Category Archives: Jean Zimmerman

December 24, 2012 · 5:42 pm

The Yule

NYC packed itself with hobbits the day before Christmas, most of them assembling beneath the 80-foot Norway Spruce at Rockefeller Center, a specimen which came from Sandy-damaged New Jersey. We took a breather outside the crowd, admiring the interaction of fairytale wildlife with Manhattan.

reindeer nyc

We got snug in a cafe called the Blue Bottle deep within the complex’s core.

cafe signage

The place was not getting enough patronage, if you ask me, for a store that specializes in Yirgachette, and encased its scrumptious rosemary-flecked shortbread in biodegradable coffee filters.

latte

Throughout about a three-hour period we consumed soup and pastrami, salad and coffee, shortbread and biscotti and chestnuts. And we wound up at the New York Public Library, especially majestic at Christmastime. Inside, an exhibit called Lunch Hour NYC, which taught us all about oyster pushcarts, Kerouac’s favorite diner Hector’s, the history of bagels, how food cost pennies way back when, and displayed an actual bank of automat slots. We took home a recipe from Horn & Hardart (actually dog-eared, in other words slightly gnawed upon by Oliver).

photo

A very merry Christmas, from our howl to yours.

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December 22, 2012 · 11:22 am

Sounds of Silence

This morning I sat on the couch and listened to all the sounds encased in the still cabin.

cabin wall

The tap-tap of the walls settling.

The rasp of bamboo knitting needles against soft wool.

The faint snore of the dog beside me.

The electronic bleat of my phone getting a message.

The distant rumble of the highway.

The gurgle of the sump pump.

The rustle of newsprint from downstairs, where Gil is reading the paper in the kitchen.

Then: pots clatter in the sink.

A singing voice swells, Marianne Faithfull, with soulful, stern urgency: “The mystery of love belongs to you.”

tree

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December 21, 2012 · 2:53 pm

Between the Shelves

Les Liaisons Dangereuses.  The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record (a Dover original). Just Kids, by Patti Smith, with its winsome pair on the cover. The lilting new version of Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.

My stacks. A cross-section.

goode vrouw

I always get kind of alarmed when I hear about people who organize their bookshelves perfectly by color. Or by the height of the spine. Or even by subject. I guess I feel kind of abashed because my shelves look like someone just threw a bunch of volumes into them and the way they landed is the way they stuck.

I expect the stately, big public libraries I visit to be properly arranged. At the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, I insist that the chit I hand in for a research item lead unfailingly  to a number on the overhead board, a 155, say, that corresponds to the book I will then pick up at the wood-framed window. I don’t like to wait, even in the lovely caramel-smelling ambience of the Rose Reading Room, where I can spend my time gazing up at the fluffy clouds floating in azure. And, though I love wandering the mysterious stacks at Columbia University’s Butler Library, I expect to set my hands on the thing cited in the catalogue where  and when I want it. As with the following super-polished domestic book sanctuaries, everything is organized.

one library

three library

Not so at my home.

My own library, as I said, is a shambles. Gardens of the Gilded Age is wedged next to A Confederacy of Dunces, which is neighbor to The Goode Vrouw of Mana-ha-ta, by Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer (Scribner’s, 1898, signed by the author). The Goode Vrouw was a priceless source to me for everything I’ve written about Dutch colonial women. Some of my favorite books, like the latter, are end of the line library volumes, dumped when the branch needed room for contemporary titles. Some are by friends: Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World, by foremost authority Bart Plantenga. On my shelf, it sits somewhat awkwardly next to Roderick Nash’s Wilderness and the American Mind.

Living in the Cabin, where every inch of space is precious, meant giving up dozens of cartons of books.  Some to the library, some to the Strand (for precious little resale value), some for pennies at the yard sale. Painful as it was to do it — and with boxes still in storage — we survived,  managing to to keep, say, one in twenty. There is a bookcase about the size of a coffin along the wall of the living room. That is all. Are those, the books favored enough to keep, the ones that I read? Do I turn and re-turn the pages, hold them, go back to them?

Infrequently.

Library hardbacks in their glossy sheaths, the dozens of e-books that hide themselves in my Kindle, the occasional irresistible find on the table at a great independent book store. Those go by my bedside, not my winnowed, cherished chums on the bookshelves. Occasionally I’ll return to Tristram Shandy (the first novel I really fell for with, in high school), or one of the two brilliant Alices, Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas or The Diary of Alice James. I might dive down into the disordered waves and come up with a gem. But otherwise the books on the cabin’s shelves — in chaos — are only to keep, to have, to save, to nurse a taste for, the way you might keep a bar of divinely dense chocolate in the refrigerator for the day you need to take a bite.

It needn’t be perfect to be delicious.

two library

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December 20, 2012 · 3:52 pm

Glistening Citrus

There is something new in the world.

fingered citron

Or at least new to me. I guess fingered citron, or Buddha’s Hand fruit, goes back a million years in Asia, where it’s used to perfume houses (it has next to no juice, but plenty of pith). The fruit is also made an offering in Buddhist temples, where the “fingers” of the fruit are placed so that they resemble a closed rather than open hand — thus symbolizing to Buddha the act of prayer.

Or if you are a Westerner, you can candy the fingers into succade. Limes and tangerines are equally glistening and scrumptious. I’m going to eat mine with Italian black pepper cheese.

candied fruit

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December 20, 2012 · 12:07 am

Stitching Christmas

‘Twas Christmastime, 1934.

B & W Family Xmas

The little lady ambled out to the drug store to pick up a copy of Needlecraft: The Home Arts Magazine. Turning the pages, flipping by the ads for Listerine and Royal Baking Powder (“I’m a Widow… with 5 Children… and I can’t afford to take chances with cheap, doubtful baking powder”, for French’s Bird Seed and Biscuit, next to menu ideas for grand yet frugal holiday dinners, she read a letter that she could have written herself.

Letter to My Husband

And, when she turned the page, there was the Singer itself.

A Singer for Xmas

“The magic means to all the clothes her heart desires!”A few pages further, the latest fashions.

Sketch of Three Women

Truly, anything was possible, frills and furbelows and cute red slippers to match a swirling red hem.

I inherited my grandmother’s machine, not a Singer but a Domestic, the name stamped in gilt on its wooden cabinet, a couple of bobbins still in the drawers. She sewed voraciously, making all the clothes for my mother and her sisters. At Christmastime 1934, was she mulling over her paper patterns, thinking about that material she had seen on sale recently in her little Tennessee town?

Sewing was a way of dreaming, of making your way psychically out of the deprivations and difficulties of the time. Sewing made what was hard, soft. It still works for people who remember how to thread a needle.

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December 18, 2012 · 6:03 pm

De weeskinderen

The Orphanmaster (De weeskinderen) comes out in Holland!

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December 16, 2012 · 5:32 pm

That Was a Heck of a Job

It’s Giants football time in my household. Here’s the announcer:

He’s just gonna run by everybody, awww, just past his fingertips…

I wind up there too, on the couch, knitting in hand, just a small piece, counting stitches, the little bumps in the patch of wool, a midnight blue strip of sky I’m building loop by loop into a recognizable thing.

blue wool

This is one active, moving group of good football players!

I like a couple of things about football, and one is the goggle-eyed tone of the announcers.

What a big time stand by the Ravens! That was huge and inspirational…

The other: the towels the players wear tucked into the front of their pants — a codpiece, dish rag, hanky that I’m sure is somehow crucial to the play, but always seems to inject an unexpected female sensibility into the macho sport.

new-york-giants

It’s been an evolutional process… they provided him with a lot of great weapons…

How about knitting as contact sport — no, beyond the needles, though they of course would come in handy in a dark alley.

Knitting writ large.

I saw an art installation some years ago on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor, that employed dozens of people to knit swaths of a gigantic American flag.

011knitting_nation_01-500x375

I remember that even the clothes of the participants were handworked. And it all seemed so zany. I didn’t knit then.

010knitting_nation_01

The artist who orchestrated this giant adventure out of yarn (and statement — it was an anti-war effort) was Liz Collins, who has since gone on to other interesting large-scale projects, such as the one titled Mend, where people were invited to bring in their frayed clothing to be repaired by Collins’ minions.

Mend

Boy, that’s a big statement — straight off the fingertips! Incomplete.

First things first. Textile codpieces all around, hand crafted by the nation’s home knitters for each and every footballer. I suddenly see a use for the midnight yarn in my lap. Aren’t the Giants blue?

That’s a good physical finish and a nice cut.

Why, thanks.

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December 15, 2012 · 9:09 pm

Plants and Prints

The prize find of the day.

Aloe

This old grandmother of an aloe must be 25, that’s about as old as they get, and she’s so heavy and covered with pups — what you call the fledgling aloe sprouts — that she’s weighed down to sprawling. When I got her, for free, at the plant nursery that was going out of business, she was covered with mud splatters. Seen better times. Kind of like the nursery itself, which just could not make a go of it any more. Supposedly getting replaced by condos. A beautiful place, even with now-bare shelves.

nursery empty shelves

I was touring the sad, magical stops of lower Westchester with my photographer friend Josefa (she made the above image) and this was the last place we went, with its half-off fertilizer and unwanted boxes of pine cones, its frowzy ferns and cold-shocked begonias. The heat had been off for a week. It’s amazing my aloe survived.

Earlier in the morning we visited an estate sale in a condo with wide open views of the Hudson. An artist had lived there, an aged woman who’d died a year ago according to her nephew. He was warily standing guard over a studio cluttered with evidence of her inspired relationship with the world.

my print

There were hundreds of wood block prints and all the intricate tools she’d used to create their templates.

nude

Nudes. Expressive rocks.

rock face

The things that got her going, baskets of bones and patina’d photos.

bones

girl

A single bed with a rumpled afghan was pulled into the corner, giving a sense of a person who lived, literally, with her work, in that cluttered cloister overlooking the river. An easel, a paint-spattered stepstool. The things that were hers. Her name: Murray.

paint stool

Upstairs, the more conventional life. Tables and chairs, pots and pans. I bought a trinket, an ornament, her tree to mine.

ape

Merry Christmas, Murray. I hope they have carving tools, wherever you find yourself now.

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December 14, 2012 · 6:19 pm

Put Your Name on the Line

The Women’s Club of Larchmont held a large and friendly luncheon at Orienta Beach Club in Mamaroneck, where we put away butternut squash soup and baked chicken before the show began… the show being myself, Dan Zevin (Dan Gets a Minivan) and Richard Zacks (Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York). A different kettle of fish in each case, as you can imagine (united by Z’s). Yet these literature-loving, Christmas outfit-wearing ladies came to all our tables afterward, often to pick up the entire trio of books, the whole hat trick, imagining they’d find some grateful recipient for one or another over the holidays.

When you’re autographing books, people sometimes seem apologetic if they only want a signature, not an inscription. “Oh, I’ll be passing it along (to my daughter, or my mother, or my son-in-law) so just sign,” they say. But I love the idea of someone liking my book enough that they want to pass it along. I’m fine with just signing my name.

A fellow writer talked to me today about signing, how with her own first novel she didn’t “know how” to sign and she had to buttonhole the person in charge of the event, anxiously, to find out. And it’s true that there can be a technique to signing. It’s good to practice, and it’s possible to be rusty. What face is your signature going to wear? And where are you going to post it? The title page, or the blank page inside the front cover? Where, exactly, on the title page? Sharpie, gel pen, ballpoint? Black or blue? If it should ever happen that you sign a lot of copies at once – this year I signed dozens on occasion, and that’s nothing compared with many writers – you want to have a system.

And what else will you employ besides your signature? I’m always impressed when authors manage to squeeze out a couple of sentences – difficult, with a clumsy Sharpie, if you’re lucky enough to have a line of people waiting. If you have one of my books you know that I often write, “Enjoy!” While that is indeed my hope, the exhortation strikes me sometimes as a ridiculously insipid.

I’ve come across wonderful twists on the conventional author’s signature as I’ve travelled around the country and met a lot of authors with just-published books.

Da Chen (My Last Empress) with his dramatic calligraphy and red seal.

Chen's signature

Richard Zacks (Island of Vice) includes a quote from early Chief of Police Big Bill Devery: “Hear, see, say nuthin! Eat, drink, pay nuthin!”

Devery1

The cartoonist Derf Backderf (My Friend Dahmer) draws a self portrait.

Backderf

Axel Vervoordit (Wabi Inspirations), the eccentric Belgian interior designer, autographs his illustrated books by actually jabbing his thumb through the first page. It’s somehow just right for his bare but expressive sensibility.

Axel-Vervoordt-02

Makes me want to come up with something more personal than this, my own mark.

jz sig

A bit minimal, a bit manic. Maybe that makes perfect sense.

Just one thing. Never call it a John Hancock.

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December 14, 2012 · 9:14 am

Apple Bombs

I made these Apple Bombs — buttery pastry-wrapped whole apples, like individual apple pies — when friends came over, but you don’t have to wait for that. A brilliant cook friend gave me the recipe. They are the perfect holiday something. Trust me. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

BOMBS

Apple Bombs

6 apples

2 1/2 c flour

pinch salt

2 sticks cold butter

cold water as needed.

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon (or more)

1 teas. grated lemon zest

slightly beaten egg white

sugar for sprinkling

Peel and core apples, leaving a bit of the stem end in tact.

Process 1 1/2 sticks butter, flour and salt, sprinkle water to form dough.  Wrap in plastic and set in fridge 1/2 hr.

Meanwhile, cream together rest of butter,  sugar, cinnamon and zest.  Spoon into apple cavities.

Set oven to 375 degrees.  Roll out dough into 12 x 18 rectangle.  Place apples on top of rectangle, cut side up  and equidistant from each other.  Cut dough into six squares.  Wet edges of each square with a little cold water, then pull each corner on top of the apple, enclosing apple. I like to shape the dough into little peaks.

Brush pastry with slightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with sugar.  Bake until pastry brown and apples soft, about 30 min.  Let rest 15 min.

A tip:  Helps to let the dough warm a bit so you can stretch it over apples; try to cover apples with dough so that sugar mixture is held in; go heavy on the egg white and sugar – since the dough is not particularly sweet, the sugar on top is good.

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December 13, 2012 · 12:18 am

I Patina, You Patina

I think patina should be a verb, as in, the Down Town Association really patina’d tonight. To glow in an extremely historic way.

Everything, from the gleaming nickel-sized mosaic tiles at the threshold, to the polished mahogany woodwork, to the aromatic fire, to the mitred turquoise ceiling, shone out as if to say, We’ve been here on Pine Street, a Romanesque Revival facility for a distinguished New York City social club, since 1887 – don’t hate us ‘cause we’re beautiful.

Down Town Ceiling

The dress code said blazers, and I actually happened to have one on.

JZ Down Town

I kept thinking a performance of The Nutcracker might break out upon the scene at any moment, it was that Christmas-y and old-fashioned lovely.

Some curiosities adorned the cloak room, which was not the nondescript entity you would expect. We found a handsome set of three old phone booths, labeled for your convenience.

Phone Booths

In the corner, an historic scale.

Scale

Astoundingly, hanging next to it by a chain was a tattered and flayed leather-covered notebook listing members’ names, dates and weights. Over many, many years, men had noted neatly every single day whether they had gained or lost a quarter of a pound. Would they eat a bite less capon as a result of this knowledge?

Scale Book

The walk-in humidor was locked, but free for the viewing were dozens of gorgeous old views of New York, including this one, which looks down toward the foot of the island and shows the old 42nd Street Reservoir next to the Crystal Palace.

getImage.gif

The contents of the cloak room also included a later date (‘60s? ‘70s?) automated shoe polisher, still in vigorous working order. My boots got a nice massage and now have a glossy finish suitable for use during lipstick application.

Shine-O-Mat

The pleasant ambience of the club made everyone jolly, and the fact that most of the audience members had some affiliation with the New Amsterdam History Center meant we all had something in common regardless of whether you had yet read The Orphanmaster: a shared affinity for the volatile, earthy, intimate, dangerous place that was lower Manhattan in the mid 17th century.

We talked and talked.

I was glad of this chunky, thick-walled old water pitcher when I was done. It patina’d just right.

Water Jug

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December 11, 2012 · 4:26 pm

New Amsterdam History Center

Tomorrow in Manhattan:

Christopher Moore will be having a conversation with me on behalf of the New Amsterdam History Center. Chris is the Curator of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Come one, come all to the Down Town Association at 60 Pine Street. Seven o’clock. I’ll be signing books afterwards.

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December 10, 2012 · 2:36 pm

Knit One

I have been knitting lately. A lot. I am putting aside cares that my craft is amateurish, that I can’t do lace or cable-work, that I drop a stitch every other row or so. Because I like to knit so much, I am focusing on the now, with a tiny inkling in the back of my head that the more I knit, the better I will get, and that someday a sweater is in my future. Nothing is stronger than habit, said Ovid. In this case, the habit of knitting and purling several hours a day.

It helps that I like to make things that are lumpy and bumpy, they hide a multitude of sins. Let’s hope the holiday recipients of my works think so.

lap throw

The ingenuity and skill of some knitters inspire me. Like the chair upholstery by Elise, the woman who owns the local knit shop, Flying Fingers.

cimg0037

Or, more insane but great, the bikini with which an artist named Jessie Hemmons draped the statue of former mayor Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia, wanting to “facilitate a conversation about whether this cultural view of a man being emasculated and ‘disrespected’ by simply dressing him in feminine clothing is representative of and in accordance to current beliefs that women are viewed as equal to men.” She calls herself the Yarnbomber of Philadelphia.

Rizzo-Statue-Featured-Image2-600x400

Wool doesn’t have to be practical in a grannyish sort of way. Peruse this story from the 1892 New York Times, about a young woman whose life was saved when a ball of yarn she was carrying blocked a bullet. All kinds of exciting knitting stories exist if you’re only willing to entertain them. But since the days when people only knew the knit stitch, in the Middle East in the 11th century, working in the round to make stockings — hear what I’m saying? nobody knew how to purl! my nemesis — creating fibrous fabric in this way became crucial to society. There were lots of cold feet in the centuries before, and warm ones after, even if their coverings were lumpy and bumpy.

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December 9, 2012 · 1:00 pm

NPR Shows Some Love for The Orphanmaster

“You can’t just stand there like a statue.” Elvis’ response to accusations of vulgarity when he was just launching his career.

elvis-presley

Earlier this week I found out that NPR chose The Orphanmaster as one of the six best historical fiction titles of 2012.

Yes! In the same league with Hilary Mantel, incredible.

“Jean Zimmerman’s The Orphanmaster is a rip-roaring read, packed with action and dark suspense,” went the review.  “I was captivated by Zimmerman’s unforgettable evocation of New Amsterdam.”

Now, “rip-roaring,” that’s not standing there like a statue.

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December 8, 2012 · 9:08 pm

Ornamental

We had a cappuccino at a local cafe.

caffe latte

Basilio ornamented the place with a saying we could have at the cabin.

cheesy saying

But not so much of a dump tonight, now that we’ve put up our ornaments. The right whale is the show stopper decoration of the season. The glittering, lit-up tree hovers over my narrow desk so I will have holiday dreams both night and day. And balsam needles crunching underfoot.

whale ornnament

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