Jean Zimmerman

Category: Culture

  • Swedish Farm

    My friend Sarah Hollister, an American who has lived in Sweden for some years now, agreed to do a guest post for me. Her perspective and her pictures are lovely. Here she is: We’re soon leaving the Henning Mankell Gård (translated farm) up here in Härjedalen in the northwestern part of Sweden. Just one more…

  • Blues Chicken

    With every last i dotted in the proofread Savage Girl galleys, I raced to my reward, a sultry New York City where everyone, it seemed, was perambulating, doing something exciting and interesting. Gil and I would go among them, we would do something exciting and interesting, too. Eat chicken, for one. Questlove, the drummer and…

  • Across the Hudson

    We went walking down by the Hudson River in the town where I grew up. Hadn’t been there in a while. The beach curved around, clean and bright. When I was young the sand here was covered in beer cans and gnarled driftwood logs, strewn with broken glass and tires. The view was always great,…

  • Tuber or Not Tuber

    My potatoes are ready to harvest. Knuckling up from under the crumbly soil, red, firm, practically begging to be dug. The tops of the plants have collapsed and faded, letting me know the tubers have reached their point of ripeness. And I’m on my knees (on my gardening pad, protecting my getting-to-be-arthritic knees) thinking about…

  • Piquant Spoonfuls of the Past

    At a bric a brac shop in Wisconsin I came away with some new treasures for my recipe pamphlet collection. What is bric a brac, anyway? Something you love and nobody else gives a fig for. The phrase originated with the French in the early 1830s, and it literally means at random or without rhyme or reason. Well, my affection…

  • The Middle of the Donut

    There are certain things that make it a good day in the Midwest, in Wausau. A stop at Kreger’s.   Best donuts hands down.   A stop at the farm. Hay for mulching the tomatoes.   A big old barn with towering rafters.   A big old solemn dog.   A guinea hen chick that…

  • Deep Purple

    No better place to be on a mild summer night in Wausau, Wisconsin. One place allows you to do more than chow down on walleye.   Return a flag. Hug a military sculpture. Make like a pinup girl in front of a valuable Air Force Corsair II that made its bones in Southeast Asia 40…

  • Rockets Glare

    Hastening toward Wisconsin. Can it be a true road trip if you only drive one road? On the other hand, it’s a massive road, Interstate 80. And it’s the glorious Fourth.We begin at the GW bridge. Oliver has already finessed the jump from the  cargo hold to the back seat, next to Maud. Gil is…

  • A Stitch in Time

    I keep in storage a box filled with 94 vintage pieces of linen and lace, and an antique silk flowered shawl with long, swaying fringes. All heirlooms, all worked by the matriarchs of the White and Coats families, small-town Tennessee residents. Artists. The women of my family. Who specifically made these creations we can’t be…

  • Plant Based Pesto

    I’ve been hearing the expression plant based ringing in my ears a lot lately. My doc saw my “bad” cholesterol ticking up (Bad, cholesterol! Bad!) and we decided it was time for a change. Get used to quinoa, she said. I had never tried it. Cut out the red meat you love, or at least cut it…

  • Il Rituale dei Bambini Perduti

    Italy has weighed in. My Italian publisher’s visual interpretation of the drama of The Orphanmaster is not perhaps what I would have expected. It’s baroque. It’s scary. It’s amazing to think of people sitting down with a copy of Il Rituale dei Bambini Perduti, so far from the island of Manhattan in 1664. If you…

  • Float Upstream

    We take the canoe upriver. Not just any river. The Croton River. Head upstream from its junction with the Hudson, next to a railroad trestle. To our north is the venerable Van Cortlandt homestead, nearly hidden by trees. The family came to New Amsterdam in 1638. They lived on Stone Street – so called because…

  • At the End of Their Bloom

    The end of the rose season and the end of the day. Glinting sweeps of sun, still, but deep shadows starting to fall across the lawn. You take what you can get. The roses that remain are as lovely as the roses that came before them. At Lyndhurst, the historic property in Tarrytown that used…

  • The Taksim Square Book Club

    In  Turkey, people are reading books. In public. Which is amazing, considering the country’s recent history. People are afraid of losing freedoms. And they’re finding a clever way to meet in public when demonstrations have been banned. Book clubs as free speech. From Ataturk – which means Father of the Turks – who founded the…

  • The Handsomest Dog in the World

    I write frequently about my dog Oliver. He is loyal. Intelligent. A good eater (lately into ripe strawberries from my garden). Brave. Well, loud and aggressive, anyway, and I think  he’s secretly a bit of a chicken. We got Oliver as a baby from a dog rescue family that was fostering his ma, a seemingly…