Reinvestment and Recovery

Every once in a while I find myself needing some time off. I suppose that’s why we’ve structured “weekends,” into the minutes, hours and days that compose each year of our lives. This week at work was exhausting, yet simultaneously rewarding. As I’ve been slowly but surely settling into my role at the Learning Center, I’ve also been slowly, but surely defining it. I am the first of my kind at the Morgan County Learning Center, which means I’ve been writing the story, script and manual of exactly what an AmeriCorps College Access Guide should be achieving there. This hasn’t gone without great direction and persistent suggestion from my supervisor, but for the most part, I’ve been volunteering the forty hours a week, of which as a functioning adult member of society I am expected to perform work for wages, flying by the seat of my pants and crafting the part which I’d like to play for the residents of Morgan County. This week, the pants came off. I am done crafting a well polished job description, and have accepted my role as jack of all trades. I am here to ensure the success of the Learning Center. I am here to ensure my own growth and development as an individual. I am here to ensure the success of Americans, the working poor, the middle class, the wealthy and all those who fall invisibly outside of those distinctions. I am here to help and be helped. That describes my job to a tee.

The need for help in Morgan County, and Appalachian Ohio is overwhelming. It often seems like the grubby fingers of the consistently overlooked and exploited will clamor at anyone and anything that pays attention. Yet clamoring doesn’t always yield a surmounted obstacle, but could and often does end in struggle with no gain and no energy left. The Edward M. Kennedy Community Service Act allowed me to come here, under one condition: America will pay my living expenses, if I expend my time and energy for others to live. Although working to make higher education more accessible doesn’t yield a high “life and death,” daily scenario, I do know that what I do here can mean the difference between barely getting by and living happily for students who find themselves enlightened and therefore pursuing happiness. I’ve been working harder as I’ve become more comfortable in my job. I put in extra effort, knowing full well that many before me have also put in extra effort and as it goes with clamoring, Appalachian Ohio always ends face down in the mud. I can’t change the tidal ebb and flow that keeps these hills and valleys tied to the gravitational force that is abject poverty. I can, however, be wise with the time I’ve been given here and smart with every choice I make in order to provide the most energy for our collective clamor to the top. Friday was pay day. What did I do with my biweekly living stipend this week? I took off exploring the region that has graciously hosted me for the past three months, and reinvested my paycheck in the delights of South Eastern Ohio’s local luxuries.

I took Saturday for myself, needing not only a short break from work, but also a break from my life. I needed to be nourished, replenished and re-inspired and sometimes my soul needs to work on that alone. After a chilly morning run, seeing the fuchsia sun smearing color across the blue eastern sky, I showered and dressed well, just for myself. Trusty cooler in hand and favorite Buddha tote over my shoulder, I got in the car and headed for the first place that comes to mind when I require an unique remedy for soul nourishing—The Village Bakery & Café in Athens. It was just the place to kick start this day of reinvestment and personal recovery. At a small, round café table I found myself seated in one of two charmingly mismatched chairs with a cup of steaming coffee and a tenderly moist pumpkin-apple muffin pulled halfway apart exposing its delicate crumb on a small plate in front of me. It was cozily warm, as the wall that was becoming fast friends with my left arm was abutted by ovens on its opposite side. The interior of the bakery is painted butter yellow, and the available surfaces are all campaigning for you to eat well, with posters, murals and memorabilia donning words like “Slow Food,” and “Locavore.” There at my table, taking up my small nook on the market side of the small agri-bistro, I paged through a cookbook I’d brought and sipped my coffee to the serenading cinematic like sound of Billie Holiday. Moments like this, however, do not only exist for mere seconds in the mind of a film director. They can be found and had, with an understanding of simplicity and a keen sense of satisfaction.

After leaving the bakery blissfully content, I assumingly headed to the arms of another love, which brings great passion to my heart on Saturday mornings—the Athens Farmer’s Market. My Chuck Taylor clad feet must have tread the same path at least four times, canvassing the “T” shaped market for inspirational produce, of which it is never lacking. The red lining of my Buddha bag soon found itself in close quarters with orange, purple and yellow carrots, burgundy red leaf lettuce, the clammy dampness of a freshly pulled sweet potato, a dozen baby bell peppers ranging from yellow to green to aubergine, and crunchy, exotic Asian pears. I picked up two slices of Crumbs Bakery’s famous market pizza to deliver a slice to my neighbor who is newly in love with said pizza, and one for myself for Sunday lunch. A pinched bundle of purple sage caught my eye, a basket of dusty fresh Yukon Gold potatoes, and a half dozen cooking onions would all marry happily together in the French Lentil soup inspired by the initial color wheel of carrots. Finally, a chocolate, cherry, chocolate-chip cookie from Crumbs would serve as my late afternoon dessert on a sleepy, warm drive home.
Crumbs Bakery's amazing pizza.

Two more stops in Athens followed. The Farmacy, located conveniently in town and stocking all things local, organic, natural and good-for-you, is where I regularly buy Aladdin’s multi-grain flatbreads, made in Cleveland, Ohio and irregularly decided to pick up a bunch of organic bananas, as I’ve never eaten them before. A short drive down State Routes 50/32 to just within the limits of Albany, Ohio there stands the Athens Bulk Food Depot. The cookbook I was paging through, jotting a shopping list as my moistened fingertip flicked page after page, is a book about baking whole grain bread. My latest ambition is to perfect two things: a perfect whole-grain loaf of bread, and a whole-wheat muffin base, from which many more delicious muffins may evolve. I took a basket, which by the end of my perusal through the narrow, fully stocked aisles was, as expected, full and dislocating my shoulder. I picked up a ten pound bag of King Arthur Artisan bread flour, which I could’ve bought at Kroger, but by buying it at the Athens Bulk Food Depot, the graciously friendly owner and his wife got to keep more of my money. In addition to the infant sized bag of flour, I invested in a few new discoveries from the chapters of my bread book: toasted wheat germ, buckwheat groats, and non-fat dry milk. Upon checking out, the owner of whom I spoke so fondly, had a momentary crisis with the cash register and apologized profusely for keeping me waiting, to which I replied, “Please, take your time, I’m not in a hurry.” He smiled, let out a relieving scoff and said, “Well, you’re unusual then.” I thought about that the rest of the day.

Not finding myself tied to a day planner, in constraint with time, or a slave to a schedule, I was able to find the kind of joy that some people believe only exists in Christmas songs and on television, in stories and other fictional makings. I had nowhere to be and no certain time to be there, wherever it was I was going. I had the time and the desire to take moments for what they were, enjoy nothing but the happenstance of my surroundings, and take my time. After leaving the Bulk Food Depot, I took the long way around, going out of my way for a beautiful drive from Athens to Middleport, Ohio down State Route 681. My partner and I used to take Saturday drives on this road, for its beauty and its isolation. Like in Morgan County, the homes of Meigs County are privy to the space between. Even homes that are not great expanses of farm land sit on property that stretches for acres and acres. We’d always pass one farm, an Amish farm, where a hand painted wooden sign would warn speedy travelers of cinnamon buns, homemade bread, and whoopie pies at a roadside stand within the next mile. We always stopped and bought something, not because the baked goods were particularly delicious or that we had some ulterior motive behind investing four or five dollars in the handicrafts of Amish women. We stopped because we had four or five extra dollars, and because of the rural space between, we couldn’t imagine this small family saw much business in their curbside confections. There was always some sort of nostalgia involved in stopping for Amish baked goods, in buying something made from scratch, by hand, and not wrapped in an industrially manufactured plastic bag containing a company logo and an ingredient list a mile long. I passed that farm on Saturday for the first time in probably three years. There was a homemade wooden sign with hand painted letters, but now it read “82 Acres for Sale,” and the farm house and roadside stand were abandoned and already being reclaimed, along with the rough, hilly fields by the weeds. While we’d all like to blame the government, or the banks, or the head-honcho types we imagine to exist in the world that looms above our heads and out of our reach, I think each of us can bear some of the burden of blame for our economic troubles. We don’t buy our bread from roadside stands any more. We buy it in those corporate plastic bags, with a corporate list of ingredients, from a corporation like Wal-Mart where eight people are making a million dollars a minute thanks to shoppers like us. You can’t point your finger at Wall Street CEOs like Michael Duke (Wal-Mart) when your other hand is pushing a cart in his store.

My intentions for taking State Route 681 to State Route 33 through Pomeroy to Middleport were imbedded in the little rumbling in my stomach, the CD mix of Appalachian music fiddling through my speakers and my desire for feeding my soul—or rather, soul food. I decided after the market that I’d have a meal at a restaurant I used to frequent often when I lived in Athens full time. Millie’s is a comfort-food haven, nestled along a country road, off the heavily beaten path of State Route 7. It’s a seat yourself kind of a place, where they’ll bring you a menu, but most people order from the eight or nine offerings written on a white board you can barely read from your table. One of those offerings comes with two sides for $7.95. When I started going there, the price was $6.95. Only a dollar’s worth of inflation through America’s Great Recession isn’t too bad. I sat myself in the farthest booth, this time carrying my book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Shortly after getting my coat off and bedding into the bench seat, a smiling waitress brought me a menu and a tightly wrapped bundle of silverware in a starchy paper napkin. She immediately asked what I was reading, and through friendly conversation and an
explanation of the basic premise of the autobiographical story, she added that Millie’s gets as much food as they can from a local market, and often their eggs still have feathers on them when they go to crack them into your omelet—my kind of joint. My meal at Millie’s was a treat. Crispy skinned rotisserie chicken, tangy and salty collards cooked to mush with bits of smoky bacon, and a bowl of sweet, creamy macaroni salad comprised an eating experience I haven’t been able to enjoy for awhile.

Recently, upon returning to restaurants and dining establishments I used to thoroughly enjoy, I’ve been experiencing a sort of lack-luster disappointment as I dug into the foods I used to love to eat. My sausage sandwich at the Bob Evans Farm Festival left an unpleasant aftertaste in my mouth. The smoked, pulled beef brisket from Millstone BBQ didn’t please my palette the way it once did, and a crock of Chicken ‘n Noodles from Bob Evans was utterly offsetting. After eating whole, natural, local foods almost exclusively for certainly the past three months and even longer to a lesser extent, these foods didn’t taste good to me anymore. I could taste the preservatives. I could taste the mechanized process by which they were made. It didn’t taste good. My meal at Millie’s tasted good. As I pulled off bits and pieces of juicy, silken white meat from my chicken breast, I could hear women in the kitchen yelling orders back and forth. This little country diner serves up Appalachian Ohio soul food, situated just close enough to West Virginia to serve Southern favorites like collard greens and soup beans, yet Ohio enough for spaghetti and meat balls, and lasagna. They also make homemade pies, crust and all, with fresh ingredients. The apple has always been my favorite, and for the first time in my entire acquaintance with Millie’s, I passed on the pie for the cookie waiting patiently in my car. And while a Bob Evans situated on a busy street corner in a suburb, adjacent to a medical office, a drug store and two other corporate chain restaurants can claim to be “down on the farm,” Millie’s is just down the road, there are still feathers on their eggs, and Millie and her staff, and the local farmers who supply her restaurant got to keep a good percentage of the $8.12 I spent there on Saturday.

I drove home, back through Athens, stopping to pick up my Snowville Creamery milk and half & half and another cup of coffee at the Village Bakery, before heading back through the hills to Morgan County and my little McConnelsville home. The drive was lazy, sleepy and warm as anticipated, and I sipped my coffee and took small, gingerly bites of my chocolate, cherry, chocolate-chip cookie I’d been dreaming of all day long, so as to make it last longer. Crumbs Bakery has their non-dairy, no-egg chocolaty confection crafted to perfection. The center is chewy, the edges are crisp, and dried tart cherries, just barely plumped from the surrounding cookie dough, serve as delightful surprises throughout. The cookie made it twenty minutes, interchanged with sips of steaming pungent fair trade coffee. I made it another twenty minutes to my front door, where I was wearing the satisfaction of my day across my face in the form of a contented smile. It is safe to say that I am ready for another week at work, another day of paperwork and meetings, of filing reports and serving students. The weekend served not only as a recovery of my own sanity, my own spirit, but also a reminder that the work I do and the money I spend are America’s Reinvestment and Recovery Act. I try to eat locally, spend locally and serve locally. Thus far in my life, nothing else has so eased my conscience and brought me so much joy. Remember, take time to enjoy your life, to know yourself, and always buy, shop, and eat local.

Nostalgia

As we begin closing the windows, putting up our storm doors, battening down the hatches for the winter weather we are all keenly aware will be arriving soon, the sense of comfort, shelter and protection that comes along with autumn in Ohio has been making me reminisce this week.

By nature I am an introspective person. I let feelings and emotions thrive and flourish within me. I am a keeper of memories, safeguarding my past and the history of my family. I have been accused of over-thinking things, of worrying too much, of obsessing. I like to brew over my thoughts while I perform somewhat mindless tasks. I am also a planner, an organizer, and a slave to my own schedule. I like to think of my home and life as a nest. I’ve built it, I tend it, I patch it up when it begins to fall apart, and at the end of the day, it is my favorite place to be.

I think this is why I love preparing food so much. Crafting a meal requires a dedicated balance and interaction of all these qualities. It begins with an idea. This is where my mind flourishes, pouring over archives of food photos I remember seeing as I paged through a magazine, recipes I remember reading, and what I’d like the overall effect of the meal to be. I sort through what I want to accomplish with this meal, and how I will set about achieving that goal. Then, once an idea has been roughly established, it follows with a plan. I like to make lists—a list of what I will serve, a list of what ingredients I need to make those things, and a list of what ingredients I’ll need to buy and where I will buy them. Creating a meal is a task close to perfection for anyone who fancies themselves a planner. Finally, there’s the execution. There are vegetables to chop, fruit to peel, meat to trim. These are the somewhat mindless tasks I enjoy so much because they allow my mind to wander, and my obsessive nature to come out and thrive. There always seems to be some complicated task, which challenges me, but also allows for a great sense of pride—a feather in my cap, or rather, in my nest, a photo to hang on my wall. Freely flowing among all of these components of a caringly prepared meal is one thing that shelters and comforts me—nostalgia.

It started on Monday of this week. Something persuaded me to buy two bunches of collard greens at the Athens Farmers Market last weekend. I’d been craving them. I think this has something to do with fall weather and fall foods. Collards are a cool season crop, and come in nicely in the temperate Appalachian spring and fall. I fixed them the only way I like to eat them—braised with biting vinegar and tender black eyed peas. I scooped a large dollop of dangling greens, dotted with tiny pieces of sautéed orange carrots and creamy white onions, into a small bowl. Perhaps my favorite part of collard greens followed, as I dipped up a ladle full of their pot liquor and poured it over them, exposing a mound of soft, myrtle, wilted greens and precariously perched black eyed peas. That was my dinner, accompanied by a piece of whole-grain corn bread, baked in my cast iron skillet. I used the golden, butter crusted bread to absorb all remnants of pot liquor once my greens were happily eaten. The coziness of a pot of slowly simmering collards always makes me think of the first place I’d ever eaten them this way.


Several years ago I had the wonderful experience of spending a weekend in the mountains of rural, Eastern Kentucky; in the city of Hazard, down Lott’s Creek, to be exact. While my collards were somewhat different, being prepared without salt pork, and dressed with olive oil and low-sodium chicken stock instead, the tanginess of the apple cider vinegar is what really takes me back. I was sitting on a wooden bench, Styrofoam tray in my hand with a cup of greens and a hunk of grainy, salty cornbread on the side, listening to a bluegrass band, lovingly cradled by two mountainsides. It was fall in the mountains, and I was in the company of a dear, sweet friend I only had the privilege of knowing briefly before God carried her home just after Christmas the same year. Collard greens always make me think of her. I like to think of myself as an adopted Appalachian sometimes. While it isn’t part of my heritage, I’d like to think it’s a part of the culture of who I am today.

Then came Wednesday, when Cleveland Scene Magazine released their “Best of Cleveland,” list. I was browsing through the fan and staff picks, seeing mostly expected results, until I came across an unusual category: Best Place to Experience your Grandparents’ Cleveland. Immediately the title of the article had me thinking about my own grandparents and the Cleveland they knew. Then I read the staff pick for this category: Frank Sterle’s Slovenian Country House. A very contented smile came across my face as I immediately began to remember Mother’s Day lunches and family birthday gatherings. It made me think of my paternal Grandmother, the only Grandparent I ever got to know. While I think most would say that her style of “Grandma,” was somewhat different than the stereotype of what we expect grandmothers to be, I can honestly say that now I understand and appreciate who she was and I don’t begrudge her that at all. Just reading the name of the restaurant made me remember so many things about her, most not even associated with Sterle’s. I didn’t see her very often, so one of my last memories of her is from my cousin Laurie’s wedding (which happened to be five years ago this month). When the DJ kindly obliged my family’s repeated request and played a polka, my Grandmother who was in her eighties danced with my Aunt Joanne, slowly, carefully and mechanically making all the correct steps. I’ve heard stories of how she used to love to dance polkas. I remember catching her out of the corner of my eye as my father practically dismembered me, whipping me around the shiny wooden floor. That was the only time I’ve ever danced with my father, and the last time I saw my Grandmother dance.

As always, food lives on like a flame in my memory, around which some of my fondest thoughts warm their hands. Sterle’s serves food like my Grandmother used to make, making it, for me, a perfect selection on how to experience your Grandparents’ Cleveland. I am not alone in thinking, and missing my Grandmother’s breaded city chicken, and pork chops, her home fried potatoes, browned and soaked with lovely bacon fat, and even her homemade creamed spinach, or fresh green beans dressed in vinegar and slivered onions. The Slovenian half of my heritage was never as fully developed as the other half, which I’m about to entertain. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there though, or that I don’t still strongly identify with my Slavic roots. I have heavy limbs, dark hair and blue eyes and I’m tall and broadly framed. I know those traits didn’t come from my short, petite Italian relatives. They are the things I see in the mirror every day and every day I’m reminded.

Finally there was Friday. Friday was the culmination of the mood of memories, autumn and cooking I’ve been experiencing this week. I had invited a friend over for dinner, and being the person I am, a meal rich in local foods, prepared in a healthy manner was in order. There is one thing I seem to make once a year, every year, in the fall—Butternut squash ravioli. There is something so delightful about the smooth, velvety pockets of pasta filled with creamy, nutty squash and a hint of fresh nutmeg. They speak of the comforts of fall, and for me, making ravioli hits home. My maternal Grandmother made homemade ravioli. We’re Italian, so of course she did. Before I moved to McConnelsville, my Mother and I were going through our kitchen drawers looking for any of my cooking utensils which had been mistakenly thrown in with hers while I was living with my parents. In one particular drawer where my Mother keeps very obscure things she never uses, I found a set of ravioli cutters. There was a large size, and a small. They were round, with crimped metal edges and worn, beveled wooden handles. When I asked about them, she told me they were my Grandmothers. Then she took them from me and put them in my box. She knew that nothing would’ve made my Grandmother happier than to know that I would use them, instead of letting them sit, sadly in my Mother’s kitchen drawer.

I carry in my heart so much unwarranted regret when I think about my maternal Grandmother. I want so badly to have known her, to have been her willing apprentice at pasta making and vegetable canning, to have known what her arms felt like when I hugged her. It isn’t my fault that I don’t know these things. She passed away three years before I was born. Thanks to my parents, I carry her with me everywhere I go. I feel her presence every time someone asks me what my middle initial stands for. While I know she might’ve been skeptical of the rich brown, grainy whole-wheat flour I used to make my paper thin sheets of ravioli, I also know that she could feel my palms bearing down heavily on the handles of the ravioli cutters, using my fingertips to guide and roll them, pinching closed the little pillows of seasonal American flavors. My heart feels near to her every time I make things the way she made them, as though I can feel her hands on my hands, directing me. The ravioli I made with her ravioli cutters on Friday were utterly perfect, so honestly reflecting my spirit in their preparation, ingredients, flavors and execution. They were the best I’ve made.

Cherry Orchards

Grasshoppers scampered, jumping after my lightly treading footsteps startled them from one rough blade of dulling green grass to another. The coarse edges of drying greenery scratched softly against my toes as I meandered slowly through a tenderly cleared field, dotted with giant rolls of hay, looking like tightly woven skeins of yarn, planted heavily all over the terrain of rolling hills and dipping valleys. The late autumn sun baked my skin, and I basked in it, worshiped it, let it warm my flesh to the touch. Blue sky was laid out above me, a vast tapestry with wavy, lazy, wisps of pale white clouds stretched out from end to end. Just out of reach was a stand of apple trees, an orchard within an orchard, roped off and marked with a hand written sign forbidding adventurers and admirers from picking the heavy hanging, brightly pink hued fruit that dangled from the low lying branches. For the first time in my life, I bit down gently on the white tipped ends of clover petals, feeling a trace of sugary water tickling the tip of my tongue. The gently blowing wind pulled and tugged at strands of my hair, hanging down, dancing light footed against my neck. Unexpectedly, I had one of the most truly unforgettable experiences of my life.



There, just miles up a winding country road, is an old Orchard and a kind hearted farmer who is proud of his land, and his living. It was just by chance my friend Betsy and I decided to take a leisurely drive up State Route 669, heading North from Malta to Deavertown, in Morgan County. Well, perhaps not by chance. There is a barn on this road I had passed once before. It is an old wooden barn on a farm beautifully placed on a hilltop, and on the face of this barn is an enormous plaque of Our Lady of Guadalupe, holding her hands in prayer, blessing the tiny mountains and faithful farmers within her view. I fell in love with this barn, and decided my friend Betsy would love it also. I also knew there was an orchard on this road, further on past the immaculate rural vision. I’d learned of this orchard just weeks ago at the Athens Farmer’s Market, where one of the men working the market stand was wearing a Morgan Raiders t-shirt, and knowingly I inquired about the location of the orchard itself. We drove past the sloping gravel drive at first, thinking that the last thing either of us needed was more apples, but something stopped my car and brought to us a consensus that we really ought to stop. Treacherously backing the car up a tiny, blinding hill, we zipped back just far enough for me to make a sharp little turn into the drive marked by a sign reading “Apples,” and “Cider.”





I cannot exactly explain the events that followed our decision to backtrack, and take the time to explore a little piece of Morgan County’s vast patchwork of agricultural heritage. There is a spirit about Cherry’s Orchard that simply cannot be put into words. The land itself hums, it buzzes and hums, like far off singing, like distant voices joined in joyful song. The driveway is lined with multitudes of flowers, plants, trees and shrubs. Red zinnias caught my eye from the road, and a flowering vine fully loaded with pink bell shaped blossoms coiled about a trellis serving as a welcoming frame to an always open door. This farm was bursting with bright pinks, purples and blues which are not usually found in the heat of passionate autumn. The colors did not stop upon entering the small building which serves as the farm stand, but rather were almost painted from outdoors to in, taking the form of jars filled with vintage, cellophane wrapped hard candies, baskets of apples ranging from shiny candy red to verging on neon green, to deep orange jars of pumpkin butter, to a vast palette of jars of golden honey—orange blossom, buckwheat and wildflower each a different shade. From a door in the back of the farm stand emerged a kind eyed farmer, donning a scratchy white beard and charming, yet worn and functional straw hat. We complimented him on the breadth of beauty that was his farm, and he gave us one of the greatest and most simple gifts we’d ever been given. He invited us to take some time and walk around the orchards, to explore and take photos and enjoy the land.







The contrasting complexity and simplicity of life on Cherry’s Orchard seems so idealistically satisfying. We walked up a gravel coated country lane, where tracks worn in by years of traveling pick-up trucks and tractors lead us up and over a hill, and back to an old barn neighbored by a patch of Fuji apple trees. The only sounds that surrounded us were the soft buzzes of happily working bees, the orchestral pangs of grasshoppers, and haphazard chirps and melodic refrains of songbirds. That and the barely noticeable mechanical click of my digital camera, as we snapped dozens of photos, breathing in the countryside, the harmony and hospitality and the effortlessness of each other’s company. The grove of yet to be picked Fuji apples was full of large, crisp fruit with rosy skin and picture perfect droplets of slowly dripping morning dew. Just beyond there were vast, mowed fields and rounds of packed hay scattered about the rising and falling ground. I put my nose up to the warm, dry, coarse grass, bundled tightly together, and took in a deep breath of amber colored, earthy aroma that brought me back to my days as a small child, running through a corn maze and making my own scarecrow at a fruit farm near where I grew up. I leaned gently against the bale, and laid my hands upon the curve of its scratchy voluminous body and felt my spirit resting deep within me, content and sighing, happy and warm. There are times in life when my spirit soars, full of excitement and wonder, and I feel like my feet could be lifted from the ground at any moment. I love those times. There are also times in my life where my spirit feels tucked in, comforted and safe, sweetly sleeping, barely breathing and content. With the slowly baking hay bale warming my thighs, my feet nestled into hearty sprouts of clover, and my eyes cast upon land that can only be described as belonging to both Heaven and earth, this was one of those times, and I might have loved it even more.





We dawdled in the fields, were in no hurry to win any race in the alleys between rows of squatty apple trees, and lingered, loitering amongst bunches of royal purple Concord grapes. We shared laughter, and moments of silence when the magnificence of the farm stole our full attention. We felt the smooth bark of apple trees between our fingers, the pock marked skin of slick, early lemons, and the comforting heat of an ember-glowing sun upon our cheeks. We tasted nutty buckwheat honey, crisp and juicy Winesap apples, and the lip sucking sweetness of biting, cold pressed cider. By the time we made our way back to the farm stand, we’d discovered that we’d spent more than an hour drifting about the plush, fertile landscape. We loaded our arms up with apples, garlic, peach butter, honey, and a pocket full of hard candy, kindly paid and appreciatively thanked the farmer for his gracious and unforeseen hospitality, and drove away contently deeper into the temperate, fall kissed mountains of Morgan County.



I was reminded today that life is too short to take any experiences we’re fortunate enough to have for granted. There isn’t a video game or movie or television show created that can generate the same kind of feeling within me that this simple visit to a farm on a Sunday morning gave me. There isn’t a book that can be read, a class taught, a song sung that does justice to the energy that flowed like life through my veins as I stood, eyes closed, against the hay bale at Cherry’s Orchard. There is no comedy or drama that can portray the emotions I felt. I could spend a thousand Sunday mornings in church and never have the same peace in my soul that was brought to it today as I sat pleased and at ease among the tall stems of red and yellow zinnias. While there is no harm in doing all of these things, just don’t forget that beyond your door, just out your window, just up your road, a world exists that many people drive by, pass up and ignore during the monotonous routine and obligation of our everyday lives. Don’t take the perfection of freshly picked apples, the quiet simplicity of a living, breathing hillside, or the complexity of a well run, walking, living farm for granted. It’s fall. Get outside and lay your hands on Ohio’s robust, round apples, scrape your palm on the gnarled knob of a great terra cotta pumpkin, and taste the sweetness of brusque, cool cider, chilling your insides. If you live in or near Morgan County, Ohio, go to Cherry’s Orchard and ask if you can take a walk. You’ll lose yourself and be wishing you’d never be found again.

Radical Hospitality

Someone call my Mother. Right now. Someone pick up a phone, call my Mother and say, "What is Betsy's favorite dessert?" ...or, "What dessert would be most likely to drive a stake through Betsy's diet?" I guarantee she'll have one, tiny, three-letter word to share with you. Pie.

I am admitting it here and now. I love pie. I don't just love pie the way I love sweet potatoes, per say, where I can write verses about the perfection of their sweetness and starchiness. I love pie in such a way that I really, truly just want to eat it. I don't want to write about it, I don't want to discuss it, I don't want to analyze it. I simply want to eat it. Any pie that is put in front of me, I probably want to eat. Fruit pies, cream pies, savory pies, cheese pies, double-crust, single-crust, cookie-crust, animal, vegetable, or humanity's creation known as Jello. No matter what kind of pie it is, I'm going to want to eat it. It has been a long time since I last let myself indulge in pie. I am a very well behaved human animal, and I eat things that are good for my body these days. However this weekend, a reason came to pass for me to fill up a dainty, frosted white dessert plate with slice after slice of pie, and indulge to my heart's delight.

This past weekend I participated in the United Campus Ministry's First Annual Pie-Bake Off. The event was a fundraiser for United Campus Ministry in Athens, Ohio. What was originally meant to be a competition turned into something even better, something more gloriously communal and more in line with the ideals of UCM. It turned into nothing more than an afternoon of antiquated community fellowship. Gone are the days when someone would spend a Sunday afternoon visiting a friend, or a relative over a pot of freshly brewed coffee and a plate of home baked treats. Now, we as Americans seem to be more likely found drowning our artificial, manifested sorrows related to Autumn athletics in endless kegs of watery American drafts. Or perhaps more appropriate for this past Sunday in Athens, we are more likely to be found caught up in someone else's idea of who we ought to be, as hundreds of young freshwomen vied for expensive spots within one of the University's many prestigious sororities, known for such achievements as infamous wet t-shirt contests. Sunday fellowship has fallen by the wayside, coinciding with America's compulsion to attend early morning Church services, or Church services period.

The second part of that idea may not be so bad. No one should do something they feel is compulsory, and mindless. However, in letting go of our rigid standard of required American Christianity, we've also inevitably lost something which is deeply attached to it-fellowship. We do not spend quality time with one another nearly as often as we should. We seem to be constantly attuned to something else, some other purpose for getting together, some arbitrary event that forces us to get to know one another. While I know some may argue that Sunday afternoon football is their form of fellowship, and I understand that, I also know that this past weekend I had an opportunity to gather with a group of people most of whom I'd never met, and I was forced to sit down and talk. It was wonderful. There was no television blaring in the background, no one was checking the scores, there was no music playing to distract from a conversation. We were simply groups of people, some acquainted, some not, gathered around tables over plates mounded full of freshly made pie, warming our fingers around cups of coffee and tea, and talking the way human beings ought to.



This originally advertised pie contest became something much more human at the end of the day. Competition would've ruined it, I believe. One of UCM's mantras is, "Radical hospitality." United Campus Ministry is an organization that strives to make everyone feel welcome, accepted, comfortable and served...absolutely without regard to difference. They are firm supporters and enablers of interfaith spirituality, social justice, and probably most importantly for this past Sunday, community meals. Nothing could've been more appropriate for UCM's mission of compassionate connectedness than a pie bake-off, turned retro Sunday afternoon visit. Pie is one of my top-ranked comfort foods. It requires no elaborate explanation, but rather its only requirement is to nourish and sustain not only our stomachs but our souls. We are as American as apple pie, after all. We are pie people. Pie makes me reminisce about the dessert finish of my family's Sunday dinners, or loading up trays full of tiny paper plates each donning a slice to be sold at my Church's Christmas Bazaar, or Father's Day, when every year without fail we conjure up a fresh strawberry pie made with just picked warm berries for my Dad. My family dinners, our Christmas Bazaar, and Father's Day all revolve around Sundays. Sundays are days of fellowship, compassion, caring, concern and love. Sundays are pie days. UCM hit this one on the nose.


With my delicious, "Queen Honeybea's Honey Pumpkin Pie."

I am so glad I not only had the opportunity to bake a pie for UCM, but even more so grateful to have spent an afternoon getting to know people I've never met, enjoying the homemade pies crafted with love, care, and all things local by the very folks who were surrounding me in the warm basement of UCM on that chilly, rainy Sunday. Thanks to the generous sliding scale donations made by the participants and tasters, United Campus Ministry raised almost $400 on pie alone. Thank you to UCM for hosting such a wonderful, heart-warming, community event. Thank you for letting me share my love of pie with you and our community. I'm already planning for next year.