Happy Valentine’s Day!
Valentine postcard sent in 1908 with a one penny stamp featuring Ben Franklin. It was sent from Norristown, Pennsylvania to my grandfather and addressed, simply, "Paul M. White, Tylersport, Penna"
As a boy, my grandfather received postcards from his relations — sometimes sent from just the next town over. There are scenes of places long gone, views of places we still know today, and sentiments expressed with lovely illustrations of rabbits, hearts, cottages nestled in snow, Santa, turkeys, horse shoes, and more, depending on the holiday. I’m delighted to be the guardian of this collection now, and enjoy browsing through the window on the past it offers.
Carla from Top Chef will fix you Chicken n’ Dumplings (while you support historic preservation and education!)
Photo: Bravo Television
Get out your datebook, people! This is a can’t-miss event!
In honor of Black History Month, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area will honor the Grande Dame of Southern Cuisine, Edna Lewis (1916 – 2006) and raise funds for their award-winning educational programs.
The night offers a meal prepared by Carla Hall from Bravo’s Top Chef, based on Lewis’s classic, soul-warming recipes. (I must confess that Carla is my very favorite person from all the vast realm that is reality television! Hootie hoo, Carla!) Also celebrating Edna Lewis’s legacy will be her 86-year-old sister, as well as historian Leni Sorensen.
Who was Edna Lewis? A review of her five-star cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking shares: “In recipes and reminiscences equally delicious, Edna Lewis celebrates the uniquely American country cooking she grew up with some fifty years ago in a small Virginia Piedmont farming community that had been settled by freed slaves. With menus for the four seasons, she shares the ways her family prepared and enjoyed food, savoring the delights of each special time of year.”
An Authentic Edna Lewis Winter Dinner to
Soothe the Soul and Warm the Heart
(And if Carla is cooking, it’s served with love!)
Chicken with Dumplings
(using locally raised, free-range, hormone and antibiotic-free chickens)
Glazed Carrots
Crusty Yeast Bread with Butter
Deep-dish Apple Pie with Nutmeg Sauce
(Totally “yum” — right?)
WHEN: Thursday, February 24, 2011, 6:30 pm
WHERE: The Foundation Room (Okras), 9110 Center Street | Manassas, VA 20110
Proceeds will help the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership continue its award-winning and nationally-acclaimed education programs designed to help students experience our history like never before.
The event is being held at the Foundation Room in Historic Manassas, owned by Chef Charles Gilliam, who will be assisting Chef Hall.
Event Sponsors:
Ayshire Farm
Jeff Adams, Walnut Hill Farm at Elm Spring
Charles Gilliam, Okras Bistro (The Foundation Restaurant)
Carla Hall, celebrity chef & owner, Alchemy by Carla Hall
Leni Sorensen, African-American historian
***
About Edna Lewis Edna Lewis was an African-American chef and author best known for her Southern Cuisine. She was born in a small farming settlement of Freetown, Orange County, Virginia, the granddaughter of an emancipated slave who helped start the community. She passed away on February 13, 2006 at the age of 89. Lewis published The Edna Lewis Cookbook (1972), The Taste of County Cooking (1976), In Pursuit of Flavor (1988) and The Gift of Southern Cooking (2003).
About Carla Hall Carla Hall cooks from the heart and balances her Southern traditions, classic French training, and holistic approach to food as an entertaining expert, and owner and Executive Chef of Alchemy Caterers by Carla Hall in Washington, DC.
About Leni Sorensen For 25 years Sorensen has lectured on African American history and the lives of women in early America. A graduate of the MA-PhD program at the College of William and Mary, she lives in rural Virginia where she teaches and lectures on culinary history.
Going back in time to make valentines
I picked Franklin Fountain and its wonderful vintage atmosphere (well, and the homemade ice cream, and the really nice people) as the location for a recent Etsy Philadelphia meet up as part of their Special Delivery: Share the Love “craftivism” project.
The valentines we made will be sent to Etsy HQ in Brooklyn. They are hoping to gather enough cards that Citymeals on Wheels can deliver one with each of the 18,000 meals they’ll deliver on Valentine’s Day.
Amid the tulle, doilies, pens, ribbon, glue and all, we had a wonderful time chatting and making valentines that will brighten someone’s day. (And of course we ate ice cream, too!)
Final valentine count: 120 valentines of all shapes and sizes, made with doilies, ribbons, flowers, vintage images, new images, hearts, flowers, fish, rabbits, foil hearts, lace, 3-D effects, and more. For more photos of the evening, click here.
Foto Friday: How much is that preservation in the window?
Could we change the [preservation] world with kindness?
One of my weekly rituals is to spend Sunday mornings with a hot cup of coffee and “CBS Sunday Morning.” This week correspondent Steve Hartman looked at the value of writing thank you notes. A slacker himself, he found others who still believe the practice has great value.
Lawyer John Kralik wrote a thank you note a day for a year and recently published a book about the experience. He wrote one to his child’s piano teacher and to his barista for making an effort to remember his name. In turn, the barista was clearly pleased that someone recognized her effort.
“When you appreciate something, it comes again,” said Kralik. “If I was thankful for clients paying their bills, they seemed to pay faster. If I was thankful for cases, they seemed to come more.”
Don’t we all feel better when someone notices we’re making the effort? Don’t we all go through life craving 
recognition for who we are and what we do?
I confess that I used to be much better about thank you notes than I have been since my fingers went digital. I email, tweet, and blog and at night think, “oh, I should have written a note to…but where’s my address book these days and do I have any nice stationery any more?”
Maybe we should all make an effort to write more notes.
Preservationists are often in the position of asking for things — don’t knock down that building, please redesign that building to be more neighborly in the historic district, please don’t put that big box/drugstore/parking lot/skyscraper on that spot. But when we achieve what we’ve asked for, do we send thank you notes?
Walmart, a notorious foe of the preservation movement, who has only lost once (to the residents of Chestertown, MD, who successfully defeated Walmart’s efforts to build in the county), recently retracted plans to build adjacent to the boundaries of the Civil War Wilderness Battlefield in Orange County, Virginia. There was a collective sigh of relief from Civil War historians, preservationists and some local residents (I’m assuming there is a faction that want access to discount televisions and Cheetos and for whom the location doesn’t really matter). Yet how many of those celebrating will take a moment to thank the giant corporation for doing the right thing — and in so doing, perhaps encourage them to think more carefully next time they plan?
Let’s make an effort to be encouraging and to thank others (be they corporations, developers, government, demolition-focused property owners) when they are willing to compromise and look at the long-term effects of their actions.
Foto Friday: Contrasts
If I were waiting for a train… 100 years ago
I stood on the train platform today (a new structure finished just last year) watching the snow blow sideways. It seemed almost pointless to stand under the roof shelter. But I’d already watched myself turn into a snowman walking to the station and it was going to be awhile until the train arrived.
To pass the frosty time while I waited, I wondered what it might have been like in years past, when the original station, built with thick stone walls in 1903, was still in use. It has big windows and a fireplace. Ah, a fireplace. Wouldn’t that be a cozy thing on a snowy morning like this?
Robert Downey Jr. updates vintage time travel machine
You may have noticed at the bottom of my sidebar I feature a link to a vintage episode of the “Rocky & Bullwinkle Show” because I always had a fondness for Mr. Peabody , his boy Sherman, and the wacky adventures they’d have in their Wayback time travelling machine. (I’ve since learned the correct spelling is “WABAC.”)
Now, it seems that Mr. Peabody has traveled all the way from those 1960s cartoons to 2014 to appear on big screens nationwide — in 3-D no less. Mark your calendars.
Robert Downey Jr. will voice the erudite dog. Directing the computer-animated adventure is Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, Stuart Little).
Haven’t met Mr. Peabody yet? Below he heads back to 1513 to meet Ponce de Leon.
Foto Friday: Braille Buildings
Foto Friday
Yesterday’s lunch, reading The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism and Historic Preservation
The view from where I sat — the past in my present.
Nostalgic for the original Wayback Machine?
My Own Time Machine: Buildings, Places, People & Things 