THIS IS THE PROGRESSIVELY DARK and gloomy time of year of cold and shortening days. It is a time to welcome the Holidays and many faith traditions of light as part of the festivities; the torches, lamps, candles and bonfires, and now modern electric lights that help dispel the darkness.

There are new lights for my house this year, something my spirit needs. It was in some ancient places an appeal to the sun to return for another year, and it did, as after the winter solstice the days lengthened again. Many of the celebrations included gathering and decorating with the greens of winter, like mistletoe which represents life in winter and the hope that spring will return. Our woods had pines, spruce, and hemlock trees, and we could find some greens on the ground or under the snow.

My mother’s favorite, particularly for wreaths, was ground pine. On the higher, southeast corner of our woods was an area covered with it. Sometimes there was so much you could tangle your feet in it. It was an exciting and anticipated excursion to go gather it each year, and you had to be old enough to walk well over half a mile to get to it. I felt important to be included. I wore my buckle-up arctic boots, snowsuit, and red mittens with a matching knit hat. Mom picked as sunny a day as possible, so that helped. Read more…

A mouse at rest? Photo contributed

“TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.

”Anyone who has lived in the country knows this would be a miracle. Once I went to Albany for a car repair. On arrival at the service center, a frazzled young woman named Robyn greeted me. I was surprised and asked her what was wrong. She had just spent twenty minutes on the phone with an irate customer. He was very upset because there was a mouse in his car’s air filter, he had spent a lot of money on cleaning and a new air filter in May, and why didn’t they remove the mouse?

I cracked up and said you have to be kidding! Eventually, she was laughing with me at the ridiculousness of it. Throughout the stay of several hours, we traded mouse stories. Read more…

An oyster in half its shell. Photo contributed

A FEW YEARS AGO, I read The Big Oyster: A Molluscular History of New York by Mark Kurlansky and found it a wonderful book, easy to read, with so much history of our colonial beginnings in this state and information about one of my favorite foods. An older friend of mine who lived in Manhattan for years told me about one of their school trips to the American Museum of Natural History, where a giant model of an oyster (Crassostrea virginicas) and its detailed anatomy was on exhibit. She took one look at it and vowed never to eat one.

She probably blocked out the real importance of the exhibit. When Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in 1626, he showed his intelligence by also buying the oyster beds off nearby Oyster Island, later renamed Ellis Island in 1770. Oysters were cheap and abundant food found around areas of Long Island (such as Oyster Bay), Staten Island and up the Hudson River where they thrived in pristine, unpolluted waters.

The early settlers learned from the Native Americans like the Lenape to relish the oyster and archaeologists have found huge, ancient piles of oyster shells in excavations showing how important oysters were as a food source. Of course the Dutch, being good businessmen and traders, shipped them to Europe. I go back to these early Dutch; our family has always eaten oysters and included them in our Thanksgiving dinners. Read more…