Their stop has a bench.

But I had to stand and wait.

The bus was on time.

Grandma Rachel

I remember nothing
Just the shifting
Memories and rumors
Never in your own voice.

Now I am my father
A boy of eight
Watching a stolen kiss,
A note passed between you

Or Pop-pop, losing you
But not caring
“Just take her, you damn fool!”
Turning his eyes away.

My father, again, grown
And unfaithful
Asking who to blame
For his wandering ways.

"We like the name Rachel"
I tell my mom
“No. Anything but that.”
The stain never fades.

I wonder who you were.
What did you want?
Did you ever love them?
Did they ever love you enough?

The story, as much as I know:

My grandfather was married at 21 and widower five years later. Within a year, he married his 18-year-old housekeeper and printing apprentice, Rachel. They had two sons, Joseph (1916) and my father, Robert (1921). She had at least three affairs before she left the family in 1929 with the man who would become her second husband. My father remembered seeing them in a passionate kiss and later finding a note from her lover in her apron pocket. When Bob Hanby asked my grandfather to give Rachel a divorce and threatened to kill himself, Pop-pop famously said “Go ahead, you damn fool.”

Rachel was divorced in 1934, but did not marry Bob Hanby until 1942. I found them in the 1950 census, when she was 53 and he was 37. Yes, she had run off with a teenager when she was in her early thirties. By 1952 Bob Hanby was dead and she was staying with us, trying to mend her relationship with her only surviving son. Joseph had died in a car accident in 1941, along with his girlfriend, leaving behind a wife and four children under the age of six. What a family, right? Rachel married a third time, and survived him, too.

When I was little, I felt pretty special, having three grandmothers and three grandfathers. (Sometimes I even cheated by claiming poor Emma, Pop-pop’s first wife.) But the truth is, with all those grandparents, I barely knew any of them. and thanks to Ancestry, I know Rachel well enough to wonder if Pop-pop was really my grandfather.

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How do the major fibers compare, environmentally?

Cotton and wool account for about 30% of our clothing

Cotton has both positive and negative environmental impacts. While it is a natural and biodegradable fiber, its production is water-intensive and often involves the use of harmful pesticides, leading to soil degradation and water pollution. Decomposes in 1 week to 5 months.

Wool has some environmental benefits as a natural and renewable material, but its production also contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane from sheep. Overall, the environmental impact of wool can be considerable, making it less eco-friendly than commonly perceived. Decomposes in 1 to 5 years.

Synthetic and manufactured fibers account for about 65% of our clothing. They typically decompose in 20 to 200 years.

Polyester is generally not good for the environment as it is made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource, and is not biodegradable, taking hundreds of years to decompose. Additionally, its production and disposal can lead to pollution and the release of microplastics into ecosystems.

Acrylic is generally not good for the environment due to its energy-intensive production process, release of microplastics during washing, and the fact that it is non-biodegradable. Additionally, the chemicals used in its manufacturing can pose health risks to communities near production sites.

Rayon is often marketed as eco-friendly because it is made from natural materials like bamboo or wood pulp, but its production process is chemically intensive and can lead to deforestation and environmental harm. Overall, rayon scores low on sustainability due to its negative impact on ecosystems and the use of toxic chemicals in manufacturing.

Is “bamboo” fabric eco-friendly?

From the Federal Trade Commission website:

“Bamboo is a plant that grows quickly with little or no pesticides, is known for its strength, and is sometimes used in eco-friendly products. But when it’s processed into fabric that’s advertised as “soft,” “silky,” or “cool to the touch,” it has likely been turned into rayon or viscose using toxic chemicals. This process is far from eco-friendly, and the fabric that it creates may not be better for the environment than other types of fabric.”

What can we do, as consumers?

The uncomfortable truth is that overconsumption is a major factor in climate change. We buy much more clothing today than we did a generation ago, and too much of it is “fast”, disposable fashion. If we define “sustainable fashion” as made of particular fibers but still ready for Goodwill in a few months, we are deluding ourselves.

Rather than predict the future, I’d like to offer my vision for my personal sustainable wardrobe.

• 80% of my clothing would be good-quality mass-produced basics, made by fairly paid workers, using environmentally sound materials and methods

• The rest of my wardrobe would be artisan-made, either by me (in my ample free time, ha ha!) or a fairly-paid craftsperson.

In addition, the fashion industry needs to provide:

• Robust textile products recycling systems, including refashioning, second-hand clothing and raw material recycling similar to existing paper, metal and plastic systems.

• Clothing rental programs for expensive, little-worn items -- wedding dresses, formals, high-end maternity wear.

• better labeling so consumers could easily identify green, ethical and fair trade products.

What YOU can do!

In a nutshell, Buy less, wash it less often, wear it longer.

• When possible, buy fibers that are produced sustainability

  • Premium fibers like Pima cotton, cashmere, merino wool cost more, but last longer

  • Organic fibers (Look for certification; “natural” is a meaningless term.)

  • Recycled fibers (yes, even polyester is being recycled)

  • “Closed loop” fibers (lyocell, modal)

• Buy classics, not trends

• Wash clothes less often (90% of plastic microfibers come from home laundering!)

• Dispose responsibly (sell, donate, recycle*, upcycle, swap with friends)

*Many large retailers have initiated textile recycling programs. For more information, see https://www.moneycrashers.com/retailers-recycle-clothes-money/

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Dear Substack, 

I have been told that Substack is not for blogs. 
Substack, I hear, is for short stories, journalism, personal essays, and poetry. 
Pictures of your dog or cat, in moderation. But not blogs. 

So consider this a letter. (I think letters are OK here.)
I miss writing letters. 
I miss getting letters, so I write them. 
Sometimes my friends answer, but usually they don’t. 
And when they do, they apologize for not answering for so long.

I also miss walking by a trashcan and seeing a duffel bag and not thinking about bombs. 
I also miss looking forward to Memorial Day concerts and Fourth of July parades. 
I miss the arts, especially arts about D, E and I. 
I miss riding the Metro and seeing people talking to each other or reading books. 
I miss this cousin and that friend and those neighbors who can’t talk to me anymore because I’m too “woke”. 

I miss shopping for new clothes twice a year because that’s when the new collections came out not just in Paris, but in Sears, too. 
And the real Filene’s Basement.
I miss my fabulous fabric store. And record stores. And bookstores. 
Especially the ones all on the same block.

Love,
Jo

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Challenging Times

I am a butterfly in a spring snowstorm
I am a cherry tree blooming in a tornado
delicate, beautiful, gone

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I met Mrs. E.J. Cogswell in 2016. I was spending nearly a month in my girlhood hometown, North Platte, Nebraska, my first visit to that high plains outpost in over sixty years. It sounds deeper than it actually was, but I was trying to figure out who I would be if my family hadn’t moved to New Jersey when I was eight. Would I have married my second grade boyfriend? Would I still be going to the Evangelical Lutheran Church on 5th street? I’ve been UU for half my life, and if there was one thing I didn’t expect to find in North Platte, it was another Unitarian Universalist.

Then one morning, I was at the town library, and noticed a large sepia photo on the wall. It had been taken in 1875 from the roof of the Pawnee Hotel, the tallest building in town, then as now. And there, on that blurry photograph was a small label denoting a building near the center of town as “Unitarian Church”. I had to know more, so down the rabbit hole I went. A few hours and several rolls of microfilm later, I had a name: Mrs. E.J. Cogswell. This is the story of what I’ve found, so far. It’s fragmentary and incomplete, and I am still looking for more. This report is offered in the hope of finding new paths that would lead me back to Emily Johnson Cogswell’s mission to North Platte, Nebraska.

Emily Johnson was born in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1818, the third of four daughters. She graduated from Framingham Normal School in 1841 and taught there briefly. In 1850, at the rather advanced age of 32, she married William Cogswell; they had one child, William J. Cogswell, in 1853, who died in infancy. The 1855 Massachusetts census found the couple sharing a home with her mother and her younger sister Susan Johnson Tuttle and her family. Four years later, at the age of forty-one, she was widowed when William Cogswell died of tuberculosis. Within a few more years, her mother died as well. In 1866 she began teaching French and mathematics at Dio Lewis’s School for Young Ladies in Lexington. The school burned to the ground a year later.

Up to that point, Emily Johnson Cogswell’s life was rather unremarkable. She had a bit more education than most women like her, and also a bit more bad fortune. An ordinary ending to her story would find her living with one of her three married sisters, helping with the housekeeping and child care. But she didn’t. In 1868, Emily got on a train and headed west, literally to the end of the line, to the brand new state of Nebraska, to a railroad town at the confluence of the North and South Platte Rivers, midway horizontally and vertically between Omaha and Denver.

She made this journey a year before the transcontinental railroad was completed. North Platte had been the “end of the line” from the east since 1866, when conflicts with the local Pawnee and Sioux had stalled work on the tracks. The first commercial buildings were just being erected when Emily Cogswell stepped off the train and established a Unitarian fellowship in a log cabin near the station. This was one year before the incorporation of First Unitarian Church in Omaha, which has the distinction of being the oldest congregation in the state. In fact, Massachusetts teacher and minister Joseph Henry Allen also went to Nebraska in 1868, meeting with the group that was organizing the Omaha church. He wrote to a friend that he had planned “to go out a few hundred miles” but decided against it because “the expense is heavy and the way excessively monotonous and dreary, by all accounts.” But Emily, we now know, persisted.

Over the next thirty years, Emily Cogswell worked doggedly to establish and maintain what came to be called “the North Platte mission”. She was a regular attendee at Western Unitarian Conference meetings, and when she could not attend, she sent reports. She also returned home to Lexington at least four times in the 1870s and 1880s to raise funds and solicit donations of books and other goods for North Platte. She was able to attract ordained ministers to North Platte on occasion, but rarely for more than a Sunday service. The lone exception was Rev. Anna Norris, the longest-serving minister in North Platte. A member of the “Iowa Sisterhood”, Norris graduated from Meadville Theological School and served the North Platte fellowship on a circuit for three years, before moving on to Colorado and planting Foothills Unitarian Church in Fort Collins. In her book Prophetic Sisterhood, Cynthia Grant Tucker describes her as “a marginal figure”, but Norris and the Rev. Mary Leggett were quite active in the High Plains for many years. Enoch Powell wrote about her work in Unity, calling her “the brave little woman preacher”. She left more of a written record than Emily Cogswell, corresponding with Unity and also writing regular columns for two of the local North Platte newspapers.

For most of the thirty years she was in Nebraska, Emily Cogswell served as an unordained minister, giving sermons, teaching Sunday school, and conducting funeral services. She supported herself by teaching music and is listed in the 1870 census as a teacher. Besides the monies raised by her Lexington parties, the Fellowship was funded by rentals (theatrical and musical events, and even the entire 8th grade class, for one school year). There was also modest income from boarders staying in what was called in one report “the parsonage”. In her late seventies and in failing health, she returned to her home in Lexington and died there in 1897. The North Platte fellowship disbanded in the early twentieth century, the building was sold, and eventually was demolished.

In the summer of 2019 I spent some time at the Andover Harvard Theological Library looking for traces of Emily in the correspondence of Boston area ministers known to have sent parishioners or donations to her fundraising events. These included such luminaries of the movement as Minot Judson Savage, minister of the Church of the Unity, and Edward Augustus Horton, minister of Second Church in Boston. Edward Everett Hale’s correspondence included the ministers of the Lexington church, one of whom, Carleton Staples, led me back to the Western Unitarian Conference and helped me understand some of the conflicts between the New England-based church and the more progressive, humanist-leaning Unitarians in the west. I caught glimpses of Emily Cogswell in these letters and in the reports that appeared in Unity, the Western Conference’s publication. They mention her work, and occasionally even refer to her by name.

For all this information, I still have so many questions about Emily Cogswell and about the North Platte fellowship. Where did Emily get the idea to head to Nebraska, in the first place? Was she inspired, for example, by a visitor to Lexington who spoke about going west? How did she finance her journey? What messages did Cogswell, Norris and preachers bring to North Platte? Was her theology influenced by the Western Unitarian conference, and if so, how and when? How involved was the Lexington church in her efforts, beyond her occasional fundraising visits? 

There is at least one more visit to Lexington to be arranged; I cling to the fond hope that one of Emily Cogswell’s sisters might have living descendants, the sort of people who would hang on to letters from a great-great aunt. I am also destined to return to North Platte to track down some of the other lay leaders who worked with Emily Cogswell and who kept the struggling fellowship going after her death. 

The archives of the The Western Unitarian Conference seem to be a promising source; the conference secretary, John Effinger, preached in North Platte, and perhaps his correspondence will tell me more about that group and its activities.

Maybe someone reading these words has come across Mrs. E. J. Cogswell, too, or someone like her. It seems unlikely that she was unique. I would not be surprised if we learn that message of liberal faith was carried across the United States by many such uncredentialed evangelists. 

And now she’s a poem:

Brave Emily: A True Story

Emily Cogswell (born 1818) having just turned fifty,
Stepped on a train and traveled west.

Leaving behind her (dead) infant son, her (dead) husband, and her (recently dead) mother.
Even the school where she taught French and mathematics to young ladies lay in ashes.

So Emily Cogswell hugged her sisters,
Stepped on a train and traveled west.

Sister Mary shook her head.
“Always so headstrong,” she whispered.

Sister Maria nodded, wiping away a tear.
“Even as a child, determined to have her way.”

Susan, the youngest, had opinions, too.
“She’ll be back within the year.”

Emily Cogswell stepped on a train and traveled west. And stayed.

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Go ahead and patch that hole.
Artistic mending can't hide the torn places, though
Bright stitches will make them pretty.
The broken threads have not healed.
Mending is not forgetting.
But go ahead, my dear, and patch it anyway.

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I could focus on an orange
but the yarn in my hands
also has a story.

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My father sang love songs, but not to her.
Today I saw her face as if for the first time -
waiting for the other shoe to fall
and fall
and fall.

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Monday blues haiku

Tinking* that headband
Tinking my last 5,000 words
Tinking my taxes.

*“Tink” means unknitting.

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The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell. Don’t go back to sleep.

- Rumi

I thought I was awake.
A stranger came to me, looking for a wife.
He was kindly-looking and lonely
I was married, with two children.
Of course I said yes
Packed my things
We drove to his house
(Conveniently near my church)
We slept apart that night.
I woke the next day
Remembering what I left behind
Especially the half jar of refrigerator oatmeal
We drove back in silence.
I ate my oatmeal, all five of us sitting at the table.
My daughter asked how long I’d be away.
Until the baby comes, he said.
“Dude”
(Said my son)
“She’s seventy-five”.

2/12/2026, about 5:30 AM

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When I hear that tune,
I feel the fiddle in my hands
Though I laid down my bow
So long ago.

The story: I have a playlist that winds me down at bedtime. Just now, for the first time in never, it served up “Ashokan Farewell”, the haunting theme song for Ken Burns’ Civil War series. It just about broke my heart to hear it. It was the reason I took up violin in my forties, and one of the first pieces I memorized. I’d taken piano lessons as a girl, but that instrument always felt…distant, so separate from me. My fiddle was part of me; the vibrations ran from fingers to hand to body right into my soul. I played for not quite fifteen years, mostly with a very amateur Celtic band, and it was a dream come true to watch people waltz as we played “Ashokan Farewell”

Then one weekend, in a pickup football game, I caught the ball wrong and broke a finger, right at the top joint. It never healed right. I tried to regain my grip for months, squeezing every exercise device I could find. I joked that I would never make it to Carnegie Hall now. I donated the fiddle to the local high school. I learned to say “I used to” and not sound sad.

But tonight, as I turned down the covers, I heard it again, and remembered.

https://youtu.be/2kZASM8OX7s?si=0VvLG2VXWRSH68qV

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It seemed like a good idea at the time. Solomon, the bar mitzvah boy, suggested that we invite all the ancestors who were the first to set foot in the United States. “Unusual! Creative! Fun!”, we thought. The research was already done, thanks to Ancestry.com. We had a good time making the list and creating fanciful formal invitations.

But then they actually showed up. I can’t explain how they did it, so I won’t try, but believe me, they did. One by one, twenty-six strange-looking people walked into the ballroom. Dressed in clothing from four different centuries, they smiled uncertainly and waited to be seated. But where? And how?

Two extra tables for twelve were quickly located and set up. It made sense to deal with the largest groups first. Eleven English-speaking guests (from Canada, Ireland and England) got the first table. Easy. Then we guided the five Germans and Austrians to a second, then added the Italians (just four of them!), and the three Russians for an even dozen. That left just Max Rottersman (arrived in 1923 from Poland) and Hans Mansson (1641, Sweden). Maybe we could just intersperse them with the other guests - but no! Max wanted to sit with the four other Yiddish-speakers, away from the goyim. The Protestant and Catholic Germans refused to sit together. One of the Russians turned out to be German, too, but no one understood his peculiar dialect.

In the meantime at the “English” table, religious conflict was breaking out between the Anglicans and the Catholics, and the two Methodists were just sitting there looking awkward. Surveying all the chaos was poor Hans Mansson, dressed in his seventeenth century breeches and armor, not understanding a word and just looking for an open seat.

He spotted Solomon and his face brightened. Moving quickly to the head table, he commandeered a seat next to his red-headed ninth great-grandson and shook his hand. Within minutes, they were joined by Johannes Schneider (1857, Bavaria) and both of the William Howleys (Ireland and Canada, around 1865). Looking around, all five of them laughed. Five different countries, over four hundred years. All red-heads.

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New Year’s Day 2018

A new day, a new year. 
Watching the squirrels in my yard,
	glad that someone feels frisky.
My brain is full of mud and snot,
	eyelids are glued together
My nose is running. 
What a beginning. 

New Year’s Eve 2019

Just in time, a star,
high above the naked trees.
Wish for better times.

Packing list for the coming year

For the journey ahead
We will need supplies.
Sturdy shoes
clean dry socks 
layers for cold days and hot.

Plenty of trail mix
A little sweetness
Lots of crunchy, salty bits

Some company, of course
And music:
A marching song
A spiritual
A lullaby
One step and then another.
Hoping for fine weather
And shelter when we need it.

1/1/2026

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In the beginning, there was a one year diary, the kind with a red vinyl cover and a key. I bought it for myself in November, 1964, beginning decades of journaling that produced several linear feet of notebooks filled with memories. About twenty years ago, I transcribed it onto a blog for the edification and amusement of my adult children and their friends. Then in November, 2022, it moved to Substack, under the title “23 Sherwood Drive” (my address when I first wrote in the red diary). That’s when the real journey began.

The first year, it was just the entries from 1964-5, with clarifications and commentary. Then came a round of additions from all the other journals, turning the snapshot of my sixteenth year into a “core sample” of my entire life. But it didn’t feel linear; it was clearly a spiral. (Just like most of my journals.)

Last year, a friend gave me a beautiful journal, the kind with a five-year page for each day, and my daily notes have moved there, where they will remain private. But this Substack, this odd thing with over 100 subscribers (!) didn’t feel finished. I’ve spent the last year consolidating the entries into weekly chunks as a kind of archive for myself, while I figured out what comes next.

I used to plan my writing, and I did a lot of it. Some of it was inspired, but most of it was the kind of academic drudgery that professors must do in order not to “perish”. In my eight years of retirement, I have let go of that kind of “productivity”. This morning I spent two hours listening to music and tinking (unraveling) a huge shawl I made several years ago. I love the colors and texture, but the shape was all wrong. Now that beautiful but useless shawl is eight balls of beautiful yarn, ready for whatever.

If knitting is meditative, tinking is metaphysical. As I raveled and wound, I realized that the diaries are also ready for tinking and refashioning. There are stories to be retold in new ways, and fresh poems waiting to be written. The idea of a traditional memoir has never appealed to me; I have never written fashion history in chronological order, so why would I organize my own story that way? So Spiral Notebook will continue as an archive to be revisited and mined for new works.

I hope to publish something a few times a month, and always for free. I have enough yarn to occupy me for years, and I am a faithful patron of my local libraries for my reading, watching, and listening needs. Engagement and good conversation is all the paycheck I need, so feel free to save your tips and paid subscriptions for the many deserving writers and artists on Substack.

See you in 2026.

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I am ridiculously pleased with myself today, because I have finally overcome my impulse to rush through art projects. A pen and ink drawing on a 3x5 index card in half an hour? Sign me up. A week spent on a large painting? No, thank you. This makes no sense, because I knit. Not only have I produced large shawls that take months to finish, but I have spent hours (days!) unraveling projects that weren’t going well.

So this week, I took my time. I sketched, I experimented, I PLAYED until I felt done.

The final picture is satisfying, but nowhere near as satisfying as the time I spent creating it. Lesson learned.

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Just like starfish

“Doom scrolling again?

I like to think of it as doom strolling, just walking along on a warm, sunny beach.

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“But there are so many trolls and bots.”

<block>

I know.

<block>

They don’t even know you block them

I know.

<block>

But I know.

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12.18.2025