The Queen

Today's newspapers carried articles about the very long reign of Queen Elizabeth II, who had died yesterday at age of 96.  This news triggers, for me, memories of seeing pictures of the young Elizabeth as she became Queen. I recall sitting in the living room of our small Danvers home with my parents as we perused issues of Life magazine. She looked beautiful in the photographs in Life in 1952 and 1953. 

One day my mother was quite excited to see that Life had published a chart of Queen Elizabeth's ancestors going back to King Alfred. My mother knew that someone in her own family had compiled a family tree that also had King Alfred at the top. She was eager to find that chart and compare it to the one in Life. When she was able to make the comparison, she announced that she was sometime like a "32nd cousin" of Queen Elizabeth!  Or maybe 34th cousin?  I do remember Mommy's excitement about this; I do not remember the exact number.  Nor can I –today– find the old family chart.

Thanks to the searchable database of the Life Magazine Archive available via the New York Public Library website, I was able to view again the chart of Queen Elizabeth's ancestry. It appeared in the issue dated July 1, 1953, on page 15.  Here's a link to it, as seen in Google books. You can scroll back 2 pages to the beginning of the article, which is titled THE EVE OF A QUEEN'S BIG DAY.  It describes her coronation ceremony in June 1953.

My mother never seriously considered that "cousin" calculation to be important. She knew that people rarely keep track of 3rd and 4th cousins, let alone 10th cousins or more distant ones. By the time you add 30 or more generations, there might be thousands of such relations. But we had a bit of fun, in Danvers in 1953, thinking about being cousins to the new Queen. 

Crazy Quilt

In Danvers, in a bureau in our guest room in the mid-20th century, a colorful "Crazy Quilt" from the 19th century was folded and stored. 

My sister and I considered this quite a treasure. We liked to spread the quilt out and admire its features. 

The variety of fabric shapes and textures, colors, and decorative details fascinated us. Fancy embroidery along the seams added much to the interest, with many different styles of stitches and colors of thread. 

The shapes seemed random and crazy, but clearly there was an overall organization: 12 squares of similar size (approx. 13" x 13.5" each).

Who made this? When and where was it made?  We don't know, and didn't get (or don't remember) any answers from our parents. 

Now, in 2022, I am belatedly making an effort to learn more. 

Note the name "Puttman" stitched on a piece near the left edge. I don't know of any Puttman in our family (Putnam yes, but not Puttman).

I have taken these photos to share on this blog, hoping that some family members or other viewers might recognize it or be able to tell us more about it. 

[Click on an image to enlarge it. See more close-ups below.]

I'm happy that it is still so colorful – much as I remembered it from years ago.

The back side is one solid color, with white ribbons. There is no thick inner filling, nor any typical quilting stitches connecting the top and bottom. It is a thin, light "quilt". 

I've searched online for "crazy quilt" to see if that is a correct way to refer to such a quilt. I discovered a VERY helpful website hosted by the International Quilt Museum (University of Nebraska-Lincoln); they devote several pages to The Crazy Quilt Story.  Here's their first paragraph about "What is a Crazy Quilt?" 

The quintessential “high-style” Crazy quilt of the 1880s was a “parlor piece,” usually too small for use as a bedcover, and which included an array of irregularly-shaped patches cut from an astonishing range of luxurious fabrics, such as silks, satins, brocades, velvets, and ribbons. The patches were embroidered, embellished, or painted with various images from nature and popular culture, and their edges were covered with rows of decorative embroidery stitches. In broad terms, these are the elements that define the Crazy style.

That is a good description of our quilt, which measures 54" x 54" overall - smaller than this double bed on which I spread it today. 

See below for more close-ups...

Below are two more photos of the quilt, showing the 4 squares on the bottom left, and then the 4 squares on the bottom right. 

After taking these photos, I folded the crazy quilt and returned it to a bureau drawer, its usual resting place.

Sweet Corn

'Tis the season of sweet corn...

Yesterday in a local paper, I read a gardening column by Lee Reich titled, "The sweeter the corn, the better?"  This triggered memories of corn in our garden in Danvers, and my mother's comments about how to capture the sweetness of the corn. 

Mommy insisted that corn be cooked and eaten as soon as possible after picking. Her time limit was twenty (20) minutes. She said that any delay would spoil the taste of the corn because the sugar in the corn kernels would be changing to starch. Her habit was to starting heating a pot of water first, and then go out to her garden to pick ripe ears to plunge quickly in the boiling water. 

That fresh corn was deliciously flavorful and sweet! 

Unfortunately, my mother's lesson lingered with me for years, inhibiting me from buying any ears of corn in a supermarket, or even a roadside stand. How could such corn, hours or days away from picking, ever meet my mother's standard?  Impossible. 

Fortunately, newer varieties of sweet corn have been developed in the years (decades!) since my childhood. The newspaper article this weekend gave me many examples, with some details about specific genes involved in raising the sugar level in corn kernels. The author does confirm the wisdom of my mother's old-fashioned habit ("sugars in corn start changing to starch as soon as the ear is picked") but states that many of new varieties can retain considerable sweetness for many days, if refrigerated.  They still tend to lose sweetness over time, but more slowly, and they have been bred to start with higher levels of sugar content.

My husband and I have been enjoying ears of fresh corn this month, bought from farmers' markets or farm stores. We have been pleasantly surprised by the good sweet taste of purchased corn, even after several days refrigeration. A few years ago we attempted growing corn in our own backyard, but squirrels or other animals stole the corn before it was mature enough for us. 

In 2007 I wrote a column titled "Garden Memories" and described some childhood experiences with corn in my mother's garden. You can read it on this blog at https://rememberingdanvers.blogspot.com/2007/08/garden-memories.html