“Often, the story of an artifact’s journey is more remarkable than the object itself.”
― Mackenzie Finklea, Beyond the Halls: An Insider’s Guide to Loving Museums

Provenance is the history or source of something. Most often, the word is used in reference to valued objects, pieces of art work or literature. It’s the work of those who buy and sell fine art, antiques, and manuscripts to determine the provenance of each piece, for its value is dependent on its authenticity. Imagine investing in a Francis Cook Mahogany Bombé Slant-Front Desk (c. 1770) for a cool $698,500 only to discover it’s really a clever reproduction (c. 1975). As an antiques dealer, you’d have a lot of egg on your face (and a reputation to repair).

As Mackenzie Finklea claims, however, it’s truly the story of an artifact’s journey that may become more remarkable than the object itself. For the story opens portals into the past where we may enter the lives and times which shape our heritage. And how do you begin to put a price on this?

As a teen, I recall watching my mother clean a piece of used aluminum foil and fold it into a neat square which she tucked in the drawer beside the stove. I’d seen her do this countless times before and had unthinkingly registered it as the thing to do. Years later–and after I’d salvaged many pieces of aluminum foil in my own kitchen–I asked my mother why we did this. Why save pieces of aluminum foil, when in truth, we were only saving pennies? Over coffee at her table, she explained that she saved because her mother and grandmother did, because aluminum was scarce and rationed during the Depression and both World Wars.

Here is the provenance then: from times of want and the lives of women who’d persevered, women who made up the rich heritage of my family to me, a century later, a woman who’s experienced little real want. In the face of their trials, what have I persevered? How have I suffered want? Yet, I devotedly continue the practice of the women before me. And knowing the origin and history of this practice has made me more convicted to continue it. To abandon it would be to break the family chain of remarkable women who passionately made do.

And snow ice cream, that delectable concoction of snow, sugar and vanilla! My father’s love of snow ice cream began as a boy in his own family. Years later, he hauled in bowls heaped with snow to his eager children who waited at the kitchen table. Over the years, we modified the recipe, most notably by adding food coloring to give our treat some extra flair. My mother drew the line at using yellow food coloring, though, because she was always more than a little leery about where my dad had actually gotten the snow.

Today, his granddaughter makes snow ice cream for his great-grandchildren. And though the ice cream is still as good as we remember, it’s the story of the banned yellow food coloring that’s even better. It’s knowing that his great-grandchildren remember and love a man they’d had such little time with. The provenance of snow ice cream is a gift that keeps on giving.

Of course, like most families, we have heirlooms–pieces of furniture, china, art–that carry their own provenance, and some, their own actual monetary worth. I have one grandmother’s pink Depression glass cake plate and the other grandmother’s blue crystal powder box. My siblings, too, have pieces rich in family history. Those pieces that mean the most to us are those whose provenance includes an experience: baking, fishing, eating holiday meals, spending summer vacations with grandparents. When we look at these pieces, we journey back to those relationships and experiences which have immeasureably shaped our lives.

In my last post, I quoted from Robert Frost’s poem, “Birches.” He writes that swinging on birch branches is good both going and coming back. So it is in the sanctuary of provenance. It’s good to go back to the origin of a thing or experience, to understand and appreciate it. But it’s also good to come back, bringing this knowledge and appreciation with you, hoping to push it solidly into the future where it might continue to encourage and shape those who will inherit it.

Provenance

Why do you do this?
my daughter asks.

I’m wiping clean a piece of used aluminum foil,
then folding it into a neat square 
to be stacked with others in the drawer near the stove.
My hands know the way
and make quick work of it.
My heart, too, knows the way
as I remember the words of my mother 

who saves foil still—
as if this is a lesson all must learn,
as if the economy of the world rests on this.

Why do you do this?
As a girl, I asked my mother 
when she patted shiny squares of foil where they sat—
as they always had—
beside assorted pencils and pens, a box of sandwich bags 
and a new roll of aluminum foil,
round and royal, nestled on a throne 
of hot pads.

To make do, she says.

And she tells me of the years 
her mother and grandmother suffered 
though the Depression and both World Wars. 

So, today, I tell my daughter:
We do this because your grandmother and great-grandmother
and great-great-grandmother did this,
because in a world of throw-aways, 
we remember a world of want,
because to make do
is to honor the women we love.

She looks out the window to the yard
as if the lean years wait there, 
crouched and urgent, in feed sack aprons.

And when she turns,
taking the foil into her own small hands,
she holds it like a prayer,
a provenance to live for. 

Shannon Vesely

I’d like to get away from earth awhile/ And then come back to it and begin over.
― Robert Frost “Birches”

As the polar vortex seizes the Midwest once again, frost reigns. Baby, it’s cold out there seems a wholly insufficient chorus for days when the wind chill never even breaks zero. Yet, as we hunker down and begin to count the days until spring, we might take solace in and wisdom from another Frost–Robert, that is.

I’m an unabashed fan of Robert Frost. My first real encounter with him was during music class in sixth-grade when we sang a musical version of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Even today, I can sing it and can hear the twelve-year-old voices (tethered to some semblance of tune with Miss Daniel’s magical pitch pipe) that filled the room at Park Elementary School. Whose woods these are, I think I know. . .

I had more serious encounters with Frost as an English major and poet in the 70s when the predominant culture and craft of poetry was free verse, a form that some poets and critics argued was, in reality, formless. Frost himself was no fan of free verse poetry, which, he claimed, was much like playing tennis without a net. Then–and now–I’ve straddled the prosodic line between traditional and free verse forms. I like both. I see and hear the craft of both. In my world, they live companionably in a space which respects and loves each for what it is.

But it’s the marriage of Frost’s delight and wisdom that might warm our souls as we bluster through these frigid weeks. In his poem, “Birches,” he writes of a boy who learns to ride birch trees which have been glazed with ice and bent to the frozen earth below. A “swinger of birches,” the boy “flung outward, feet first, with a swish,/ Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.” And when he’s “weary of considerations,” and “life is too much like a pathless wood,” he wishes that he just might escape it all by leaving earth for heaven. As the Omicron strain of Covid ravages our communities, I’m guessing that there are a lot of folks who’d like to “get away from earth awhile/And then come back to it to begin over.” If a cosmic do-over were possible, most of us would probably take it.

And yet, the boy’s joy in riding the birch trees towards heaven lands in Frost’s final wisdom:

Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

As an 18-year-old who couldn’t imagine leaving Earth which was absolutely “the right place for love,” I first read these lines in my freshman composition course. Today, as a seasoned 66-year-old, I cling to the wisdom of escape and return, the glorious awareness that “one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” Escape comes in many forms for us, some more healthy and positive than others. But it comes as a balm to our earth-weary souls for times such as this. It’s redemptive but temporary, Frost argues, for the “coming back” is necessary for us mortals. As I look out my window to the timber beyond, I can imagine “both going and coming back,” and, for today, this enough.

As the world seems to spin out of control–at least, out of our individual control–we also might take solace in these words from Robert Frost:

We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn’t overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.

Why not “make a little order where we are”? Sound advice for those of us who often feel the chaos pressing in. To “gain composure” through the small ways we order our lives–through baking or bird-watching or woodworking or scrapbooking–is truly something. Perhaps, in truth, it’s everything. For Frost (and for me), “Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.” But he understood that it isn’t the means of holding back the chaos, but the fact that we each find our own “little order” in something. When I’m writing or walking the country roads, I make my own order, one word and one step at a time.

I’ll leave you with this, a diamond in Frost’s jewel box of wisdom:

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

Whether I escape and come back or create a little order in a world of chaos, life goes on. There’s something comforting about this promise, for even when we’ve had dark days, a new, perhaps brighter (and warmer?) one, comes on its heels. Frost was a realist but still an optimist. Though he claimed to be one “acquainted with the night,” he was also a “swinger of birches,” momentarily escaping the darkness but always returning to the light. One could do worse.

Sinister (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

1: singularly evil or productive of evil

2: accompanied by or leading to disaster

3: presaging ill fortune or trouble

Sinister is clearly not a word that occurs naturally or frequently in everyday speech. It’s an exceptional word, a hushed-voice, dim-the-lights kind of word that raises the hairs on our arms, an Edgar Allen Poe inspired word that ushers us into the dark unknown. It conjures up silhouettes of terrifying figures that hold the road and tyrannize our dreams.

As exceptional as this word may be, I’ve seen it twice in the past few days: in Iowa Senator Jake’s Chapman’s claims regarding education and media influence and in Princeton Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s claims concerning classical education. Although both men use the same word, they speak from diametrically opposed perspectives and worldviews. Which begs the all-important question: sinister according to whom?

In her Des Moines Register opinion piece, Reka Bashu states that Chapman made what may be “the most inappropriate allegation you’ll ever hear from a public official” when he accused members of media and education of having “a sinister agenda to normalize sexually deviant behavior against our children, including pedophilia and incest.” According to Chapman, “some teachers are disguising sexually obscene material as desired subject matter and profess it has artistic and literary value.” In addition, he stated that members of our media “wish to confuse, misguide, and deceive us, calling what is good evil and evil good.”

Chapman expressed a concern that others have aired in school board meetings, local elections, and through social media. Specifically, those who share Chapman’s perspective raise questions and concerns regarding school library books and school curricula with themes that include gender identity and sexuality. Although Senator Chapman’s remarks have drawn the ire of many educators and media representatives who argue that the only sinister agenda is his and that of likeminded folks, there are also many who share his perspective on what is sinister and evil. If you were to ask these individuals to answer the question, sinister according to whom, they’d undoubtedly respond with a resounding: according to us, those who want to protect and promote what is good.

In Thomas Chatterton Williams’ recent article in The Atlantic, “The Battle Between Ideas and Identity,” he cites Rachel Posner’s article in The New York Times Magazine in which she discusses Princeton Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s mission “to save classics from whiteness.” Padilla explains that he “cringes” as he thinks back to his youth when he desired to be “transformed by the classical tradition.” He rues the tradition that introduced him to a formative textbook, How People Live in Ancient Greece and Rome, an experience which he now declares to be “a sinister encounter.” In his interview with Posner, he admitted that he isn’t proud of the fact that a classical education brought him out of poverty. “Claiming dignity within this sytem of structural oppression,” he said, “requires full buy-in into its logic valuation” and that he won’t “praise the architects of that trauma as having done right by you at the end.”

Although Professor Padilla Peralta’s criticism of a classical education and Great Books curriculum have angered those who find value in them, there are many who share his perspective that perpetuating this tradition is sinister. If you were to ask these people the question, sinister according to whom, they’d likewise respond with a resounding: according to us, those who seek to protect and promote what is good.

This is a dilemma, indeed. One group’s sinister is the other group’s good. Each group speaks passionately for its members. Each group advocates for the common good and sees clear, unmoveable fault lines between sinister and good. Each group has noble intentions, for the education and well-being of our citizens are at stake.

It goes without saying that social media is ablaze with comments and accusations from those who righteously denounce sinister agendas. The fervor and certainty of these posts are very similar, but the content and perspective are very different. When worldviews vary so greatly, who decides what’s sinister and what’s good? And who decides what the common good is?

To a great degree, I realize that I’m beating a dead horse. These educational questions are the same questions we’ve raised–and continue to raise–politically and culturally. We’ve been tossing them around for decades, each side lobbing rhetorical grenades at the other. We’ve been drawing and redrawing fault lines, defining and redefining what is right and good. Which brings us where, exactly?

I hope that it might at least bring us to the painful, but necessary, admission that we don’t–and most likely, won’t ever–share a wholly common perspective and definition of good and evil. I also hope that we might seriously consider a difficult question: When one group’s evil is another’s good, how do we proceed in making policy, deciding curriculum, and generally navigating our world?

In Farewell Waltz, Czech novelist Milan Kundera writes:

What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for order. Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which everything goes well, everything functions as a subject of an impersonal will.

Kundera’s claim that those driven to sinister occupations (or perhaps sinister agendas) are motivated by the desire for order is insightful, I think. Historically, one group’s good has always been another group’s sinister. Perhaps all groups have been driven, at least to some degree, by their desire to create order where they see chaos, to create a world in which everything goes well.

At this point, a truly wise writer would conclude with solutions and answers to the questions I’ve raised. Forgive me. I’m not that wise writer. I can, however, leave you with this. When worldviews vary so greatly, we must continue to ask when–and if–we can justifiably compromise. We must truthfully count the costs: of conceding, of compromising, and of refusing to compromise. And always, we must intentionally seek to understand those we believe hold sinister agendas.

Two Wild Turkeys
    for my mother and father

On a branch from a dead tree that lies horizontally
to the snow-covered earth below,
two wild turkeys roost.

They hunker down,
their dark bodies cocoon against the north wind
into the warmth of each other.

And the branch that is so slender 
it floats mere inches above the ground
holds.

Can you see how their tail feathers dust the snow,
how they will soon lean into the moonless night, suspended
and coupled in this wild and lovely place?

Once so sharply silhouetted against the snow,
now their shapes sink into the dusk
and when I look out my window,
I see one—not two.

Later when I dream,
even the stones mate for life.