All Entries in the "Left in Andover" Category
Left in Andover: A potter turns toward reality
By Susan Leader ©2020 Telegraph Publishing LLC This is Part II of a two-part story on my journeys with pottery. Last week: Pottery as a spiritual pursuit My original plan to take the Hippie Trail home across India through Afghanistan to the Middle East and thence back to the USA lost its appeal after my […]
Left in Andover: Pottery as a spiritual pursuit
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC I divide my 51 years as a potter into several different stages. What started out as a spiritual experience for me at age 17 morphed into a much more mundane, “of this earth-ly world” career. This is Part I of a two-part story. Next week, Part II: On […]
Left in Andover: The canopy over his head
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC The box containing Dad’s cremated remains sat under the eaves at Popplewood for two whole years before we figured out what to do with them His instructions to “dump me on the compost pile” seemed crude if not illegal. But Dad’s opposition to the funeral industry left few […]
Left in Andover: Steering toward the good life
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC I treasure Simple Food for the Good Life, the 1982 non-cookbook by Helen Nearing (1904-1995), not for its recipes, but as a reminder of how fortunate I am to live in an era when women have the freedom to choose how much of their lives to invest in […]
Left in Andover: A whipping to end whippings
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC Compiling her “Vermont Historical Gazetteer,” Abby Maria Hemenway (1828-1890) enlisted the elders of each Vermont town and city to provide historical material, which she then edited and published from 1861 until her death. The section titled “The Local History of ANDOVER, VT.” (1886) includes a primary source contribution […]
Left in Andover: A long Thanksgiving walk
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC The Sunday before Thanksgiving, 1975, my dad and I set out for an adventure hitchhiking from Andover to Bennington, then onwards to Albany, N.Y., to visit Cousin Frances who had invited us to stay at her house overnight. The weather was mild for that time of year, and […]
Left in Andover: Martha’s life of faith and family
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC Eight-year-old Martha Hennessy learned of the assassination of JFK standing in line at Perkinsville Elementary School. Fifty-seven years later, the Vermont native and grandmother of eight recalls: “That same year, 1963, we were still having duck-and-cover air raid drills because of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the perceived […]
Left in Andover: Taking the wheel, and a ticket home
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC Although Dana-san, the boss, had given me permission to work on the potters wheel, no one actually “taught” me. One learned by doing, in this land where questions as such were just not asked. I was assigned my own wooden kick wheel, the concrete base of which was […]
Left in Andover: The push to learn in Japan
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC The downside of securing an apprenticeship at the Ogami Pottery was that I could no longer freely visit the other workshops in Tachikui village without feeling like a traitor. Wherever I wandered, workers quizzed me as to how the Ogamis did things: What tools and techniques did they […]
Left in Andover: Transformation in Japan
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC In 1979 I resettled permanently on our family land in Andover with my life partner-to-be, fiddle player John Specker, my long held dream of establishing a family run pottery upmost in mind. John had recently come to southern Vermont from Ithaca, N.Y., where his bowing, singing and rhythmic […]
Left in Andover: Discovering pottery in Japan
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC When I started college at Antioch in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in the summer of 1969, it was an era when all the rules were being broken. I was desperate to create my own young adult identity. But it was disorienting to go from a very structured high school […]
Left in Andover: Finding the Promised Land
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC In 1942, at the age of 21, my mother was determined to escape her urban New York life. “The superficial, merry-go-round life of the city is hateful to me,” she wrote. “I want to get away from it and remain close to the soil. You are holding a […]
Left in Andover: Following the golden thread
By Susan Leader © 2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC A sermon by the distinguished guest preacher the Rev. Roland T. Heacock, presented at Simonsville Church in the summer of 1966, was instructive as to how to live a righteous life. The imagery was striking in his “Golden Thread” sermon: “I am giving you a thread, a […]
Left in Andover: Keeping up with Anne Mausolff
By Susan Leader 2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC While visiting Middletown Cemetery in Andover this summer, I met a man paying his respects to his dad and son, whose ashes he had scattered guerrilla-style between two boulders where were no gravestones. Both had loved roaming nearby Markham Mountain to hunt, though neither had ever lived in […]
Left in Andover: Warp, weft and spinning a life
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC In the late 1960s and 1970s, when I viewed “dropping out” as a viable career option, I wrestled with what version of the Age of Aquarius would be right for me. I toyed with creating my own clothes, the goal being to make myself independent of the exploitation […]
Left in Andover: An oasis in our food deserts
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC My father Herbert Leader (1917-1988), self-described “Bennington boy,” recollected driving out to the surrounding countryside as a small child with his father: “Pappa used to take the horse and wagon around the countryside, a rabbi from Slonim looking out for his flock. Sometimes he’d take me along and […]
Left in Andover: Apple picking plants seeds for lifetime of growth
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC In 1978 my mother, Miriam Leader, wrote, “I search the reddened cheeks of a Northern Spy, my daughter’s cheeks rosy as she picked it … I am becoming greedy of those times.” I have no desire to reprise my time as a professional, seasonal orchard worker throughout my […]
Left in Andover: The Coolidge connection
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC As a young child I used to hike up Weston Road with my mother to Middletown Cemetery, where we enjoyed trying to figure out the stories behind the gravestone inscriptions. What triple misfortune befell the Chandler family, summers end, 1839? Even the ministrations of Dr. Charles Chandler, husband […]
Left in Andover: A bit of Hetty Green in Weston
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC In 1966, I inherited my older sister’s job as a housekeeper at the newly rebuilt Weston Playhouse, designed by architect and esteemed native son Ray Austin. What I most dreaded was cleaning the toilets. Luckily for me, all the bathroom fixtures in the upstairs actors’ quarters were still […]
Left in Andover: Finding our place in France
By Susan Leader ©2019 Telegraph Publishing LLC Late August 1963, stranded in Helsinki, my family and I explored the city, subsisting on hearty black bread, figs and sour yogurt from an open air market. A family living near the Olympic Stadium rented us the dining room of their mansion, outfitted with five beds. An overly […]
