all-day delish (sans calories)

all-day delish (sans calories)

by marian wolbers

caribbean coconut, clary sage & vanilla, 
chocolate cherry, sweet pea…

or what about the cucumber & melon ?

the vetivert & grapefruit ?

fresh ginger lime silk ?

white raspberry truffle ?

ummmmm.

hard choices on this menu: all together, 165 selections, in fact, simultaneously stimulating nostrils and salivary glands, and juicing the mind. the senses unite and converge to select the most tantalizing offering du jour, according to mood, according to desire.

and skin—oh, happy epithelial cells thirsting to be slaked !—the skin wins. that‘s because it‘s a feast for the body (sorry—you can‘t actually eat this stuff !) at amber hills herbs & gifts, which rests in the middle of pennsylvania cornfields and pastureland, amid the flavor of newly mown grass in every breeze this nearly-summer day. tammy abraham, owner and body-care-products chef extraordinaire, smiles broadly at her array of natural soaps, body butters, misters, and lotions.

standing before the soap shelves, she urges: "go ahead ! smell them !" reveling in the beauty of each softly scented soap, reliving every ingredient as she explores each item, she slips a 5-ounce bar of 'chamomile & neroli' soap out of its pretty cardboard box. placed in a bath at night, she says, "this really relaxes."

the next box abraham pulls off the display is decorated delicately, with the words 'cherry blossom' adorning its label. "nice and fresh ! it‘s prissy," she smiles. she takes one more whiff, then adds: "what a fairy would wear—fresh and sweet !"

"the 'raspberry & lemonade' soap has lemon butter in it," abraham explains. "makes me want to drink some !"

as for 'chocolate cherry,' "that‘s just fun!" (of course, it‘s real chocolate.)

savoring one soap after another, discussing each in culinary details, much as a master chef would discuss balance and tone and texture from appetizer to luscious dessert, abraham patiently, happily guides her uninitiated, soon-to-become-devotees of natural soaps, into the sensuous world of old-fashioned, handmade, food-and-herb-filled suds.

( all soap-happy photos by marian wolbers ) 

speaking of suds, she illuminates what the big soapmakers don‘t really want consumers to realize. "when you stop to think about it, sudsy doesn‘t mean cleaner. sudsy means drier ! the more bubbles you have, the drier your skin gets." the big soapmakers, she asserts, strip natural oils in their manufacturing process—forcing us to then buy toners and moisturizers (which is where they re-insert the glycerin).

supermarket soaps were, in fact, the reason abraham began making body-care products in the first place. she was itchy—all the time. "i tried all the commercial soaps. and i got tired of itching." with such sensitive skin, prone to allergic responses, she knew cooking up her own soaps would prove to be a magical solution.

so all her products are made with ingredients like goat‘s milk, and fragrance oils, calendula oil ("good for healing burns"), cranberry butter, and even blueberry seeds (as exfoliants). carrot-seed-oil is the secret to her 'mature woman' soap, smoothing out fine lines and tightening up pores.

for oily skin, there's 'lemon verbena,' which has a deliberate drying effect, and a character that‘s "bright and ―very happy !"

for the kitchen there's a coffee soap, to neutralize all scents. 'gardener‘s soap' is created with orange peel for a gritty feel on one side, plus rosemary, an antibacterial.

the scents of all these products are tender, subtle, never overwhelming, even in the body butters, lotions, and fine mists, reflecting the exquisite sensitivity of their maker. her olfactory powers appear to be an inherited gift: "my father was part american indian," explains abraham. "he used to say he could smell the snow coming…and there was hardly a day he wasn‘t right."

identifying the scent of her cranberry fig milk and honey lotion as "not fruity but home-y," abraham suddenly looks up, a revelation complete: "it smells like grandma‘s kitchen. candy apples ! she used to make candy apples."

ummmmm.

imagine—smelling like candy apples ! all. day. long. (who needs food ?)

find these delights at 105 fisher mill road, oley, pa 19547, usually tuesday through saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. call ahead at 610.689.0025. also search for amber hills herbs & gifts on facebook.

p.s. oh, and two cups of catnip (to tuck your cat in).

amber hills also sells the wickedest gift ever for puss ‘n boots—a 'kitty blanket' which is basically a mini-quilt chockfull of premium-grade, long-lasting catnip from the high mountains of canada. absolutely affordable at $6 each, these are cute beyond repair: they‘re sewn with print fabrics that kitties would choose themselves, if they cared about such things. which they don‘t.

just remember what one customer said: "i had to put the darn thing in the refrigerator overnight in order to get some sleep !"

news, not blues volume twenty-one is outtt.

news, not  blues volume twenty-one is out !

grab it up !

news, not blues donated rita dove's latest book to the boyertown community library.

news, not blues recently donated its fourth book of poetry this year to the boyertown community library—sonata mulattica by rita dove.

dove served as the u.s. poet laureate from 1993 to 1995. sonata mulattica is her latest book of poems and explores the life of renowned african-polish violinist george bridgetower who lived during the 1700 and 1800s. learn more about dove and read her past poetry at www.poets.org. 

( ode to the almighty oley pie & over-sized cookie )

( ode to the almighty oley pie & over-sized cookie )

by marian wolbers

pies are more art than cookies. cookies are just clever. – felicia fisher, owner, black buggy baking company, oley, pennylsvania.

felicia fisher bakes.

   

in the countryside of oley, pennsylvania, right here, right now, even as soft breezes waft across the valley, and late-spring rainshowers sprinkle rich earth that will become wheat and corn in the months ahead, fisher is up before dawn: she’s tossing around silky-fresh flour and mellow, milky-fresh butter, and moistening the mix till it’s ‘chust’ perfectly ready to start becoming a pie. actually, make that 40 to 50 pies.

    

it’s pie and cookie season once again at fisher’s farm fresh produce, where a green acres gal from long island, a lawyer-turned-baker and mom-of-three named fisher, happily and lovingly churns out handmade baked goods under the moniker of black buggy baking company.

     

never mind her sordid past helping wealthy people ‘stick it’ to other wealthy people; bbbc appears to be salvation not only for the baker but for all her devoted customers who are known to queue up next to the boyertown farmers’ market stand or the west reading farmers’ market where, on weekends, husband kirk fisher garnishes his own just-picked produce with supersized cookies, fruit pies, zucchini, banana, or pumpkin breads (depending on the  season), and any sort of goodie that strikes his wife’s culinary fancy.

…and fisher’s fancy is always in season. along with two addictive standards, vanilla sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies, the baker is now creating a margarita cookie. “i just started thinking about margaritas one day,” she mused, as though baking possessed a mystical element that inspires. she’s now consumed with putting together the perfect combination of lime, caramel and sea salt. in a cookie shape, that is.

     

bbbc’s shoofly pie is always cooling somewhere on a rack in the 1800s summer kitchen at the fisher farmstead. fisher’s website quotes one fan whose sugary praise pronounces her ‘the goddess of shoofly pie !’

     

there are many other pies, though, including blueberry, apple, pecan, raisin walnut, peach, apple, cherry, pumpkin, and more, with crumbly tops or flaky latticework.

     

the secret ingredients in black buggy’s yummy success are pretty simple, said the owner. first and foremost, she loves what she’s doing. people claim her baked goods make them just plain happy. “it’s comfort food. it’s traditional. every pie has been hand-rolled.” as she labors, often starting at 3 in the morning, she enters ‘the zone,’ a sweet place to be.

( all photographs by marian wolbers )     

bbbc is constantly tinkering with recipes, too; many come from time-tested texts, like the farm wives of america cookbook.

     

the kids have happy jobs, too: they taste-test.

     

lastly, bbbc loves all that’s fresh and local (if frocal was a word, fisher would use it). mennonite neighbors supply aromatic herbs for her famous lemon rosemary cookies, while the baking flour all comes from fm brown’s, in fleetwood. fisher loves the fact that not only is the flour priced right, but “it’s milled only a day or two prior to my baking, so it’s my husband’s and my neighbors’ wheat that goes into my creations.”

    

even her chocolate chip supplier is from pennsylvania. and now her rhubarb—for rhubarb and strawberry-rhubarb pies !—is within grabbing distance, planted by a devoted husband whose family goes back 8 generations in these parts. the definition of love, said fisher, “is the fact that he grew this rhubarb for me.”

    

bbbc goods are found locally six months out of every year.

    

visit this inspiringly palate-savvy pie and cookie-swept scene online by searching for bbbc on facebook and at www.blackbuggybakingcompany.com.

( boyertown community library’s director spills a page about this treasure of a resource )

( boyertown community library’s director spills 

a page about this treasure of a resource )

by jennifer hetrick

    

the year 1989 marked something integral in boyertown—it is when a community library brushed into the zip code.

     

two years ago, mark sullivan took over as the boyertown community library’s director after earning his master’s degree in library science in 2004 and working for several years in lehigh county’s library system.

     

a reflection of the community is what sullivan considers the library in how its staff tries to shape it in the community, including of course an angle of usefulness as its main element.

“each of the berks county libraries is independent, but we work together,” sullivan explained.

     

“anyone outside of the county has to become a member of their home library first,” sullivan said, “and then, they are allowed to become a member of ours.”

     

“we try to reflect the needs of the community, which is one of the reasons we became a passport processing facility,” sullivan said about one of the library’s unique attributes when so few places today offer passport services.

     

free use of computers is another well-utilized characteristic of the library with its computer room in the middle of the building, even in 2011, of all years.

     

"i think it’d probably be surprising to many people—how many others out there don’t have ready access to the internet," sullivan said. "in a time when most job applications have to be done online, the library offering computer usage is becoming more and more valuable."

     

the library has more than 70,000 visits per year, with that number certainly including repeat patrons. its system boasts of around 9,100 active members, meaning those who have used their library cards within the past three years.

     

berks county also offers a loan system where users at any library can request books from others, and they are shipped to a patron’s home library within just days, at no charge.

        

it costs the library about $250,000 each year to pay for staff, new materials, and general operating expenses. with budget cuts from the state recently taking a toll on local libraries, sullivan hosted a first major fundraiser in 2010 with the goal of gathering $10,000 to put toward the budget.

     

in the end, $14,000 had been raised, and sullivan said he couldn't believe at first that the number was definitely accurate.

     

"the people who use the library the most have opened up their wallets," sullivan said, noting that patrons who regularly use the library are incredibly dedicated to supporting it. "there really were not that many large donations— most were $25 or $50 each."

     

besides offering reading time to pre-schoolers and school-aged children, along with parenting classes and much more, the boyertown community library has one of the most successful summer reading programs in the county.

     

sullivan collects donated prizes from businesses along the main street in town to use as giveaways for those participating in the summer reading program. this summer’s theme for readers is one world, many stories for a multicultural delve into appreciating the lives, experiences, and perspectives of those perched across the globe.

     

a unique new asset at the library is a guys read club, which is for boys between the ages of five and nine, and dads are welcome to join.

     

“it is part of our mission to encourage children to read and make them lifelong readers and learners,” sullivan said about kids and the importance of honing a reverence for books early in life, adding that the reading programs are always full. “the way you do that is to make the library an inviting place that they’ll continue to come back to, taking on a life of its own.”

     

search for the library on facebook and twitter. 

also visit them online at www.berks.lib.pa.us/boyertowncl.

( mooing & more for the good of a firehouse )

mooing & more for the good of a firehouse

by jennifer hetrick

    

what better way to spend a saturday in the finally warm weather of spring than waiting for a cow to do its business in the hope that you might win money, if the final plop lands squarely in your favor ?

     

this is something volunteers from ruscombmanor township fire company are setting into motion may 7 from 12 to 7 p.m. in efforts to fundraise for the nonprofit emergency services agency along pricetown road in fleetwood, berks county.

around 10 to 15 volunteers from the ruscombmanor fire department are working together on this cow-inspired fundraiser, a first of its kind at the firehouse.

     

vice president and assistant fire chief eric fox explained that a semi-newer member of the fire company, alan shinkus, moved here from the coal region where his former fire department held a greatly-praised and enjoyed cow chip bingo fundraiser in the past. with this prospect in mind, the chuckles bubbling from all directions for those listening to talks of the event, the fundraiser seemed well worth trying in little old berks county.

     

cow chip bingo, otherwise sometimes called cow pie bingo, is an outdoor game where a field has squared off blocks measured out, and people buy a ticket for one open slot. a well-fed cow is brought out onto the field, and wherever its eventual poop plops, the person who had that block wins the game. if the final winning marker lands across one or more block edges, the one with three inches in diameter wins the top prize.

     

blocks are two-feet square, with the field’s span in the game measuring to 40-feet-by-100-feet.

     

in the event that a cow can’t make bathroom rounds on the field, a backup cow will be ready for grazing the grass.

     

the two cows offering their services are from earl hafer & sons farm in douglassville, while a temporary fence to keep the cows in line is being donated by amity fence in muhlenberg.

     

the first prize is $1,000 while the second is $750 and the third is $250.

     

tickets for each block are $10 a piece, with some still for sale. blocks in this case are called deeds. those buying tickets will be known as landowners. in addition to a small block per deed, tickets also include one burger or hot dog and a drink.

    

landowners don’t need to be present to win the big money involved, but a special door prize winner will be announced at 5.00 p.m., and in that case, the winner does need to be present.

     

but aside from the main event at the fundraiser, live music is expected to be a part of the day along with pottery time at a small charge for kids, through clayote, a gallery and studio in boyertown. more food and bevvies will also be up for grabs.

     

volunteers with the fire company began selling deeds in the cold of winter, with more than half sold.

     

besides watching the cows, eating a bit, doing clay, and listening to sly tunes, some games will also be a part of the mix at this fundraiser.

     

fox said he and his fellow fire company volunteers are excited to test out the proverbial waters of a new, unexpected kind of fundraiser this spring. while volunteer fire companies generally always need to fundraise in their communities to keep their budgets going well, this is especially all the more crucial for them in a time when they are required to comply with a slow to happen radio system mandated upgrade at the county level, with most new equipment costing departments easily into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    

and with this event, fox said he is happy to be able to bring such a festive and unlikely new element to the local landscape for a day in worthy support of the fire company where they average around 200 to 250 calls of service per year to area communities.

     

to find out more, visit www.ruscombmanorfire.com and search for them on facebook. 

news, not blues volume twenty is mostly out !

news, not blues volume twenty, featuring talk of pie intended for humans and then a whole other kind, involving cows, a field, and yelling bingo, is mostly out ! 

our douglassville drop-off sites is in waiting, but look for copies soon ! 

pets-ercise brings wholesome care straight to your fur kids.

pets-ercise

tara honey is a professional pet sitter based in barto, pennsylvania.

visit taraspetsitting.com & be sure to check out her blog for animal companion-smart tips & insight.

( the whims of weaving )

the whims of weaving

by jennifer hetrick

decades ago, boyertown resident diane kennedy hadn’t guessed that she’d one day be weaving her way through life one basket at a time.

    

today, kennedy’s baskets have sold locally and shipped across state lines.

     

but to suspect or assume that her basketry is anything remotely ordinary is a mistake because her pieces set themselves apart from commonplace baskets, clearly redefining what weaved pieces can be when someone practicing a specialty craft moves away from the followed norms.

     

kennedy’s baskets take on a more organic form both in shape and also in inspiration by way of the materials she uses. a good portion of what she incorporates into her baskets comes from her own backyard, while she orders in reed supplies from the country seat in kempton.

what originally sparked kennedy’s curiosity in basketry is her earl township home which sat covered in vines when she purchased it in the late 1970s. an acquaintance jokingly suggested she strip down the house’s invasive plant collection, then using it to weave baskets. but she took the recommendation seriously, signing up for a basket-weaving class soon after, and since then, she hasn’t looked back.

    

her time spent in a studio at goggleworks led her to start realizing the potential of her art taking on unexpected final looks, trusting herself, slowly losing the structural constraint of staying in line with commonly practiced basketry.

     

“my dad used to own an alternator & starter business,” kennedy said, noting that she weaved abandoned materials from his shed into one of her baskets.

“normally, i would never have used metals and car parts in a basket,” kennedy said. the piece sold right away at a show.

     

kennedy is a member of the reading-berks guild of craftsmen and sells her pieces at shows but also ships them across the country when people from far off places set up orders with her.

     

“there is no basket that can be made completely by a machine. every basket was made by someone and has a story or a history,” kennedy said with passion in her voice.

     

“i see patterns in the woods,” kennedy said about walks with her dogs or time spent hiking. “sometimes, i’ll see a form in a piece of bark or wood, and i can see the basket right away.”

( garlic baskets are one of diane kennedy's specialties )

“when i go to try to create it though, it doesn’t always turn out that way,” kennedy said, “and that’s what’s so fascinating about working with wild materials too, that you can’t control it—they are wild and often have their own ideas.”

honeysuckle, grapevine, wisteria, and willow are climbing plants she uses once in a while in her final basketry samplings.

in some pieces, she incorporates exotic materials like date palm branches and fruit stock, coconut fiber, dracaena draco, and philodendron sheath.

     

with the therapeutic angles of what she does, kennedy sometimes weaves out her life in baskets after losing a loved one or close friend. she calls them life baskets, not to sell but to work through her own grief.

      

with the pieces she makes, kennedy said it’s very important to her that baskets are useful and functional. she also said that if handled well, they can last forever.

     

“a good rule of thumb is that anything that can be wrapped around your wrist can be weaved into a basket,” kennedy said.

     

onion and black walnut husks boiled, sitting for a while, are what she uses as stains on baskets. a single black walnut tree in her yard keeps her supply plentiful.

     

“art really does come in all different forms—i see it in the most common of things,” she concluded. “you need to believe you are an artist.”

the 15th & 16th of october in 2011 mark the dates for the pennysylvania guild of craftsmen's  fine craft festival in blue bell at montgomery county community college. admission is $7 for adults and free for members & children. hours are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on sunday.

     

to reach kennedy about her basketry, call 610.689.9887 and check out her other work on flickr.com by searching basketry by diane kennedy.

&&&

to enter for a chance to win one of diane kennedy's garlic baskets (seen above), comment below. please include your e-mail address in the comment. this contest ends sunday, the 10th of april. good luck !

( art as work: students learn about the bigger-career picture )

art as work: students learn 

about the bigger-career picture

by jennifer hetrick

last fall, we featured boyertown junior high west’s art teacher stephanie stamm in her efforts to whisk art professionals into her classroom for students to meet and learn from about the real work world. in light of stamm continuing to bring this exceptional opportunity to her students, news, not blues will be highlighting her classroom visits periodically throughout the year.

     

among the slew of varying artists boyertown junior high west art teacher stephanie stamm reels into her classroom for students to meet throughout an academic year,  one whose work particularly piqued teenage curiosity this past march is children’s author, illustrator, and calligrapher carol haile of wyomissing.

     

having published a handful of her own books by now, haile is also a graduate of boyertown area high school, which made her visit to junior high students all the more special during her later winter guest appearance.

     

she has four published books, two of which she illustrated herself, the princess tree (2005) and elephant overboard ! (2007), and a fifth is in the making as an alphabet book starring berk county's own moo-happy cow supply.

     

looking back at the evolution of her writing, haile gleaned that she didn’t necessarily expect to one day be penning children’s books, handling their artwork too.

     

"i wrote prolifically while i was a student in boyertown and enjoyed seeing my byline in newspapers and magazines," haile said. "i never thought of writing a book particularly."

"books were mysterious things to me," hail said, "and i was having enough difficulty getting my work published as it was."

     

"i had accumulated enough rejection slips to wallpaper a gymnasium," haile joked in earnest.

     

after collaborating on a book with freiman stoltzfus who left the country for a time to be in venice, haile felt anxious to attempt another. her editor sam keiser encouraged her to further pursue a story she had started about two pandas who take a trip on an infamous ark. eventually, a dream vacation came to life on the book market in all of its 32 pages, with illustrations handled by robert miller.

     

the princess tree takes place in olde ireland. haile had trouble finding an illustrator for it who would know the literal depiction of the story as well as she knew it inside, and so she finally decided to pursue the illustrations on her own.

     

"i approached the artwork as a calligrapher and quickly discovered that an illustrator had been lurking within me all along," haile explained.

     

"she was so joyful and positive, and so complementary of the boyertown area school district," stamm said about haile. "she stressed how lucky the students were to go here."

( all photographs are a kind courtesy of stephanie stamm )

     

while talking about her books, haile gave students an introspective look at her publishing process, ideas, illustrating endeavors and even a thoroughly detailed history of writing and calligraphy, stamm said.

     

"i tremendously enjoy visiting schools and sharing my work with students," haile said, reflecting on her visit. "i tell them to study hard and move forward armed with lots of knowledge—and then, when the opportunities present themselves, grab them." 

visit carol's website at www.caroljhaile.com.