Meeting Mrs. Egg

Although Mrs. Egg was younger than the woman in this picture, she fed her 6'5" son with that kind of zest. Mrs. Egg was the creation of Thomas Beer, who wrote stories about the Eggs and other families for the Saturday Evening Post during the 1920s and 1930s. Most of his books are out of print. Reading about Mrs. Egg is like reading stories that Norman Rockwell would have liked to illustrate. Or was it the other way around--did Norman Rockwell, whose paintings graced the covers of the Saturday Evening Post--inspire Thomas Beer?

I was referred to Thomas Beer by William Faulkner. During his question and answer sessions at the University of Virginia, Faulkner was asked who were the major influences on his work. He replied, Cervantes (whose Don Quixote he said he read once a year), Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, and Thomas Beer. Thomas Beer?

Beer was actually a literary man, the kind of man that Faulkner said he wasn't. He wrote a biography of Stephen Crane, a book on the American culture of the 1890s titled The Mauve Decade, and three novels. He moved in literary circles in New York City (he lived and died in Yonkers), and his many literary friends felt sorry for him because he was chained to churning out popular stories for the Saturday Evening Post about everyday types of people--like the Egg family, who own and run the biggest dairy farm in Ohio, a world away from that which Beer made his home--to make the money he needed to live in style. Mrs. Egg and her son, Adam, champion Navy wrestler in the years of World War I, are the major characters of the stories, which are otherwise crowded with Mr. Egg, her three married daughters, Mrs. Egg's grandchildren, her parade of cooks, friends, neighbors, town folk, and various strangers who often are the occasion for the plot. These are fun stories of small-town family life.

Mrs. Egg, who weighs 250 pounds, thinks a lot about food and how to keep her strapping son well fed, and is a very down-to-earth person--a condition that Beer celebrates. Her strong suit is common sense, that always wins out against pretension. The dialogue is authentic, as if Beer secretly stalked Middle America listening to people talking in their homes or along their backyard fences or at the local store. And in fact, he had many correspondences with all different kinds of people all over the country.

In Beer's third novel, Road to Heaven, he attempted to write about people like the Eggs in a more literary style, but the book was panned by the critics, who considered this side of Beer's work to be too low-brow. Beer was writing at the same time as Sinclair Lewis was penning his caricatures of small-town life in Main Street and Babbitt, books the literati found far more praiseworthy.

Faulkner, however, said he never read literary criticism and so was free to find in Beer's stories a source for learning his craft.

The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips: A Diamond in Coal Country

At the end of July I spent a weekend with my widowed sister-in-law and her family in southern West Virginia--and it is only recently that my mind, forced to pay attention to other issues, has returned back to home. I asked for some glimpses into "uncanned history," and my sister-in-law and her sister very kindly obliged and took me to see two deserted coal towns, Thurmond and Kaymoor. Both sisters had lived in Thurmond when its population was down to fewer than 100. My sister-in-law used to flag down the Amtrak passenger train with her bandanna and then hop on to go to Philadelphia, where my brother picked her up to go down to the Jersey shore. To see Kaymoor we hiked nearly three miles up a mountain. Along with their mother, they introduced me to the world of coal--a lot different than the far easier worlds of farming and suburbia in southeastern and south-central Pennsylvania that I had grown up in.

When I came home I started digging into coal mining, the struggles of the United Mine Workers to unionize coal mining in Appalachia (a campaign that at least ended coal feudalism), the history of coal mining in the United States, who owns the land in Appalachia, and the history of the region and of its people. I also wanted to read novels from these endless mountains and happily came upon Gin Phillips' The Well and the Mine.

You don't need an interest in coal to read this book--The Well and the Mine will appeal to anyone who is interested in reading novels about families, raising children, housework, and everyday morality.

The story takes place in the coal mining region of northern Alabama, home region to Ms. Phillips, and is about the Moore family--a father, mother, two daughters, and a son. Ms. Phillips tells the story through the words of all five, which is a pleasure in itself. In this way -- unlike modern-day novels that function only as screenplays with scenic description -- The Well and the Mine gives us insight into the mind of each character and what they are thinking, including of each other.

The story takes place during the depression. It is hard to imagine a family in which the father works hard every day and it is still a struggle to put food on the family table. The Moores do better than others, because the father works a small farm and raises vegetables. They get milk from the family cow. Mrs. Moore puts up vegetables for the winter, and the family rarely eats meat, not even on Sundays. Their meals are composed of bread, which Mrs. Moore bakes, along with assorted vegetables, relishes, and fruit. They churn their own butter. Breakfast is biscuits. The book also describes Mrs. Moore's views of housekeeping--in contrast to those of her sister. (I love books that talk about housekeeping theories!)

It was a relief to spend time visiting, through this novel, with a functioning family. Far from being boring, as Tolstoy avers, it is fascinating to see how the Moores muster their strength to deal with the many difficulties they face, with the opportunities they have for doing both good and evil, with the changes each goes through as the family's youngsters grow older. This was a thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring read.

You can read about Gin Phillips here, and here she explains the origins of The Well and the Mine, her first novel. I will be watching out for the next.

Little Squirrels

Squirrels by Albrecht Durer, 1478-1521

See Louella at What Matters Most for a very ingenious method of seeing a squirrel up close and personal. And don't miss Mennonite Girls Can Cook, which she contributes to, for scrumptious recipes.

Fine Arts Friday: Just a Reminder

Children on the Shore by Mary Cassatt, 1885

This is a favorite painting of Americans, undoubtedly of those, like myself, that spent summer vacations at "the shore." It reminds me of the happiest playtimes that children can have in freedom at the beach. Of course, parents need to keep a watchful eye that children don't stray or get into trouble in the water, but for the most part, unless a parent wants to join in the fun and assist in creating an ocean castle, fortification, or living burial ground, it is best that adults stay out of the way (applying sun lotion only and otherwise not worrying about clothes or sand or wet).

These two charming little girls are equipped with shovels and a bucket. A bucket is useful for carrying water and also for shaping sand for fortifications, but no other equipment is needed; clam shells are good shovels. My brother's family and I plunked our kids at a beach one afternoon with absolutely nothing, and they managed to play for four hours in perfect bliss.

There is so much going on at the beach--sand crabs, shells, the constant motion of the waves and whatever they bring up, the eating away of the sand around your toes and your castles as the tide comes up ever closer and then recedes, the seaweed, the clouds, the invitation to skitter and slide in the shallow surf, gulls catching fish, gull political conventions, sandpipers fretting, instant relief from heat in an ocean that always surprises, skate and fish remains, boats going by, holes that fill up with water from the bottom, sand sharks, fishermen, mud pies that need to be made, the ocean breeze, and constant noise of surf and animals and wind and jabbering with friends about what you will build and how, with improvisation along the way.

And the beach accommodates children of all ages together in an ensemble of play. Here are photos of my brothers and two friends playing on the shore. The littlest one there (on the right), my youngest brother, never left it, living his adulthood on the Florida eastern coast. At the beach he was always and thoroughly absorbed. If you have access to a beach and young kids, take advantage. They have a ball--you have a rest. Mother beach takes over.





Happy summer, everyone!

Clothes that Bespeak Femininity

Keri Russell in The Magic of Ordinary Days.

I love the clothes that Keri Russell wears in the Hallmark movie, The Magic of Ordinary Days. Russell wears cotton blouses that are, in fact, exquisitely cut to fit, with fine flowery prints and beautifully cut dresses also with flower prints.


A lively print shirt dress with accompanying sweater.

The dresses all fit to a T, so that although Keri Russell is alluring, she is always dressed modestly. Of course, few of us are as beautiful as Russell, but I think most women would look better in clothes like these than in many of the outfits I see on the street or the grocery store, which often are either sexy but not necessarily feminine, or are unfeminine by virtue of being sex-less.


A superbly cut red skirt with a red and green flower print blouse that reminds me of Liberty of London prints available at Purl Soho.

Fine Arts Friday: "I Am Going to See Grandma"

I Am Going to See Grandma by William Merritt Chase, 1889

American impressionist painter William Merritt Chase created this pastel of his two-year-old daughter, Dorothy, as her mother buttons her coat in preparation for a visit to her grandmother, who lives cross-river in Brooklyn.

Needless to say, this is a beautifully rendered image. The room's furniture and rug both frame and point us to the mother and her child. The beautifully harmonized colors unify the well-established but cheerful surroundings that lack the oppressive darkness one often associates with Victorian interiors.

Click on the painting to see it in a larger size and get a good look at little Dorothy's expression. Although she is excited, as the title tells us, Dorothy is patiently standing still while her mother primps her coat so all is in order for grandma's inspection. But the tilt of her head and her half-smile show she's also enjoying the joke: "I see you drawing me getting ready to see Grandma, Daddy!"

Creating a Mary Garden

In this medieval painting Mary gives the Baby Jesus a flower. Strawberries, signifying Fruitful Virgin, grow in the raised garden behind them.

(I realize this is a little late, but consider it early for next spring!)

The Mary Garden is a tradition from the Middle Ages, when gardens were created with flowers and shrubs that all signify names of the Virgin Mary or her attributes. Medieval gardens were usually small and enclosed and featured trellises like the one in the painting above.

If you have a garden, most likely numbers of the flowers and shrubs you have planted signify names of Mary or her attributes, such as humility (violet) and purity (lily), or also her eyes (forget-me-nots) or her heart (begonia), or even an event like Easter (forsythia, known as the Easter Bush), the Flight into Egypt (lavender), or a Lenten rose.

A Mary garden in Australia, compliments of Under Her Starry Mantle.

A Mary Garden gives praise to Mary and also invites us to contemplation, especially if it is centered around a statue of Our Lady. Mary gardens are traditionally enclosed. But even if you are not able to strictly create a Mary garden, it is a lovely thought to know the religious meanings of the plants that you may already have. In my garden, for instance, I have hydrangeas and was very happy to learn that they mean Ave Maria. They sit next to forsythia, the Easter Bush, and a rose bush, meaning Mary's Glory, and in front I have petunias (Lady's Praise).

To learn all about Mary gardens, you can go here and here and to see a beautiful Mary garden in Annapolis, go here.