childhood memories

Helena Clare Pittman, one of the Center’s most dedicated teachers, has written, painted, and taught her entire life. In her monthly Helena Writes series, she shares a lifetime of wisdom, one pearl at a time.

In her 71st post, Helena offers a dozen sensory vignettes from her summer camp experiences. Enjoy!

 

Sullivan County

 

I was fascinated by the Amish and the picture I took, with my eyes, and all my senses, the clop clopping of the horses, their smell...

Someone’s singing in the basement. Annie hears it through the floor and feels it in her feet when she puts them on the floor to pull on her slippers...

In her 44th post, Helena Clare Pittman tells the second part of her March story of adolescent rebellion.

My older sister, Jolene, was the ringleader in our sister group. It was a group of only us two...We were an organism. Where did she stop and I begin? I can't find a fixed edge...

The bears are asleep now that the temperature has dipped into the single digits, nights in these foothills of the Catskill Mountains. So, I’ve put out the bird feeders. I acquired this wisdom soon after coming here 23 years ago, when my sturdy feeder, made so that squirrels couldn’t chew it through, disappeared...

One of the things I love to paint in my long lineup Still Life paintings is a group of vintage cans I’ve accumulated—tobacco cans, powder cans, baking powder cans. I love the look of their graphics, their beautiful colors, and the way they remind me of another time: childhood...

Many years ago, my sister and I went on a house tour, a walking exploration of some of the great old houses in Oyster Bay, on Long Island, the peninsula that extends east from New York Harbor, sitting in the Great South Bay where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. The house tour was something I was less interested in than was my sister, but it was a way for us to spend time together...