A Voice Out of the Past-Part 2

After finding Marguerite's note to Mrs Clark, I looked for more clues in the other volumes of Parkman. And I found them, in his "Old Regime in Canada". Two bills of sale from stores in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with the goods purchased by Mrs C.F. Clark, of Washington City, Iowa. The fifty cents must have been a delivery charge or a tip, for one statement says at the top that charges must be pre-paid. This makes me wonder if Marguerite was a servant or maid, and if Mrs Clark was her employer.

Perhaps Washington City stores were too limited to buy all the necessities for a household. Perhaps draymen made forays out to Iowa's little towns every week, carrying goods from the big cities.

Then, somehow, notes and bills of sale were tucked away in Parkman as bookmarks. Or just tucked away. The mystery of who read Parkman remains. Into this vast, encyclopedic history of Colonial America someone introduced small artifacts from everyday life in 1912. 80 years before these statements Iowa was a territory with a few settlers, and many Indians, and one might have lived a dangerous life there. Yet fewer than 100 years later Iowa housewives could buy china in Cedar Rapids, and draymen could deliver it safely.

How I love the little mysteries of the past!

A Voice Out of the Past-

One of the best things about old books bought at Antique shops or estate sales or used bookstores are the old notes found tucked inside. I find old letters in cookbooks recommending a particular recipe to a friend or thanking them for their hospitality.

I was looking for a quote in Francis Parkman's "History of France in the New World", and this fell out of "The Conspiracy of Pontiac". I bought the Parkman set at the Bellevue Antique Mall about ten years ago. I paid $100 for it. It would still be worth that, or more, if a beagle had not chewed up the cover of "A Century of Conflict".

This set was published in 1904, and the "drayman" Marguerite asked Mrs. Clark to pay might have been someone local delivering to the house. The UPS man of his day. Anyone reading this might remember the wonderful scene in "The Music Man" where the Iowa townspeople await the Wells Fargo Wagon singing "It could be something very special for me".

No matter what the drayman brought, Marguerite did not have the change to pay him. Fifty cents must have gone farther and put a bigger dent in the pocketbook than it does today. And not a clue here as to what Mrs Clark could expect to come on that wagon. Whatever it was Marguerite would explain it later-

Marguerite, home at seven, lived at that address. So apparently, did Mrs Clark. Was Mrs Clark the housekeeper? Was she the proprietor of a boarding house for young ladies? Those existed into the 1960's. I know this because I once lived in one in Hanover, New Hampshire for a brief time before I went to nursing school.

And who tucked this note into "The Conspiracy of Pontiac"? Who was reading a history studded with names and places such as Fort Pitt and Oswego and the settlement of old Detroit? Not light reading then. Not light reading now-

Maybe there are more old notes. Whomever read this Parkman took a gentle pencil to it to note passages he or she found important. Here is one:

"The subject to which the proposed series will be devoted is that of "France in the New World'-the attempt of Feudalism ,Monarchy, and Rome to master a continent where, at this hour, half a million of bayonets are vindicating the ascendancy of a regulated freedom".

Francis Parkman wrote this in 1865. He dedicated the book to Theodore Parkman, Robert Gould Shaw, and Henry Ware Hall- each "slain in battle."

A Winter Day Indoors

The portrait of a woman was painted by Vermont artist Virginia Webb. The amber globe is an old lampshade found at a junk shop. The candle stand was found in the same place-

Meanwhile my white ceramic duck watches over the cookbooks and tries in vain to keep the Shih Tzu from barking at everything that drives or walks by.

Going Fishing

Several weeks ago, the other nurse working the night shift at the prison clinic and I were called to one of the cell blocks to check on an inmate. It is unusual that we go out at night, for the inmates -unless they are in the segregated unit- come to us, accompanied by several officers, and we see them in our house, the clinic.

I will not go into all the reasons we were called, but by the time we arrived the officers were tossing the mattresses and sheets, looking for anything that a man could hurt himself with. I had to wait to check the prisoner's BP while this went on, and I had to wait outside the cell.

If our visits to the cell blocks are infrequent, our visits inside the cell are rare, and usually we step only a foot inside, when the officers have finished handcuffing the man who has just committed the heinous crime of disturbing prison peace and routine and inflicting paperwork on others.

Prison is a foreign country. It has its tribes, it wars, its alliances, its allegiances. The officers, in the hourly company of felons, know this well. The nurses hear of it in rumors, or if a fight breaks out, see it first hand as we travel in to certify that everyone in the rumble has been checked out for damage.

When the officers cleared me, I stepped inside to take an unremarkable blood pressure. How curious I was then to see , in the cell of someone suspected of hiding razor blades to hurt himself, a long, ragged, roped up sheet tied to the air vent high up on the wall. This smelled of harm to me, though how anyone could hang himself this way was a mystery. I pointed this out to an officer, but he was unimpressed.

As the other nurse and I walked back to the clinic, I mentioned the sheet.

"He's not going to hang himself with it", she said, It's just a fishing line".

Of prison folkways it is best not to know too much. But there are times when insight shines in on 600 bored men left to their own devices. Ingenuity springs forth like a fairy circle of mushrooms appearing overnight on wet ground .

What a precious inch of space it must be, the gap between cell door and cell floor . Out into the 0100 world goes the fishing line,unseen by the officers(or ignored), as they sit in their office between their two hourly prisoner head counts.

And what are we fishing for? The Moby Dick of prison contraband, a cell phone? Unlikely, unless it is thin enough. Perhaps a cigarette or a pill never swallowed, then spit out onto toilet paper and sold two doors down, passed on by other sportsmen out for the night on the Prison Pier.

Maybe just a note to some one in Protective Custody, who can communicate in no other way.

A strange night world. Adventure in the light under the door, in the sheet reeled back in-

And perhaps this anecdote- Different prison, different sex.
I went out one evening to Death Row at the women's prison. I went with the tiny LPN who was passing the ladies their evening medicine. Outside the doors- normal noise. Within- Babel.

Screaming. Shouting. Hooting. Hissing. A baboon pack in a jungle of bars.

"What are they doing?", I asked the LPN.

"They're talking to each other", she said.

Chicken Braised in Broth, Sour Cream, and Mustard

This dish did not come from a formal recipe. It came from my head as I went along. It had occurred to me that a chicken braised in broth, mustard, and sour cream might be good, and I was right. Even Dippity Dog, my beagle can see that.

I took 6 chicken drumsticks and browned them in a butter-olive oil mixture in my cast iron Dutch oven. I browned them on both sides, then took them off the heat, for they were headed for the oven. I peeled and chopped into chunks 3 carrots and 3 gold potatoes. I put them in with the chicken. And in went 4 cloves of garlic as well.

In a bowl I mixed 1/4 cup of heavy cream, a 1/2 cup of chicken broth, 3 heaping tablespoons of sour cream, and an over sized tablespoon of grainy style Dijon mustard. I also sprinkled on a few shakes of Herbs de Provence. I did not salt, as sour cream and mustard had enough savor already. I whisked all this, then poured it over the chicken and vegetables. I covered the dutch oven with foil, then put the lid on tightly.

Into a 275 degree oven it went for one hour. At the hour mark I pulled it out, turned the chicken drumsticks, and set it back in for another hour. When it came out, the meat was falling off the bone in a most enticing way. A fine one pot dish to feed three or four-

A note- I think winter cooking is hearty cooking, which is why I use butter and the various creams. I do not apologize for it. And if there was ever a winter day, yesterday was it in this city. 32 degrees and a frigid rain. Weather not fit for woman or beagle!

The Soul of Small Kitchens

I live in an apartment. My kitchen is a galley, and I must live with the cabinets and wall colors dealt me. It is not the American Dream Kitchen. I doubt anyone but the homeless would envy me this cramped space, but I have learned to love it. Age has taught me that larger is more confining than smaller, for there is more cleaning, more tidying, more walking about through empty space looking for a pot holder or an omelet pan. I prefer cosy and close to daunting and outsized.

A small kitchen must be kept neat. It encourages discipline, though some disorder can be charming if it is imbued with the personality of the owner. Foolish though it may be, I have an island in my small space. Several times I have removed it, but it always comes back. I need it too much. Where else would I chop onions or mix muffin batter? I care not what others think of it. This is my kitchen, and it will please me.

I think a huge kitchen is like a designer jacket with sleeves too long and shoulders too wide. I would rattle around in it. And unlike a jacket, a too large kitchen cannot be altered.

I saw an article yesterday on TheKitchn website about an Italian archeologist living in Parma. She is an everyday cook with a kitchen comprehensible only to herself. She is there in the objects she has collected in travels. She is there in the piles of magazines, and pots, and under a cupboard dressed up with a little skirt. The article contrasts her kitchen with another Parma kitchen so sparse that one might conclude that the owners are either Shakers or compulsive Minimalists. Of the two I prefer the former, where the soul of the owner is in every corner.

I also would mention the "Little Paris Kitchen" of English cook Rachel Khoo, who looks like Amelie, and who once ran a miniscule restaurant in her apartment. She has a half hour cooking show, which is excellent. It is so good it feels out of place on "The Cooking Channel".

Miss Khoo cooks under conditions most Americans over a certain income would not put up with. I am not certain I would put up with them, for when she wants to use her blender she has to crawl under a table and plug it in to the one outlet in her apartment. I think to be young in Paris might make this endurable.

Miss Khoo, with her quirky fashions, makes it charming.

There can be loveliness in having limits-

Dr Wes Explains All

If you are a patient, or if you take care of patients, you may be wondering what is going on in American hospitals and doctors' offices. Why, you may ask, is Dr X quitting, or not taking new patients, or not taking Medicare patients, or only giving you five perfunctory minutes of his time.

Well, Dr Wes can explain. Dr Wes is a cardiologist. He is also the Don Quixote of American medicine,tilting his lance at his three great foes- the computerized world of the evil and mandatory Electronic Medical Record, the McPatient medicine promoted by the Corporate Medical Industrial Complex , and the Algorithms for All now required by the U.S. Government.

Dr Wes knows his quest is futile, but he is a man of honor, and he will fight on anyway.

Now, you may ask,why is all of this so evil? Computers are our servants.

No, says Dr Wes, they have two roles. Both hideous. They are our masters.And they demand we take care of them, and not the patient.

The Corporate Medical Complex. Isn't that a good thing? Surely they are more efficient than the public sector. After all, they are out to make money.

Yes, says Dr Wes, they are out to make money, and that is why you wait three hours to see a nurse practitioner or your doctor for a full three minutes. The money is in the volume, and this office needs to see 10 people an hour.

Now we are down to the U.S. Government which wants your doctor to use algorithms to treat you so that everyone is on the same standardized page and so that they can measure "outcomes".

I see you are getting nervous. You do not want your outcome to be measured. You only ask that your outcome is that you get out of the hospital alive and without going bankrupt.

Well, does not the government know best? Why rely on your doctor's wisdom or experience or brainpower or God forbid, his intuition? Those cannot be measured.
After all your government is the face you see or the voice you hear at the Social Security Office and at the IRS. Remember how competent they were. How efficient and prompt.

If you are still confused you can go to drwes.blogspot.com

I do, for he is a voice of reason.