Happy Spring, Everyone!

Buds and Blossoms by Daniel Garber, 1916

Backbone of America

John Garfield as Mickey Borden

"Hmmm," says Mickey Borden, the cynical composer, when he first walks into the home of the musical Lemp family, "Rug, the smell of cooking in the kitchen, piano, flowers. It's homes like these that are the backbone of the nation."

Four Daughters, 1938

Knitting Is Helping Elderly Survivors of the 2011 Japanese Tsunami

Women at Yarn Alive, started by an American Christian missionary, confer over an afghan that is in the works.

The Wall Street Journal has an article (go to the slideshow or video) today on how knitting is helping older women in northeastern Japan, who survived the 2011 disaster in Japan and who are now homeless. A Christian missionary from Ohio, Teddy Swaka, who has lived in the area for 50 years, started Yarn Alive, with yarn donated from Australia and Ohio, to offer the opportunity to elderly women to knit. Swaka says that she herself goes crazy if she doesn't have something to do with her hands, and she had a hunch that knitting but be helpful to these women whose lives were ripped to shreds by the tsunami. Many of the women are widows who lost their homes or their businesses or both in the tsunami or who lost loved ones. Now living in makeshift temporary housing, they get together every Tuesday to talk and knit and learn new patterns and stitches. They are also crocheting afghans. The sharing of company and the knitting has alleviated some of the sadness and loneliness that these women feel--and also produced beautiful work!

Delta Wedding Celebration Fare

In Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, on the night before the wedding, all the family has gathered at the Fairchild house for a family celebratory meal. Here's what Ellen Fairchild served:

"They had been eating chicken and ham and dressing and gravy, and good, black snap beans, greens, butter beans, okra, corn on the cob, all kinds of relish, and watermelon rind preserves, and that good bread--their plates were loaded with corncobs and little piles of bones, and their glasses drained down to blackened leaves of mint, and the silver bread baskets lined with crumbs.... Then Roxie was putting a large plate of whole peaches in syrup and a slice of coconut cake" on the table."

The wedding dinner featured chicken salad--"two or three tubs and we've got it covered on ice"--along with cold lobster aspic, champagne, and of course, the cake. There was always cake, at all meals, it seems, served with fruit, and for all snacks and for tea when the aunts or anyone else came to visit.

Shown here is my favorite southern cookbook: The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock.

Fine Arts Friday: Fern Coppedge

January Sunshine

(All paintings in this post are by Fern Coppedge. As always click on the picture to get a better view.)

"People used to think me queer when I was a little girl because I saw deep purples and red and violets in a field of snow. I used to be hurt over it until I gave up trying to understand people and concentrated on my love and understanding of landscapes," Fern Isabel Coppedge once related. She had wanted to be an artist since she was 13 years old and became more enamored with the idea when her family moved to California from her native Illinois and she attended her sister's watercolor class.



Stone House

She went on to study at McPherson College and the University of Kansas, where she met her husband Robert Coppedge. A teacher, he encouraged her to study art, and when they moved to Illinois, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1908 to 1910. From there she moved to New York, where she studied at the Art Students League with Vincent DuMond and William Merritt Chase and also attended summer art sessions in Woodstock, New York, where she studied with winter specialist John Carlson. In 1917, she began to study with Daniel Garber at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and started to show her work.



Lumberville Cottage

From then on, although she also painted in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the summer, Coppedge lived in Pennsylvania and built her artistic reputation painting the landscapes of Bucks County, north of Philadelphia. From 1920 to 1929, she lived in Lumberville near Garber and then moved to the artist colony in New Hope, along the Delaware River, where she resided til her death in 1951. Many of her paintings can be seen at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.



Autumn

Coppedge was an official member of the Philadelphia Ten, an organization created by women artists who had studied at either the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now the Moore College of Art and Design) or the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Founded in 1917, the Ten had banded together to give greater prominence to their works in a market that was dominated by the works of male artists. Although the flattened later works of Coppedge remind the viewer of post-impressionist works in France, the Ten never embraced the modern art that hit America with the 1913 Chicago Armory Show.


Normans Woe Gloucester, Massachusetts

Coppedge always went outdoors to capture her vision of the landscape, no matter the weather. "I may erase most of my sketch, but after I have it the way I want it in charcoal, then I work over the entire canvas with a large brush," she explained of her method of painting. "I use thin paint in trying to get the right value. I test different spots to see whether the scene should be painted rich or pale. Then I proceed with the actual painting using paint right from the tube. I hold the brush at arm's length and paint from the spine. That gives relaxation."



Fern Isabel Kuns Coppedge

"Warm and Pretty"

It is September 1923, and Dabney Fairchild is marrying Troy Flavin in the Fairchild family house in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, first published in 1946. We see all the hustle and bustle and the intricate weaves of the relationships of all the family members in this portrayal of a way of life is, for the most part, no more. Here is a short excerpt when hand-made quilts arrive the day before the wedding, sent by the bridegroom's mother:

But Troy was pushing his way into the parlor, intent.
"Look," he said, "everybody look. Did you ever think your mother could make something like this? My mammy made these, I've seen her do it. A thousand stitches! Look--these are for us, Dabney."
"Quilts!" Dabney took his arm. "Shelley! Come in and look. Troy, come speak to Aunt Tempe--she's come for the wedding. Papa's sister from Inverness."
But he flung her off and held up a quilt of jumpy green and blue. "'Delectable Mountains,'" he said. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am. I swear that's the 'Delectable Mountains.' Do you see how any lady no higher'n a grasshopper ever sewed all those little pieces together? Look, 'Dove in the Window.' Where's everybody?"
They all came forward and watched Troy spread out the quilts, snatch them together, spread them out again...

"What's the name of this quilt?" asked Dabney, arms on her hips.
"Let's see. I think it's 'Tirzah's Treasure,' but it might be 'Hearts and Gizzards.' I've spent time under both."

"Ma pieced that top of a snowy winter," said Troy gravely staring, his eyes far away.
"I wish I could make something like that," said Aunt Primrose gallantly.
"Not everybody can," said Troy. "But 'Delectable Mountains,' that's the one I am for Dabney and me to sleep under most generally, warm and pretty."

More People Living Alone in the United States

Christmas Eve by Carl Larsson

The number of people in the United States who live alone continues to climb and stands now at 27%, still lower than that of most Western European countries, where Sweden's 47% hits the high mark, noted an op ed in the New York Times February 4, on the basis of U.S. 2010 Census reports.

The author, Eric Klinenberg, argues that "living alone can make it easier to be social, because single people have more free time, absent family obligations, to engage in social activities."
What I find interesting about this
sentence is the distinct line drawn between being with one's family and engaging in social activities. For many people, being with their family, including their extended family, is the heart of their social life. When I was growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, our family lived within half an hour of our grandparents' houses. We saw our grandparents often. We vacationed with our grandparents. We went to parties of the extended family or parties involving the extended family plus friends. Aren't all of these social activities? Isn't the family dinner a social activity?

It is true, as the author notes, that families today are less social within their own homes. Technologies such as TV, ipods, and computers have pulled children and parents away from the family dinner table and familial interaction. Smaller nuclear families also make for less interaction and fun in the house. The fact that 77% of all married mothers with children under the age of 15 work outside the home has drastically reduced the number of meals eaten together for families and in some cases eliminated the family meal altogether. And, with the far greater geographical dispersion of extended families since World War II, visiting grandparents and aunts and uncles can involve air travel or long car rides and is mostly reserved for holidays. These conditions, sadly, could be causing an under-socialization within the family, hurling members outside of it to seek friendship, comfort, and fun.

Nevertheless, I take issue with the idea that family and social life are mutually exclusive. The author notes that living alone "comports with modern values. It promotes freedom, personal control and self-realization — all prized aspects of contemporary life"--"values" that also add to the centrifugal forces pulling at the family today.