I recently discovered the transcript for a podcast I was a guest on last summer. It’s been published, and it’s available here.
You can also listen to it wherever you listen to your podcasts.
On Family Foods and Ethnic Ties
I’ve been cooking and baking nonstop for the last week. I’ve gone through ten pounds of flour, four pounds of butter, and innumerable eggs. I’ve made dips, cookies, bread, meatballs and many other lovely things, and I’m not inclined to stop until the New Year.
Part of the reason for the kitchen flurry lies in the season. We celebrate Christmas, and many of our food traditions show up at this time of year. Ethnically, I’m British, German, Danish, and Swedish, primarily, and when I look at my holiday menu, I see the ripples of those traditions settle on my plate. I’ve always been the primary cookie baker at Christmas in the family, and I certainly made a dent in my usual list: butter cookies, Russian tea cakes, peanut butter bon-bons, and peanut butter kiss cookies all appeared on my table—and disappeared from it. I made garlic-artichoke dip and olive tapenade, and baked fresh French bread for those allergic to soy and corn in the family.
Most of these recipes are family favorites I picked up here and there over the course of a lifetime. The bon-bons? Middle school French class. Tea cakes? Middle-school home economics class. Peanut butter kiss? My cousin’s Grandma Elaine. Butter cookies? Who knows? But they’re a staple on all German and Scandinavian holiday tables.
The garlic-artichoke dip comes from an editor at my first professional newspaper job. She brought it hot and bubbling to each gathering, and it was luscious. I never got her recipe, so I’ve been playing with it ever since, trying to get it right. I think I’m close. The tapenade was a suggestion from my earliest viewings of the Food Network. I think it might have been a Cooking Live Primetime recipe.
But other foods clearly come through an ethnic heritage. For breakfast on Christmas Day, we have German potato sausage, made by my mother and her sister. For dinner on Christmas Eve, it’s always Swedish meatballs, thanks to my Grandpa Tom, a first-generation son of Swedish immigrants. On Christmas Day, dinner has always sort of rotated, but now that I host it at home, when I can afford it, we have a beef rib roast, a nod to my British ancestry.
If I have leftover mashed potatoes, I’ll probably make lefse. My Irish Grandma Elsie learned how to make it from her Scandinavian neighbors in northern Wisconsin, and she taught me how to make it.
Other traditions just creep in. I bought a snowflake waffle maker a few years ago; it was Frozen-themed. My girls were little and very into Elsa and Anna and Olaf. Now, apparently, I’m required to make snowflake waffles to go with our sausage on Christmas morning every year. (What will happen when the waffle maker gives out? A problem for another day, I guess.)
As I’m getting older, I find myself stopping to reflect more often on the heritage that stays with us, and the legacies our ancestors leave behind them. I’ll savor the next cookie and wonder: Which of my ancestors made this, too?
On Salem witches, family ties, and lost stories
For as long as I can remember, there’s been a rumor in my mother’s family.
One of our ancestors, we heard, was involved in the Salem witch trials. Further, we heard, she was an accused witch.
The notion was framed as a fun story, usually trotted out at Halloween, and otherwise conveniently left to rumor. This changed in this generation, when I decided I wanted to track her down, if possible, to general agreement from sisters, cousins, and nieces.
First, I turned to the family genealogy, which has been meticulously kept by some members of mother’s family back as far as colonial America. I input the data we’d collected into Ancestry.com to keep better track of the tree, and found other relatives who had done the same to cross-reference it with. When that work was completed, I looked for anyone on the tree who might have been in or around Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692.
I found one family who matched the date and location: John and Elizabeth (Betts) Fosdick.
Still, correlation is not proof. When I started this search, years ago, I dug into what I could find on the World Wide Web regarding Salem and the injustices that occurred there. I learned that 170 men and women were accused of witchcraft by a team of young women in a timespan between January and September of 1692. I learned that 19 of those accused were executed by hanging, or in one case, pressing (the act of being squished under planks and stones). I learned that in the end, none of the accused were actually guilty of witchcraft, and the bodies of those hanged were tossed into a nearby ravine. Rumors also suggested that the families of the accused claimed those bodies under dead of night, to rebury them on family lands, since they weren’t allowed on consecrated ground.
I learned of the shame that fell over the area in the wake of the enormous injustice dealt to the women and few men accused, and I learned that the judicial records of the period were hidden, perhaps purposefully.
Digging around on the Web revealed a snippet of a transcript of an arrest warrant listing Elizabeth Fosdick. It seemed very likely that our rumored connection to Salem was true, then, but I wanted more.
Every year around Halloween I think about Elizabeth Fosdick. Yesterday, I decided to do a little more digging.
I struck gold.
The judicial records from the trials had been sitting in the Phillips Library connected with Peabody Essex Museum in Salem from 1980 to 2023, according to the Museum’s web site. Before they were turned over to the State of Massachusetts Judicial Archives, the Museum digitized them, and the documents are now available online.
A quick search turned up several original documents related to Elizabeth Fosdick: The criminal complaint, sworn out by Joseph Houlton and John Wolcott on May 20, 1692. A statement accusing Elizabeth of witchcraft committed upon the bodies of Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Mary Warren sworn out by Geo. Henrick Marshall on May 26, 1692. Another statement accusing Elizabeth of witchcraft upon those young women and on local livestock, sworn out by Nathaniel Putnam and Joseph Whipple on May 28, 1692. An arrest warrant issued for both Elizabeth Fosdick and Elizabeth Paine.
Through these documents I learned that Elizabeth’s husband, John, was a carpenter, which I had not known before. I also learned that while the arrest warrant was issued on May 30, Elizabeth was not arrested until June 3, and the phrasing of her arrest was odd:
“I have also apprehended the body of Elizabeth Fosdick of Mauldin & Dolian(?)…”
Why mention her body? Was she somehow unconscious when he found her? It’s a strange sentence that does not appear earlier on the document when Elizabeth Paine is arrested.
But these are the documents I have. I know that Elizabeth was not one of the 19 convicted and hung or pressed. She was a part of the 150 other people incarcerated for witchcraft. I know that she lived until 1715, so it’s likely she was released at some point.
But I do not know how. Right now, any documents related to the disposition of her case are not available. I’m going to keep looking.
But here we have, again, a lost story. Those accused of witchcraft in Salem have numerous descendants, but the shame of those events have helped to sweep their true stories under the rug. We know very little about who survived and less about how their trauma may have rippled throughout their lives. The youngest of the accused, for example, was Dorcas Good, who, at 5, likely never recovered from the trauma of her incarceration.
The injustices today are recognized in Salem, where a group has organized to help fight such injustices. But the legacy of injustice remains, disguised in jokes and stories about the Salem witches.
Elizabeth Fosdick was my 9th great-grandmother, and I will say her name when I think about injustice toward women.
On Visiting Caddie Woodlawn’s House
The book Caddie Woodlawn, written by Carol Ryrie Brink is based on the childhood of Caroline Woodhouse, who was raised on a Dunnsville, Wis. farm in the mid-19th century. The farm itself still stands, and it has been turned into a county park. Woodhouse’s childhood home has been restored, and visitors today can walk through.
I’ve been playing with videography, and I started a YouTube channel just to have a place to put these short videos. Ive also been playing with format, and I think I like the intimacy of the walk-through with me talking to you all about what it is we’re seeing. I’d love your feedback, too.
You can find the Caddie Woodlawn walkthrough on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/5h2aop1lRcQ
There are a few other short videos, too.
On Visiting the Grand Canyon
It’s bitterly cold in Minnesota this week, and it’s making me think about our latest trip someplace warm. Our family went to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon in October, and we all loved it. In fact, we all rated it as better than Disney in some respects.
We arrived in Phoenix when the weather was turning cool in Minnesota, and Phoenix itself was hot. We rented a car at the airport and drove up through the mountains to Sedona, then on to Williams, Az. From Williams, we took the train into Grand Canyon National Park, where we stayed as Maswik Lodge for two days before reversing out trip back to Phoenix.
What made it more fun than Disney? I think it might have started with the train. We purchased tickets on the Grand Canyon National Railway, staying in their hotel the night before and the night after our trip. The station in Williams anchors a train line that runs right into Grand Canyon National Park, and it’s been there for more than 100 years. The cars vary from old nineteenth century Pullman cars to modern luxury cars, and the ticket prices vary accordingly. We decided we preferred air conditioning when riding in the desert (a wise choice), and bought tickets to the 1950s car.
We arrived the night before our ride, checked into the Railway Hotel, and ate from the buffet at the Fred Harvey Restaurant next to the depot. There, we started learning about the legacy of Fred Harvey, a nineteenth century entrepreneur who brought fine dining to the west and southwest, and imported young women of impeccable character to serve the travelers at his hotels and restaurants. These “Harvey girls” married locally, helping to establish communities at the stops along the route that Harvey hosted.
One of these original Harvey properties actually exists in Grand Canyon National Park.
We enjoyed excellent food (I had beef tenderloin) and live music before heading back for some swimming at the hotel pool. The excitement about the train built as the night wore on, and we were up early the next day for breakfast at the buffet.
We also took advantage of the restaurant’s packed lunch service. We were told that dining in the park could be challenging, and restaurants were not always open. For a reasonable $17, we got an insulated lunch bag filled with a sandwich, bottled water, trail mix, cookie, fruit, and cheese stick. The lunch bag itself, emblazoned with the Grand Canyon National Railway logo, made it worth the price, and as our day unfolded, we found the snacks and water to be invaluable.
Once we’d picked up our lunches, we went to the depot. Our luggage was handled separately, and frankly, I felt a little spoiled by not having to haul luggage onto a train. I think that might have been my favorite part, personally. We were able to just take our lunch bags and backpacks to the depot. There, we were treated to a skit put on by a crew of terribly inept cowboys. We immediately suspected shenanigans, especially since they kept getting up after getting shot, and our suspicions were confirmed when some of the crew–including the sheriff–followed us all onto the train. We found our seats easily, and as our train left the station, our porter treated us to an introduction to the train, the Park, and the history of the area. He emphasized drinking lots of water, again, and I finally caught a clue. We were heading into a desert.
Definitely time to buy a water bottle or four. I bought four water bottles on the train, and they proved to be extremely helpful to our staying hydrated the rest of the weekend.
The train also featured a singing cowboy who started a sing-a-long in our car. We already were having a great time when the train pulled into the station. Our first views of the Grand Canyon village were of a pretty little mountain town. We had tickets for a tour right away, and we went to find our bus. Once on the bus, we opened up our sack lunches for a snack and a drink, and chattered at each other as the bus took us upon the South Rim to our first stop: Mojave Point.
Friends, I cannot describe the experience of seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. I can tell you that every single person on the bus said, “Wow!”, involuntarily, when our bus came around the corner of the mountain and we saw it for the first time. It’s vast, layered with stratified rock, a ribbon of river at the very bottom, which is so far away that it’s hard to recognize its scope. We were stunned, and a little afraid. When we got out of the bus to walk out on the path, I kept my children firmly away from the edges and railings.
But that view? Worth every penny.
We took lots of pictures; my girls had their iPads along and were taking video of everything. Our tour took more than an hour, and took us to all the main high points along the South Rim. When it returned us to the village, it took us to Maswik Lodge, which was our lodging for the night.
Maswik features clean rooms that have their own entrances and exits to the outside. Ours had a patio off the back into the woods from which we were able to view deer and other forms of wildlife. We could walk up to the food court in the main lodge any time we were hungry, and take a trolly bus to any other spot in the park on our whim. If we were still hard core backpackers, we could have outfitted ourselves easily with what we needed to hit the trail.
As it was, we decided to walk gentler trails along the South Rim, from one point to another, and to spend some time at the big Visitor’s Center with its indoor and outdoor exhibits. We also made time to send postcards from the village post office and just relax to the sound of the wilderness around us.
We also dug into the area’s stories, exploring the original Fred Harvey property there and eating at its cafe. When we left on the train to head back to Williams, two days later, we felt invigorated.
Then we were robbed on the train. Of course, these were the same inept crew as before, and I was able to buy them off with one shiny gold U.S. dollar coin. But still, it made us giggle as we saw the sun set from the train window over the mountain.
I’m sure we’ll return.
On a new year, and the nature of inspiration
The first resolution I have for this new year–though I am not a fan of resolutions–is to write more. I’ve gotten somewhat out of the habit, and it’s not quite like riding a bicycle.
But in order to write more, I need to think about the nature of inspiration. I’m not one of those folks who’s ever considered “The Muse” to be a source of inspiration. As a professional journalist, I never had time to consider writer’s block, for example. The story content was already there, waiting to be shaped. I had to make sense of it, shape it, and write it. There’s no room for doubt about how words go together in that kind of pressure cooker, and significant experience with that method of writing also means leaving those words behind when they’re out on the page.
I think that’s why I have a hard time going back to an earlier work to revise it. In my mind, I’ve completed the story and moved on. Being prompted to go back and revise sections of something, therefore, feels challenging in a way I can’t really express properly.
Still, that’s something of a tangent. The thought today is, how do I go about the resolution to write more?
I think the theme this year will be writing about the lost.
Last spring, I worked with a group of students in an experiential storytelling class to uncover and tell the many local stories that have been lost to time. We uncovered so many, in fact, that it should keep me busy for quite some time. We’re even soft-launching a web site to house them this semester.
The big advice I gave students last semester is to get out from behind the computer screens and explore local archives, museums, historic sites, parks, and other spaces that they’d not been before. I think, for this year, I’ll take my own advice. There’s always something out there to write about.
On Looking Out Tacy’s Window
It probably will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I enjoy reading the books by Maud Hart Lovelace that feature her childhood self, Betsy Ray.
Lovelace wrote about her childhood in Mankato, Minn., thinly disguised as a community called Deep Valley, and her friendships with two other girls that became lifelong friends. The first book, Betsy-Tacy, shows readers how Betsy met Tacy, the five-year-old across the street from her house, and their epic friendship. The pair could see each other from their bedroom windows, and send messages.
I recently brought my storytelling students to the former homes of Lovelace and Tacy’s true-life counterpart, Frances Kenney. Both homes have been lovingly restored by the Betsy-Tacy Society. While I’ve visited them several times, with this private tour, I finally had a chance to peek out Tacy’s window to see Betsy’s house across the street.
I admit I geeked out a little. I’ve been focusing on experiences and how they can inspire us to be creative, to seek stories, and to tell them. In this instance, I had an opportunity to stand in Tacy’s shoes, peek out her window, and see her best friend’s window across the street. I definitely felt inspired, and I took the picture that represents this post. I found that experience to be immediately applicable to the overall lesson of the class; my glee in the moment could be reflected in the grins of my students.
The Betsy-Tacy houses will open for the season with a party honoring Betsy’s birthday: April 14. While the upstairs portion of the Tacy house is not normally open to the public, the lower floor houses family artifacts and a gift shop, and it’s a gathering place for those looking to tour Betsy’s house across the street. Other sites mentioned in the Betsy-Tacy books can be found all over Mankato, and a handy QR code on Tacy’s front porch will unlock a tour. you can follow on your phone.
On Investigating Lost History
One of the particular challenges of investigating the past lies in the lack of evidence. This semester, I’m teaching a class in experiential storytelling that focuses on investigating lost stories and local history, and we’re uncovering some really interesting stories.
One of the first steps took us to the Marilyn J. Lass Center for Minnesota Studies on our Minnesota State University, Mankato campus. The archivists there showed students a wide variety of primary source materials, including diaries and personal papers, that form the basis for additional research or storytelling. Students found everything from cookbooks to community histories of soldiers from the first Great War, and each emerged from that session with three great ideas for future stories. Our archivists/librarians also demonstrated several databases available through the campus that provide information, images, and other resources for storytelling.
Our next trip took us to the Blue Earth County Historical Society, which hosts a wide variety of primary source materials that students found inspirational. One student was particularly taken in by a diary of a soldier from Mankato who served in World War II. I can’t wait to see what he does with it.
I, too, have been inspired. The challenge of seeking lost history, as I noted earlier, is a lack of evidence. Period newspapers only cover stories of interest to those who were producing and reading the paper. In some cases, that can lead to total ignorance about some people in the population. Women’s history, black history, indigenous history, and other overlooked history must be gleaned from the “margins”, or the absence of their stories in such public records. As regular readers of this blog know, much of my own research has investigated farm women’s history, in particular. That interest forced me to seek alternate sources, including a single farm woman’s magazine and oral history, to try and uncover their stories in the U.S. Midwest in the 20th century.
Primary sources such as those that start in archives, however, can lead investigators to new pieces of history that have rarely been uncovered. One item I was delighted to discover at the historical society was a meticulously collected series of “social notes” for communities surrounding Mankato, including communities that no longer exist. I plan to dig more deeply into these notes to see if they can shed light on those who lived in such lost communities, and into the character of those communities.
The class has a great deal more to do. We plan field trips to the Minnesota Treaty Center, as well as other sites related to the Dakota War of 1862, and we plan trips to “lost” Mankato sites such as old Front Street and Victorian homes. Along the way, we work to ask these questions: Whose story is told here? Whose story is missing? Where can that story be found? If it can’t be found, what have we lost?
We’re also investigating memory. Of the stories we find told, who told them? Why? And what compelled the original storyteller to preserve it?
Examining these questions will help us all become better storytellers as we uncover lost stories.
On Leftover Turkey Soup
Sometimes, I think my husband prefers the leftovers from Thanksgiving to the meal itself.
Sometimes, I don’t blame him.
My favorite post Thanksgiving meal is a slab of perfectly moist roast turkey breast on a fresh, buttered roll. There’s something about that combination that makes me utterly happy. This year, I made a fresh cranberry sauce for the first time, and that hint of tartness with the fresh turkey also made me utterly happy. In fact, we dipped fresh apple and pear slices into the warm sauce as an appetizer this year, and we generally agreed that we’ll have to try that again.
However, the day after Thanksgiving, the “leftover” meal of choice is turkey soup.
This starts by breaking down the leftover turkey carcass from the day before. At this point, the carcass should have been carved away, leaving bones with minimal meat attached. This year, I roasted a turkey breast rather than an entire bird, and it just fit into my 12-quart pot.
For this recipe, you will need:
1 leftover turkey carcass, carefully chilled after carving
Two to three cups of leftover veggie tray vegetables: carrots, celery, and green pepper slices are my favorites.
1 cup of diced yellow onion
Two bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
1 t. dried thyme (more or less to taste)
1/2 t. granulated garlic or equivalent fresh chopped garlic
Leftover roast turkey, 1-2 cups diced
Egg noodles or rice
Put the carcass in the stock pot, and cover with cold water. Set on the stove to bring to a boil over medium heat. Add your chopped veggies and seasonings. Cover, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, back the temperature down to low and simmer for at least two hours. At that point, remove the bones from the stock. Taste. Add two to three bullion cubes to boost the stock if necessary, and salt and pepper to taste. Dice any leftover turkey slices to add to the pot. Bring back to a boil, then add noodles or rice. Cook until the noodles or rice are done, then serve.
It usually yields enough to serve for a couple of meals. We serve one immediately, then I bag the rest in a one-gallon Ziplock freezer bag to transfer straight to the freezer for another meal later.
On the Deep Valley Book Festival
I have the opportunity tomorrow to discuss historical fiction with a panel at the Deep Valley Book Festival. This virtual event is free, and I recommend it for anyone interested in writing or in engaging with writers and book lovers.
The panels include a talk from keynote speaker and author Cindy Wilson, who will discuss the process of bringing the Hard Winter of 1880-1881 to fiction form in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter. Wilson is the author of The Beautiful Snow.
Other panels will focus on the process of bringing a book to publication, connecting writers to readers, and writing with humor and creativity.
It promises to be the perfect way to stave off early March cabin fever. I really look forward to it. If you want to join us, click the link above to go directly to the schedule and register for the sessions you want to see for free.
Amy Lauters On Everything 