Op-Ed

June 20, 2008
Mark D. Schwartz

Tasha Tudor's death last week brought to mind the tangible benefits of living off the grid. Perhaps the world's most famous children's book illustrator and author of approximately 100 works, Tasha truly lived a life which was the reincarnation of an earlier existence centered in the early 1800s.

Her Vermont farmhouse near Brattleboro was built by a son to replicate a late 1700's structure. This one-man job complete with chicken coop, goat pasture, and separate wing for white doves was completed without the use of one nail by a son who worked while chanting Shakespeare or Chaucer from memory. Well into her eighties Tasha remained proudly self-reliant, not simply with respect to her literary output, but also planting some 3,000 bulbs per season using an iron watering bucket (that this writer half her age couldn't handle) , harvesting vegetables, making cheese and tending to her animals, all in her bare feet, weather cooperating.

Reaching 80 or so, she stopped carrying her beech bark canoe to the not-so-nearby lake and gave it, along with hundreds of period piece dresses to the Smithsonian. She also began to give up some of the farm chores, choosing instead to trade some of what she did raise for other staples at the Brattleboro food co-op. She was a sight there.

Companionship for her consisted of her characters, her corgi dogs, her birds, and "Chick-a-hominy" her best pet rooster. Life experiences came from raising her family, tending her splendid garden or writing and reading in several rooms that were right out of the 19th century. A glaring exception to the décor was that portable phone on a wall filled with scrawled numbers. I could always envision her doing an ad for AT&T on that phone, while wearing the flowing shawl and 1800s garb, gabbing away with Chick-a-hominy on her lap next to the crackling cast iron stove. Maybe they would film that lined, but still impish and always smiling face, framed in the kitchen window while washing dishes in a copper basin next to the hand pump.

She lacked, a Blackberry, cell phone, computer, record player, television, CNN, "Entertainment Tonight" or a radio. Time was spent scrambling to pay for her family from the books written that came from games and characters invented to entertain them. It didn't come easily. Books read consisted of volumes of the classics passed down from her ancestors. The most modern author was Hawthorne. She never had on hand a collection of her own books or her illustrated editions of "Mother Goose", "The Night before Christmas" and "The Secret Garden". They were simply her work. She felt that she was neither an author nor an artist.

I can well imagine her answers to present day issues which occupy all too many of us for far too much time. They conversation might go something like this:

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"Tasha, who do you like in the election, Obama or McCain? "

"What election? Who are they ?"

"You know there is an election every four years"

"Oh dear, I haven't ever followed elections. I let those things take care of themselves."

When I mentioned presidents I think she had a recollection of Roosevelt; but couldn't remember whether it was good or bad. She certainly hadn't heard of Bill Clinton during his presidency. In retrospect, what she accomplished as a single supporting parent makes Hilary's self-touted "breaking of the glass ceiling" pale by comparison.

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"What about your thoughts of weapons of mass destruction and the war?"

"The deer onslaughts on my garden seem to be more brazen every year. I got a good shot off at them several weeks ago, but my nearest neighbor complained to the police, worrying about my shooting. What nerve! I'm a better shot than those police boys and they know it."

"War…… What war? The only war I really know anything about is the one my great-great grandfather fought in. He was George Washington's adjutant general. His musket is over the hearth."

"But what of the wars since? Surely you've heard of WW I, WWI, Korea, Vietnam?"

"I heard something about them. Its all little boys. Little boys are always fighting about something or other. They grow into men and that's how you get wars. It is all senseless repetition. I spend my time with my garden and my animals. They get along famously and I much prefer their company.

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"What about the latest on Britney Spears' downfall?

"I didn't know that Brittany fell. I'm sure my relative Frederic Tudor, otherwise known as the Boston Ice King passed through there. He was the first to harvest and ship ice to the West Indies, Europe and China from Walden and other ponds near Cambridge, Massachusetts. That tea set in the cupboard over there came back as ballast on one of his sailing vessels returning from China. Brittany is a lovely province on a peninsula between the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. ."

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"Have you heard of what happened to Governor Elliott Spitzer?"

"Now that's a great name for a character: I imagine a mischievous freckle-faced boy with glasses carrying a watering-pail and spilling wherever he goes?"

"Sounds like him..."

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This brings me to the question I've thought of since meeting and representing Tasha Tudor about a decade ago. What would we do with the time and resources that Tasha Tudor used and without those she chose to forego?

In the final analysis what stands the test of time? "Mother Goose", "Pumpkin Moonshine", "The Night Before Christmas", "The Corgiville Fair" and "The Secret Garden" trump this Presidential election, the Clintons, Britney, and Elliot. Her work will prevail over the electronic onslaught of content-less content that fills our lives. There might be something said for those thousands of fans who emulate her lifestyle.

PS. It occurs to me that Tasha might not chose to read what is set forth herein, as newsprint was meant only to line those bird cages of hers wherever she is; hopefully happy and back in the early 1800s.