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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 2020)
B Tuesday, December 1, 2020 The Observer & Baker City Herald Traditional Boiled Cornbread Recipe AND SO IT GROWS CHRIS COLLINS COVID-19 even got in the way of fruit canning Best laid plans ... As I sat down to ponder the end of the fall harvest and the Thanksgiving holi- day, I began to wonder how many times I’d written a garden column that started with those three words. Not that many as it turns out. But this year, as we all can attest, has provided more apt circumstances than most to apply the phrase. My plans were well laid until many things in our world seemingly went awry. But as the growing season progressed, our garden was the least of those concerns. As usual, we grew a bumper crop of tomatoes, the harvest of Italian prunes from our backyard tree was one of the best we could remember and the green beans were bountiful as well. As our crops began to mature and I had placed an order with Eagle Creek Orchard for peaches to preserve, I began to gather supplies. Peach canning was set in stone for Labor Day weekend. The peaches were ordered, my canning assistant had set aside time for a long-awaited visit and I knew I had plenty of canning jars for the upcoming work session. See Canning/Page 2B BETWEEN THE ROWS WENDY SCHMIDT Gardens can help reduce stress levels It is understandable why many people do not have pets; they can be an irritation and a lot of work. Even so, people with pets live longer. It is heartbreaking that they have lives much shorter than ours. But no one has a guaranteed life span. Gardens are also precious and take on a sentimental meaning when part of the garden space becomes a cemetery for those family members that own part of our hearts. Creating a solemn area in a corner of your garden gives you a place for a bench or chair. A place for quiet contemplation, reading, and peace. It becomes a little private garden room; a space for remembrance, special plants, or statuary. Many churches and monasteries have areas set aside for quietness. Watching the movement of fi sh in a pond, birds at a feeder, butterfl ies on blossoms; all these bring us “back to nature” and give appreciation for the living world outside ourselves. The world is bigger than just us. See Gardens/Page 2B Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune-TNS Three Sisters Boiled Cornbread is a traditional Haudenosaunee recipe, shared here in honor of Native American Heritage Month. T HE T ASTES OF T RADITION ■ The Three Sisters features a trio of foods that are staples in many Indigenous cultures By Lauren J. Mapp The San Diego Union-Tribune As the late autumn air grows colder, I fi nd myself wanting to prepare corn, beans and squash more often as a way to connect to my Indigenous heritage. Known as the Three Sisters, they are food staples in many Indigenous cultures of the Western Hemisphere, including my own: the Kanien’keha:ka or Mohawk nation, part of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy of present-day New York and southeastern Canada. The prevalence of corn, beans and squash predates European contact, and their cre- ation is found in our traditional, oral origin stories. It is said that when the daughter of Skywoman (who fell from the sky and made our continent, known as Turtle Island) died during childbirth, fi ve plants grew where she was buried. From her heart grew strawber- ries; from her head, tobacco; corn from her breast; beans from her kidney; and squash from her navel. The Three Sisters are eaten in the long- house — the long, communal dwelling — at many of our Haudenosaunee ceremonies and festivals, including the O’rhotsheri (green bean), Okahsero:ta (green corn), Kanen’shon:a (seed) and Ka’khowanen (harvest) ceremonies. The longhouse, which was the multifamily clan living space for the Haudenosaunee in the time before European “The Three Sisters in the Mohawk language is Kiohehkwen, which literally means, ‘They give us life.’ ” can be a rare commodity during many grow- ing seasons, farmers may plant the Three Sisters in a sunken spot to help collect rain- water and dew to nourish the plants. Regions that typically experience excessive rainfall in — Lorraine Kaneratokwas Gray the summer — like the Northeastern states contact, is now predominantly used for cer- — would traditionally grow these plants in emonial purposes. mounds to keep the roots from getting over- Today, there are still many Haudenosaunee saturated and “drowning.” farmers who harvest the Three Sisters to- Some communities, like the Wampanoag gether using traditional, companion planting Nation of Massachusetts, place a fi sh in the techniques. Through companion planting, mound with the seeds as a fertilizer. When specifi c plants are grown together to produce the body of the fi sh deteriorates, the soil higher yields, better distribute nutrients and becomes fertilized as nitrogen is released. prevent soil erosion, among other benefi ts. Once the corn is fully grown, picked and The beans help convert atmospheric nitro- dried, it is later processed in one of two ways gen into a form in the soil that all the plants for eating. can use. The corn acts as a support for the The fi rst method traditionally involved beans to climb, and the broad squash leaves pounding the corn kernels using a large help maintain soil temperature and hold in mortar, made from a hollowed-out tree stump, moisture. and a pestle to break the dried kernels into My ista (mother), Lorraine Kaneratokwas corn fl our. I learned this traditional, albeit Gray, continues to grow these plants together labor-intensive process, during the summer of 2004, when I worked as a cultural interpreter on her farm in New Mexico. at what was then called Plimoth Plantation “The Three Sisters in the Mohawk lan- guage is Kiohehkwen, which literally means, in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The living his- tory museum, now renamed Plimoth Patuxet, ‘They give us life,’ ” Gray said. “That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Corn, beans and squash features reenactments of the English colony that sprang up there after colonists landed in — along with wild game, strawberries and 1620, and the Wampanoag tribe who already maple sap — were the main sustenance of lived there. the Mohawk people. Without them, there would be no life.” See Tradition/Page 2B In areas like the Southwest, where rainfall Exploring Sherry’s Theatre’s 2nd story By Ginny Mammen In our last article we exam- ined only the street level of the Sherry’s Theatre building at 1106 (B) Adams Ave. and those individuals who were involved with its history. With further research there seemed to be quite a story about the people of the second story of that building that needed to be shared. We begin in the fall of 1916. When the building was origi- nally constructed the intent was for the second fl oor to be used as a club room for the Moose Lodge. It is hard to identify just when the lodge moved out, but they had relocated to the top fl oor of the Foley Building across the street by 1916. In October of that year an advertisement “For Rent” appeared in The Observer. It was placed there by a young man named James Kapellas who ran the Cigar Store and Shine parlor next to Sherry’s Theatre. He had advertised “fi ne club rooms or lodge rooms; also dancing hall.” Either he was an impatient man or just a young 22-year-old entrepreneur full of ideas, we don’t know, but by the end of October an article in The Observer reported that the for- mer Moose Lodge was to be soon a new rooming house. It seems that James decided to lease the entire upper fl oor and create a “rooming house, equipped with a cozy lobby and all appurtenances for an up-to date establishment.” This was to be in addition to his Cigar store and Shine parlor. By the middle of November it was announced that the Kapel- las Brothers had opened a new hotel. This was the beginning of the Imperial Hotel in La Grande. For years the favorite hotel in Portland for La Grande visitors had been the Imperial and now La Grande had one of its own. There were “20 fi ne rooms, well heated, hot and cold water, electric lights, well furnished with baths, etc.” Larry Fry Collection See Sherry’s/Page 3B The Imperial Hotel opened in 1916.
