HUMAN TOUCH

Digitally altered photo by S. Auberle

"Fewer and fewer Americans

possess objects that have a patina,

old furniture, grandparents' pots and pans

the used things, warm

with generations of human touch

...essential to a human landscape."

- Susan Sontag

The above is an old cooking pot, from the Wagner Ware Foundry in Sidney, Ohio. It belonged to my grandmother, Rosa, may have been a wedding gift in 1912, when she married Ferdinand on an April day in St. Michael's church in Fort Loramie, Ohio.

I recall endless pots of soup simmering in this, on winter days in my childhood, and Grandma requesting my "assistance." The warm kitchen, the smells, the love--it all comes back each time I use it. It's stained and crooked and old but I swear I can feel Rosa around me when I use it. Wouldn't trade it for every piece of Calphalon I own. It's essential to my landscape, for sure...

- mimi