A Plethora of Pleasures

When I'm at home, it's often difficult to find something new to blip, but on vacation, the opposite is true, as the days are filled with so many interesting activities that it's hard to choose which one to feature and impossible to write about all of them in any detail.

After a copious Virginia breakfast this morning, we bid a very fond farewell to my cousin W, her husband B, and her mother, my Aunt S, soon to celebrate her 95th birthday, and with cousin L and her husband B, headed back toward North Carolina. After a stop in for lunch in Hendersonville, we spent a couple of hours at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, maintained by the National Park Service -- a very fine use for our tax dollars! -- where Sandburg lived in his later years.

The Sandburg Home, known as "Connemara," is on 264 acres of lovely grounds in western North Carolina, near the town of Flat Rock. It is undergoing extensive preservation work, so most of the furnishings are being inventoried and packed away in preparation for this work. Our excellent volunteer guide put this work in context and provided much interesting information about one of America's most famous and beloved poets, as well as about his wife Lilian Steichen, sister of renowned photographer Edward Steichen.

During their years at Connemara, Lilian, whom the poet called Paula, became a prize-winning goat breeder. There is still a goat herd at Connemara, much reduced from the nearly 250 goats that were there from 1945 to 1965, but still a draw for visitors, particularly the most recent beguiling kid, which almost was my blip today.

The Sandburg entourage also included their three daughters and two grandchildren, as well as some hired help, and the family raised much of their own food.

The first book of poetry I bought as a college student was Sandburg's "Honey and Salt," which I still own, 50 years later. I didn't know at that time that he also was a folk singer, accompanying himself on guitar in a variety of settings, and producing an anthology of folk songs in 1927, the "American Songbag," which influenced a number of singers, including Pete Seeger. Carl Sandburg was also an accomplished lecturer, a newspaper journalist, a champion of labor rights, and winner of several Pulitzer Prizes, including one for his extensive biography of Abraham Lincoln.

There is so much more that could be said about this inspiring, creative, talented man, but it's very late and I need to sleep, so I hope that you'll explore Carl Sandburg's works on your own!

(A footnote: We ended the day with a superb meal at a small Italian restaurant near L and B's home, which offered some of the most delicious food I've ever eaten. What a wonderful day we've had!)