Happy Birthday Linda! - Printable Version

Happy Birthday Linda! - Printable Version

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RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - Linda Anderson - 05-20-2014 07:59 AM

Congratulations, Dawn! It's wonderful that you read such great poetry to your "babies." Frost "had been up the entire night writing the long poem "New Hampshire" and had finally finished when he realized morning had come. He went out to view the sunrise and suddenly got the idea for "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".[1] He wrote the new poem 'about the snowy evening and the little horse as if I'd had a hallucination' in just 'a few minutes without strain.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stopping_by_Woods_on_a_Snowy_Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - Eva Elisabeth - 05-20-2014 10:28 AM

Here Robert Frost himself reads it:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hfOxdZfo0gs

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - HerbS - 05-20-2014 11:00 AM

Linda,Pullman Island and Castle Rest are the same Island.Yes,I have been there,and so was RTL.[Jason Emerson's book refers to his visit]-Herb

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - Linda Anderson - 05-20-2014 11:42 AM

Thanks, Eva. There is a whole room dedicated to "Stopping by Woods" in the Shaftsbury house. It's reassuring to know that even though Frost says the poem came to him in a hallucination, he did revise it.

Castle Rest looks like a beautiful place to visit, Herb. Here are two articles about it.

"Castle Rest and its original boathouse were also tragically lost in the '50s when short-sighted officials refused to relent on property taxes despite post-Depression realities." - See more at: http://www.thousandislandslife.com/BackIssues/Archive/tabid/393/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/628/Castle-Rest-Past-and-Present.aspx#sthash.ZBOwCyYI.dpuf

http://www.thousandislandslife.com/BackIssues/Archive/tabid/393/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/341/Castle-Rest-Its-story.aspx

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - Linda Anderson - 05-24-2014 03:36 PM

Here are the photos I took at Hildene and the Robert Frost Stone House Museum.

FRONT VIEW OF HILDENE

ROBERT FROST HOUSE FRONT VIEW

ROBERT FROST HOUSE BACK VIEW

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - RJNorton - 05-24-2014 03:55 PM

Linda, thank you for sharing your photos!

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - HerbS - 05-24-2014 04:56 PM

Absolutly Fantastic!

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - Linda Anderson - 05-24-2014 05:37 PM

Yes, it was a beautiful day. Thank you, Roger, for posting them for me. I have a few more to add if you don't mind.

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - Eva Elisabeth - 05-24-2014 06:15 PM

Great photos, Linda! Hildene looks like a king's castle rather than a civilian's private home. I hope you'll share some more!
Was Frost's house originally thatched? (Because of the half-hipped roof over the entrance, this is typical for straw roof houses as it enables the house to be evacuated in case of fire without burning thatch falling on the escaping occupants.)

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - Linda Anderson - 05-24-2014 08:51 PM

(05-24-2014 06:15 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote: Great photos, Linda! Hildene looks like a king's castle rather than a civilian's private home. I hope you'll share some more!
Was Frost's house originally thatched? (Because of the half-hipped roof over the entrance, this is typical for straw roof houses as it enables the house to be evacuated in case of fire without burning thatch falling on the escaping occupants.)

Thanks for pointing that out, Eva. I don't know if it was originally thatched. Here's what I found on their website.

"Built c. 1769, the house was considered historic before the Frost period. It is a rare example of colonial architecture made of native stone and timber. It has changed little since Frost's time and remains in excellent condition. The house sits on 7 acres and features many Frostian associations including stone walls, birch trees, a timbered barn and some of Frost's original apple trees. Many poignant episodes in Frost's life happened in this house."

http://www.frostfriends.org/

I have some beer in my refrigerator that is called "Two Roads." On the top it says "The Road Less Traveled."

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - BettyO - 05-24-2014 10:00 PM

Thanks, Linda!

Beautiful photos and you had beautiful weather to boot, it appears!

The back of Robert Frost's house almost appears like someone took the Surratt House and modified it with a 1920s style house around it....

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - Eva Elisabeth - 05-24-2014 10:23 PM

Maybe due to the red color? I once asked Laurie about the color used to paint the Surratt House because it looks the same as the color used for Scandinavian wooden houses. The red color comes from the copper and the iron the paint contains to preserve the wood. If I remember correctly, the Surratt House color had similar "ingredients".

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falu_red

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - LincolnToddFan - 05-24-2014 11:59 PM

Oh God...Hildene is almost making my mouth water. It's beautiful!

Thanks Linda and Roger!

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - L Verge - 05-25-2014 02:09 PM

The story of the Yankee Red Surratt House is this: We are fortunate in that the house was lived in consistently from 1852 until 1968, and so was fairly well taken care of until its last few years. Much of the weatherboarding was original, so a preservation paint analysis was done to determine the original color. This was done on the exterior as well as the interior. Some of the interior rooms had as many as fourteen layers of paint (and even if painted the same color over and over, layers of dirt will distinguish one paint job from another when a slice of plaster is removed for study).

In the case of the exterior, the last layer of paint against the raw wood was what is termed red oxide. It was typical barn primer paint in the earlier centuries. Later in the summer of 1865, a newspaper reporter rode out from D.C. to write about a church camp meeting at what is now Camp Springs, Maryland, (home to Joint Base Andrews and the Presidential fleet). He knew that he was close to Surrattsville, so he rode about three more miles south to see the infamous Surratt House. He described seeing a big, red barn in the distance, but as he came closer, he realized that it was the house itself.

Mr. Surratt had the house built and lived in it until his death in 1862; but because of his poor management of finances, he never finished paying the Calverts for the land or the carpenter (Jeremiah Townshend, who had also built the Huntt house) for all his labors. He also owed debts to Andrew Kaldenbach, who had built other outbuildings on the farm, as well as various merchants in D.C. We can only speculate that there wasn't enough money to go around, so the house never got finishing coats of paint.

By the 1870s, however, it became traditional Southern Maryland white with dark (usually green) shutters. It also had a long front porch added to replace the small stoop at the front door. When restoration began, the porch was torn away -- and the oldtimers of the town had a heart attack! When we painted it Yankee Red, they rose up yelling and screaming that we had destroyed their landmark. The 1865 newspaper article helped as did the 1867 sketch of the house that appeared in Leslie's during the trial of John, Jr.

About 25 years ago, we gave them another scare. We have a hard time keeping paint on the house, especially the front, which faces west and gets all the afternoon sun as well as car exhausts from the nearby road and intersection. We called upon a consultant with Benjamin Moore Paints, and it was decided that at some point in its life, the old house had been painted with a cheap paint - probably containing lime, like whitewash.

This time, the house got a chemical wash and then a very strong primer paint. That primer was Pepto Bismol pink! It is a big house, and that made for a big blob of pink stuck at the intersection of two heavily-traveled roads for all to see. One person accosted me in the grocery store and demanded to know if we were going to leave it that color. By that time, I was used to explaining and said cheerfully, "Yes, we painted it to match the plastic flamingos we are going to add to the front lawn." Luckily, they laughed.

RE: Happy Birthday Linda! - brtmchl - 05-25-2014 10:05 PM

Happy Birthday Linda. I hope you had a wonderful day.