Hot times in Decorah

We’ve been in Decorah, Iowa, for the past few days. Decorah is home of the Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit that collects, propagates, and sells heirloom vegetable, herb, and flower seeds from all over the world. We wandered around their display garden, had a little picnic, took a look at their orchard (gazillion wonderful old apple types), and made a token purchase of jam at their Amish-built barn of a welcome center. We missed the British White Park Cattle. If you’re interested in growing things your grandmother might have grown, or simply in growing veggies that actually taste, you can become a Seed Savers member, or take a special Flowers and Herbs membership. Of course, you can also just buy seeds or plants.

We also spent most of a whole day enjoying (and I can’t tell you how much that surprised me) the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum.


Decorah is at the center of an area settled in the 19th century by the Norwegians who have dominated its culture ever since. (I asked the nice lady at the museum if the population was still overwhelmingly Nordic. She told me ruefully that the 2000 Census was the first in which fewer than half the population claimed Norwegian ancestry. But they are still by far the largest single ethnic group.)

“Vesterheim” means “Western Home,” and the museum “embodies the living heritage of Norwegian immigrants to America.” I’ve got to say it does it in great style. The newspaper USA Today calls it one of the top ten places in the country to look at folk art. One of the things I liked most about the place was that its displays are more open and available than things are at most museums. It’s clearly set up, in significant part, to teach the children of the area about their heritage, and it takes children’s natural touchy curiosity into account. That works for me, too.

The museum has moved a number of buildings onto the large site behind its Main Street headquarters. It’s smaller and much less formalized than places like Sturbridge Village or Plimouth Plantation in Massachusetts or the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan, and I enjoyed that about it. We had a great, wonderfully led tour of a church, a country schoolhouse, five houses, a storehouse, a small mill and a huge one, a drying shed for the barley used in beer, and a smithy, all of which illustrated an element of Norwegian-American life in the 19th century. (Actually, I especially loved the desk/bureau (called a skatoll) in the main museum, the bottom drawer of which is purported at various times to have slept “four boy babies and two girl babies.”

I also learned that beer in Norwegian is Øl.

And, though it’s spelled with a “y,” rather than an “i”, Decorah, like Fairlee, Vermont, has a WhippyDip.


So you know it’s a great town.

More booky excitement

The Friends of the excellent Rochester Public Library have a very good used book store (though I must say that the Friends of the Woodbury Public Library have a bigger and better, if less elegantly housed, one), and we went in to browse the other day. We came away with a grocery bag full of “traveling books” (paperback mysteries and historical novels), but I also made two big scores: Tony Judt’s Postwar, and Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge. Big expensive books when new, I got them both for well under $10 total. Bliss.

I took the Judt book out of our library months ago, but life intervened and I never got into it (must have been too busy blogging). The Branch book is the final entry in his “America in the King Years” trilogy covering the career of Martin Luther King. The first two, Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire were superb. (P of F was one of my personal bests of the year—though I can’t remember now which year!)

Speaking of Woodbury’s own Friends bookstore: before we left I snapped up two paperback Alan Fursts for the trip. In one of them, Kingdom of Shadows, he writes about “the ecstatic gray light of a rainy Parisian morning.” It reminded me yet again of why I love his books. He can write.

The Orwell Diaries

Does everyone know about these? What a fantastic idea.

Root, root, root for the home team

Last night, on B’s ninth day, her parents and four grandparents dressed her in her special Red Sox shirt and red gDiapers ...


...and took her to her first ballgame. Have I mentioned how smart she is? She learned immediately to emulate her maternal grandfather’s inarticulate sounds of dismay and outrage at bad calls by the umps.

It was, despite the umps—unbelievably bad—a lovely evening at the park.


With a good crowd.


And the home team Honkers came from behind to win.

My job with B has already been assigned. I’m to teach her how to throw a baseball, one of my few competences. But I like to start by teaching children the fundamental concepts first. Have I mentioned how smart B is? By her third or fourth day, she understood the basics: three strikes, four balls, three outs, nine innings, World Series winners since 1903. Simple stuff like that. Last night, although she hasn’t quite got it yet, she was trying to come to grips with the infield fly rule.


Don’t worry. She’ll have it by next week. Have I mentioned how smart she is?

Sweet evening

Today was B’s one week birthday—and also her first real outing. We put that good bottle of Champagne on ice, tucked it and the diaper bag in the back of the car, buckled the baby in, and headed east, across the Mississippi to Wisconsin. There, on Thursdays only, this farm offers pizzas made entirely from ingredients produced on the property and baked in a wood-fired brick oven. (This seems to be a happening thing in the cheese state—other farms there are offering their own riffs on the same concept.)

We got there to find what looked much more like a lawn party or a holiday picnic than anything remotely like a restaurant, with adults in lawn chairs chatting and drinking beers or sodas, and what seemed like dozens of fair-haired children running cheerfully around.


We placed our order, and the lady asked us where we were sitting. Well, over there by the little tree. She wrote that down on the ticket: “By the little tree.” And when it was ready, she brought the pie over to us.

Before the pizza came, H and A posed with B, the bottle (an attempt at providing a scale for B’s size), and a card from a friend.


The pizza itself was very good. People in Brooklyn are always going on about how they have the best pizza anywhere. They’re wrong. The best pizza anywhere is in New Haven, Connecticut. This Wisconsin farm pizza wasn’t quite that good, but is isn’t absurd to mention it in the same breath, either.

We offered a toast to a dozy B, singing “Happy Birthday” and tapping her very gently on her sweet little head with our glasses, and another to H, who had just gotten notification that she passed Step II of the national medical boards.

We had a lovely, easy-going meal, watching the goats nibbling in the next field. As dusk came down, the pizza boxes were put to good use starting a campfire that people were beginning to settle their chairs around.


We left just before dark, sending a slightly fussy B back to sleep with the motion of the car. A sweet, sweet evening.

B is five days old now, and there’s been a lot of bonding going on. This girl will be well-loved, for sure...and probably a big reader, if only in self-defense.


We’ve been keeping H company for the last few days, running the occasional errand, doing a little shopping...and grabbing B for snuggles whenever possible. H and A walk a lot, and B has not put a crimp in that at all. Last night, we were all out, including Jasper the Wonder Dog, who has been a bit confused, occasionally concerned with unfamiliar cries, but essentially his easy-going self.


When we got back, B decided to just kick back.


We’ll be here through the end of the week or so, and after we leave we’ll be counting the days until we can see B in the flesh again. Wonderfully, iChat will let us get together by video whenever we want.

Many thanks to all of those who have sent best wishes. B will be seven days old on Thursday, we’ve got a bottle of bubbly in the fridge for a one-week birthday party, and we’ll toast you all.

Utter joy

Early Wednesday morning we got the call we’d been waiting for, and we were in the car headed for Minnesota by 7:30. Eighteen or so hours later, somewhere north of Chicago, we took a call from A telling us that our first granddaughter had been born: Thursday, August 31, at 12:08 AM (Central time). Giddy with happiness, stupid with fatigue, we stopped for a few hours rest in Madison, Wisconsin, and came on the rest of the way later in the morning.

Despite a difficult labor, H looked glowingly wonderful when we saw her, and she and A introduced us to the tiny, red, soft, and perfect B. The usual holdings, kissing, cooings, and picture-takings brought to our attention the fact that B is beautiful, highly intelligent, and deeply sensitive.


H left the hospital Friday afternoon, and she and A walked home, 10 minutes or so, with B in one of those little cuddly carriers.


Since then, there’s been relatively little sleep at their house. Infatuation? Oh, maybe just a little.