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About Applegater. (Jacksonville, OR) 2008-current | View Entire Issue (May 1, 2016)
Applegater Spring 2016 •••BIZ bits••• Welcome to BizBits, a section that highlights businesses new to the area, holding special events, or offering new products. If you are a business owner, please let us know when you move into the area or to a different location, hold a special event, expand your business, or mark a milestone. Email gater@applegater.org. • • • CrushPad Creamery. A recent venture of Wooldridge Creek Winery located on-site and offering homemade cheeses from both cow and goat milk, “ranging in style from soft and creamy to hard cheeses that are aged over one year.” 818 Slagle Creek Road, Grants Pass. Phone: 541-846-6364; www.wcwinery.com. • • • The Great Unbaked Raw Chocolate Factory & Unbakery. Opened late last year at 8880 Williams Highway, Unit B, Grants Pass/Murphy. Hours are 9 am to 4 pm, Monday through Thursday. Website: www.thegreatunbaked.com. Phone: 541-450-9080. See article by Laird Funk on page 12. 5 LEHI Pump Service, Inc., is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Their story in their words: It all started in our beautiful town of Applegate in 1976 with Les Hill (first generation). And because of you, our customers, the business grew. In 1979, Ron (second generation and Les’s son) joined the family business. Some years we barely kept it together, working day by day, month by month. But you kept calling. We greatly appreciate your support over the years, which allowed us to continue providing water to your homes and fields and adding Dustin (third generation, Ron’s son, and Les’s grandson) in 2000. Our goal is to continue providing our outstanding, loyal customers (without you, there would be no LEHI!) with knowledgeable, honest, reliable, and affordable water-well pump service for many years and generations to come. We are truly honored and blessed to have been a part of this great community and surrounding areas for 40 years! Thank you from the entire LEHI family. PS: If your pump is broken and you need it fixed, that’s what we’ve been doing since 1976. Call 541-846-6662. BOOKS & MOVIES — Books — The Witches Stacy Schiff The Mayflower landed on our eastern shores in 1620. Harvard College was established in 1636, and by the time of the 1692 infamous Salem witch trials, villages throughout Massachusetts Bay Colony were vying for Harvard’s theology- schooled clergymen. Harvard tuition was paid with wheat, butter, parsnips; a side of beef covered a year’s tuition. Laws requiring public grammar schools began in the 1640s, and ignorance was considered satanic. The ability to read the Bible was the crucial be-all of Puritan life. Schiff has stated in interviews that she loves to actually smell and touch original documents, and we readers are the lucky beneficiaries of her thorough research. For those who care, her 495-page book contains 67 pages of very small-print notes. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Ellis says about the book: “The Witches is the fullest and finest story ever told about Salem in 1692, and no one else could tell it with the otherworldly flair of Stacy Schiff.” Puritan life placed extreme emphasis—and I do mean extreme—upon sin and the devil, this in a feverish, small-town atmosphere where everyone knew everyone else’s every foible and failure. Even a bruise was considered a punishment from God or a “mark of the devil.” People not only gossiped about these things, but also pointed to them in church and prayer meetings, with accompanying ecclesiastical demands for punishments, apologies, and fines. Punishments, such as head and hands locked in the stocks, were severe, public, and humiliating. Though providing a very rural, small-town milieu, Massachusetts Bay Colony was a highly litigious society; neighbor sued neighbor for such as an errant pig in a garden. Combine this with the constant fear of Indian attacks, homes burned to the ground, women and children kidnapped while men were away serving as guards and fighters in Indian wars (ten percent of the male colonist population—including my eighth great-grandfather, Nathaniel Sutliff—was killed in King Phillip’s War of the 1670s), and you get an environment ripe for witch hunting. Schiff details much of this overburdening pressure and fear and much of the grinding hard work by all, including children, when she writes: “When she was not tending livestock, the garden or a fire, when she was not baking or candle-making, a Puritan girl was meant to be knitting, spooling, or weaving. A five-year-old could be relied upon to sew a counterpane or spin flax.” Bible quotations, interpreted as “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” were widely known and rigorously applied. The first two teenage girls to twitch and writhe, to moan and scream accusations were daughters of the Salem Village clergyman, Samuel Parris. Present in the Parris household was the slave, Tituba, brought by the family from the West Indies. She brought with her, and thus influenced the children with, that society’s beliefs in magic and spiritualism. The first person to be accused of being a witch by the teens had been a relatively well-off woman, Sarah Good, widowed and reduced to begging in a community where downward mobility was often considered suspect, a sign of God’s disfavor. When Good (and her five-year-old daughter) was turned away from neighborhood doors with less than she considered adequate, she was known to walk away mumbling and muttering—much to her detriment, as Cotton Mather wrote of murmuring as “the devil’s music.” The accusations snowballed in a community full of resentments, jealousies, and grudges. A culmination occurred in the severe winter of 1692, during which 14 women, five men, and two dogs were hanged (not burned as many believe) for witchcraft. Schiff details the overzealous and often inept proceedings, held in a bar, by a couple dozen men considered to be community leaders. Some were unschooled other than their autodidactic knowledge of their businesses, guard service, church, and other local activities. The Witches is an exposé to vex the image many of us have of the kindly Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie. It also should give moderns pause about preconceptions and judgements: 1692 Salem Village folk believed firmly in the imminent Apocalypse, in Satan, in hellfire—and in witches. They believed in conspiracies by the foreign swarthy men (the Native Americans), by an overweening government (Britain), and even by rumored unfair plans of neighboring towns and villages. Beware. Julia (Helm) Hoskins julmudgeon@aol.com Julia Helm Hoskins is the author of She Caves to Conquer, a novel set in the American Midwest and in southern Turkey. — Movies — Chocolat Binoche) and her young Reviewer rating: 5 Apples 1 Apple—Don’t bother daughter. Genre: Romantic 5 Apples—Don’t miss When comedy-drama Vianne opens PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned. a magical chocolate shop Some material may be inappropriate for during the week of Lent, children under 13.) it soon becomes clear Opened: December 2000 that this conservative Cast: Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, and rigid town is not a Johnny Depp, Alfred Molina good fit for her. While Director: Lasse Hallström the townspeople are understandably drawn to Vianne’s Chocolat is my go-to movie when I warm personality, her beauty, and her want the world to melt away and to get rich chocolate creations, she and the lost in something happy. Needless to say, town’s leader, Comte de Reynaud (Alfred I’ve probably seen this movie a dozen Molina) are instantly at odds. Right times, yet I never tire of it. about now, I have to pause the movie The movie opens in a small and to fetch a mug of rich, hot chocolate quaint provincial French town in the late because I know in the next scene that 1950s. A strong wind begins to blow and Vianne is going to pour a mugful ushers in a mysterious Vianne (Juliette of thick and creamy hot chocolate for a rebel townsperson (Judi Dench) and I won’t be able watch without drooling. And just when I think I can’t drool any more, in walks a handsome gypsy man named Roux (Johnny Depp). Need I say more? Again, I hit the pause button of my television remote to visit the pantry in search of leftover Christmas chocolates. I double-dog dare you to make it through this film without craving chocolate! Roux eventually becomes Vianne’s love interest, but because Roux is quite a free spirit, it is not without some effort on Vianne’s part. We are given the idea that Vianne, with her beauty, charm and chocolates, typically gets what she wants, but this town and this man prove to be a bit of a challenge for her. Her chocolates contain some magical powers, some of which have a very funny effect, while another manifests in a woman who needs courage to leave her abusive husband. There are some touching scenes where Vianne helps the woman—the film is not all about love and romance with Roux. Darn! Nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, this romantic comedy-drama is lusciously filmed and beautifully acted by the entire cast. I give it five out of five apples for its sweet, mysterious, and adventurous storytelling. It’s perfect for a cold, cloudy afternoon by the fire with a warm blanket and, well, some chocolate. Mikell Nielsen mikell@mikelllouise.com
