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30 Jan 11 - 08:34 AM (#3085178) Subject: TOUCHSTONES From: Deckman I've had a recent thought that might encourage some thoughful postings. It's about "touchstomes." I don't know if that's a legal word, but it's a word that I've used many times over the years. I've lived, unfortunatly, so darned long that I had to watch many dear friends go into the ground. Often, family members have invited me to take a "rememberance" ... that's what I call a "touchstone." To me, a "touchstone" is something that I touch, or see, every day that I walk into my private space ... my office and archiving space. Let me tell of my various "touchstones: To my left is a pocket knife, simple, clean, but with a good edge that I maintain. Every time I open a letter, I reach for it, and remember my years with Walt Robertson: I have a collection ... too many in my opinion ... of old and worn our capos. Let's see ... there is one from the late John Dwyer ... wonderful man ... there are two from Walt Robertson ... there is one from the late Stan James ... there's another one from (what's her name) ... OH never mind ...! I used to have a tie from the late David Spence, but I actually wore it out many, many years ago. I also have an orchestra director's baton frim my late, and very dear friend, Lauren Jakey. He and I grew up together. At the time of his death, he was an orchestra director of five orchestras and the director of the music department of San Jose Sate college (university?). So .... those are some of my "touchstones. These are the things I look at every day, use every day, and in enjoying them, I well remember my friends. WHAT ARE YOUR TOUCHSTONES? bob(deckman)nelson |
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30 Jan 11 - 06:49 PM (#3085539) Subject: RE: TOUCHSTONES From: Joe Offer One friend I don't ever want to forget is Sandy Paton. I helped him put his Folk-Legacy albums on CD, and he sent me one copy of every album in return. I've put most of the albums on MP3 and stored the CDs, but I keep a few favorites out to remind me of Sandy. In Sandy's sweet version of All Gone For Grog, he says he'll "keep this old hat to remember." I'll also keep the Folk-Legacy Green Man baseball cap Sandy gave me, not that I ever wear baseball caps. -Joe- |
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30 Jan 11 - 08:35 PM (#3085604) Subject: RE: TOUCHSTONES From: Deckman Other treasure I have are rosin cakes. I've lost several fiddler friends, and I occasionally enjoy holding the rosin that I know they held. bob |
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30 Jan 11 - 08:42 PM (#3085607) Subject: RE: TOUCHSTONES From: Wesley S I have my dad's pocketknife. A piece of petrified wood one of my grandfathers gave me. And a Tarzan first edition from my other grandfather. |
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30 Jan 11 - 09:08 PM (#3085617) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: katlaughing Neat thread, Roope! I remember when you first told me about Touchstones and I thought "Touchstones of our past" would be a neat title for my dad's oral history book I was working on, but it's since become a novel and renamed On Garfield Creek, but I still LOVE that word, Touchstones, and what it means to you. I use it that way, too. I've got so many. Still trying to be a little quiet, right now, so I won't list them. But, I will enjoy watching this thread and maybe posting some later. Thanks for sharing. kat |
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30 Jan 11 - 10:00 PM (#3085634) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Bill D Yes.. I have many such items, though I never had a name for them. A belt buckle given me many years ago by a daughter who has since died.... a brick from a brick factory in my mother's home town--and my mother's recipe box with her clippings and handwritten ideas for food... some signed LP albums, including one signed by Pete, Mike & Peggy Seeger at the last concert they shared....my grandfathers pocket watch...a photo of myself with departed friends. Now some of those I don't see/touch every day, but I 'see' where they are, and it feels good to know they are there. I have helped 'sort' three estates of departed friends, and I have several mementoes ...like cufflinks featuring "September Morn" from a very good friend who died in 1975. I suppose there are a couple dozen that could be listed. |
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30 Jan 11 - 10:15 PM (#3085639) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Deckman I sing a song, "Warp and Reeling", that is also a touchstone for me. The late Dave Spence, a fine singer, taught me the song back in 1965. He told me that he thought he could never do it justice, but thought my voice could do it. I've never forgotten that. Every time I sing that song, just yesterday in fact, I well remember Dave. bob |
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30 Jan 11 - 10:35 PM (#3085642) Subject: RE: TOUCHSTONES From: Janie I'm not quite old enough to have lost any close friends yet, only family members. I also live at some distance from family, so some of my touchstones that are around me or that I make use of every day serve as warm connections to the living. I have my grandfather's wheel barrow. He loved tending his garden and his fruit trees, and was a careful and frugal man, tending to his gardening tools so they would last with the same care he took with plants and the soil. As I push it across the yard with a load of mulch or topsoil, I hear him admonish me to oil the axle to stop that awful squeak, and feel his approval at the way I tend the soil. (or at least used to. I haven't had time to do much gardening the last 2 -3 years.) Because I haven't taken care of it the way he did, I can almost count the years he used it from the layers and colors of paint that have gradually chipped away over the 16 years I have used it. My grandmother's rolling pin, the steel box grater my mother received at a bridal shower in 1947. (Mom, fortunately, is still with us.) The little gold hoop earrings that belonged to my late sister. |
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31 Jan 11 - 09:23 AM (#3085840) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Deckman I also have my grandmother's rolling pin, and YES, I know how to use it. And I also have her breadknife ... it's most unusual and I'm guessing it's well over one hundred years old ... just like me! bob |
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31 Jan 11 - 11:09 AM (#3085906) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Bill D Well...one I cannot miss everyday is my grandmother's kitchen cupboard/sideboard/cabinet. (free standing unit) with glass doors over two shelves above, and working counter originally covered with zinc. Flour & sugar bins and a row of small storage drawers above working counter, then large bread drawer below and storage to its left. It is a different version of one of these I remember watching her make pies on it about 1948. On it, among all the other stuff, stands a souvenir cut glass tumbler she got at the St. Louis Worlds Fair in 1904. Also in a place of honor on it is my grandfather's tonic bottle (he was a barber in Missouri). |
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31 Jan 11 - 11:25 AM (#3085918) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Wesley S And speaking of stones - I've been known to pick up rocks from time to time and bring them home. I have two big rocks from a wall on my grandparents old farm in North Dakota. And I've picked up some from Jenny Lake in the Teatons, a beach close to my old home in Florida and other places of importance to me. Everyone else will just see a pile of rocks. But I know where each one is from. |
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31 Jan 11 - 11:28 AM (#3085921) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: ClaireBear I have an arts-&-crafts dining-room table that was my mother's, and her mother's before her. It's too big for my kitchen, but it has memories of happy families long gone that I need my family to absorb, so there it sits. I love the walking-stick my father made when he had climbed to the top of Pikes Peak in the 1920s. It has "Pikes Peak" carved into the side...which always makes me smile, remembering a fella I once knew who incorrectly read "Yikes Yeak" and thought I liked to discipline my gentlemen callers. A 19th c. pump organ from Bob Thomas's unparalleled collection of musical instruments, most of which went up in the Cloverdale fire. Bob himself is gone now, too. |
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31 Jan 11 - 12:01 PM (#3085941) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Deckman Ahh yes ... stones. "Bride Judy" loves stones and constantly brings them home from her travels. Lucky that we have a large yard and many gardens ... all places for the many stones. As you said, most people just see "rocks" ... but we see treasures and memories. They should have a name ... let's see ... maybe something ... like ... AHH,I HAVE IT ... "touchstones! bob |
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31 Jan 11 - 12:25 PM (#3085957) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: MGM·Lion A beautiful pink-rose motif china bowl on my window-sill was a gift to my late wife Valerie from an old woman who had been a friend of the woman who nursed its original owner, the Victorian novelist Rhoda Broughton, in her last illness, and had been given it by Broughton's faithful lady's maid Miss Pullein, who had left it in turn to my wife's informant Mrs Helsdon. My wife was researching a book on Broughton, and had advertised for anyone who might have known her. Mrs Helsdon, over 90, decided that Valerie would appreciate more than would her own children this bowl which had been frequently looked at, and possibly handled, by Henry James, who was a dear friend and constant visitor of Miss Broughton, who, as well as a successful Victorian novelist, was a well-known salonière. In it I keep such small souvenirs from our travels during our ½-century together as a piece of marble from Mycænæ, of terracotta from Heraklion, lava from Vesuvius & Etna; + a bit of the Berlin Wall given to us by a friend whose son was serving with NATO in the RAF when it fell. Needless to say I treasure all these things greatly. As for the many pictures of Valerie I possess and display ~~ one of the things I love most about my present wife Emma is that, when I offered to put them away after we were married last year, she wouldn't hear of it, declaring that she valued Valerie's memory as such a great part of my life. I am, I think, fortunate in my touchstones, as in both my dear wives ~~ though tears fill my eyes at this moment... ~Michael~ |
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31 Jan 11 - 12:31 PM (#3085963) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: MGM·Lion ... and I OP'd a thread here a while ago about a handwritten letter I have here which Valerie received from John Masefield, returning the proofs of an article he had written for a woman's magazine on which she was a sub-editor in the early 1960s. ~M~ |
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31 Jan 11 - 12:46 PM (#3085971) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: ClaireBear MtheGM: back in 1961 when I was a wee thing of 7, our family spent six months in Europe while my father researched a book. Wherever we went, my dad (ever the ancient historian) made sure we spent most of our time exploring Roman and Greek ruins. I have a little chunk of marble he purloined from and lovingly labeled as having come from the Acropolis of Athens, as well as a Roman nail I picked up at Pompeii, pocketed carelessly, and neglected to ask my father about until we were outside the gates. He scolded me for picking it up, but at the same time he kept it and treasured it. I was allowed to reclaim it when he died. But all I have of Mycenae is a memory of my father and I standing in agamemnon's tomb together, as he explained to me how a corbelled arch is put together and why it is so strong, in this awestruck voice that spoke of his reverence for the place we stood. That is one of my favorite memories of him. Sometimes just a word is a touchstone. |
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31 Jan 11 - 12:51 PM (#3085975) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: MGM·Lion Thank you for your charming response, Claire Bear. That, indeed, is a touchstone of a sort also. ~Michael~ |
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31 Jan 11 - 01:05 PM (#3085982) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Deckman Thank you all for these touching postings. bob |
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31 Jan 11 - 02:24 PM (#3086027) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Bill D "most people just see "rocks" Which reminds me of one of the most interesting stories I have heard of such things. I knew a family who had several kids...one, a little girl of about 7. AQt one time, they had to move, and as things were being packed, they discovered under the girl's bed a box...of rocks & concrete and asphalt. "Heather, what's this?" "Oh, that's my collection of street!" "What do you mean...why street?" "Well, this one is part of the curb from our house, and this one is from in front of Grandpa's house, and this one is from where they repaved at my school...and this is from Sally's driveway. and ...."...etc...etc. She had told no one... but she had her 'touchstones'. |
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31 Jan 11 - 02:37 PM (#3086038) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Manitas_at_home REally LTS on the sofa.... A piece of beetle-eaten wood from a walk with a good friend; a feather from my last trip to see my mother; sheep wool from Avebury; a piece of stone from Cader Idris; some copper tinted rock from Alderley Edge; a pebble from St Michael's Mount, France; a wooden motif from my parent's wardrobe; a fragment of grandmother's wedding dress; the list is endless, as is the memory each evokes. LTS |
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31 Jan 11 - 04:21 PM (#3086102) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: maeve All but a very few of my physical touchstones are gone. I trust I will find different ones. |
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31 Jan 11 - 04:33 PM (#3086113) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: ClaireBear Maeve, watch out or someone will start a "touchstone project" for you, making up a whimsical, fantastical tale to accompany each incomprehensibly bizarre mathom he or she finds to send you. Like "These are the purple BVDs left behind by Cathal MacConnell when he stayed in your spare bedroom in 1981." Not that I or anyone I know would ever so such a thing, of course... (Though actually he did stay in my spare bedroom in 1981, and I did wind up with the aforementioned purple BVDs. I am happy to report that they do NOT remain in my life as a touchstone!) |
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31 Jan 11 - 04:41 PM (#3086119) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: maeve Funny, Claire. Fortunately folks who value touchstones and know us will know better than to try that. We also have an excellent recycling program in the village. Are you in need of a purple frame? We miss our meaningful treasures and we know they are not to be replaced as one would an old toothbrush. |
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31 Jan 11 - 04:48 PM (#3086125) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: ClaireBear I know, and I was just funnin'. I'd never, of course. And NO! No purple frames! The BVDs went, sharpish, after the departure of the renowned guest. We'd have sent them home to await his arrival, but didn't have a home address. |
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31 Jan 11 - 05:03 PM (#3086136) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity I've played two pianos at a VERY well known recording artist's home, who recently passed away. He had two pianos..one in the studio, a Yamaha full grand, and a Baldwin baby grand in his room upstairs, in a room off the living room. When I got up, from playing the one upstairs, I remarked immediately, that the one in his upper room, not the studio, was the one he played out of Love. I could feel it in the keys. True story!!! for what its worth. Regards, GfS |
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31 Jan 11 - 05:55 PM (#3086186) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Deckman GFS ... that's very believable. I've played guitars, violins, held orchestra batons, and one mouth organ that still had the "energies" in them. I do feel that musicians especially are attuned, for lack of a better word, to the feelings ... memories ... choose your own word ... that connected those that have passed on to their personal instruments. bob |
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31 Jan 11 - 06:52 PM (#3086226) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Deckman, It was amazing..I could feel those vibes as close to physically as you can get!!..in fact, I could say truthfully, that they were physical. It was somewhat like a tingling feeling, but not as sharp as an out front tingling!! Thank you for your post! GfS |
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31 Jan 11 - 07:00 PM (#3086230) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Wesley S Claire - I don't know if there was a Mrs. Cathal MacConnell at home or not. But if there was - a pair of underware sent through the mail could have made for a difficult situation at home. He would have had some 'splaining to do. |
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31 Jan 11 - 07:18 PM (#3086241) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: ClaireBear No worriws Wesley, I can say with certainty that there was no Mrs. MacConnell at the time. The woman he would later marry was a friend of mine (which was how he happened to be at my house) and was there with him. |
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31 Jan 11 - 09:45 PM (#3086329) Subject: RE: Touchstones From: Janie Lovely reading. |
