100th Anniversary of the ERA

Last November, my bloodwork revealed a liver problem, with enzyme levels almost double the high end of the normal range. My doctor said I probably had fatty liver disease, which left untreated could be serious. I was scared that all the comfort foods and extra wine during the three stressful years of Covid had caught up with me. I was determined to change my eating and drinking habits to reverse the damage.  Laurent joined me on the quest for better health. We gradually reduced our consumption of alcohol, sugar, and processed foods while studying various detox programs. In January, we started the regimen we had designed for ourselves.

When it’s edible art. In my little town in the middle of France is a wonderful boulangerie/patisserie (bakery) only a ten-minute walk from my house. During the Christmas holidays, their master chocolatier produced exquisite, life-sized red high heels made entirely of chocolate. Also for sale were the traditional holiday pastries: buches de Noël (Yule logs) and galettes des rois , the puff pastry Epiphany cake filled with almond paste. This year I resisted all these tempting delicacies because, alas, bad bloodwork convinced me that I must diet and reduce my alcohol intake. Hence my New Year’s resolution to commit to a month-long detoxing diet, eliminating alcohol, caffeine, sugar, gluten, and dairy products -- all the foods I love. How can I do without them while living in France, where, a short walk from my house I can find affordable good wines, rich espresso beans, world-class pastries and breads, and a staggering variety of cheeses? It’s not going to be easy saying no to these culinary pleasures, but I’m going to give it a try for the sake of my health. If I don’t succeed, I’ll eat my shoe.

Well, we survived the summer, at least. Brutal temperatures and historic drought resulted in watering restrictions that are still in effect in many departments, including ours. We watered the potted plants with the water we recovered from gutter runoff and from saving rinse water when washing our hands, but that didn’t go far: we lost most of the perennials we had planted in the spring. After the fall rains came, the outside green returned, but the water table hasn’t recovered yet. We still can’t wash our cars or use the power washer, but no complaints – at least our taps are running. Luckily, in the summer we were allowed to water the potager at night, so most of our vegetables survived, although many were scorched by the sun. Unlike last year’s generous crop, the pumpkins this year were few and quite small, although we have enough for a couple of months of soups, breads, and holiday pies. On the contrary, our tomatoes were abundant, and some could have won prizes. Laurent favors the classic reds: for salads, the “ Coeur de Boeuf, ” or Beefsteak tomato (literally beef heart), and for sauces the treasured “San Marzano.” I go for color on the plate, since we eat with our eyes almost as much as with our mouths: the striped green and white of “ Green Zebra ”, the yellow of “ Lemon Boy , ” and my favorite, the beautiful “ Pineapple ,” which when sliced is patterned with squares of green, pink, and yellow, resembling the outside of a pineapple. Laurent’s relatives are avid gardeners and have always been competitive about whose greenhouse produces the first lettuce of the season, who grows the biggest zucchini, etc. His mom started the competition this year when she emailed a photo of her biggest tomato on a kitchen scale. Accepting the challenge, Laurent responded with a photo of our biggest “ Pineapple ,” which tipped the scale at a whopping 729 grams, about 1.6 pounds. Winner of mine-is-bigger-than-yours. Laurent’s biggest horticultural victory this year was his impressive grape harvest, thanks to the online purchase of mesh bags which tie around clusters of grapes (or other fruits), protecting them from wasps and birds. He also convinced his parents and sister to buy them. Everyone won the battle against wasps and birds this year, delighting in piles of big and juicy grapes. We’re now clearing the potager and flower beds, getting ready for winter. Fall has been relatively warm so far, but we are warned that a tough winter lies ahead because of the continuing war in Ukraine. Gas shortages and high prices at the pump (over $8 a gallon) will surely continue, and we are told to expect electricity outages and to keep our thermostats dialed down to 19° C (66° F). We’ve set our thermostat for 18.5° during the day and 17° at night. Sweaters, scarves, gloves and hats are now go-to accessories. I’m not a big fan of the cold, but we’ll get through it, and winter will eventually give way to spring. In the meantime, I shall keep the kitchen warm and the house smelling good by making classic comfort foods -- breads and soups and stews. And preparing for Christmas always warms the heart.

I sometimes wonder why we even bother gardening. In addition to breaking our backs planting and weeding, we constantly battle enemies foreign and domestic which seem determined to destroy everything we try to grow, be it flowers, fruits, or vegetables. The weather has been unkind this year. The spring began with a lovely warm spell, which encouraged the fruit trees, lilacs, and wisteria to blossom. Then, around Easter, we were attacked by several days of hard frost which destroyed all the young buds. April was indeed the cruelest month. Then we had a horrible heat wave in May, followed by a couple of cold weeks of torrential rains in June, complete with attacks of lightening and hail. Now we’re in the middle of a drought again. With its extreme fluctuations now commonplace, the weather is a foreign enemy we cannot control. Thank you, global warming. We share our property with multiple enemies. The pigeons and other birds eat the seeds we have sown, snap the heads off tasty young sprouts, and poke holes in ripened tomatoes. The neighboring cats are not deterred by the walled garden and roam the grounds like they own the place, using our flower beds as litter boxes; although they much prefer eating small birds and mice, they nibble on the plants, with a particular fondness for parsley, which we have had a hard time growing this year; next year I should plant catnip to lure the cats away from our edibles. The resident red squirrels take more than their fair share of our walnuts, but I must admit I enjoy watching them chase each other in the trees. My most detested enemies are the little spiders which wreak havoc on the shrubbery and the legions of snails which eat more plants than the birds and cats combined. I spray the bushes for insects from time to time. Don’t ask me what I do when I come across a snail. Laurent’s principal enemies this year are the wasps which attack his beloved grapes. He spends countless hours tending his grapevines: pruning, feeding, and reducing the number of clusters so the grapes harvested will be bigger and sweeter. Then the wasps begin going after the ripening fruit. Last year, we ended up with only a few bunches. This year he’s determined to keep the army of wasps at bay. He went online and found mesh bags with drawstrings designed to protect fruit and has bagged the best of the bunches — about 150 of them. I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out, but so far he seems to be winning this battle. I see Waldorf Salad and grape juice in our future. Why do we continue fighting enemies in the garden? For lunch I made a five-star tabbouleh with tomato, onion, green pepper, celery, parsley, and mint from the garden. And for dinner, we made a tarte flambée with our onions and garlic on top of the crême fraiche base, with a side salad of just-picked spinach. Today, at least, it’s worth the bother.

The past year has been challenging here in France. First of all, I was working on the book nonstop, the subject of my last two blogs. The writing was hard enough, but the editing process nearly killed me. After months of hard labor, I was running on empty, and my eyes were failing me. Laurent was tired as well, burdened with not only his own work on the house but also the computer tasks I couldn’t do, like creating and maintaining the website and blog. But, hallelujah, we survived, and the book is now published, currently available as a Kindle e-book, and the paperback version will be released in a matter of days. Trying to get Susanna and Alice: Quaker Rebels published wasn’t the only challenge we faced. We also had to survive the replacement of our roof. When we moved back to France in the fall of 2019, we fell under the spell of a century-old manor house centrally located in the Berry region, just south of Bourges. Designed by the renowned architect Georges Vimort around 1910, it has beautiful woodworking inside, a lovely exterior of stone and brickwork, and a stunning, high-pitched slate roof. Lots of cosmetic renovations we could do, and have enjoyed doing – painting and such, but there were a couple of big projects that we knew the professionals would have to handle: the replacement of the kitchen, and roof repairs. We moved in just before Christmas 2019 and contracted for the kitchen replacement in January 2020. The space needed to be completely gutted, rewired, refloored, and fitted with new cabinets and equipment. Because the space was so small, we decided to distinguish it with an ultra modern design in contrast to the rest of the house, which is appropriately vintage. (The kitchen here was meant only for the cooking and service staff, not for today’s eat-in family.) We were fortunate that the work started right away and was finished as promised, just before Europe shut down because of Covid; otherwise, we would have had to eat microwaved food and wash the dishes in the bathroom sink for half a year. We were lucky on the kitchen project. Then came the roof. At the end of 2020, we contracted for the roofing work to be done in the spring of 2021. We could afford to replace only half of the roof because of its size – the half most exposed to our strong winds. We made a hefty initial payment so the contractor could order the slates; the slates on the roof were original, worn, and needed to be replaced, as did the wooden slats supporting the slates. The contractor estimated it would take about 10 weeks to complete the job. He said he could delay the start until September if we preferred, but we insisted the work should start in the spring, early summer at the latest, because we didn’t want to find ourselves in the winter without a roof over our heads. You can guess what happened: for one reason after another and another, the work didn’t begin until mid-October, and we had to go through the winter without a roof over our heads. And the project that was supposed to take two and a half months at a cost that was barely affordable for us ended up taking over 6 months, at a cost three times the original estimate. How do you say money pit in French? Vieille maison (old house). The problem with old houses is that their innards, which buyers rarely see when falling in love with a property, often need repair or replacement. This was the case with the structure supporting our roof. The beams supporting that high roof are, in fact, tree trunks, because there was no engineered lumber in 1910. And those tree trunks, although periodically treated during the life of the house, have been damaged by insects. Before the roofers could even start climbing on the roof to remove the old slates, they needed to support the structure with lumber and manhours not included in the original estimate. The pattern repeated itself throughout the project. More and more rotten things needed to be replaced – windows, zinc flashing, etc., which increased the length and cost of the project. Those were no pleasant six months. We heard constant hammering except for the workers’ lunch hours and blessed weekends. We had to keep our volets (shutters) closed because of workers on the scaffolding outside our bedroom and bathroom windows. And for almost a month in December and January, the only covering over half of our house was a tarp, which flapped very loudly when the wind picked up. And wouldn’t you know we had a couple of epic wind-and-rain storms which ripped the tarp let in the rain. Laurent had to empty buckets in the attic every few hours to minimize the water damage on the ceilings below, and to the roofers’ credit, there was always a number we could call in case of a tarp emergency, and they responded quickly. The job wasn’t finished until April. But we survived, and it was certainly worth the inconvenience and probably worth the cost. The work has improved the roof’s structural integrity, and the roof is, quite simply, a thing of beauty. The roofers, true artisans, took great pride in their work, and knew this was no ordinary roof. They posted photos of their progress on their Facebook pages, and even hid a kind of message in a bottle with their names and the date for roofers to find 100 years from now. The crowning moment was the installation of the two replacement zinc finials that the team leaders had crafted by hand, about six feet tall and exact replicas of the originals, complete with zinc acanthus leaves that no one can see from the ground without binoculars. The day came when the contractor and the two finials were lifted above the towering roof by an aerial work platform (a giant cherry picker). Laurent and I were on the lawn capturing the moment with our cell phones, our neighbors across the street took a photo from their upstairs window, and the roofing team looked up silently as the finials were lowered onto their supporting spikes. Fini. There was applause. And, later, champagne. It was strange when the scaffolding came down and we shook hands goodbye with the team that had been part of our lives for six months. Laurent had come to know the workers pretty well, having served them espressos every morning and afternoon when they were on the job. They enjoyed the coffee, and we appreciated their craftmanship, but I’m sure we all hoped the other half of the roof would be done by the next owners. After thirty years of renovating old houses, we’re feeling the pinch of old age. Perhaps this old house is one too many. Laurent’s new mantra is maison neuve , new house. We’re probably too old for this, according to our backs, knees, hips, and shoulders. There are days when I can hardly walk if I’ve gardened for too long. We now say, with certainty, that we will never live in another house like this one. Next time we’ll have a much smaller house, a thoroughly modern house, with double glazed windows, a new roof, and nothing to fix. Or so we tell ourselves.

Some of my friends and blog-followers have been asking for more blogs. I admit it has been a while since my last one about the writing of my upcoming book, Susanna and Alice: Quaker Rebels . I haven’t blogged because I have been in the throes of a difficult labor – the editing and proofing process, but I am happy to announce that my labor is now over and the book will soon be released, delivered. At last, I can blog. Let me catch you up on the book and give some tips to first-time writers to help them avoid some of the stressful and time-consuming errors I made. Gestation In my last blog, I described how the idea for the book was conceived: from reading the letters of my grandfather’s cousins, Susanna Parry and Alice Paul. I wanted to tell their intertwined stories, but I didn’t know where and how to begin. I spent a long time reading many books about Alice Paul and the Progressive Era, but I couldn’t write anything because the task of writing a book seemed overwhelming. Then a widely published friend gave me simple and seminal advice: Write a page a day, and the book will be done in a year . A page a day: I could do that, so I started with the introduction, telling my story of becoming enthralled by what I found in Susanna’s letters, becoming the book’s narrator who tells the story of her distant relatives as well as her own genealogical adventure. Hence, the Introduction was written. I studied not only the lives of Susanna, Alice and the Parry family, but also the fascinating, vibrant decades of America’s Progressive Era. All the cultural changes going on at the beginning of the 20th century encouraged the young cousins to dare to be different, to rebel against Quaker norms and become so-called New Women. The young women were surely influenced by the arrival of automobiles, airplanes, electricity, radioactivity, the telephone, the phonograph, motion pictures, ragtime, Cubism, psychology, the reforms of progressive powerhouse Theodore Roosevelt, the settlement houses of Quaker activist Jane Addams, and, of course, the demands of the early suffragists. I had found in the Progressive Era the entry into the world of young Susanna and Alice and the early chapters of the book. I never imagined I would write a history book, but there is indeed a lot of history roped into the pages. We are all, in large part, products of our environments and our times, and Susanna and Alice were no exception. What next fascinated me was, given the striking similarities of the young cousins -- both born in 1885 to well-to-do Hicksite Quaker families, both educated at Swarthmore College, what made them so different as adults? The once vivacious Susanna became quiet and somewhat reclusive, whereas the once shy Alice became an outspoken, confrontational icon of suffrage who would not be silenced or deterred in her quest for women’s full equality under the law. Whereas the book begins with describing their childhood similarities, the rest of it explores their differences as adults. A page a day, sometimes two or three, and the book got written. The same friend gave me good advice about how to get the book published: Send a query a day until you find a publisher . I did just that, finding the most suitable matches in Writer’s Market and sending a query a day to publishing houses. This is not for the faint of heart: there were many rejections and even more non-responses. By the time Laurent and I moved back to France over two years ago, I had given up on getting the book published. Never think the story is over. Just when I had moved on from the book and out of the country, I found an e-mail in my junk mail from Sunbury Press (coincidentally, the first query I had sent), expressing their interest and asking if the manuscript were still available. I submitted my latest draft and was soon under contract. I thought the hard part was now over: I had found a publisher for the book. I was wrong. The long labor was about to begin: the editing process. Labor I don’t take criticism very well. I thought the book was good enough to be ready with just a few tweaks here and there. Silly me. I had to work hard on the book for almost a year until it was ready for publication. It was exhausting and very hard on these old eyes. But I had no choice. The same friend who told me to write a page a day and send a query a day gave me more priceless advice: Whatever you editor asks you to do, do it . I was blessed with two skilled editors. The first was the publisher himself who insisted that I make substantial changes to broaden the book’s appeal. My second editor had a remarkable talent for finding errors I had missed and improving turns of phrase. I am grateful for their invaluable help which made Susanna and Alice a much better book. The most creative fun I had was working on the front cover with a gifted student at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design who came up with the idea of using old envelopes and a script font to reflect the epistolary nature of the book. I am delighted with this unique and eye-catching cover. That was the fun part. The unpleasant part was having to undo mistakes I had made. Let me share two of my costliest mistakes so that you can avoid them and save yourself valuable time, energy, and aggravation as you bring your book into the world. Mistake #1 : Writing in the Historical Present. I struggled with tense in writing the book. In reading the letters in chronological order, I experienced the cousins’ lives as they unfolded. Susanna and Alice came to life for me. I wanted the reader to have the same experience, so I made the decision to write the narrative in the present tense. When events of the past are written in the present tense, it’s called the historical present. This dramatic technique is widely used in fiction but almost never in non-fiction. I had admired Jeremy McCarter’s use of the historical present in his compelling Young Radicals in the War for American Ideals , which tells the stories of Alice Paul and other progressive activists, and thought the technique would also work well for Susanna and Alice . I found one essay on-line, however, which warned against ever using the historical present in writing non-fiction because historians hate it. Alas, I ignored this advice. Turns out my publisher is a historian, and he hated it. I had no other choice but to change the tense of almost every verb in the narrative, but I left the letters as originally written. All the screen time was very hard on the eyes, but even harder was having to relegate Susanna and Alice to the past. I had so enjoyed being with them in the present for years. I went through separation anxiety, but I got over it and saw that my publisher was right about keeping past events in the past. Mistake #2 : Paginating the Index. Creating an Index was a necessary but horrid task. Time-consuming, boring, hard on the eyes. If I had it to do over again and had the money, I’d pay someone else do it for me. But I did the job. Unfortunately, I assigned page numbers to each entry. How stupid: The original manuscript’s page numbers changed, first in the editing process, then again in the “building” of the book. That’s why the publisher is at first always given an Index with no page numbers; the author adds them once the final edits and proofs are completed. I had to go back to the manuscript, number every paragraph of every chapter, then substitute a chapter/paragraph reference for every page number in the Index. For example, “3-8” was the eighth paragraph of Chapter 3. Time-consuming, aggravating, hard on the eyes. But useful, because when the time came to put the page references in the Index, the “Find” function, although very helpful, was imperfect and the chapter/paragraph references helped me locate references “Find” hadn’t found. Don’t make these mistakes I made. You’ll regret it if you do. Delivery All the mistakes and labor are behind me at last, and the book is about to be born. The timing is good: 2022 is the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, and 2023 will be the 100th anniversary of when the Amendment was first written by Alice Paul. It will take several weeks for print and e-books to be available, but if you search Susanna and Alice: Quaker Rebels online, you’ll find the book, me, and Sunbury Press. The book can be ordered from their website. It’s also available on Amazon. I hope readers find it an entertaining, informative, and relative book – a good summer read. Click here to order.

I never had children, so I can only imagine how long, exciting, and challenging pregnancy can be, or how scary and painful childbirth. I never delivered a baby, but I am giving birth to my first book. This creative process has taken not nine months but nine years, and I shall be relieved and happy when Susanna and Alice: Quaker Rebels makes its way into the world. I thought would-be writers might be interested in the rewards and frustrations of my experience as a first-time author: conceiving then writing the book, finding a publisher, working with an editor to polish and build the book, and helping the marketing department to get the book into readers’ hands and onto their Kindles. So, here’s my first blog post about the process of birthing a book. It begins with conception. My journey as an author began when my cousin, knowing of my interest in genealogy, gave me a box of letters that he found in the attic at the estate sale of a cousin of my Grandfather Parry – Quaker spinster Susanna Parry. The old wooden box contained dusty paper bundles tied up with string that hadn’t been opened for decades – over 400 letters, postcards, engraved invitations, dance cards, and other keepsakes, dating from 1879 to 1971. It took me over a year to clean them, put them in chronological order, then read the collection from beginning to end. I was transported back in time by the letters, witnessing, as it unfolded, the saga of one branch of the Parry family and one leaf on the branch – Susanna. I had met old Susanna a few times when I was a young child, yet I never knew much about her, until now. Through the letters, she emerged as an educated, privileged, and well-travelled Quaker lady who never married yet lived a life blessed with friendship, family, and generous service to others. I also learned the untold secret – unknown to any living Parry family member -- of Susanna’s youthful rebellion, her struggle against the cultural norms of the 19th century, and her desire to break free from bondage to tradition and become a 20th century “New Woman.” Learning about Susanna’s secret was my moment of inspiration. Susanna had intentionally saved those letters, hoping perhaps that someone would find the box after her death, read the letters, and perhaps tell the story she was unable to tell. I was that someone, and I decided to give Susanna’s story a voice. The Susanna Collection also contained letters and cards from her favorite cousin, Alice Paul, infamous suffragist and equal rights activist who was something of a pariah on my grandfather’s side of the family, rarely spoken about because of the controversy she stirred up with her suffrage protests and multiple arrests. She was a Quaker woman out of line with Quaker norms – a rebel. I had never even learned about Alice Paul in school because she, widely considered what some today would call a “nasty woman”, had been shunned by the history books. I began to read whatever I could about this American icon of feminist rebellion and activism who played a major role in the passage of the 19th Amendment and wrote the initial Equal Rights Amendment. Most people I have asked have never heard of Alice Paul, and I thought her story deserved to be told again. In reading Susanna’s letters and many books about Alice Paul (and there are some good reads available), I learned the two Quaker cousins were both born in 1885, shared many carefree childhood memories, attended Swarthmore College together, kept in touch throughout their adult lives, and spent their final days together. Another Parry cousin, knowing I was planning to write a book about Susanna, encouraged me to chronicle the lives of both cousins simultaneously. And so, the idea of the book was conceived, the story of two Quaker rebels in the fight for women’s emancipation. The title of the book was inspired by a book my Grandfather Parry wrote about his famous Quaker ancestor: Betsy Ross: Quaker Rebel . Now his granddaughter, born on the same day in January as he, like him not an author by profession, like him fascinated by family history, is writing a book about two of his cousins. I’ll talk about the writing of Susanna and Alice: Quaker Rebels in Part 2. Conceiving the idea was the fun part. The hard part began when I started trying to put the project to paper. But take heart if you have a story you need to tell: it can be done. I’ll share some tips I’ve learned along my way that might make your journey a bit easier than mine. In the meantime, why not ask some of the elders in your family to tell you some of their stories?

One advantage of living in a foreign country is experiencing cultural differences: new scenery, new language, new cuisine, new ways of looking at the world. I am now living in France for the second time. The first time was 30 years ago when I moved there to marry Laurent, who at the time was in the Armée de l’Air (French Airforce). We lived first in Alsace, then in the Pas de Calais, and finally in Normandy. In those almost two decades, I experienced many joys of French life: diverse landscapes, beautiful architecture spanning centuries, and a wide variety of regional cuisines, to name a few. After moving back to the States in 2009, I quickly appreciated one facet of French life to which I had never paid too much attention: low-cost universal health care. In all the years I lived in France, I never once worried about getting sick because I knew that no health problem would jeopardize us financially, thanks to the combination of basic state-run health care coupled with our supplemental policy from the military. We returned to the States before the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, and finding coverage was a nightmare. Laurent was covered by French insurance for French people living abroad – comprehensive, but far more expensive than his coverage when he lived in France. As a newly arrived American, the best coverage I could get was a very expensive policy that provided only catastrophic coverage with a very high deductible: I was paying not for health care but to protect myself from bankruptcy in case of serious accident or illness. I got better coverage when the ACA was enacted: less expensive and more comprehensive. I breathed a big sigh of relief when I turned 65 and was covered by Medicare. I received very good care under Medicare, although I had to pay for my own prescriptions, eyeglasses, and visits to the dentist, not covered by my costly supplemental policy. One of the reasons Laurent and I moved back to France two years ago was its affordable universal health care. We now pay about one-fifth of what we paid for health insurance in the States, a savings of about $8,000 a year, significant for fixed-income retirees. We have better coverage here: we pay little or nothing when we go to the doctor, have an X-ray or bloodwork, and nothing at all out-of-pocket for prescriptions and semi-annual check-ups at the dentist. As an example of how the system works, last week I had blood drawn for an analysis prescribed by my generalist. I didn’t have to go to a clinic: the phlebotomist came to my house, put my healthcare card in her little machine, took the blood, then charged me eight euros and 28 centimes (under $10). I paid her and will soon be reimbursed by direct deposit to my checking account for almost all of it by the state and supplemental plans. The laboratory will send me a bill for the analysis, I’ll pay them by check, and I’ll be almost fully reimbursed by direct deposit. (My bloodwork has averaged about 25 euros here, a small fraction of the cost in the States.) When I see my generalist, she will process my card, I’ll pay her 25 euros for the visit, and I’ll be reimbursed over 22 euros by direct deposit. Due to Covid concerns, I haven’t yet visited an ophthalmologist, but the payment/reimbursement process will be similar; I’ll use my annual allowance for basic frames and lenses but will choose to pay more for the upgrade to stylish glasses and transitional lenses. From a budgetary standpoint, the U.S.’s primary advantage over France is its more affordable energy costs. In France, fioul (heating oil) is about 0.85 euros per liter, the equivalent of about $4 a gallon; essence (gas for the car) is even more expensive at about 1.5 euros per liter, over $7 a gallon. It costs dearly to fill up the tank, but with Covid restrictions we hardly drive at all these days so haven’t really felt the pinch. I loved many things about living in the U.S., but the cost of health care was not one of them. The U.S. has miles to go to arrive at reasonable costs for medical insurance, doctors’ fees, hospitalizations, and prescription drugs. It can be done. Food for thought.