Spring So Beloved

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

On January 6, 1979, Eloise Jordan’s New Year’s column in the Lewiston Evening Journal’s Magazine was what I like to call “weather and seasons.” Looking out over the year ahead she wrote:

“We know the January blizzard that flares over the shoulder of the north, shaken with cold and the high arctic winds.  Equally well are we aware of the lure of spring, first a promise, then a retreat, at last fulfillment of bluebirds and daffodils.”

Her column continued through the calendar and then launched into a sweet sermonette about making the best of each day, regardless of the weather.

This past weekend’s frigid temperatures being a “retreat” from March’s earlier “promise,” I cozied into Sunday afternoon with a long-simmering beef stew and some daffodils from the local grocery store.  I pulled out some seed catalogs and sketched out my list.  Cold though it was, by 4:00 p.m. I was ready for some fresh air and took a walk around town.  I sallied past the usual places, like the cemetery on High Street and the old high school on Campus Avenue.  Or more accurately, the Lisbon Falls High School.  Since 1953, students have attended a unified “Lisbon” High School; prior to that time there were two high schools.  Students in the village of Lisbon Falls attended the Campus Avenue high school and students in the villages of Lisbon Center and Lisbon attended the yellow Lisbon High School.*

Eloise Jordan, who grew up in Lisbon (a little less than two miles from the Lewiston city limits) attended Lisbon High School.

The building looks a little weary today, but in Eloise Jordan’s day, it must have been quite a place.  It’s where she first began “writing stories by the peck” and learned to write poetry.

The 1924 Lisbonian, the first yearbook of its kind to be published, featured two works by Eloise; a poem called “Spring So Beloved” and a fictional story about a Russian violinist.

Here’s Jordan’s poem, from the 1924 Lisbonian,  courtesy of the Lisbon Historical Society:

Spring So Beloved

Ah!  Spring so beloved
When fair winds doth play,
And sunshine comes fleeting through leaves at noon-day

And then my beloved,
When twilight draws nigh,
I sit by my window
As day passes by.

Ah! fair are the petals
Of rosebud and flower,
When rain drops come patting
Behind the gray tower.

Ah!  Spring so beloved
When morning dawns fair,
The blue birds are winging,
And fleeing all care.

Following high school graduation in June, 1924, Jordan waited four years before going to college.  The archives I’ve studied to date don’t record her life during those years; that’s the stuff I’ll leave for the fiction writers.

There will be more of Eloise Jordan the poet when we meet up with her at Simmons College.  Until then, keep your shovels handy because it looks like it will be “Snow So Beloved” just once more this week.
____

*A member of the Lisbon Historical Society provided some more accurate information regarding the two high schools in the Lisbon Villages.  Merton Ricker says “the LHS you pictured…was repurposed as a grade school in 1944 and the two high schools were combined under the Lisbon High School banner…at the former Lisbon Falls High School.”  The current high school “started out as just a gym built in 1951 in an empty field what was a former brick yard.  The following year, a high school building was added to this gym and in 1953, first classes attended this new facility.”

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Six Degrees of Eloise

Posted on March 11, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

Last Friday, my boyfriend Handy and I had the pleasure of attending a concert.  The Maine troubadour David Mallett was playing at Auburn’s Unitarian Church.  It was Handy’s birthday, an occasion worthy of a night on the town.  And even though I had grown up hearing Mallett’s name and music around me from time to time, I’d never seen him perform.

Not knowing what to expect, we arrived early and squeezed the Jeep into a parking lot filled with tiny cars.  The church, a significant architectural accomplishment in its own right, was filling with an older crowd.  Demographic identification not being my strong suit, I’ll draw no conclusions from the graying beards and ponytails.  We took our seats and waited for the show to begin.

A tall bearded man walked down the aisle near our seats and I recognized his familiar face from long ago.

“Bob Bittenbender,” I called out to him.

He didn’t recognize me.

“Julie-Ann Baumer,” I said.  “We worked together at Lucas Tree in 1987.”

The tumblers unlocked, we talked about old times and I asked him if he remembered Mrs. Young.  He did; he recalled her superlative kindness.

The lights dimmed, Mallett took the stage; we clapped our hands and tapped our feet with the crowd and enjoyed his poetic tales set to music.  We sang along to his popular Garden Song.  There was an encore, I hugged Bob Bittenbender, and we drove home to Lisbon Falls.

It was kismet that I saw Bob Bittenbender that night, while finishing up my research and assembling my presentation on lady writer Eloise Jordan.  You see, even though I grew up reading the local paper she wrote for, I didn’t remember reading Eloise’s column or her feature articles.  I knew of her only from working with her best friend, Lorna Brown (Mrs. Young) in that dusty tree company office long ago.

How Mrs. Young’s eyes lit up when we were first introduced and I told her I was from Lisbon Falls.  She had grown up in Lisbon Falls too and had fond memories of the place.  She had numerous relatives and friends there and although I was at that young age of not caring much about the old home town, I listened to Mrs. Young’s recollections and inquiries about various people “back home.”  She frequently mentioned her dearest friend Eloise Jordan and from time to time she’d excitedly mention a recent visit or a day trip they’d taken together.

So even though I didn’t know Eloise personally, I was able to piece together bits of her life from Mrs. Young.

I lost touch with Mrs. Young when I divorced and moved to New Hampshire.  I often thought of her when I’d pass through the North Deering section of Portland and wonder if she still lived at her house on Alpine Road.  But life being what it is, we speed too quickly past the places where we might stop and we regret never having a last cup of tea with an old friend.

Lorna Brown Young died in 2012

Having known Mrs. Young, it seemed like I was only six degrees separated from Eloise Jordan.  Or as I like to call it, Six Degrees of Ayuh. 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll unpack my Eloise Jordan presentation here on the blog.  We’ll learn more about the tall thin woman who, according to one adoring neighbor, always wore a fur coat when walking from her apartment to her mailbox (“every single solitary day”) and wrote more than 1,000 columns and feature articles for the Lewiston Evening Journal.  We’ll read some of her poetry, revisit the places she loved, and meet a few of her friends.

Sit down and pour yourself a cup of tea.  And please, use a real cup and saucer, like Eloise would have done.

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Lady Alone Eloise

Posted on March 6, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

Eloise Jordan, a long-time columnist and feature writer for the Lewiston Evening Journal, is remembered by few who read the physical incarnation of this local paper today.  Mention her name to the digital paper’s readers and the response will be a louder silence.

Her columns and features graced the publication of my childhood and young adulthood; she wrote content for the Lewiston paper until 1989.  She died of a stroke on January 5, 1989 while visiting her dear Portland friend, Lorna (Brown) Young.  Meticulous and conscientious in turning in material before deadline, her final column was published posthumously on the Saturday following her death.  Jordan’s former Evening Journal editor Faunce Pendexter said “she did a good job for us, and she came through week after week.  She was very faithful.”

Her final column?  A recollection regarding an opera diva she had known.  Eloise Jordan loved opera and wrote more than one or two columns about it over the years.

She was born on March 27, 1907.  Her father, William Jordan, was a lumber dealer and owner of numerous rental properties in the area.  He was also noted to be a descendant of Cape Elizabeth’s Reverend Robert Jordan, who arrived here in 1631 to act as minister to the colony established on Richmond Island.  Memories of her father and mother as well as her post-Mayflower lineage would occasionally find their way into Eloise Jordan’s features and columns.

She graduated from Lisbon High School in June, 1924.  Nicknamed “Tweedie,” the high school yearbook notes she was the “school soloist” for four years and kept busy “writing stories by the peck.”

eloise-jordan

In 1928, she entered Simmons College in Boston and graduated in 1932 with a degree in Library Science.  The 1932 Simmons yearbook, The Microcosm, lists among her activities the Glee Club and the Poetry Club.

Following graduation, Eloise Jordan returned to Lisbon.  Her mother died in 1934 and Eloise became her father’s housekeeper and secretary in his business holdings.  They lived in the family house in Lisbon, which is still standing on what is now Route 196.  In an April 29, 1950 Lewiston Sun Journal feature  about her father, Eloise wrote “I traveled with him constantly, driving the car when he was on crutches with an injured foot, keeping accounts, and looking after his business when he was ill.”

In June, 1945, Will Jordan died.  Eloise, an only child, went to live in a small upstairs apartment located in a house owned by Meryl Brown on what is now the Upland Road.  The apartment, recalled as “tiny” by those who visited, had a kitchenette under the slant of the roof, a bed, and a typewriter among other things.  And it was filled with books.

Shortly after her father’s death, Eloise began writing features for the Lewiston Evening Journal.  These feature stories would run in a Saturday “magazine” section.  Her first feature ran on July 6, 1946.  On September 28, 1946, her first “column” ran with little fanfare.  It was titled “The Corn Shop” and recalled the long ago tradition of bringing the summer’s corn to a centralized location and canning it.  She would revisit this column on September 8, 1984 (almost forty years later) and write “I cherished a desire to husk corn but Father dissuaded me by saying I was not husky enough.”

She lived a “spinster’s” life, not unknown to women of her generation.  She wrote her columns, drank tea, listened to opera, and occasionally traveled.  She was a “club woman,” a member of the Women’s Literary Union and the Progressive Club, among others.

On Wednesday evening, March 8, I’ll be giving a talk about the life and times of Eloise Jordan at the Lisbon Historical Society; I’ll also read from some of her columns.  As is always the case at these events, we’ll all learn more than we anticipate from one another.

Located at 18 School Street, the Historical Society entrance and parking lot are located at the rear of the building, accessed on Berry Avenue.

The event is free and open to the public.  Refreshments will be served, tea included.

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An Open Letter to My Blog Readers

Posted on March 2, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

How many times have you seen a business or organization write “an open letter?”  For instance, Starbucks might write an open letter to coffee drinkers, explaining why the “holiday” cups don’t have a Christmas-ey theme.  The letter ends with an appeal to the coffee connoisseur, reminding them Starbucks coffee is delicious even if it’s overtly political.

Or it might be something more innocuous; an open letter to a celebrity for a perceived wrong or gaffe.

Everyone is in the open letter writing business these days.  That’s the essence of the internet; big electronic clouds of open letters.

(Pause here, compose myself, and step away from a screed.)

Dear Blog Readers,

Please accept my apologies for the boring content of my blog these past weeks and months.  As I look over the content I’ve produced, I’m mostly dissatisfied.  In the allotted time, I’ve been doing more research and less writing.  The research is for a series of freelance articles in the local paper.  It’s time-consuming, it doesn’t pay very well, and yet it’s important to get the words exactly right.

Oddly enough, there was an article in the paper about a local historian.  The article’s author stated the historian found much of her information in that same paper.  Interspersed between the historian’s quotes was this sentence:

“All of the papers from 1866 to the 1930’s are archived on Google newspapers.”

I don’t think that’s true.  When I look at Google newspapers for January, 1920, I see there are 9 days where there are “no editions available.”  It’s the same thing for The Lewiston Daily Sun in the same time period.  A more accurate sentence would be:

“Many of the papers from 1866 to the 1930’s are archived on Google newspapers.”

But let’s not get too hung on some the difference between “all” and “many.”  That’s a different blog post for a different day.

The fact of the matter is Google newspapers can be very helpful…until they’re not.  It’s at that point in time when a diligent researcher will need to leave the virtual shelter and venture forth into the world of real people, places, and things.

an-open-letterThat’s a page of the wedding directory for a church in Lewiston.  I visited the Maine Franco-American Genealogical Society in Auburn for two hours, doing research.  It’s time consuming and not immediately gratifying.

There are only so many hours in a day, dear readers, and because we are currently trapped in a time and space continuum, I’ve been unable to write exciting content.

My blog has been boring.

Please accept my apologies for this lack of vibrant and vivid content.  Life is like that sometimes.

Thank you for visiting nevertheless.

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Talk of the Tile

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

I visited the Androscoggin Historical Society last week, located in the County Building in Auburn.  I had so much fun I ended up becoming a member.

I was tired when I left and found myself staring at the front entrance’s floor tiles.

tile

I’m still in the fog of history this morning…so…must…keep…things..brief…

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Along the Foundation

Posted on February 23, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

Jack and the Beanstalk.  I think that was name I heard in my dreams last night.  Or maybe it was Sasquatch, Godzilla, or King Kong.  It seemed so clear by the time the Sun Journal arrived in the front door.  This blog post was nearly dream-state complete when the alarm went off an hour later.

Poof…and it was gone.  I sat up in bed and I had nothing.

Yesterday was a beautiful spring-like day, so lovely I hung laundry outside on the clothes line.  The clothes smell fresh after a day in the sun and air.

Someday someone will probably try to tell you that running a clothes dryer that ultimately runs on petroleum is better for the planet than hanging your clothes out to dry; they’ll conjure up some pretzel logic to convince you to BUY BUY BUY a new appliance that will make you feel better and satisfy your neighbors who don’t like looking at your towels and dainties blowing in the wind.

I saw something similar on the Simple website yesterday.  I was using one of their recipes and I got a pop-up suggesting I could “reduce waste and save time cooking with these fresh, pre-cut and portioned ingredients delivered straight to your doorstep.”  There was a button I could click to “buy the meal-kit” for “Pasta with Turkey and Broccoli.”

How does that work?

The recipe called for ground turkey and broccoli.  Have they invented powdered turkey meat and broccoli?  If not, how do you ship fresh turkey meat and broccoli and deliver it straight to my doorstep?  How does that reduce waste?  Do the broccoli stalks magically disappear somewhere far away from my doorstep?

I’ll have to do some research; it’s possible they don’t deliver to my zip code even if I did want to buy a box of their twisted pretzels.

Meanwhile, along the foundation of my old house, the “ditch lilies” are popping up.

along-the-foundationThat part of the house gets the sun almost all day long.  My garlic is still under snow, but I’d say things are on schedule for its arrival at about the same time I saw it last year.

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Requiem

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

I love the notion of terrestrial radio.  It is dying, of course, as more and more radio stations are bought by media conglomerates.  Like almost everything else in our daily lives, consolidation eliminates options.

On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at around noon, the Maine classical music station known as WBACH changed to a “classic rock” format. Prior to this, WBACH broadcast classical music at two frequencies on the FM band, one serving Portland and the other the Midcoast area.

I listened to WBACH on the latter station, usually in the morning and late afternoon.  It brought a focus to my thoughts that only composed and orderly music can.  I loved the calm voice of Scott Hooper, the WBACH program director.  It helped me to go serenely up the stairs to my office and face the challenges of my professional day.

I first began listening to the station when I lived in Portland in 1991.  The strength of its signal and its weekly jazz program, hosted by Arnold Olean, expanded my musical horizons and taught me things about music I had not considered.

Moving back to Maine, I was delighted to find it again.  I even enjoyed the commercials, which were tastefully produced and often for eclectic businesses along that interesting corridor of Maine north of Bath.  More than one trip to the Farnsworth Art Museum was instigated by something I heard following a Handel concerto.

I know I can stream hundreds of classical music stations from around the world.  London’s BBC  Radio 3, with their erudite and clever announcers , is quite nice.  I could invest in a new piece of equipment to do this in stereophonic high fidelity.  On one of my WBACH-inspired trips to Rockland, I almost bought such an item at Black Parrot.  A Tivoli Audio Model One BT.

There are men and women in our world who associate classical (ancient) music with dead white men in powdered wigs, promoting patriarchy.  I do not.  I hear the balance of geometry, the rhythm of nature, mathematical accuracy, scientific curiosity, and the history of humanity.

I hear the beauty of creation.

mourning-wreath

That’s my mourning wreath.  It’s hideous and ugly.  I made it with things I found here at my house after death arrived in our family.  I never hung it on the door; the solitary creative act soothed me regardless of the aesthetically inferior product.

WBACH was another soothing component of household peace and tranquility in a world flipped upside down.

Today, I mourn for the loss of beauty among the many other things I am mourning.

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Half a Donut Day

Posted on February 16, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

As I look over my blog and read mid-February posts past, I see my themes have been generally the same.  There are posts about snow and shoveling.  There are posts about shoveling and beef roasts.  There are posts about snow anxiety and dreaming about shoveling beef roasts.  Or something like that.  Many of these same posts contain quick and almost-quiet mocking swipes at a holiday I don’t celebrate.

Galentine’s Day or “ovaries before brovaries, you know?”  (And if you would like to know where that quote came from, you are welcome to do your own Google search.  I’m gently mocking it, remember?)

Here’s a post I wrote in 2013.  I was hoping Mr. Right would show up with a heart-shaped pizza.

Sad, but I was hopeful.

This Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, Handy stopped by around 10:00 a.m.  He hardly ever stops by that early.  But he did and he gave me half a chocolate frosted donut from a favorite bakery, wrapped in a napkin.  I had to hide a little tear from the corner of my eye.  It was sweet on several levels, but mostly because it was Handy’s own way of sweetness which he does not often show.  And that’s ok.  The donut touched me and I remembered that I have not been alone so much since Handy came into my life and started fixing things.

I used to be alone a lot, even when I was surrounded by others.  Would it be too saccharine to say how much Handy means to me?

The donut was delicious and as I had planned, I made Budget Beef Bourguignon.  I burned it a little in the beginning steps, but Handy said it was delicious.  And we didn’t have Ginger Tea over Silken Tofu for dessert.  We split a heart-shaped Bismark from a favorite bakery.

valentine

There goes the plow.  On to more shoveling…after all, it’s February.

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Ginger Tea

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

On Sunday, the Sun Journal ran my “Chinese New Year Dim Sum” article.  You can read it here if it’s not behind their pay wall.  When I interviewed the restaurant owner and her foodie “friend like a sister,” we had a fun time chatting about the things food lovers talk about.  It was an animated two hours and before we knew it, it was time to go.  I hadn’t even gotten a recipe for my article.

“What about the ‘ginger tea’ you passed out during the brunch?”

“Oh, it’s just simple syrup steeped with ginger over silken tofu!”

Sometimes, due to layout limitations, stories get shortened.  This Sunday, my version of “Ginger Tea” didn’t make the cut.  It’s a pleasant way to eat bean curds.

Ginger Tea over Silken Tofu Dessert

Ingredients:

3 cups of water
3 cups of sugar (you can use white or brown or a combination of both)
3 inches of whole fresh ginger (more or less depending on your taste)
1 pound of Silken Tofu (such as Chang Shing Tofu found in Asian specialty stores)

Directions:

Clean the ginger root and remove any dirt.  Peel the ginger and cut the root into thick slices.

Place sliced ginger, sugar, and water into a saucepan and bring to a boil.  When boiling, reduce heat to simmer.  Let simmer for approximately one hour.

Pass the finished “ginger tea” through a sieve to remove the ginger bits.

In small dishes or tea cups, scoop thin layers of silken tofu.  Drizzle 2 tablespoons of ginger tea over the tofu.  Serve and enjoy immediately!

ginger-tea

This is what Handy will be having for his Valentine’s dessert.

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The Chemo Drip

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Julie-Ann Baumer

One of my friends has cancer.

Finally, I said it “out loud.”

She’s a very good friend, one of my best.  I have been overwhelmed by her illness and her amazing strength in the midst of her own fear.  She keeps telling me she is doing it “one day at a time” and that she is very afraid.  But I don’t see it.

When she was first diagnosed, I wondered how I could help.  Naturally, I prayed.  But my faith seems so paltry and brittle; the phone rings or a text message arrives and I’m interrupted like a squirrel searching for a nut.

I just keep pushing bad news and unpleasantness to the back of my brain.

She has an amazing family and many friends.  She had family meals and her children’s after school transportation covered.  So I wrote her a letter every week; four handwritten pages.  I told her about books I was reading, food articles I was contemplating, and the sad state of bed linens in the United States.  I harpooned Moby Dick-sized local food writers from time to time and outlined the dreams I had for new draperies.  I indulged in gossip.

I wrote almost anything and everything except “how sick does the treatment make you feel?”

Now, the doctors have recommended a more aggressive treatment regimen.  A more sickening approach.  She has to have three consecutive days of chemotherapy infusions.  She sits in a cancer treatment center for 8 hours during those days.  Then she is sick.

My schedule was crazy during her first cycle and I wasn’t able to “sit” with her for any of it.  Instead, I offered up sacrificial fasting in solidarity with her three-day chemotherapy regimen.  In retrospect, it was “stoopid.”  I was struck by my own weakness in the middle of my third day of fasting while stuffing cheese and crackers in my mouth.

This Tuesday, I had the good fortune of four free hours and I spent it with my beautiful friend at the cancer treatment center.  I warned her I’d be wearing yoga pants and an ancient turtleneck and she cautioned me as well.

“I will be wearing a cap as I lost about 1/3 of my hair yesterday.  If I touch it at all, it drops out like the needles on an old Christmas tree.”

I know this might sound odd, but the four hours we sat together were four of the best hours I’ve had in a long time.  There are no Tee Vees at the center; it’s peaceful and cozy in an odd, institutional way.  We just sat and talked and then didn’t talk.  We ate snacks and Tootsie Rolls.  I colored from her “adult coloring calendar.”

the-chemo-dripWe gossiped and then we Googled a man we knew in college who is a “rock star” now.

“Do you think he has hair plugs,” she asked?

“I don’t know.  But he definitely has veneers” I replied.

“He looks so small standing next to Steve Lillywhite.  Was he that short in college?”

We laughed.  We cried.  We contemplated the cosmos.  I didn’t want to leave.

Today is her third day of chemotherapy.

Two down, one to go, my friend.

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