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Ann
This piece was sent out to Summer House Soaps customers in November, 2023.
A few years back, I read an article in the Boston Globe about a new ramen restaurant in Davis Square which, according to the Globe food critic, “put impermanence at the center of the ramen experience.” When the restaurant opened, the chef/owner declared it would operate for just 1000 days, and then it would close. Over the counter, there was a sign with the countdown.
The owner explained, “It is very important to have an end to things. A person’s life is limited. Setting an end to things makes you focus on what you’re doing now.”
When I read the article, I thought, WOW! What a cool thing to do!
When we closed our store and production space in January 2021 and brought the business back into the barn, I envisioned running it for three more years, or roughly 1000 days. Those days have gone by quickly, but my sense that it was time for a life change hasn’t left. I feel the truth of impermanence, of the limited time I have left to do a few more things in life while I’m able. Some of those things I already know about, and some will no doubt emerge from the big open space I’m creating. It’s uncharted territory – a bit scary and a bit exciting!
I’m proud of what we’ve created over the past 25 years, and immensely grateful to our team and our supportive customer base. It’s been wonderful having this vehicle for sharing my creativity, my love of soap and scents, and my observations about life with all of you.
It’s possible that, in the future, something different might bloom out of what we’ve created and nurtured – who knows? But Summer House Soaps as it currently exists will be closing.
What to expect: We’ll be operating normally through December, with the usual holiday promotions. There will be a store-wide closing sale beginning in January.
But if you have favorites, don’t wait till then, as they may be sold out.
For obvious reasons we’ve stopped selling gift cards, and I encourage anyone who has one to use it before the end of December. If for some reason you’d prefer a refund, let me know.
Sending my deepest gratitude to all of you. Without you, none of this would have been possible.
Warmly,
Ann
My garden is coming back!
Like many of you, I planted a vegetable garden this spring. It was a a joy and a solace during the months of shutdown to see seedlings sprout and grow. By June it was flourishing, the best garden I’ve had in years.
Then, about two weeks ago I came home to a scene of massive destruction. Pea tendrils had been ripped off the trellis, bean plants mowed down, and the beautiful leafy swiss chard had been stripped down to the spines. The only plants that were spared were the tomatoes and eggplant. The garden had been trashed on a scale that could only mean a groundhog.
PA! GET THE SHOTGUN!
Not really, but every time thereafter when I saw the fat groundhog grazing in our yard, I aimed my finger and pulled the trigger. BANG! Take that!
Once I could bring myself to return to the garden, I reinforced the fences and hoped for the best. But I know that in battles between humans and groundhogs, the humans usually lose.
Still, lo and behold, the plants are recovering, leafing back out from their roots, bringing forth new blossoms that may in time turn into peas and beans.
It may not last, but for now it’s a nice metaphor for renewal out of devastation, something that we all wish for in the months ahead.
While on vacation recently with my friend Barby, we talked a lot about Face Book. For Barby, it’s an important part of her life, a way of keeping in touch with friends from afar.
I, however, have been a late arrival to the social media party. As recently as a year ago, I would say, “I’m on my computer all day long in my business. The LAST thing I feel like doing when I get home is to sit at the computer.”
Duh! Only recently did it dawn on me that most people weren’t scrolling though their news feeds while sitting at a desk – they were doing it on their phones, anywhere and everywhere! Which, as everyone knows, is more comfortable and fun. It doesn’t feel like an extension of work at all.
So during the past year, my phone has slowly evolved from a practical tool to a dispenser of tasty tidbits for my mind, to be enjoyed whenever there was a pause in my schedule. This shift has been accelerated by the political mayhem of the past year. No matter where I was, I felt the need to check my phone to see what was NEW. And oh boy! There was a lot of NEW every day!
But even though I was checking the news constantly and dabbling with Instagram, I hadn’t yet embraced Face Book. Now I’m glad that I never got hooked. With all the bad press that Face Book has been getting recently, many people are trying to leave Face Book, or at least take a break. And they are finding it very, very hard.
This from Globe correspondent Michael Andor Brodeur:
Search “quitting social media” and you’ll find pages and pages of brave souls chronicling their journeys into darkness as though they were wandering naked into the Amazon or lowering themselves into a well….My own breaks from social media have been characterized by long conscious bouts of distraction, frustration, impatience, and that most contemporary of insecurities, FOMA – fear of missing out.
As a meditator, I’m well aware of my own small addictions – cravings for sugar, distraction, entertainment, and confirmation of my own world views. They are endless, and can do real harm. I’m not smug…I’m as susceptible to little hits of dopamine as anyone, and there countless highly-paid individuals out there whose job is to ensure we stay addicted. Now I’m scared to go anywhere near FaceBook.
But it’s not easy to resist. (Even as I write this, I feel my iPhone beckoning to me.)
When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water. ~Benjamin Franklin
I’ve done a fair amount of traveling to places where you should never, ever drink the water that comes out of the tap. Usually there’s bottled water available, but it takes vigilance to remember to use it every time you brush your teeth – a single lapse, and you could spend the next two days on the can.
Ice is also suspect. I tend to make a case by case decision about ice in my drinks. Sometimes it’s worth living dangerously to have a frozen margarita.
I came back from a vacation in Mexico last week, and the first few times I turned on a faucet, I was astonished to think that all the water rushing down the drain was potable. Every drop of the water we use to shower, to flush the toilet, wash our clothes and water the lawn has been purified to be safe for drinking. That means that the average U.S. household uses over 400 gallons of clean drinking water a day!
Doesn’t that seem crazy wasteful!?
On Cape Cod, we don’t have the kind of severe droughts that afflict much of the world, so It’s easy to take our clean, abundant water for granted. But that’s not the way most of the world works. And not taking things for granted is important if we want to change the way we impact the earth.
This Earth Day, I’m committing to being more mindful of the worth of water. If you’d like to join me in reducing your water waste, consider the following:
1. Shower bucket. Instead of letting the water pour down the drain, stick a bucket under the faucet while you wait for your shower water to heat up. You can use the water for flushing the toilet or watering your plants.
2. Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth. Water comes out of the average faucet at 2.5 gallons per minute. Don’t let that water go down the drain while you brush! Turn off the faucet after you wet your brush, and leave it off until it’s time to rinse.
3. Turn off the tap while washing your hands. Do you need the water to run while you’re scrubbing your hands? Save a few gallons of water and turn the faucet off after you wet your hands until you need to rinse.
4. If It’s yellow, let it mellow. This tip might not be for everyone, but the toilet is one of the most water-intensive fixtures in the house. Do you need to flush every time?
6. Re-use your pasta cooking liquid. Instead of dumping that water down the drain, try draining your pasta water into a large pot. Once it cools, you can use it to water your plants. Just make sure you wait, because if you dump that boiling water on your plants, you might harm them.
7. Head to the car wash. If you feel compelled to wash your car, take it to a car wash that recycles the water, rather than washing at home with the hose.
8. Cut your showers short. Older shower heads can use as much as 5 gallons of water per minute. Speed things up in the shower for some serious water savings. And do you really need to shower daily? Skipping even one shower a week makes a difference.
9. Choose efficient fixtures. Aerating your faucets, investing in a low-flow toilet, choosing efficient shower heads, and opting for a Water Sense rated dishwasher and washing machine can add up to big water savings.
10. Use less electricity. Power plants use thousands of gallons of water to cool. Do your part to conserve power, and you’re indirectly saving water, too!
The blissful bungalows at Petite Lafitte, just north of Playa Del Carmen.
Valladolid, a classic colonial town.
Chichen Itza, a 35 peso ride from town by the collectiva van.
Casa San Roques in Valladolid, one block off the town square.
Cenote Jaci, just two blocks from our hotel.
Till next time!
I think most of us want to be Irish today, and not for the green beer. There’s a mystique to the Irish character that draws us.
Although I’m a quarter Irish, I’ve only been to Ireland once, ten years ago with my son Alex. I remember whitewashed cottages and emerald hills dotted with sheep, dark cliffs plunging down to the sea, and evenings spent drinking Guinness to the rolling rhythm of Irish pipes.
But the most memorable part of the trip was the afternoon we spent with Bernie.
Alex and I showed up unannounced on Bernie’s doorstep in the town of Dingle. When Bernie answered our knock – a bright-eyed gentleman in his mid-70s wearing a rumpled tweed jacket – I explained that my sister had hired him as a tour guide a few years earlier and she urged me to look him up when I was in town.
Bernie said he could probably arrange something for that very afternoon. Since he was about to go to the pub for lunch, he suggested we join him. He grabbed his cap and headed briskly down the hill, already beginning to weave a mesmerizing tapestry of stories drawn from the history, myths, plants, animals, faeries and politics of the region – a flow of stories that didn’t stop for six hours.
A friend of his who owned a cab was recruited to be our driver. They took us to ancient cemeteries and crumbling ruins overlooking the sea. It began to rain lightly, but we kept going. They loved to talk about their corner of Ireland, and all we had to do was keep up with them and offer our delighted attention.
Eventually, we were back in town, warming up over cups of tea in a small cafe, and our companions were still bantering and spinning improbable yarns. “This is what they mean about Irish men!” I thought, remembering the blarney stone and all the characters I’d met in books, brimming with charm and passion and darkness.
Frank Delany wrote, We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth…We love the “story” part of the word “history,” and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes, observe a Celtic scroll: we always decorate our essence.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote, To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.
I suppose the heartbreak flows from a history fraught with destitution and oppression. But to be able to turn that into color and exuberance, humor and creativity? Wonderful!
Today is day five of being sick. I’m coming out the other end, though I know the effects (bronchitis, cold sores) will linger for weeks. Still, I’m grateful for the opportunity it’s imposed upon me to “put it all down” for a few days. Illness, in its acute phase, is one of the few things strong enough to silence my incessant To Do mind. During the sickest days, illness insists I just be a body, even a suffering one, napping and breathing and occasionally getting up for a piece of toast.
One morning, I had just stepped out of the shower when a wave of dizziness and nausea came over me, demanding that I go lie down RIGHT NOW! Wait!! Let me towel off first! But my body would have none of that, so I staggered across the hall and put my dripping chilly body under the covers till the feeling passed.
Now, as I begin to feel better and clearer of head, it’s easy to think I have the energy to tackle some small projects. I mean, what is unexpected at-home time for? But the supply of energy is very limited, and I quickly hit the wall.
I have to admit that there’s something I love about this process. Maybe it’s because my day to day life is so out of balance. I mean, what does it say when I look forward to surgical anesthesia because it seems like one of the rare times I really rest?
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I also want to thank my immune system for the fine job it’s been doing. I know it’s never a given that the battle will go my way. The virus, which probably arrived as a small raiding party that landed in my nose, proliferated quickly and swept through my body like Hitler’s forces sweeping across Europe and North Africa. (The rapidity and breadth of that sweep was one of the horribly dazzling take-aways from my visit to the World War II Museum in New Orleans.) Soon the battle was being waged on many fronts, hence the headaches, chest spasms, woozy stomach, low grade fever, and general feeling of having weights attached to my limbs.
Clearly now, the tide has turned, stability is being restored, and we’re mostly dealing with a cleanup operation. If I were a general, I would send the troops home on leave with a ration of whisky.
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Between naps, I’ve been reading I Contain Multitudes, which is about the microbes within us. I should mention that the author, Ed Yong, takes issue with applying military metaphors to the immune system. What’s happening is far more subtle and complex. He says the immune system is more like a team of rangers carefully managing a national park, only the control flows in both directions as the immune system manages the microbes and the microbes manage the immune system.
There’s so much in this book! Read it if you want to know who/what you are.
New Orleans is a hazy fever dream of a city, with a history as winding and arabesque as the stretch of the Mississippi River Delta upon which it sits. ~ Todd Plummer
It’s a glorious September weekend here on Cape Cod, which feels a little incongruous when disaster is raining down in so many places – hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, fires gone wild.
Perhaps nature is telling us something. Something like, You do not control me. Or maybe, You cannot ignore me.
How often we ignore the natural world, treating it as a scenic backdrop to our human-centric busyness. Or treating it as simply a resource from which to extract whatever we need to sustain our standard of living. Our 24-hour lighting and climate-controlled buildings supports this confidence that nature is under our control. Things like sharks and earthquakes and hurricane only show up in the movies. Except in times like this.
I’m not saying that nature is a pissed-off Mother who is trying to teach us a lesson. (That’s just another view that puts us in the center of the universe.) If anything, natural disasters show us that we are not the end all and be all. Our deep ancestors knew their place in the scheme of things. Right now we could use a little of their wisdom, their humility.
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