Beautiful Barnesville, Fairyland and Walking.

Roger and I walked the seven miles round trip to the Fairyland ice cream stand yesterday. One of the charms of Barnesville is how it captures a simpler, bygone era. Of course, my feet now hurt ... even after bathing them in Olney's lake. Ah spring!! How we love you!

I'm struck with Barnesville's quiet when I come back here from Richmond on the weekends. I live on a shady, quiet, old-fashioned street there, but Route 40, a few blocks a way, provides constant, subliminal traffic noise and there's the train whistle, and an undercurrent of hum from people in houses built in a row along a street. It's not bad noise, but it's noise. Our house in Barnesville, however, is surrounded by fields and a barn, with the lake on one side, and we are set far back from the road, so the quiet is profound, except for the birds and the geese, and occasionally, sounds drifting over from Olney.

Since, like Jane Austen, I live "half in" all the books I've read, our walk to the Fairyland reminded me of when Donna Parker and her best friend Ricky, a freckle-faced girl, took a long walk to the soda fountain on their day off from camp counseling in the Donna Parker books, a children's series written in the late 1950s, early 1960s ... which book was that? Of course, the soda stand looked a lot closer when they were whipping past in the car on the way to camp ... Has anybody read the Donna Parker books?

And while I'm ruminating on long walks ... trekking to the Fairyland reminded me too of a March of Dimes walk-a-thon through Baltimore when I was 14. I wish I had photos and/or a route map from that day, because it was street after street of tidy rowhouses with marble steps ... and most of that is probably gone now or in disrepair ... I took it all for granted, of course. I know there's a metaphor here somewhere. :)

Any walk memories?

Christmas in Barnesville

Only three days late ...

We had a lovely Christmas ...

We went to ecumenical Christmas Eve services organized by the Barnesville Ministeriam at the Presbyterian church, where the Rev. Andy Wood is the pastor. We love Andy and he feels like our friend because he hangs out with Quakers. Ela and Bill, who are both very talented musicians, and who used to work at Olney, performed on the cello and whistle. Bill makes his own whistles, which look like piccolos. Needless to say, Bill and Ela were wonderful. The whole service was lovely-- the storybook church with stained glass windows, the traditional Christmas carols .. Joy to the World, Silent Night... and readings about the birth of Jesus ... the glow of lit candles at the end ... very "tender" in the Quaker sense of the word. They even rang the old-fashioned bell at midnight ...

Barnesville was pretty and idyllic on Christmas Eve, with the lit wreathes and big stars made of white lights attached to the lampposts along Main Street, the road glistening. Even the lopsided, decorated Christmas tree with colored lights on the corner added a touch of whimsy.

Christmas day was nice and I think (hope) everyone liked their presents. I liked mine. I read The Financial Lives of Poets, which I loved, except that (male) author treats women as objects--I felt like saying, come on, already ... is there anything more to the fictional wife than a "tight bod" and "hot bod" and that she's "cute" and that other men find her "hot" and that the protag. wants to have sex with her? And the other surface things: she likes to shop because she has "issues" from her childhood and she's good with their young sons (which makes him jealous because he wants the attention)? What is she like as a person? What's in her mind and her soul? And all the other women in the book are the same: "hot" Amber the HR woman, and the son's hot second grade teacher whom he wants to ... you know .. and the "hot,' "Nordic" blond Bea who .. guess what he wants .... and it's simply depressing that in an otherwise great book, where the men are immediately drawn as fully human, and yet there's not one woman who is more than a body. It wasn't deliberate either, I don't think, as he goes to pains to make this fictional hero sympathetic. But that's my rant.

Sophie's flight in from Baltimore was delayed so we had a big rush getting to Jane and Clyde's for Christmas dinner. As Jane said, after two years, it's a tradition! Bill and Ela also came and there was more music. Clyde, who is a retired music professor, played the piano, Jane sang (beautiful voice), their daughter Susan played the flute and Ela and Bill again played the cello and whistle. I lack the musical gene, so I listened. It was a lovely, old-fashioned event in the big high-ceiling living room--we even had a fireplace--and I don't think I can remember ever having had such a musical Christmas, filled up with so many Christmas carols. And I was thinking how nice it is that we all share a cultural heritage of Christmas music: People from farflung parts of the country can gather and we all know the same songs ... Something to think about. I like to think the music touches people with some of the true, pure sweetness of Christianity at its best.

Life in Barnesville: December

I learned the other night that molasses makes a good fertilizer, especially if your soil is low in sulphur. Just add a teaspoon (or perhaps a tablespoon) of blackstrap molasses to a gallon of water and pour on your plants. It's supposed to be a natural miracle- gro. I like this idea because it's so simple.

I have to keep chasing two fat squirrels out of the birdfeeder. I've never seen animals so fat run so fast.

Cows are being pastured just beyond our front yard, so I am studying cow behavior now and again. Not much to report, except that the two new calves run around and frolic. The adults don't stand entirely stock still, as they graze, but they're not doing much else.

It snowed today and is very cold and windy. However, I managed to get Sophie from Muskingum, along with all the stuff she was taking home for her winter break, without any problems.

Barnesville's Main Street is pretty. Christmas wreaths lit with white lights are attached to the lampposts. With the light snow and the decorations and the old brick and stone buildings, the town looks idyllic, at least at night. I continue to appreciate the quiet and lack of traffic here, the ease of parking and shopping. Other than clothes, we can get everything we need in town--there's a grocery store, several dollar stores, a hardware store, a pharmacy, a library, a Rite Aid ... a rare occurrence, I think, in this day and age, and probably supported by the Amish, who I imagine don't find it feasible to ride their buggies all the way down to St. Clairsville to shop in the big box stores and the Walmart. Again, I marvel that it's is the religious groups--the Orthodox Jews in some areas, the Amish in others, and doubtless other groups--that keep communities alive. Rules we moderns reject as senseless and archaic, fit for another era, such as not working on the Sabbath (and hence living close enough to the synagogue to walk) have hidden values. Should Quakers start embracing the Sabbath? Should we start thinking of driving as work?

I have become a vegetarian and that is going well, although in this geographic area (and perhaps all areas) it can be a challenge at times to find something on the restaurant menu other than a grilled cheese sandwich. I've been thinking about veganism, as much of my impetus towards changing my diet is factory farming ... but I can't figure it out. I'm pondering it. Here, I could buy Amish milk and eggs, as I sometimes do, and rest assured the animals are not abused, but so many processed foods contain milk or eggs ... as with many things, it's gradual.

Roger and I had trouble getting out of Barnesville on Saturday, one of the drawbacks of being six or so miles off the interstate. Cars were spinning out of control on the ice on the windy, hilly roads, blocking traffic. We were eventually able to get to Route 70, but for a moment I thought we were going to end up like De Smet, South Dakota from the Little House books--snowed in all winter.

Persimmon Cake

Our persimmons are now "well-frosted"--or at least, somewhat frosted--and so I picked some. I've discovered they're best when they turn bright orange, almost the color of a cherry tomato, and are beginning to shrivel.

When I'd gathered enough, I whipped them into a pulp in the food processor and made a persimmon cake from a recipe I found on the Web.

I served it at the Quaker Writing group meeting this evening. It was the color and texture of an English plum pudding, a moist, dense cake. The "tasters" --aka the writing group--liked it. I was glad.

I was informed that you can frost persimmons by picking them and putting them in the freezer. Now why didn't I think of that? I was also told that November and December are more the months for persimmons, but we have had a cold snap recently.

In any case, the golden and orange persimmon globes are colorful and pretty in the tree. People in Barnesville with persimmon experience tell me I should try an actual persimmon pudding. Maybe I will.

This is all the more thrilling for me as I am reading a book now called Jane Austen and Food. After her father died, according to this book, Jane and her mother and her sister Cassandra lived in a "cottage" called Chawton, with a big garden surrounded by high walls. They grew pears and greengages and many other fruits (and vegetables) and made their own jams, jellies and preserves. So as I baked with persimmons, I liked thinking that Jane Austen would have done the same.

Pumpkin (festivals) and Persimmons

I spent Thursday and Friday morning in the school kitchens baking pumpkin bread for Barnesville's annual pumpkin festival. The Olney Friends School senior class sells the bread as a fund raiser for the senior class trip.

Every year, the largest pumpkin is crowned King Pumpkin. This year's pumpkin came in at more than 1,500 pounds. This is close to the world record for the largest pumpkin ever, which is 1,528 pounds. However, the Barnesville pumpkin festival allows gourds into the competition. The largest gourd on record weighs more than 1,800 pounds.

The new King Pumpkin is huge ... and flat.

While I was helping to bake pumpkin bread, I learned some other interesting facts:

Persimmons don't ripen until after the first frost. Interesting.

Don, the Olney farm manager, said he is having the Jonathan and Empire apples (hope I have those names right) made into apple butter. First you boil the apples down into apple sauce, then you boil them down even further, adding a lot of sugar (apple butter is apparently half sugar) until you have a nice smooth paste. The key is never to stop stirring with the paddle.

Jessica, our gardener, came in with a plastic bucket filled with giant kale leaves. They were as big as palm leaves and a vivid green. I couldn't over how huge they were. My baking partner, Richard, told me it was a good season for kale.

About half a dozen wild turkeys have been shredding Richard's kale and other vegetables. It's hard to shoot them, Don said.

It's been raining buckets today, but Roger and I still went to the book sale that the Barnesville Historical Society holds on Pumpkin festival weekend. Do we need MORE books? Not really. But at 10¢ for paperbacks and 20¢ for hardbacks, it's hard for us bibliophiles to resist.

With the rain pouring down, we've yet to stroll the fair proper, so no fried snickers bars to sooth our tastebuds ... so far.

What's a Persimmon?

This time last year, after I had been living the bucolic rural life for about, say, six weeks, somebody asked me: "Are you going to put up your persimmons?"

Huh?

"Put up" my "persimmons?"

He must have seen the blank look on my face because he said, laconic, "You know, you've got that persimmon tree in your yard by the barn. Little tree. Looks like it's got a lot of fruit this year."

Oh--and he was asking me if I were going to can the persimmons.

OK. Like, oh yeah. Now where do I come from? S-u-b-u-r-b-s. Like right. Like I'm going to put up persimmons.

Now I know people in the suburbs "put things up." But what on earth is a persimmon?

I don't think I'd ever seen one. In fact, I thought they were some exotic fruit that grew in, say, England. You know, like gooseberries. The kind of thing Benjamin Bunny might eat in Beatrix Potter. Of course, I'm the person who some years ago took mulberries to my Quaker meeting because I didn't know what they were and my daughter had eaten some from a bush in our yard. As they say, you never stop learning ..

I went outside later and looked for the persimmon tree and sure enough, there it was, a little tree by a bigger tree by the red barn. And yes, little golden fruits that looked like yellow cherry tomatoes dangled amid its leaves. Persimmons. My body of knowledge had just once again increased.

I ate one just to make sure. I've been much bolder about eating flora since I wrote an article on poisonous plants in which I learned that it's exceedingly rare to die of plant poisoning the U.S. in this day and age. (Unless, of course, you're that young man in "Into the Wild" ...)

The golden fruit was sweet and soft inside. Good. I gathered some and ate some more, figuring, macrobiotic, anti-oxidant, what could I lose. I never did put them up. I think other people might have gathered them. Or the birds.

In any case, this year I went out and looked at my persimmon tree, and lo and behold, fruit was forming. It's wonderful--Edenic really--to have the earth produce such bounty without any effort on my part. I tried a persimmon. Not ripe yet. But soon enough.

Faith and Micah's wedding

A few weeks ago, I went to Faith and Micah's Quaker wedding at Stillwater Meeting House.

I barely know Micah and Faith. I met Micah in August at Ohio Yearly Meeting, which is largely held on the Olney Friends School campus. The plain dressing Quakers in their bonnets and long, flowing dresses captured my attention far more than the "civilians" in ordinary clothes.

Red-haired Micah was a civilian. I shared a table with him and some others at dinner one night in the Olney dining hall. I was in particularly bad mood and off my "center." Maybe that's why he and I bonded over a discussion of the demonic. Really. We connected.

In September, my Quaker friend Jaya from Toronto came to town with her friend Quaker Rebecca to stay at our house so they could go to Micah and Faith's wedding. It was Quakers everywhere. This actually worked out well because Sophie had just moved to college and Will and Nick to the Olney Friends School dorm across the lake, leaving empty bedrooms. I hung blue curtains, spread a light blue blanket on the bed, and put a blue bowl on the dresser of one bedroom, creating the "blue" room! Just like the magazines say! Simply rearrange what you've got!

Anyway. Jaya invited me to a meeting for worship with Micah and Faith at the Georgian Pillars, our one and only Barnesville B&B. Given that we have no hotels or motels in "Pixieville" for miles and miles, it's actually the only place to stay. I jumped on the chance to have a meeting for worship there.

The brick Georgian Pillars looks Georgian on the outside in that it's brick, but inside it's a Victorian or early twentieth century house with high ceilings, art glass, stained glass, fireplaces and an amazing mammoth staircase that says "I am made of real, solid cherrywood and I am here to stay. Don't mess with me." So, with that staircase looming in the hallway, I sat in silent worship stared at by stuffed teddy bears and a large knickkack on the coffee table of a tuxedoed bear at a grand piano.

Even though they didn't know me, Micah and Faith couldn't have been warmer about encouraging me to attend their wedding. After the meeting for worship, we drifted into the Georgian Arms sunny dining room and Faith showed us the hand-calligraphed certificate of marriage that all the witnesses to the wedding would sign the next day, as no priest or minister validates a Quaker wedding. Quakers traditionally frame their certificates of marriage and hang them in their houses.

I was surprised at how calm Faith was the day before her wedding. Wasn't she supposed to be going crazy with last minute crises? Shouldn't she be, like, having a nervous breakdown? Well, one of the joys of a Quaker ceremony is its simplicity: Nothing could be a starker contrast to the bridezilla wedding industry.

Micah and Faith's wedding was true to form, truly beautiful in its austerity. No string of bouquet clutching satin clad bridesmaids preceded Faith to the front of the meeting house. It was simply her, in a simple strapless white dress, and Micah, saying their vows each to the other and exchanging rings. Afterwards, people rose as the spirit moved them and shared stories about the couple or about either Micah or Faith. At the end, we all signed the marriage certificate and poured out to the porch for cake and punch.

Some Quakers commented on how few, if any, Quaker weddings they had attended. It's sad there are so few young Quakers marrying in the Quaker tradition, but that could change. I do think the world would be less harried--and impoverished-- if more couples adopted the simplicity of the Quaker wedding. This is a place where less is more. Where simplicity is beautiful.

Christmas in Barnesville

I was talking with my new friend Sally on the phone last night and we agreed it's a wonderful thing that a group of us all arrived here in Barnesville at the same time.

Tonight, Christmas Eve, we will all go to hear Clyde (and our Olney friend Ela), both of whom are musical, at a Christmas Eve service at the Presbyterian Church in town. On Christmas, we will all get together at Jane and Clyde's 100-year old blue frame house just down from the library for Christmas dinner. All of these activities will include our teenage and young adult children (except for Sally's; her children are far away). Even Sophie is home, having returned from her visit with her boyfriend Lucas's family in Yellow Springs.

I'm appreciating Christmas in a place where there's little to buy and little to do. Downtown Barnesville looks not too different from downtown Bedford Falls (circa 1946) in "It's a Wonderful Life." Maybe a little quieter. The town has hung Christmas decorations from the street lamps on Main Street. You can still pull into an (unmetered) parking space in front of the store where you'd like to shop. While there are a straggle of stores with separate parking lots as you head east toward my end of town--some fast food "joints," a Save A Lot, Riesbecks, Dollar General and Rite Aid--there's nothing like a strip mall, mall or arcade of shops. Downtown Main Street shopping could be lifted straight out of the 1950s. For me it's a delight to live in a land time forgot. (As an aside, I'm rereading Emma for my reading group in Maryland and last night was charmed by a streetscape. Emma is waiting for her friend Harriet to pick out ribbon and so steps outside to watch the activities. One is a boy urging a donkey down the street (you won't see that in Barnesville but horses and buggies you will see) and another is a group of children staring in the bow window of the bakery looking at the gingerbread. That last image struck me as more Victorian or Dickensian that Jane Austen-like, but it was charming.)

All our snow is gone, but the grass has a golden cast and we still have some reddish leaves on the trees outside our south living room window. Plus the view of the red barn with the green roof.

I keep telling people, half jokingly, that Barnesville is still in the 1970s. That's part of what I like about living here. But where ever you are, feliz navidad.

The Pumpkin festival and more

This past week has been a busy one here in Barnesville. I baked lots of pumpkin bread in the Olney school kitchens for the Olney senior class to sell at the Pumpkin festival. I got to know Quaker Richard Simon better as we worked side-by-side mixing dough and scooping pumpkin bread batter into cake tins. He is an amazing man, who goes from dawn to dusk (literally) baking for the school before and during the festival. Cleda, the alumni liaison, is no slouch herself, working for hours on end to supervise, organize and bake.

The Pumpkin Festival is Barnesville's biggest annual event. People come from all over for the food, including slicse of $2 pumpkin pie, as well as the carnival rides and, of course, the weighing of the pumpkins. This year, King Pumpkin weighed 1,175 pounds. And don't forget the tobacco spitting contest.

I liked the way the festival, rides and all, was woven right into Main Street and the other major streets of the town. I'd never been to a fair of this sort that wasn't exiled to a field on the outskirts (or far outside) of the town holding it. I think it must be great for residents to stroll up the street and be part of the festival. On the other hands, I'm told some people leave town for the duration.

I helped sell pumpkin bread in the Olney booth, helped with the Barnesville historical society's book sale (hardcovers 50¢; paperbacks a quarter), manned the Obama booth, and I marched with the Obama float in the parade, handing out literature, so I felt very involved during the festival. I've never participated in a political campaign before. (How many times have I said, over the phone, 'This is Diane, a volunteer with Barack Obama's campaign for change here in Belmont County?')

So Republican friends, don't hate me! I'm really not a politcal animal. I don't like the way politics divides and alienates people. I know thoughtful, caring and intelligent people belong to both parties and hold the same values of wanting to make the world a safer, more compassionate and more justice-filled place. And idealist friends, I know Obama is not the perfect candidate, but I am in a state where votes count, and I do believe the country needs a change of direction. So there it is, my one and only (I hope) political speech.

Tomorrow I go to an Amish farm to get milk! I can't imagine having the opportunity to do this in Columbia, and I am very much looking forward to it.

I've also picked apples in the school apple orchard last week, and peaches from neighbors Fran Taber's orchard. Have I mentioned I am enjoying the rural life?

Tomorrow, Johanna comes with the boys' friends Elvin and Phlip to visit for the boys' 14th birthday. I'm very happy to be seeing friends from home!

Of course, life is not perfect, but I won't dwell on the various vexations.

Back after Hiatus

I didn't think I'd be "dark" for two long weeks. I hope everyone hasn't entirely given up on the blog.

Just as a synopsis: the move went well. We had unseasonably cool weather, which was great for August. Now we're more or less settled into our new little cozy house. I like it here. I like the hardwood floors in the bedrooms. Our newly-remodelled kitchen is beautiful, with a new Pergo wood floor and granite-look counters and a soft beige tile backsplash. It might be my favorite room now especially as it is a big square space. I'll post before and after pix when I get a little more settled. Of course, it makes all the difference to have our familiar furniture in place.

It's very pretty here, with lots of rolling hills and apple and peach orchards. For those of you who followed the series here on Plain Secrets, the books about the Schwartzentruber Amish, you may be interested to know that the Amish around Barnesville are a group that broke away from the Schwartzentrubers and moved here because land prices are lower than in northern Ohio. I was excited to find this out. I heard they are more conservative than the Schwartzentrubers, which is hard to imagine. But we have seen no lights or reflective symbols on their buggies, so it appears to be true.

Anyway, there have been many faculty dinners and so a rash of socializing. My kids are adjusting, though it's hard to be virtually the only teens around. School starts Friday--at least new student orientation--so that should give them more to do.

I'm hampered in blogging right now by no Internet at my house but we hope to have that situation fixed soon. In some ways, while I miss all my cyber connections, it's been liberating not to have 24/7 access to the web.

I'd love to catch up with people, so please let me know what you are up to!

Food for Thought

We hear a lot about food. From Supersize It to the epidemic of obesity to slow food, from vegetarianism to veganism to macrobiotics to the various diets formed around the explosion of food allergies, food seems to have taken on an increased complexity.

At my Quaker meeting, we try to juggle the needs of vegans with those allergic to soy, wheat, nuts, dairy, etc. ... There was a piece a few years ago in a Vogue (or perhaps Town and Country) magazine that I read at the hairdressers by a woman living in the south of France who got so tired of guests e-mailing her ahead time with what they weren't eating ("Please be informed that I'm on a no-tomato diet ... and of course, I only drink soy milk") that she refused to cater to anyone's food needs at all!

My children were transformed -- or perhaps traumatized in a good way!-- by seeing "Supersize Me" in school. This documentary records the ill health effects of a man who eats nothing but MacDonald's food for a month. Anytime he is asked to supersize a meal, he does. At one point, he throws up. Since seeing the movie, my children refuse to eat at MacDonalds. Truly, there is a God!

Anyway, Will tells me that MacDonald's no longer supersizes but instead offers "value meals." He also told the story of a friend's father who ordered himself three quarter pounders, two fries and two milkshakes at the drive-through window. The mind boggles.

When my children were in the early elementary years, their school was chosen to be part of a program in which all the children were given breakfast at school. The rationale was that breakfast helps children learn and yet a. some children in poverty weren't getting breakfast and their parents were ashamed to send them for free breakfast (which unlike lunch, most kids didn't participate in) and b. some children in before-school care were getting breakfast so early that they were hungry well before lunch.

I was happy about the idea -- as was told to us -- of children going to school and getting a balanced, nutritionally complete breakfast. Somehow, I pictured steaming plates of freshly cooked foods: eggs, bacon, French toast, orange wedges. What was I thinking? What the kids got was processed cold food in little wrappers pulled out of a bin beside the teacher's desk: packaged danishes, sweetened yogurts, milk and cereal boxes, bottles of juice. Nothing fresh, nothing warm. Not enough. Airplane food. It was a disappointment and, I thought, radically wrong to teach children that this is what "healthy" eating is. At the same time, I recognized that the school wasn't in the food service business, and wasn't going to hire short-order chefs to stand at the back of the classrooms and toss omelets for the little ones.

So I am surprised and delighted by the --dare I say?-- old-fashioned approach to food I've seen at Olney Friends School. After breakfast the last time I was there, I asked Helen where they bought the cinnamon buns.

She told me they do all the baking themselves, except for hamburger rolls, hot dog rolls and sandwich bread. I was amazed.

Eggs laid by their own hens, lettuce grown in their greenhouse, potatoes grown in their own fields and what we now call "free range" beef cattle grazing nearby. The school even has a gardener on staff. Real cooking from scratch. And the students helps out, from gathering eggs to harvesting potatoes to making maple syrup to planning and cooking a meal from time to time. It's almost like stepping back in time or into an alternative universe.

Real food. Locally grown. I can't get over it. I keep thinking there must be a down side but I can't figure out what it is.

At home, we try to cook and bake and make things from scratch, but also often fall back on carryout pizza (but never MacDonalds!) Last fall, we even made our own ricotta cheese, though we haven't repeated the experiment. I love having a garden, but this year, with the move, we haven't put one in. What kinds of things do you do to cook from scratch?

Bits of Barnesville

We returned Sunday from our weekend in Barnesville. For now, I will take a page from Regina and write a list of some things I saw in Barnesville:

The fresh coat of white paint with forest green trim on the Towe house, where we'll be living.
Two layers of old wallpaper peeled off the kitchen wall there.
A bedroom painted pale green.
A big raspberry patch with ripe raspberries.
Wild berries growing by the driveway leading to the house.
Lake Malaga at sunset. It looked like a Maxfield Parrish painting in the dusk, with the trees reflected in the water.

Other things:

Meeting the couple who planted the raspberry patch when they lived in Towe house years ago.
The sense of peace in the Stillwater Meeting.
Sharing breakfast and lunch with teachers from the Quaker music camp.

When were driving out to Lake Malaga, where Bev, an administrator at Olney has her house, we passed an Amish man driving a buggy, wearing a shirt that seemed brilliantly blue in the light. Will, instinctively social, waved to him vigorously. The man frowned and shook his head as he passed.

Towe house photos

Some more photos of the house we will be living in and its environs. We won't be in suburbia anymore! The captions refer to the picture above.



View of south side of house. The two picture windows look out from the living room.


The meadow to the south as seen from the living room.


They took down the wallpaper in the kitchen!


Me in front of the very long driveway to the house. You can see the house as a white speck in the background.



The barn next to the house.

Subdivisions

We head out for Barnesville today, our house being carefully watched by our neighbor Vashti. Our van is loaded with winter items: wool sweaters, space heaters, Christmas ornaments, sleds ... We will store these in the basement of our new house.

As we head out to Barnesville, I think about ... subdivisions. One of the remarkable things about Barnesville is the lack of any neighborhoods of tract housing. Or so I think. I can't quite get my mind wrapped around this, as I can't get my mind wrapped around so much about this move, such as no Thai food. I keep thinking that around the next corner or far enough down some two-lane street, I will come to entranceway of ... Barnesville Estates or Quaker Heights executive homes. But so far, no. It truly appears there is nary a subdivision in Barnesville.

This makes Barnesville somewhat like a movie set to me. It's a largely late-nineteeth-early 20th-century town architecturally, its streets lined with Victorians and Queen Annes, it's downtown core surrounded by farmland.

There are some streets with newer houses interspersed amongst the old--brick ranchers and split foyers. And as we drove around downtown Barnesville during Memorial Day, we saw several grand old Victorians in a row and next to them, a couple of trailers. For me, who has spend most of her life in tightly zoned and regulated housing environments, the trailers in what would here be a "historic district" were somewhat jarring. My first thoughts were a sputtering, wait a minute, what's going on here, we need to have zoning, this can't be ... but then I remembered all the articles I've written about the problems of affordable housing in my area, where most of the trailer parks have been closed, forcing people into high-priced apartments. I thought, OK, Barnesville's zoning (or lack thereof) puts all people on an equal footing, rather than marginalizing the poor.

I take comfort in the trailers, the brick ranchers ... they're reminders that Barnesville is Real World and not a Hollywood set. Otherwise, I might think I'd truly lost it and was fantasizing this whole episode.

Roger and Sophie went driving the back roads the last time we were in Barnesville. They found no subdivisions.

Actually, Barnesville reminds of Addison and its environs in downeast Maine, where we rented a house on the beach from Quakers for several summers. That place too was, in some ways, a step back in a time, a land, almost in Canada, that was simply beyond the "tree line" of fast food and subdivisions. (Barnesville does have fast food.) We saw nary a housing development around Addison, though, traveling the back roads one day, we did see rural poverty.

Nick scared me the last time we visited Barnesville. We were in the car, rounding a corner when he screamed, "Mom, mom, there's a horse and buggy on the road!" in total alarm. I nearly had a heart attack. Actually, I didn't nearly have a heart attack, but my heart did do a little clutch because of the shriek in his voice. We'd turned the corner before I saw the horse and buggy, but I thought it was the Amish we are told live nearby.

I realized then that we had never taken our kids to Lancaster to see the Amish. Roger and I were both brought there by our respective parents as children, but these days sensibilities and sensitivities dictate that we don't go and gawk at the "plain people" as if they were a zoo exhibit. So Nick had probably never seen a horse and buggy on a road.

This move is going to be an interesting and growing experience. I'll let you know if I find a subdivision ...

As an aside, Roger gave me a book called Amish Secrets, about an Amish family who are part of a very conservative group, the Schwartzentruber Amish of Northern Ohio. I am reading it now and finding it most interesting.

Convergences: On Barnesville

We visited my in-laws on Father's Day. Much of the conversation was about the move to Barnesville and that caused me to think about what has led to this change.

We tend to look for a simple script, but layers of converging circumstances have brought us to the brink of Barnesville.

Certainly, major changes coming to Roger's contract, as well as his office's move from Silver Spring to Rosslyn, motivated him to look for a new job. However, he'd contacted Olney about a job last summer, before all the changes were even imagined. On the other hand, the longer commute and other issues make leaving the current job easier.

Olney Friends School having a house on campus available for us as well as the opportunity to take meals in the dining hall was crucial to the decision: We wanted a complete lifestyle change, not another commute from home to work and all the rush, rush we currently experience.

The proximity of Stillwater Friends was attractive. We can walk to meeting.

The boys turning 14 this year was crucial: if we didn't have children who could benefit from a Quaker education, the job would have been less compelling. Sophie possibly doing a year at the school is also attractive.

My (re)entree into freelance writing has made the move much less complicated as I don't have to leave a job.

All of these factors were like pebbles in the bowl of a spoon: one by itself would not have tipped us, but one after the other after the other-- job changes on this end, the meaningful work opportunity, the kids' education, the chance for a new lifestyle, my work flexibility-- all finally spilled the whole pile into Barnesville.

More subtly, 12 years of (in my case, Christ-centered) Quakerism worked a transformation that made it possible and desirable to make this kind of move. The possible is more important than the desirable, because it's the (just bare) psychological/spiritual ability to actually do what is desirable that makes all the difference. When the opportunity/leading came, we were (if just barely) ready. Despite the problems facing liberal Quakerism, the movement of the holy spirit remains alive in Quaker meetings (whether it's recognized or not or on life-support or not) and the emphasis on simple living, integrity and expectant, silent worship (not to exalt any of this at all) works on one. All of this underscores the importance of community, the "where two or more are gathered."

Have you had an experience in which layers of things converged to make the improbable possible?

On Barnesville, the pendulum swings

My list of the good things about moving to Barnesville (what I can think of today):

I won't have to cook. The joy of this is hard to overstate.
Roger can walk to work.
The kids will get more individualized attention in school.
We will be around Quakers.
We will be in a quieter place, with fresh air and fewer crowds.
We're not that far from the big city.
It will be a good experience for everyone to live in a new place.
We won't have to mow the grass.

Of course, these are surface issues and all about us. Self, self, self. The real question, I imagine, is can we better serve or become better servants in this new place? If we are really called there, the answer is yes. But how do we know?

On Barnesville Again

My blog on moving may (or may not!) have romanticized Barnesville, but there's another side to the story.

The side that usually strikes late at night, when I crawl into bed, curl up in the fetal position and think "Why oh why are we doing this?"

Yes, in reality the "little white cottage" is a circa-1960 ranch house that needs, as the head of the school put it, to be seen for its "potential." Meanwhile, the kitchen floor is cracked and coming up, the bathroom walls are coated in some sort of vinyl-covered formica and the house could basically make you throw up. Plus it's small. Not to mention that the kitchen, though large, is closed off and claustrophobic, with knotty pine on the walls and ... well, let's not go on.

Barnesville itself doesn't look as if its changed much since the 1970s. A lot of it is quaint and charming and a lot of it looks beyond worn out.

I don't like cold, and we are moving to Ohio, where I am sure the winters will be long and dreary. The whole area, I understand, is depressed, and jobs are hardly a-plentiful. The coal companies own most of the coal under people's yards and can come take it, sinking your lawn a few feet in the process. Zoning, I understand, is fairly nonexistent, so you have to be careful that you don't buy a house across the street from a port-a-potty business.

It is going to be different.

So, in my bleaker moments, I ask myself, why are we taking a pay cut to move to a tiny town in rural Ohio to a smaller house in disrepair to ... what? Be part of a Quaker boarding school? Why are we leaving our friends, our jobs, our nice home, our affluent area, our money, our conveniences, our lives? We're told there's no Thai food, nothing pretty to buy out there, and then I wonder what are we to do about Sophie's senior year in high school? ... And I curl even deeper into the fetal position. And how are we going to find a renter, pack, move? Is this going to eat up our savings? Surely Roger could find a job he likes in this area.

As I said to Roger, it feels like dying. The only question is are we going to heaven or to hell?

But beneath all that surface noise it simply feels that this is the right thing to do. I can't explain why. It's not quite a leading as much as just a sense that right now, in this moment, this is what we should be doing. And that if we're wrong, all this of this will come skittering to a halt (though I don't think it will). While at this point it seems incomprehensible, I think that by September we will be moved into Barnesville.

So if Don Quixote could turn windmills into jousting knights, I can turn my new house into a cottage. Or so I hope!