A Historic Place and a lifetime memory - Orchard House, Concord, Massachusetts and Shakers

When I was a child, my Grandmother Lyons allowed me to borrow books from her bookcase in the basement. One she allowed me to keep - Little Women. It had a cold cloth binding with an embossed and colored portrait in the front cover. I loved that book for so many reasons. It had everything - a character who was so like myself, the real feelings of real girls, a big family, a setting that was emotionally evocative. It was a beautiful and very old book. All the books from that shelfing unit were very old, maybe my grandmother had inherited them. No one but me ever seemed to read them.

Sadly, I made the mistake of thinking others were like me for many years in my life which led to many losses, disappointments and mislaid expectations. I gave that book to one of my sisters who never read it, never cared for it, and eventually it was lost. I should have kept it in honor of my grandmother.

Many many years later, in the 1980's, I took a friend and my daughter on a road trip to visit all the extant SHAKER villages in New England. If you are not familiar with the shakers, they were a utopian religious sect that flourished in New England in the first half of the 1800's. They established about 18 villages, communities, which were celibate, egalitarian, and devoted to all works and actions as devotion. They are mainly famous today for the elegance and beauty of their furnishings and their furniture sells, if original in the many thousands of dollars. They were a farming community and aside from furniture, they sold seeds and absolutely gorgeous storage boxes that stacked within each other. Everything they made was beautiful to a remarkable degree because every single thing they made from brooms to fabric was made with religious devotion. They are also famous for a song "Tis a Gift to be simple tis a gift to be free, tis a gift to come down where you ought to be, and when you find yourself in the place just right it will be in the valley of love and delight." There was a show of their works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York which I went to see.

The Shakers were named the Shaking Quakers because they were Quaker like in simplicity, humility and equality, and they sang with a religious ferver that often had them shaking.

We three traveled to every Shaker community in New England from Sabbath Day Lake in Maine, near where Poland Springs water comes from, down to Concord Massachusettes where the Transcendentalists had their commune. They are famous for Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. When we went to see the Shaker house which had been moved to Fruitlands, we didn't know that the Alcott family had lived in it briefly. The house is now a museum in Concord. It isn't the family seat of the Alcott's which is Orchard House, it is another dwelling them inhabited for a time when trying to establish the Transcendentalist commune, but it turned out everyone was starving and cold and it wasn't so easy to start a commune as they had hoped.

Over the many yers since my childhood, I hve seen numerous film versions of Little Women starring, from the beginning for me, Katharine Hepburn, and with my daughter, Winona Rider, and tonight for Christmas Eve, I rented the newest version by filmmaker Greta Gerwig. And despite a bit of confusion that I think would throw viewers not familiar with the story (it jumps around in time in a peculiar and confusing way) it is my favorite of all the ersions for the reason tha the characters seem to have more life and color than in the other versions. It is also a gorgeous film. The acting, espedilly in the secondary characters is remarkable - they are actors at the top of the craft and bring their characters to life.

In an era of tawdry, criminal, and violent film fare, it was rewarding and enriching to watch a film about ideas, about growing up, about people trying to live good lives and live out their noble values. I highly recommend this film. Also it is an interesting view of the homefront during the Civil War, and a glimpse into the suffering of German immigrants. Sometimes we forget that Germans were once immigrants. In fact, on my father's side, our ancestors were German immigrants at nearly that period of time, the early 1800's. They had to flee Germany because of the Civil War raging at that time when Prussia was attempting to conquer and unify the various feudal principalities that existed at that time. For Revolutionary War fans, I might add that my Catholic German ancestors came from Hesse Cassel, the place where the dreaded Hessians came from during the Reolution when they were in the employ of the British.

Merry Christmas

Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com Merry Christmas!