Old Family Letters

When I saw that the challenge for today was 'old', I was tempted to turn the camera toward myself! Having taken a hilly walk and a Pilates class featuring weights and balance I was feeling a trifle creaky! 

My friend Ann, the historian, told me many years ago that old letters should be saved because they are a valuable window into another time and place. I ran across  an old tin box full of family letters, many of them to my  great grandmother, Mary Plum. (Called Plum by most of her correspondents). The thing that strikes me most about them is not the subject matter but the beautiful penmanship. It's interesting to imagine what one would write about in the days before telephones. A lot of them had to do with health, or the lack thereof. In the days before modern medicine the main prescription seemed to be to take to one's bed....

Most of the photographs are faded by time, but of the ones that survived, I get the impression that having one's portrait made was serious business for none of the subjects is smiling and some of them look downright grim. I think the process could be quite lengthy and maintaining a smile throughout was probably not an option. Some photos have names written on the back, none have dates and most have very few clues as to who the subjects might be. Yet they are still interesting. 

Looking at the old photographs I can't help wondering what their daily lives were like. One likes to think that they might have been simpler, but without modern conveniences they were probably a lot more work. Three of my grandmother's four sisters lived in Berkeley but had a 'summer house' in Lafayette, a fifteen minute drive through a tunnel today but back then a day's journey by horse and buggy.

Speaking of a simpler life, I picked several pounds of green beans from the garden today and am now trying to figure out how to cook them seven ways, for we will be eating them often in order to keep up. The tomatoes are coming along, but still green. I thought John planted cucumbers, but I couldn't find them....

I heard an interesting quote today. A fragile ceasefire is in effect between Israel and Iran. Trump is claiming credit  but, The outcome of this war may be shaped more by Iran's culture and politics than by the military prowess of its opponents. You can't militarize or negotiate an idea.
---Robin Wright, journalist and Middle East politics expert