We no longer attend the Albemarle County Fair religiously each summer; it’s earlier than it used to be, and smaller, and without young kids, the thrill is sorta gone. But I still love to take pictures there. Lily was able to get her 12-hour “furlough” from camp on the fair’s opening day, so we headed to the fairgrounds, about 10 minutes from our house, right after the gates opened at 4:00. It was still light (in fact, we left at dusk), so I was able to shoot with the Holga as well as with my G-9, and I was pushed to see things differently since I couldn’t fall back on my usual cool-effect-of-rides-in-the-dark schtick. This week I got around to printing and scanning a few of my black-and-white images, and it’s still fun for me to compare the results from two very different cameras.
As usual, we wandered through all of the exhibit tents first; the animals are always our favorite, no question. Then we checked out the home-making and “special kingdom” tents before setting out in search of fair food. To our dismay, the food vendors were–well, I guess you’d have to say franchise fair food vendors…hardly any of the churches, ethnic groups, or guys-with-trailers who used to provide amazing barbecue, apple dumplings, and funnel cakes. Those things are still there–they just come out of a freezer, seems like. At least there was real lemonade, and the funnel cakes were huge.
Although we were practically sedated from barbecue and funnel cakes, we wandered on through the rides. Nobody wanted to ride any of ‘em–but we had a great time taking pictures.
We’ve been going to this event since before Lily was born–23 years. We still run into old acquaintances, eat too much junk food, walk around the fields till our feet are coated with dust (some years, mud), and take pictures like we’d never seen it all before. I hope that each year, it still seems new.
In the past week I’ve finally had time to get into the darkroom and accomplish some printing, and I plan to do more in the coming week. There’s no question that I find printing more satisfying than digital editing; on the other hand, I love being able to scan the prints and post them online. There’s less of a sense of closure to editing on the computer; in the darkroom, I test and tweak and dodge and burn and when it’s done, it’s pretty much done. Maybe because my primary computer is a laptop, I often find myself changing the digital versions. In the long run, I’ll need a “real” monitor that I can keep calibrated. The demands of technology never seem to end.
For now, I’m happy to post these Holga images, some of which were taken this summer and others two years ago, that show a different view of camp (although some of the subjects match my earlier digital posts). As I begin to contemplate organizing and finding ways to publish these pictures, I continue to question whether to put them together by method (digital vs. b/w) or by place (camp, county fair, home, etc.). So many options….and somehow it’s always easier for me to advise my students than it is to chart my own course as a photographer!
It’s been a long and vivid week, beginning with 3 days over in Harrisonburg where our yearbook publisher held an annual workshop. This is my second year teaching photography at the workshop, and it’s fascinating. Yearbook advisors from fifteen or so mid-Atlantic schools bring their staff members and immerse themselves in both learning and creating; living in dorms (this year at JMU), they work around the clock to design the cover and theme pages for their upcoming books, and the final event is an awards ceremony where everyone’s ideas and effort are recognized. This year I was able to meet with staffs from individual schools and also worked with several kids over two days of teaching–we did an intensive camera basics class and then spent a lot of time shooting and editing digital pictures. I was truly impressed with the talent and desire that these kids had for the medium; I was also surprised with the increasingly wide range of access to photography in both public and private high schools. Some places have well established programs, but at many schools, the only photography instruction is in a graphic arts class or a photojournalism class that feeds kids into publications courses (yearbook, newspaper, and as it’s usually called, “lit mag”). A tiny minority of the students I met had any real understanding of the foundations of photography, and most were reluctant (if not terrified) to turn off the auto-everything features on their huge, expensive DSLRs. But quite a few of them threw themselves with real energy and interest into not-so-scary world of manual focus and exposure controls. We put together a nice little slideshow for the closing workshop session, and I was energized by working with kids from such a range of schools.
But there was a nostalgic aspect to the whole experience. Not a fan of staying in a crowded dorm or sharing a hall bathroom with a dozen high-school kids (who I’m sure would prefer not to have me there either), I requested one of the rooms in a more private residence hall, which turned out to be a converted Howard Johnson’s motel alongside I-81. It was barely changed from its motel days–just stripped down, with an empty parking lot and weird mauve wallpaper, and some conventional wooden dorm furniture.
My family and I had stayed at that HoJo’s probably a dozen times on trips back and forth to camp. And outside of it, on the lawn next to what was in 1972 a pretty quiet interstate, my dad taught me how to use an SLR for the first time. We were en route from West Virginia to pick up my sisters from camp, and my father had a last-minute meeting to attend in D.C., so he couldn’t make it to their end-of-summer Big Horse Show. I’d just finished my sophomore year in high school and although I’d never used a “real camera,” I was ready to learn. He and I stood outside on the grass with his already old Contaflex, and he taught me about f/stops, shutter speeds, and what a light-meter was for. The camera was stiff and clunky, but the f/stop and shutter-speed controls are linked, so you get a clear sense of repricocity–if you change one setting, the Contaflex changes the other, mechanically, so you see it happening. Off we went to camp (and Dad to D.C.), and I got to photograph the still-infamous moment when my younger sister Susan took a blue ribbon over the family equestrian, Kate (who came in second). As for me, I went back to camp for one summer as a counselor a few years later and shot probably 12 rolls of Tri-X with my recently purchased Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic. Thirty-six years later, I’m still taking pictures at camp–and now my daughter does, also. Maybe one of the reasons I love teaching photography is because of the way I learned it–passed along from my dad the way my mother taught me to cook, the way my husband has taught my kids how to bake. Handing it on to the next generation seems like the only thing to do. Photography makes the most sense to me as an act of love.
Susan and Kate, 1972; Kate and Lily, 2005. Edinburg, Virginia.
This morning I happened to stumble onto somebody’s online photo album from the Maine Photographic Workshops, and I was hit by a wave of genuine homesickness for Rockport–the place and the people. It’s been two years since my last workshop (out of three total); family and financial logistics have made it impossible, and I’m not confident about getting professional development money from my school, so I had concluded that my Workshop experience was over. But those pictures sparked a powerful sense of need–not just “want,” but actual need–and sent me into my archives to look at pictures from my time there.
My first workshop was in 2004, and it was a video production class for teachers. I loved my classmates and the mix of interests and backgrounds that we all brought to the week; everyone was opinionated but open-minded, and we got a lot of work done. But I hated being cooped up in a windowless room full of computers or performing mindless drudgery for a minor film shoot–it was very obvious to me that the photography classes were where I really belonged, and the Alternative Process workshop seemed to be having the most fun and producing the coolest work. Word was that if you took the Photography Teachers’ Workshop with Christopher James and Craig Stevens, you’d be admitted easily to the Alt Pro workshop the following summer, since Christopher teaches that too. So that’s what I did: Photo Teachers in 2005, Alt Pro for two weeks in 2006. I’m still grateful to our academic dean for her financial and moral support. These classes rejuvenated me as a teacher and a photographer; I made friends with whom I’m still in touch, and I was introduced to the Holga camera, which completely changed the way I work and see. There’s simply nothing else like the atmosphere of Rockport, where everyone is wandering around with cameras; you talk about photography at your picnic table over every meal, you work in the darkroom till the interns shut it down at 10 p.m. every night, and you laugh (and cry a little) at the lobster feast and “wrap party” production on the last night.
As I sat down to write this entry, I flipped through pages of scribbled notes from my last two workshops. It’s impossible to sum it all up neatly, but it’s fun to stumble onto these random jottings that bring back valuable technical advice, goofy inside jokes, and insight into nurturing creativity. Part of my work as summer draws to an end will be to revisit these notebooks and pull out points to use in planning my new course structure for next year. Not only has my curriculum changed…my students have changed also. They’re much more used to shooting what I call “disposable” pictures, and they tend to be less interested in technique. Though many of them seem to fall in love with the darkroom and its craft, they don’t show as much affection for their cameras. Craig and Christopher emphasized creativity over mechanics, self-direction (”points of departure”) over limiting subject assignments, and dialogue over rule-making. They pulled us out of our usual habits and helped us face our demons, whether technical or philosophical. For me it was a validating experience–I too believe in learning through play and in encouraging (or forcing!) students to determine their own subjects as photographers–but it was also very challenging. Photography has evolved from a straightforward process into an endlessly expanding array of technical options; you can’t build a photo program strictly around black-and-white craft anymore, and it’s hard to know where to begin or how to keep things cohesive. Finding a unifying, purposeful thread–a “through-line” for one’s teaching–is one of the biggest challenges now.
Between my two weeks of Alt Pro workshops (2006), a friend and I took a day-long road trip along the coast, north through Belfast and onto Mt. Desert Island. We poked around in shops and galleries, confessed our mutual terror of high bridges (before driving across one), and took pictures like tourists. Away from Rockport, I did feel a bit conspicuous with my camera, until we arrived in Bar Harbor and wandered onto the boat docks on Frenchman’s Bay. The sunset and view were postcard-perfect; photographing it all was completely irresistible. Two women were poised with photo equipment, waiting for the whale-watching boat to pull in, and their cameras could not have been more different in size and “degree of difficulty.”
If I were their teacher–and I could have that situation in a digital class–how would I work with such a range of technical options, or give them really useful advice on the right kind of equipment? One note I made in the teachers’ workshop was “how are you going to respect the vision when you’re thinking about the value of the camera?” But another note said “you [the teacher] don’t want to be a technocrat–as soon as you put a limitation on a student artist, you cut them off at the knees.” Teaching photography was definitely simpler in the days when a Pentax K-1000 and a roll of Tri-X was a great way to start. I’m both intimidated and excited about the possibilities that my students have now, and my toughest job as a teacher will be to help them use all of these tools as a way of making genuine meaning.
I got home last night from a weekend at camp–hadn’t been there since 2006, and it was the perfect weekend to return. I met Lily in Edinburg on Saturday afternoon; she was on her first day off, so of course we began at the Shenandoah County Library, where there’s wireless. (One of the best things about camp is the lack of technology, but everybody’s gotta check in sometime.) We ate a late lunch and drove back out to camp. Coming around a bend on Stony Creek Road, there’s a place where you can first see Wolf Gap and the rocks up there (maybe it’s Schloss?), and it always makes my heart just open up. I love a lot of places, but this landscape does something for me that no place else ever will. Soon after our arrival at camp, a thunderstorm hit. We got drenched on our way to Barcarolle, and Teddy’s ebullient greeting added a lot of mud to my messiness, so we sat out the storm on the cabin porch, taking pictures and listening to the campers enjoy the rain. It was a true sun-shower…lovely.
After dinner, we wandered up to the Old House, as we were expecting my sister’s arrival, and another storm–a really big one this time–rolled in over the mountains. We were stranded on the Old House porch, watching the hills disappear in the clouds and mist and then reappear as the storm ran its course. As camp began to come back to life (and the girls got ready for the Turtle Derby), we met Kate and headed into town for the night.
Sunday morning, Kate and I ate breakfast at a diner on Main Street in Woodstock before driving back to camp for church. The memorial service for Libby Smith was scheduled for 11, and we wanted to beat the anticipated crowds. The chapel in the pines was full of riders, relatives, old girls, and current campers, and the service was beautifully done; Belinda’s eulogy was sweet, funny, and emphasized the wonderful memories of Libby (I don’t know how to make a live link to her sermon on here, but if you want to read it, the best thing is to email Belinda at babair21915@yahoo.com and ask for the link to her blog). Linda Pear did a fantastic job of leading the choirs, who sang Libby’s favorite hymns: “Hymn of Promise” and “Green Cathedral.” The traditions, rituals, symbols, and ideals that keep camp going provided a backbone to the service. We may have been a motley group of women–literally all shapes, sizes, ages, and backgrounds–but we sing the same songs, we laugh at the same memories, and we all fight back tears when we say “you stand for spirit, friendship, and honor.” We wept and laughed during the service, and afterward we gathered in the Rec Hall for an unbelievable feast (courtesy of Schaffer’s) and for much catching-up among old friends. Thanks to the instigation of Anne Allnutt, who provided archival camp photos of Libby and friends, I put together a slideshow/video project that perhaps I’ll figure out how to post on here eventually.
Before I left for home, I climbed over the fence into the pasture behind Barcarolle and T.A. and found myself surrounded by very persistent (and apparently hungry) horses. I’ve never experienced the urge to ride one of these critters, but it’s so fun–and funny, really–to feel like a minority in their midst. They use their bodies and faces to communicate in a fascinating way, and I wish I understood it better. One big grey horse (Sissy, maybe?) was intent on trying to eat my camera straps, though he finally gave up and started in on another horse’s halter instead. I was thoroughly investigated by them.
The day before, as we sat in the air-conditioned Italian restaurant in town, Lily had commented on how strange it felt to be “indoors”–after only ten days at camp, she’d become used to feeling permanently outside. As she put it, when you’re in the cabins or the barn at camp, it’s just like being outdoors, just with a roof, and the air feels somehow different on your skin. Her observation really struck me as I was returning to Charlottesville yesterday evening. I stopped in Harrisonburg to get coffee at the Barnes & Noble, and I realized that I’d spent most of the last day sitting on wooden floors, walking through puddles, being greeted by a leaky puppy, getting nuzzled by horses. I was pleasantly grubby; I’d been breathing in the familiar camp smells of pine trees, wooden cabins, and horse manure; and the mountains surrounding camp had affected my sense of scale. Walking through acres of pavement into a huge, sterile, heavily air-conditioned store was like being on the moon–at least, for a little while. All too soon, I’m used to “the real world” again, but I vividly remember my own camper summer, where after eight weeks of Strawderman life, it was truly bizarre to take a shower indoors or flush a toilet. At camp, you inhabit your body in a different way; your senses are sharpened, you’re used to walking and working, you’re viscerally aware of the hot sun, the cold swimming hole, or the way the wind changes when a storm comes over the mountain. Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved to take pictures at camp: could it be that my vision is more vivid there too?
“And since I have no gold to give,
And love alone must make amends,
My only prayer is, while I live–
God, make me worthy of my friends.”
–F.D. Sherman; Camp Strawderman Ideals
To watch the slideshow of Libby at camp, click here (I hope!):
Probably my favorite thing about having a compact digital camera is the portability of the thing. I do drag it around with me everywhere, and thus I take more pictures–sounds obvious, but how many times have I said (or heard from students) “if only I’d had my camera!”
Five nights a week, I wait at the Boar’s Head Inn for Ben to finish work. He’s supposed to be done a little after 7, but sometimes it takes longer. Last night he had to clean the fryer, a nasty job that took over an hour. Evan was with me, the temperature was perfect, and we lounged around on the grass near a pond, watching ducks and enjoying the evening.
Across the pond we saw a couple of Asian men with a toddler and a video camera; after about a half an hour of chasing their little girl along the water’s edge, they arrived at our patch of grass. The dad scooped up the baby under the armpits and literally plopped her down onto Evan (who was a bit taken aback at first). She was a gorgeous little child, and the father began to talk to us about his baby and his life. Turned out he too was waiting to meet somebody working at the Inn–his wife was about to end her housekeeping shift–and clearly he wanted more than anything to communicate in English. He was very surprised that we could understand him (it wasn’t easy most of the time), but he was also compelled to tell his story and truly happy that I was photographing his family. What we were able to understand was that he, his wife and brother (the other man, who was partially deaf and mute), and a young son had emigrated from Thailand. They had lost two younger children who died in infancy there. He missed his beautiful homeland, with its huge trees, warm weather, and wonderful gardens–we heard a lot about coconuts–but had to leave because of the “bad government,” bad medicine, bad schools.
Obviously bright and determined, he wanted his remaining children to grow up in America (the little girl had been born in the U.S.). He fervently encouraged us to visit him and his family–unfortunately one thing I couldn’t decipher was where he lived, but I expect we’ll encounter them again this summer, and at least we can help him learn to tell his story in a new language. It was a fascinating encounter–like wandering into a novel or movie, or a parallel universe, set there in the manicured faux-colonial setting of suburban Charlottesville. How lucky we are to have been born in a place where we feel safe; and how lucky we are that this town can be a refuge. My son Ben works at the Inn to help pay for college; he’ll sweat over a fryer in order to earn the privilege of education. For this Thai family, the challenge is greater, but I’m willing to bet that the little girl who clambered over us last night will put herself through college, too, one day.
This little story was a big part of our spring, and “the view from Red Hill” seems like the place to put it in writing. In April, shortly after one of our photographing and bush-whacking expeditions down around the quarry lake, our youngest dog Charlie up and disappeared. Evan was headed for bed one night and said “Has anybody seen Charlie?” We realized that we hadn’t. Terry had taken a walk in the afternoon and noticed that only two dogs tagged along, but he hadn’t thought much of it. Charlie had vanished.
So we phoned in a report to the SPCA, went for walks and called him, and kept our fingers crossed. I wasn’t optimistic. Charlie is shy–won’t let anyone pick him up if he’s spotted by the side of the road–but out in the woods he’s a risk-taker. Just before his disappearance, I’d documented his pursuit of a beaver down at the quarry lake: he must have swum after the critter for 25 minutes without ceasing, pivoting in the water to track it, and I remember thinking “that beaver is trying to tire him out till he drowns.” I figured that my goofy little dog had just chased some varmint into a place of no return.
When he hadn’t reappeared by the weekend, we got our act together and printed out some flyers, which we hung up in the Red Hill and North Garden country stores and post office. Within two hours, we had a phone call–Charlie had been spotted down on the Plank Road, maybe a ten-minute drive away and, although a small mountain and a couple of big dairy farms were en route, it was a straight shot down the railroad tracks, an easy run for a stubborn little dog. We spent that evening, and the three that followed it, down in North Garden, near the tiny, rural subdivision where he apparently lurked, driving up and down through farmland, yelling “Chaaaarrrrrliiiiiieee” out the window like idiots. The apple brandy factory (pictured below) seemed like the perfect place for him to hang out, and Evan and I gave ourselves the heebie-jeebies wandering around in this weird environment and investigating ditches, ravines, and trackside brambles where a little hound-dog could hole up. No luck. This is a dog who was brought to the SPCA as a young puppy after having been flung out of a car window down in southern Albemarle County. He’d acquired two hernias and a lot of obvious emotional trauma as a result of that experience, and he’d always clung close to us after we adopted him. For him to disappear seemed…well, just wrong, but it also made sense that he was staying away from strangers and cars. We knew he was alive, but we began to think that we wouldn’t get him back.
On a Thursday evening, ten days after Charlie went walkabout, we came up the driveway and, without fanfare, he was home. No different–well, maybe a little thinner, and festooned with ticks. Not any more neurotic–in fact, maybe a bit less so. Still knew to sit when told, lie down for treats, wait by the door. Same stinky hound-dog Charlie, back from his big adventure. After ten days of living on his own and finding his way back to Red Hill, he seems to have learned that home is for keeps. Not a bad lesson for a growing-up dog; certainly a lesson in patience and faith for his people.
Because of a cluster of circumstances, it’s been three months since I wrote here, and the longer I’ve waited to recommence, the more crucial it seemed that I have Something Important to Say. So I’m grateful that periodically somebody mentions having read this blog or, better yet, urges me to update (thanks, Kevin!). Since my last post in early March, I’ve passed some milestones and just about finished up the school year.
Important things have happened in my life and the lives of my family. We’re through with one set of transitions and ready to take on the next. When my days are hectic, my photography definitely tapers off, or becomes repetitive, but it still sustains me as I navigate change, allowing me to document both the transformations in the landscape and the significant events in our lives.
And sometimes it helps me revisit my past, too. At the end of March, traveling back to West Virginia with my daughter, I woke up early and found myself time-traveling, thanks to the particular quality of light that makes its way through the early spring foliage into my parents’ house. It was as if I were back to being a child, waking up before school and listening to the birds, watching the light come in through the windows. When my father died last June, I felt as though the house had frozen in place and time, and on this March morning I felt drawn to making pictures of the place where I’d grown up.
It was like the sensation created by the Auden poem:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
My father was the cornerstone of the family–as Auden’s poem says, our North, South, East, and West–for years, and my mother’s life truly revolved around him. To move on has been the biggest challenge she’s faced in a challenging life. Nothing has changed significantly in their house; it’s a portrait of them as a couple, and I expect (maybe hope) it’ll stay that way. It has its own beauty. But slowly, my mother has begun to bring it back to life. With the help of my sisters and brother (I can take no credit!), she’s fixed what was broken, hung up new birdfeeders, replaced her stove, replanted a damaged garden. And in April, she traveled here to Charlottesville to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for U.Va. Hospital’s new cancer treatment center. In memory of my father, she made a gift to build a treatment room. It was the first major financial gesture she’d made on her own, and it honored my dad and the years he spent bringing her to U.Va. for medical care. Her gift will help others confront cancer with the kind of courage and spirit that my father brought to his own illness.
By making meaning out of Dad’s death, my mother brings Auden’s poem full circle. Like the poem’s mourner/narrator, she experienced much bitterness, and probably felt that “nothing now can ever come to any good,” but we know that it can, it does, and it’s our job in life to make it happen. Auden’s third verse ends “I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.” Of course, it’s that line that’s wrong–and it’s the love, not the person, that lasts forever. It isn’t just a cliche to say that by honoring him, we keep him alive.
As the spring has ended and the first anniversary of Dad’s death has passed, I felt a not-unexpected welling up of grief. A dear colleague died this week, which brought back that same impulse to “stop all the clocks.” I sat in my front yard on a muggy night, watching the first fireflies and thinking over the year that was ending. And I realized that despite the loss and sadness, it’s been a good year–not easy, but good, and the better for having been challenging. Ben had wonderful college options and has chosen to attend Wittenberg University in Ohio this fall; it’s a school my dad would have loved and wanted to explore. Evan tackled a leading role in the Middle School’s Shakespeare play, facing his own learning difficulties with trepidation but playing Falstaff with flair and enjoying his fat-suited body with a humor and ease that I know he absorbed from his grandfather. Lily has been able to live and work at a job that is truly helpful to others and draws on her strengths and loves; like my sisters and me, she’s pursuing a school life, which would have made my dad so happy. His nine grandchildren are carrying on his legacy of loving to learn and sharing what he knew. His exuberance, his extraordinary air of being at home wherever he went, his deep and wide-ranging curiosity about new places and people–when we emulate those, we honor him, and our love does last forever.
Yesterday was the beginning of daylight savings time and of my spring break from school. As if following some migratory impulse, I set off down to the hill to the quarry lake just before dusk. Why I don’t do this in the winter, I can’t say, but at least I can be grateful for the earlier arrival of “spring forward,” as it gives me time in the evening to take advantage of the light. Our house sits pretty high on the northern slope of Red Hill, so it gets dark early, but the quarry and its surroundings are illuminated by the setting sun and take on an incredible color at the end of the day. For the first time this year, I heard “peepers” (tree frogs) whistling and calling, a sure sign of spring.
Sometimes I question my annual revisiting of this place, where I seem to take the same pictures over and over again. This time last year, I was just as happy to see the emerging scarlet maple buds and to watch the Canada geese protect their goslings as the dogs splashed around in the still-chilly lake.
But this time last year, I was about to turn 50; I knew my dad was dying; my daughter was about to graduate from college; my middle child was beginning his college search; my life was in transition. The next leg of that journey is now underway; it took no great wisdom or revelation on my part to negotiate it. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and paying attention to what lay before me. Making pictures is a crucial part of that process for me. It forces me to pay attention to details and really to look at my surroundings. And it helps me to remember that no matter how long winter seems to be, spring will come around again.
“Successful people never find poems, for you must kneel down and explore for them.” — William Stafford
Today I learned of the death of Libby Smith, who taught and mentored both my sister Kate and my daughter Lily as riders and teachers. Libby had been part of Camp Strawderman off and on since her childhood, and had directed the riding program for perhaps twenty-five years (and was still going strong last summer in her early 80s). She held annual Strawderman reunions at her house in Goochland; a few times I brought Lily and other local camp girls down for the afternoon. Along with a collection of current and former campers of all ages, we’d inhale sweets and snacks, visit the camp horses who wintered over on her farm, walk down to the fishing pond, and watch videotapes of Water Pageant, Wakiyan, and the Omega Drill–all the wonderful camp rituals.
I don’t have the words to say what a loss this is for so many girls and women; and I can’t quite explain why this death and that of my daughter’s other riding teacher, Shirley Clement, have affected me so strongly. They’ve given my girl something I never could, and I’ll always be grateful for the lessons they’ve taught her about courage, perseverance, and grace under pressure.
When Lily was twelve and we brought her to camp for the first time, we had to go into the Old House to sign her in and hand her over to this group of women, most of whom had been running the place since I’d been a camper in the early 1970s. They’re called the O.G.’s–short for “Old Girls.” Without knowing this little bit of Strawderman lore, my husband commented, “I get it now. This is where the old girls pass on their wisdom to the young girls.” Indeed they do, and I pray they continue to do so for many summers to come.
