Salinger

As many of you know by now, J.D. Salinger, most famous for writing Catcher in the Rye, passed away at age 91. He was a well known recluse who lived just over the river from the folks in Windsor in Cornish, NH.

I remember reading Catcher in the Rye when I was a freshman in high school. Unlike a tremendous amount of American youth from 1951 on, I didn't relate to the angst of Holden Caufield, and for that I was grateful. Reading this work made me appreciate the love and encouragement I had in my own life from my parents, teachers and church leaders. I was so grateful to not feel the pain he felt as he began his journey to adulthood. I did however relate with the feelings of not wanting to accept the responsibility that came with growing up. As the oldest of five, I often thought it might be more fun to be the youngest (Chris will have to post about that to let me know if youngest children have more fun). Overall, I was glad to have had the experience of reading what has become an American standard for rite of passage novels.

It's interesting to me that so many artists sought refuge of one kind or another in New England. Perhaps it's the lush and inviting natural surroundings that calm the soul. Or maybe it's the fact that you can tuck yourself away in those natural surroundings and leave the world behind, just as J.D. Salinger chose to do.

Here's a link or two of interest on J.D. Salinger:
N.Y. Times
London Evening Standard
The Australian

Vermont poetry links

A few weeks back, I noted some Vermont authors. Here are three links to some Vermont poets/poetry.

Poets.org Vermont page

Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor- Vermont references

Poetry Society of Vermont


I think I'm on a poetry kick because I just finished reading Julie Andrew's Collections of Poems, Songs and Lullabies. It's a beautiful book and it reminded me of how much I love beautifully strung together words in small amounts of space. So search around and I hope you find something that takes your mind to a happy place as you start a new week.

Thanks for hanging in there with us. We hope to have some more pictures of some finished work inside the inn soon! Our resident photographer will be back on the job soon. Be sure to let us know what other topics you'd like to learn about. We'll be happy to share what we've learned.

Refinishing Plaster and Lath Walls

In many old homes the walls are built out of plaster and lath. They are then covered with beautiful wall paper. But over time, the wall paper does not age well, it begins to crack and peel. The walls begin to look old and worn out.

One of the many beautiful but worn out wall papers in the Inn
Some of them looked hand printed.

So in pursuit of smooth and pretty walls, the prep work is quite intensive. Here is a bit of the process.

It took teams of us, working furiously with streamers and scrapers
to get the walls stripped.

The peeling begins before the walls can be refinished and all of the old wall paper must be removed. Which can be a daunting task, or as easy as tearing a piece of paper depending on the wall paper. Many of the rooms we stripped had layers of wallpaper that had then been painted over. Doubly hard.

Here is our master skim coater. It does take a steady even hand.

When the wall is finally free of paper you are left with a very rough plaster surface so the mudding or skim coating begins. The technique we used was to roll out the mud onto the walls, and then come back over it with a blade to smooth it out. This may not be the preferred technique of professionals but it worked for us.


The pink (post it's) are places that have to be done twice, because of discoloration or were missed and aren't smooth enough. Once the walls are newly finished they are then sanded smooth. When the sanding is completed (which can take several times over) the primer goes on, and then the paint. Finally and eventually we have beautiful smooth walls. It is ALOT of work but worth the effort!

A great orator

Here are some resources to help you appreciate the writings and works of Martin Luther King Jr. Enjoy your holiday!

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Detroit, Michigan, June 23, 1963.

Quotes
Text to famous speeches

One of my favorite insights into the Perkins family is a book I've mentioned before: Father to Daughter- The Family Letters of Maxwell Perkins. It contains letters and illustrations Maxwell Perkins created for his five girls.

In 1928, their daughter Bertha was taken out of school to accompany a relative on a Mediterranean cruise (sounds nice right now doesn't it?). I was reading some of the letters Maxwell wrote to Bert while she was on her trip and I enjoyed this one.

January 26th Zippy is furiously writing at her story. She is sitting on the arm of the big brown chair at the blue covered tabled, dressed in her red suit. Janey is in that reddish, tight, french suit in which she looks so well, sitting by Mother on the sofa at the side of the living room. Its a cold night. --I can feel the cold from the window by this desk. We shall have skating, I think. We have had no snow here but snow covered the country below Talmadge Hill today, though thinly;--yet N.Y. had none. I had a gay letter from Hemingway today, from Switzerland. He said he had not written for some weeks because for two he had been blind, --though now he could see. He had been skiing in Switzerland. Doing that, you wear goggles, for the snow glare. Once he fell very hard and the glass of both lenses was broken to bits, but hurt him not the least. That night he went to say goodnight to his little boy in the dark. The boy put his arm up and the nail of his finger cut across his father's eyeball. He says he thought for a time he would never see again. ... Mr. Scribner goes away tomorrow for two months. I had lunch with him and his son, and we had a pleasant time too. Generally before he goes away he is worried and worries us. Today he let it go with saying that he'd bet an English publisher he doesn't like with whom I am negotiating a contract would "get the best of me before he was through if I regarded him as a Gentleman"; and that "things were in good shape but that we'd all be in trouble before his train was out from under the river."--These things he says with humor, you know Bert. I've liked him increasingly ever since I've known him, --some years now too."

I love the way letters give us insight into people's personalities. I love this letter because it's addressed to his daughter, but includes stories for two influential figures he worked with, Ernest Hemingway and Charles Scribner. Max Perkins definitely had an interesting life; it's great that he shared that with his family in his letters. It's also a wonderful gift to all of us that the Perkins girls have given by sharing these family treasures with all of us.
--Joy

The perfect library

What comes to mind when you think of sitting in the libary
at the Snapdragon Inn?

A crackling fire, hot chocolate, and a good book.

We knew we needed to keep the wood stove but opted for a new Vermont Castings Stove, the Encore. There is something extra cozy and warming about actually seeing the flames--especially when it can get as cold as we have seen this winter. These are brilliant stoves made here just up the road from us. Their motto, "Built Vermont. Proud and Strong" Enough said.

Let us know--what comes to mind when you think of the perfect library?

DIY inside and OUT

As Windsor freezes over--literally--it is fun to look back to Summer. The DIY element doesn't end with inside projects but seems to be DIY everywhere projects.

McKay posted a Thursday Thought on Sharing 26 Main a few weeks ago and many people commented about how much they loved the wrap around porch that used to exist on the home. We love it too and would certainly love to recreate it at some point. But before that would even be possible, we had to do something with this...

For those of you who live in the Northeast and know just how FAST foliage can grown, this will make you laugh, but in a matter of weeks your house can, in fact, be overtaken. So in order to take that side of the house back and expose that side of the house, we took it to this place...

Now we have a clean slate for whatever comes next. It is such a striking building with or without the wrap around porch. Someday there is another DIY project for us there--anyone a porch builder?

Outside looking in

In 2004, the New York Times ran an article about the proliferation of literary talent stemming from Connecticut. The article mentioned the home in New Canaan of Max Perkins. I thought it was interesting considering we have also been touched by the life of the Perkins family as we have been renovating the inn. Here's the excerpt from that article ("Writer's Block", Alan Bisbort, New York Times Nov. 28, 2004 ):

Maxwell E. Perkins

New Canaan

A few years after Fitzgerald moved out of Westport, Maxwell E. Perkins, the Scribner's editor who guided Fitzgerald, moved in to New Canaan, a few towns away. Perkins also edited Ernest Hemingway, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Thomas Wolfe.

In a letter to Fitzgerald on Oct. 18, 1924, Perkins wrote: "I told you we'd bought a house in New Canaan. It has the face of a Greek temple and the body of a spacious Connecticut farm house."

This capacious, eccentric home, located at 63 Park Street half a block from the New Canaan commuter station, was designed and built in 1836 by Hiram Crissey, a local carpenter. Mr. Perkins bought the Greek Revival house in 1924 after it had served as a boardinghouse and private school. He lived there with his wife, Louise, who called it her "investment in happiness," and their five daughters until his death in 1947. Louise stayed in the house until 1965, when she died after falling asleep while smoking in bed, the blaze gutting part of the structure. The oldest Perkins daughter, Bertie, stayed in the house, divided it into four apartments, and then moved to Vermont a few years later, according to Sandra Bergmann, one of the current owners of the house.

By 1973, when the house was sold to its Ms. Bergmann and her husband, Richard, it was falling apart. It was largely through the efforts of the Bergmanns, who have lived in the house for 31 years, that the Maxwell E. Perkins House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 6, 2004. Mr. Bergmann has been chairman of New Canaan's Historic District Commission for 24 years.

"I remember seeing the house for the first time in 1961," Ms. Bergmann said. "It was so overgrown, like an antebellum mansion gone to seed in the South. We knew it as an eccentric-looking house, not because of the Max Perkins connection. We confess that the name meant nothing to us at the time we bought it."

When the Bergmanns purchased the 5,000-square-foot house and two-acre lot, it had been on the market for some time.

"Only an architect would take on such a challenge as this house presented," Ms. Bergmann said. "There was four of everything. Four kitchens, four bathrooms, four front doors, and so on. I started crying when my husband said he wanted to buy it. We lived in one room at a time and it took us seven years to renovate. We inherited a hundred years of deferred maintenance. It sagged right down the middle. The house is now structurally the same from the outside as it was when the Perkins lived here. We tried to leave something from each era in the house. Bookcases Max Perkins had built are still here."

After the Bergmanns moved in, they were invited to a party by Thomas Ashwell, the neighbor across the street and one of Mr. Perkins's publishing colleagues.

"Mr. Ashwell told stories about 'Max' and how it was their running joke that whenever he'd see smoke coming out of the chimney over here they'd say, 'Max must be burning some more of Thomas Wolfe's manuscripts,' " she said.

Today, the Bergmanns run an architecture firm out of this shrine, which in addition to the National Register of Historic Places plaque, sports a plaque for being on the national Literary Landmarks Register, an honor bestowed on May 18, 2002. At the ceremony, A. Scott Berg, author of "Max Perkins: Editor of Genius" (and originally from Norwalk), delivered the keynote address from the steps of the house.

"People come by all the time now because of the Perkins connection," Ms. Bergmann said. "It doesn't bother us. We share the house with everyone."

And here's an interesting letter to the editor in response to the article here.

Perkins definitely was a fascinating and inspiring character to many. And although he is often put on a pedestal by others, I believe Max himself would have been the last person to tell you he was important. I think that is part of his success. For Max, home, family and books were prized far above any temporary honor. It's a model any of us would do well to follow.

--Joy