The Ash Family

The Ash Family by Molly Dektar

      I am the type of person who thinks for themselves. Sometimes I’m wrong and sometimes I’m not but it’s my wrong and my right. Never, ever have I understood how someone can be brainwashed, convinced so completely to give up. And so, people who become members of cults have left me in a quandry. The Ash family is a cult.

      Berie is a young woman at a crossroads, trying to figure out how to live her own life and not the one prescribed by her mother and on again/off again boyfriend. Apparently this makes her an easy target when she is spotted by Bay, the cult’s recruiter, at a bus stop. I don’t know how the recruiters know an easy prey but they do. They wouldn’t find one in me so I don’t understand why anyone would watch their suitcase leave in the hold of the bus and go off with this stranger. But that’s what Berie does.

     Bay takes her deep into the hills of North Carolina’s mountains and introduces her to the community, the Ash family, led by a man named Dice. Berie is given a new name, Harmony, and told she will stay three days or forever, that there is nothing she will have to do if she doesn’t want to, there is complete freedom here in the family, freedom to be free of the outside where everything is fake.

     Harmony stays longer than three days. She finds wearing other people’s clothes strange, sleeping in an unassigned bed different, the smells of each other off putting until she smells the same. The food is foraged, grown, butchered, milked, cheesed. And she is happy living with nature and following its dictates, she truly does.

     But there are rules and Dice and Bay and the group do tell you to do things you don’t want to do and treat you differently until you do them. And if you are like Berie you want so to be accepted by these people you will do anything. You believe this is a family even when some tell you it isn’t.

And when the people she has come to care about the most start disappearing with no clear explanation, she begins to question that she is still searching even after she thought she found her answers.

     I watched Berie become a member, listened to her reason and try to figure out her life and she really believed what she was seeing and doing yet she also never felt her place secure within the family, that they never really trusted her. She strove even harder to prove herself to them, especially Dice and Bay, who continually played with her mind.

     I found The Ash Family fascinating. I found Berie’s story fascinating, but personally, I still don’t understand that kind of giving up my brain to someone else.

Cruschiki Day

Today was cruschiki ( Polish bow ties) day and like the girls learned how to make PH's mother's noodles, they're learning how to make my grandma's cruschiki. 

 We used a few modern gadgets, like a pizza cutter to make the strips.  Busia never had a pizza cutter in her hand in her life.  I told the girls if they hadn't ridden their bikes over I would have had them bring the noodle making machine for rolling these out.  There's always next year.

 While I was outside frying they were inside using their own system.

 I am absolutely thrilled I finally found a way for frying these outdoors.  I don't deep fry in the house because of the residual smell and greasy smoke and since we moved to this house I've tried using the gas grill to fry them,  a small deep fryer and now a hot plate.  Nothing made the grease hot enough to fry like they should but this does.  Happy days-I can now make corn fritters more often.  Fried chicken once again!

 This was the fun part. They had to show some constraint because I told them I didn't want to have to mop the floor when they were finished.  That was a real possibility.

Done for another year!

Spring

Last weekend was the meeting of the needles at our spring retreat. We are so lucky to be at the Inn at the Rustic Gate twice a year, being together, talking, walking, eating (oh, the meals!!) enjoying the company of keepers of the Inn, and of course sewing. Below are a small sampling of some of the projects, highlights and our group picture.  Enjoy.  We sure did.