Bob Wittersheim
Appearances
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
Plates and Bowls There is a little shop in downtown whose window I have been looking through each time I pass by.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
Pretty wine glasses, cozy-looking coffee cups, linen napkins, and heavy, hardcover cookbooks. They have a few shelves of fancy salts and olive oils. Candies and chocolates you can't find in the grocery store. And jams made of fruits I've never seen in person.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
And the light in there is warm and inviting. There is music playing, barely loud enough to hear. Something with cellos. and violas and classical guitar. It even smells calm, like herbs and lemon and clean laundry. And all through the month of December,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
And listen, I enjoy the holidays. I love the lights. and the gatherings, the food and music, gifting and merrymaking. But the calm that comes after, the quiet and the fresh start of the new year might be my favorite part. So today, on this snowy afternoon, with no errands to run, no party to go to later, I was keeping a promise to myself. When I turned onto Main Street,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
I actually felt my own shoulders soften on my back, my grip on the steering wheel relax a bit.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
A busy place can make me feel busy. A crowded street. A noisy restaurant. A cramped aisle in the grocery store. can all leave me feeling simply too much. And while I was working on carrying my own calm, a deep well of quiet that couldn't run out inside of me, it was a work in progress. and I let the nearly empty street gift me some ease.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
Salt crunched under my boots on the sidewalk, and I stopped to look up at the sky. It had been sunny earlier. that energizing blast of winter sun that gets you moving, even in the cold. But clouds had begun to move in, and I wondered if more snow was on its way.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
Might as well welcome it. It was something a friend of mine said. When you can't get out of it, get into it.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
And that was what I was going to do right now.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
I guess it could be called a kitchen shop, but that didn't seem to do it justice. I stepped into the warmth and glowing lights.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
gravy boats, and water pitchers. I am a sucker for dishes. My grandmother had one set for every day and one for special occasions, and they had lasted her for many decades. But I am not built like that. When I can afford it, I like to switch them out. To have a new set to serve my meals on.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
My own holiday gift to myself. I slipped off my gloves, one and then the other, and tucked them into my coat pocket.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
there were classic sets of shining white porcelain.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
and imagining the food I might serve on them.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
Beside them sat a stack of thicker dishes.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
The glaze was fairly smooth, but here and there, were tiny and, I guessed, intentional grains of grit from the clay that still stood out on the surface. All in all, they were not the plates for me.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
I needed something in the middle.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
I clasped my hands behind my back and wandered around the table, peering slowly down at other options. Sunny yellow soup bowls that felt out of season, but whose shape was perfect. Wide dinner plates in robin's egg blue, whose color I adored, but whose rim was too wide. and well too small for the hearty meals I'd eat this winter. And then I found them.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
They were a hearty olive green color, the finish shifting a bit lighter at the rim, with such a nice heft, as I lifted a mug from the table. The plates were round and minimal, with a small lip and a humble feel. The bowl was low and wide, almost a second plate, with a high rim, which was how I liked it. perfect for pasta or soup that would cool to the right temperature as it set.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
The pieces were smooth, but not glossy. And I just felt that any meal I ate out of them, I would be grateful for. I would feel nourished by.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
I'd found a way as I couldn't get out of it. to get into it. Sweet Dreams
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
Well, now it's here. Enjoy it.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
They sell, oh, a variety of things. Pretty wine glasses, cozy-looking coffee cups, linen napkins, and heavy hardcover cookbooks.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
Something with cellos and violas and classical guitar. It even smells calm, like herbs and lemon and clean laundry.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
gifting and merrymaking. But the calm that comes after, the quiet and fresh start of the new year, might be my favorite part.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
Salt crunched under my boots on the sidewalks, and I stopped to look up at the sky.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
I pulled open the door to the shop.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
I slipped off my gloves, one and then the other, and tucked them into my coat pocket.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Plates and Bowls
The plates were round and minimal, with a small lip and a humble feel.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
They didn't have any guests right now.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
Next, I called a friend who lived in an apartment in downtown.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
He thought today would be the last day of his snowcation, that the roads and sidewalks would be clear tomorrow, and that the rest had been lovely, but he was excited to make bagels in the morning. Finally, I called a friend who lived in an old farmhouse in the countryside out of town.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
She said she'd been out to feed the birds and that the forest was full of their calls and songs. when we hung up and I began to bundle into my boots and coat to go next door.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
that all of it wove together and warmed me like a quilt on this icy winter day. Snow day in the village. The storm had been as fierce and thorough as they'd predicted.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
Snow was heaped over sidewalks, blown into sloping mounds at doors. and standing in thick, unbroken swaths on park benches and bird baths. Today, while not sunny per se, was brighter. The thick, gray clouds that had brought the storm had blown over when wispy white ones replaced them.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
I spied them from the window seat at the end of the upstairs hall in my house and thought they looked a bit like the thready, woolly yarn of my scarf.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
I leaned closer to the pane, my breath fogging up the glass. There hadn't been much entertainment in the last few days. But watching their little family had given me lots of laughs. They had gotten a new puppy a week or two ago. and their two sons, along with their grown retriever, Clover, had been making the most of the days off.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
While many of us had just let the snow pile up, waiting to clear paths and sidewalks,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
I read and write all the stories you hear on Nothing Much Happens. With audio engineering by Bob Wittersheim.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
The boys had been out every hour or two, with their shovels, making paths for the dogs. I imagined the promises they had made about that puppy, that they would walk him every day, that they would be sure to let him out and play with him. And so far, they were doing just that. Well, not walking him, really. It was too cold, and the pup too young for walks.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
but they romped in the snow with him through balls which disappeared into snowbanks and kept the path from the door shoveled and clear. I'd baked some biscuits for the dogs and some banana bread
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
And once my own sidewalk was shoveled, I'd sneak over to their house to visit. I smiled to myself. thinking about the wild puppy kisses I'd be gifted and the happy, excited energy of their household. I shuffled down the long hall, a sweater around my shoulders and thick socks on my feet.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
while the snow had finished falling, the temperature hadn't, and my old house had chilly, drafty spots that I dodged in the winter. It also had cozy, warmer corners, and I stepped into one at the top of the stairs. Here another window let me look out at the winter wonderland around me. This time out to the street where a few neighbors were beginning to dig out from the snow.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
One was standing, her hands on her hips. knee-deep in the stuff, with a discarded shovel tossed down beside her. She was waving at another neighbor a few houses down, who had a massive snowblower fired up. I smiled when I saw him, He would be our collective hero today. I had no doubt. He loved that snowblower. And he was the type of guy that thrilled at a task like the one now set before him.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
He often did everyone's sidewalks and driveways and was known on the block as the person to go to when you needed to borrow a tool or get some advice, possibly too much advice on fence repair,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
He taught history at the high school, and his penchant for the ancient world led him to dub his beloved snowblower Clear Opathtra. He looked up from the slow, clear path he was now making and spotted the waving neighbor. He lifted an arm above his head, a thumbs up, signaling he understood the assignment, and went right back to focusing on the snow. The waving neighbor
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
clapped her hands happily, reached for her discarded shovel, and began trudging back to her garage. Having neighbors who take care of each other, who look out for each other, It is no small thing in this world. And even on this cold day, as I descended the stairs, I felt it warming me through. And it made me think, if shoveling was no longer on my chore list,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
How else might I be helpful to my neighbors? In the kitchen, as I packed up the treats for the boys next door, I thought that while our block was checking in on one another, there were folks who lived further out who might need a call. I picked up the phone and dialed the inn on the lake. As I listened to it ring, I imagined the innkeeper racing through the halls.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
to reach it in the front office where guests checked in.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
that she and her cat Sycamore were camping out in the library in front of the fire, looking through old photo albums and books and eating their way through the well-stocked kitchen pantry. They didn't have any guests right now, Chef was away, working at a ski resort for most of the winter. But they had called to check in as I had. The snowplow was expected today to clear their long drive.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
Next, I called a friend who lived in an apartment in downtown. He worked at the bakery, and I realized I had no idea if anything was even open on Main Street. He told me that as far as he could see from his window, nearly everything was closed. He'd gone out just once. at the urging of the baker herself to help himself to any of the cookies or loaves of bread still on their shelves.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
while wrapped up in blankets in his favorite chair. He thought today would be the last day of his snowcation, that the roads and sidewalks would be clear tomorrow. that the rest had been lovely, but he was excited to make bagels in the morning. Finally, I called a friend who lived in an old farmhouse in the countryside out of town.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
I'd met her when I'd stopped to pick some lilacs from the bushes that ran along the front of her property, where she'd posted signs encouraging folks to take as many blooms as they liked. She'd been fixing up her house for the last few years. And I wondered if, like my own old house, it could be drafty in the winter. She told me it was actually quite snug.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
She said she'd been out to feed the birds, and that the forest was full of their calls and songs. When we hung up, I began to bundle into my boots and coat to go next door. I thought of how sweet it was to be connected here on my street through banana bread and snowblowers.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
but also to those further away through a thought or a word, that all of it wove together and warmed me like a quilt on this icy winter day. Sweet dreams.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
Learn more at the link in our show notes.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
In the village of Nothing Much, I'm sure they never have to worry about their tap water.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
Now, lights out campers.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
Snow day in the village. The storm had been as fierce and thorough as they'd predicted. For two days, the wind had blown. and a steady downfall of flakes had blanketed the village. Snow was heaped over sidewalks, blown into sloping mounds at doors, and standing in thick, unbroken swaths on park benches and bird baths. Today, while not yet sunny per se, was brighter.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
and thought they looked a bit like the thready, woolly yarn of my scarf.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
I leaned closer to the pane, my breath fogging up the glass. There hadn't been much entertainment in the last few days.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
They'd gotten a new puppy a week or two ago. And their two sons, along with their grown retriever Clover, had been making the most of the days off.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
Well, not walking him, really. It was too cold, and the pup too young for walks. But they romped in the snow with him, threw balls which disappeared into snowbanks, and kept the path from the door shoveled and clear.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
And once my own sidewalk was shoveled, I'd sneak over to their house to visit. I smiled to myself, thinking about the wild puppy kisses I'd be gifted and the happy, excited energy of their household. I shuffled down the long hall, a sweater around my shoulders, and thick socks on my feet.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
While the snow had finished falling, the temperature hadn't, and my old house had chilly, drafty spots that I dodged in the winter.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
This time out to the street, where a few neighbors were beginning to dig out from the snow. One was standing, her hands on her hips, knee-deep in the stuff, with a discarded shovel tossed down beside her.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
He taught history at the high school.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
and went right back to focusing on the snow. The waving neighbor clapped her hands happily, reached for her discarded shovel, and began trudging back to her garage.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
I picked up the phone and dialed the inn out on the lake.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Snow Day in the Village
And in fact, when she answered, she was a bit out of breath, but laughing and happy to hear from a friend. She confirmed that they had plenty of firewood,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Merry Much Happens
But I just wouldn't feel right if I didn't.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Merry Much Happens
You feel good, and then you fall asleep. I'm Catherine Nicolai. I write and read all the stories you hear, and nothing much happens.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
My teacher reached out to stop my wrist and leaned in closer, adjusting the glasses on her nose. I know that name, she said. The painting itself had become clearer, richer, And now, the story of the lady in it would too. To be continued for now. The Lady in the Painting She'd been watching over me for years. From her bench in the painting. Hung for a long time in my uncle's living room.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
All you need to do is let your attention rest on the shape of the story and the sound of my voice.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And then, for the last ten years or so, from the front hall of my own house, I'd see her, lit with daylight, as I took my keys from the bowl on the entryway table, on my way out for the day. And then... lit with the low light of the hallway lamp on my way up to bed at the end of the night. She sat with a book in her hand, looking over her shoulder through the window behind her.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
She had one finger tucked into the pages to hold her place. And I wondered what had called her attention, away from what she'd been reading, to look outside. Was a child calling? Or an animal eating from the plants in the garden? her friends coming to have a cup of tea and chat, a neighbor needing to borrow a tool from the barn.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Had she just fallen into a daydream and turned her face to the light? I knew that feeling of being pulled into the broad sea of what-if. and forgetting where you were or what you'd planned. I found myself floating through it a lot as I worked to restore her. In the studio classroom of the community center, I'd spent weeks carefully freeing her from her frames,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
cleaning the surface of the canvas and securing any loose paint so that not a chip was lost. We'd found a small tear in the surface near the bottom of the painting. The fibers of the canvas were split and in danger of fraying. My teacher had helped me to apply a patch to the back of the piece, a sort of bandage that would hold the fibers in place.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Just shifting your attention from the background static of your thoughts to the gentle structure of my tale will transfer brain activity into the task positive mode.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And then we had worked to match the colors and dab them on gently. Just color matching could be a life's long work, it seemed. And the small repair had taken me a solid week. But now you could barely make out where the fix had been done. Something I was very proud of. Some might think that a whole week spent on a small spot the size of a silver dollar would be tedious. But I found it thrilling.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
It was like a puzzle that I knew could be solved if only I stayed at my bench. And I found myself thinking of it when I woke up each morning about what the next step would be and what tools I'd use in the process. In the studio, we had a collection of brushes and swabs, bottles of purified water, and mild olive oil-based soaps.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
There were small hammers to put tacks back into place, cans of varnish and strips of gentle adhesive, paints and magnifiers, something like a jeweler's loop that would be worn right on your head. and focused in front of your eyes. I liked those a lot, and marveled at the small things I'd spot in the painting when I had them on, that I'd never have otherwise known about.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
It was a bit like finding a message in a bottle, something written years ago, and waiting for the right person to open up and know again. Once the painting was clean and restored, I'd covered the surface in a smooth layer of varnish, which sealed and protected it. but also gave it a satisfying and uniform shine.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
As it sat to cure in a corner of the shop, my teacher and I dug into the hunt for the artist who'd painted this piece. We had a scrap of paper we'd found stuck to the back of the canvas, and we'd taken it from the frame It had a few letters that might be part of a last name, also a city, and what I took to be a date. If I was right, my painting had been made in September, 142 years before.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
While I'd been in the process of cleaning all those years of soot and dust from the piece, we'd found a small and barely decipherable signature in the bottom right corner. Thankfully, my teacher had recognized it. Otherwise, I'm sure it would still be a mystery.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
The painter wasn't famous, though, just a favorite of hers, who had painted for 30 years or more, mostly portraits of people who were themselves also not famous. She showed me a small collection of them in a book, and I attentively looked at each one, there was a man sitting with a bowl of soup in front of him, tearing a piece of bread from a loaf, and it seemed talking to someone not pictured.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And they are stories about an inherited treasure and the tale it has to tell. It's also about the precious gift of a common moment preserved in paint. The feeling of knowing someone you've never met.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
There was a family walking in a field, someone in a thick winter coat reaching out to buy a newspaper at a stand. A woman planting a bulb in a flower garden. Like the lady in my painting, none of these people were looking at the painter. They'd been captured in something more like a casual photograph. Just living. Just living. and being observed while they did it.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Mine wasn't in the book, and neither was much about the painter themselves. They were known only by a first initial, and a surname that might have been invented. Maybe they wanted to be, to a certain extent, anonymous. just like the people in the paintings. I considered whether knowing more about them would feel like a more satisfying ending to the story. But a name was just a name after all.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And the real clue to who the painter and subjects were lay in the work itself. This was a person who admired simple aspects of living. A meal, a day in the sun, a connection to the world, a hope for a colorful spring. I could relate to that when it was enough. So who was this woman? I guess I'd never know her exact details. But I felt a kinship with her.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
She read books, and so did I. She had a cluttered kitchen, and so did I. She looked off into the distance and wondered or called out to visiting friends or watched her children play. And I understood all of that. People are not so different, no matter what century they live in. When the painting was dry and ready to be rehung, I set it back in its original frame.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
I'd even kept the tacks and hammered them into place. The canvas itself had become a little stretched out with gravity and time, and one step in my process had been to mist some hot water onto the back of the painting and set it out in the sunlight. As it dried, the fibers shrank back into their original shape. and the surface became taut again.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
I'd learned so much over the semester, not just about the process of restoration and conservation, but about what it might be like to capture a moment and save it for another generation. I was proud as I looped the hanging wire over the hook in my wall to have saved this moment, which I would pass down again when the time was right. I stood back a few paces and looked at the scene I knew so well.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
A woman, a book, a window. Ordinary magic. Restoration. It had started with a painting in the hall. One that had been handed down through the generations of our family. It had hung for most of my young life in the living room of a great uncle, above his fireplace, in fact, which accounted for all the soot that clouded its surface. When it had come to me,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
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Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
I'd carried it from one room to another, trying to find the right spot for it, where the light would show the details that had been painted into place a hundred plus years before. Finally, I settled for a spot in the hallway that led from the kitchen to the stairs. Its hanging wire was still strong and sturdy, and there it had stayed for ten years or so. Then,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
At the end of a summer, when kids were going back to school, and the sunlight was just beginning to take on that golden autumn overlay, I'd found a class in the community education brochure for art restoration, step-by-step. and I thought of the painting. In it, a woman in simple clothes looked over her shoulder, out of a window, behind her to a green landscape.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
She held a book in one hand, and the room she sat in was paneled in wood, with a shelf full of jars and bottles above her head. There was a dark smudge in one corner that we'd always thought might be a signature. I'd taken her down from her nail and signed up for the class. She and I had spent the next few months at the community center where we'd gotten to know each other a lot better.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
It is a strange thing To spend so much time with your attention centered on one face felt like a kind of communion, not just with the subject, but with the painter, whoever they are. and finding out had been the most intriguing part of the process. We'd started, the half dozen of us in the class, plus the teacher, by carefully freeing our paintings from their frames. It had taken patience,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
and a bit of hard work to take out the tacks that had been in place for so long. But once it was done, we each laid our canvases or boards on clean workspaces and looked at their backs. one of my fellow students, had a painting found at a garage sale.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And though any work of art has value, his piece, a simple vase of flowers, was being restored more for the experience of working on it than the work itself. The flowers had been painted on a piece of board. And on its back, we'd found a signature in ink pen with a date. It had sent us all into a fever of curiosity. Who was the woman who'd painted the flowers? And what was her life like?
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Responders are ready to support you, no matter what you're going through.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Her restorer had eventually found her in a yearbook at the high school. And he'd brought it in for us all to look at. We'd crowded around his table and peered down at her picture, taken almost 50 years before. She had a big 70s collar, a natural hair, and a high puff. She'd been in the winter drama that year,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
and played volleyball, and, at least according to the date on the back of the board, painted those flowers. I'd sighed with satisfaction when I'd seen her, and felt like reading the last chapter in a good book. I found I appreciated her painting even more. It meant more to me, knowing something about her.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And it made me even more curious about my painting, the woman seated in that room, and whoever it was who painted her. When I'd first opened the back of the frame, I'd hoped there would be a label, a tag, something to send me in a clear direction. But all I'd found was a scrap of paper that had a few words on it. and most of them had been cut in half when the scrap was torn from a larger sheet.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
There was what I suspected was half of a name, a surname that might have been the painter's. There was also a city, and a bit of a date. I thought about those scraps of information while I worked on the surface of the painting. Restoring and conserving important works of art takes a level of skill and study. that we knew we wouldn't even be approaching in our semester at the community center.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
We kept it simple. We would clean the top layers of dust and soot from the art with very gentle cleansers and reframe our pieces and learn the best way to care for them going forward. I liked taking a new thin dowel from the tray on my workbench, tearing off a piece of cotton and winding it around the tip till I had a long swab. Most often I cleaned just with water.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Take a slow breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Do it again. Breathe in. And out.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
working my way slowly over the surface of the painting. As I did, hidden details I'd never seen before emerged. In the green space through the window, I uncovered a tiny hill sitting in the distance, dotted with minuscule houses. Among the bottles and jars on the shelf was a small, black key propped against a cup. What door did that open? The woman herself became much more human.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
There were lines around her mouth, as if she'd spent many years smiling and laughing. and her hair, which had seemed a simple, plain color, turned out to have thin streaks of darker and lighter shades mixed in. It seemed that every time I sat down to work on another square inch of the canvas, time would race past me, and I'd be shocked to hear that my hours in the studio were up.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
I got so connected to what I was doing that I lost track of anything else. Many a cup of tea had gone cold beside me as I looked closer at the scene on my easel. When I got to that dark smudge in the corner, I held my breath. My teacher stood beside me, and a few others crowded around. We were all invested in each of the pieces that we'd brought in.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
hoped to find enough of a name under the dust and dirt to decipher the artist. I plucked my swab from the tray, wound it with a fresh bit of cotton, and dampened it just a bit in a saucer of clear water. Then, bit by bit rolled it over the surface careful to lift off just the soot and not any chips of paint a few letters began to emerge like shapes coming clear from a retreating fog
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
my teacher reached out to stop my wrist and leaned in closer, adjusting the glasses on her nose. I know that name, she said. The painting itself had become clearer, richer, and now, the story of the lady in it would too. To be continued for now. The Lady in the Painting She'd been watching over me for years. From her bench in the painting, hung for a long time in my uncle's living room.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And then, for the last ten years or so, from the front hall of my own house, I'd see her, lit with daylight as I took my keys from the bowl on the entryway table, on my way out for the day, and then lit with the low light of the hallway lamp on my way up to bed at the end of the night. She sat with a book in her hand, looking over her shoulder, through the window behind her.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
It had started with the painting in the hall. one that had been handed down through the generations of our family. It had hung for most of my young life in the living room of a great uncle, above his fireplace, in fact, which accounted for all the soot that clouded its surface.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
She had one finger tucked into the pages to hold her place, and I wondered what had called her attention away from what she'd been reading to look outside. Was a child calling? or an animal eating from the plants in the garden? Were friends coming to have a cup of tea and chat? A neighbor needing to borrow a tool from the barn? Had she just fallen into a daydream and turned her face to the light?
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
I know that feeling of being pulled into the broad sea of what if and forgetting where you were or what you'd planned. I found myself floating through it a lot as I worked to restore her paintings. in the studio classroom of the community center. I'd spent weeks carefully freeing her from her frame, cleaning the surface of the canvas, and securing any loose paint so that not a chip was lost.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
we'd found a small tear in the surface near the bottom of the painting. The fibers of the canvas were split and in danger of fraying. My teacher had helped me to apply a patch to the back of the piece, a sort of bandage. that would hold the fibers in place. And then we had worked to match the colors and dab them on gently. Just color matching could be a life's work, it seemed.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
and the small repair had taken me a solid week. But now, you could barely make out where the fix had been, something I was very proud of. Some might think that a whole week spent on a small spot the size of a silver dollar would be tedious. But I'd found it thrilling. It was like a puzzle that I knew could be solved
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
If only I stayed at my bench and I found myself thinking of it when I woke up each morning about what the next step would be and what tools I'd use in the process. In the studio, we had a collection of brushes and swabs, bottles of purified water, and mild olive oil-based soaps. There were small hammers to put tacks back into place.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
cans of varnish and strips of gentle adhesive, paints and magnifiers, something like a jeweler's loop that could be worn right on your head and focused in front of your eyes. I liked those a lot and marveled at the small things I'd spot in the painting when I had them on that I'd never have otherwise known about. It was a bit like finding a message in a bottle.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
When it had come to me, I'd carried it from one room to another, trying to find the right spot for it, where the light would show the details that had been painted into place a hundred-plus years before. Finally, I settled for a spot in the hallway that led from the kitchen to the stairs. Its hanging wire was still strong and sturdy, and there it had stayed for ten years or so.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
something written years ago, and waiting for the right person to open up and know again. Once the painting was clean and restored, I'd covered the surface in a smooth layer of varnish, which sealed and protected it, but also gave it a satisfying and uniform shine. As it sat to cure in a corner of the shop, my teacher and I dug into the hunt for the artist who'd painted this piece.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
We give to a different charity each week, and this week we are giving to GLAD, GLBTQ, Advocates and Defenders, working to create a just society, free of discrimination based on gender identity and expression. You can learn more about them in our show notes.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
We had a scrap of paper we'd found stuck to the back of the canvas when we'd taken it from the frame. It had a few letters that might be part of a last name, also a city, and what I took to be a date. If I was right, my painting had been made in September, 142 years before. While I'd been in the process of cleaning all those years of soot and dust from the piece,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
we'd found a small and barely decipherable signature in the bottom right corner. Thankfully, my teacher had recognized it. Otherwise, I'm sure it would still be a mystery. The painter wasn't famous, though. just a favorite of hers, who had painted for 30 years or more, mostly portraits of people who were themselves also not famous.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
She showed me a small collection of them in a book, and I attentively looked at each one, there was a man sitting with a bowl of soup in front of him, tearing a piece of bread from a loaf, and, it seemed, talking to someone not pictured. There was a family walking in a field, someone in a thick winter coat reaching out to buy a newspaper at a stand. A woman planting a bulb in a flower garden.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Like the lady in my painting, none of these people were looking at the painter. They'd been captured in something more like a casual photograph, just living and being observed while they did it. Mine wasn't in the book, and neither was much about the painter themselves. They were known only by a first initial and a surname, and that might have been invented,
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Maybe they wanted to be, to a certain extent, anonymous, just like the people in the painting. I considered whether knowing more about them would feel like a more satisfying ending to the story. But a name is just a name, after all. And the real clue to who the painter and subjects were seemed to lay in the work itself. This was a person who admired simple aspects of living.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
A meal, a day in the sun, a connection to the world. hope for a colorful spring. I could relate to that, and it was enough. So who was this woman? I guess I'd never know her exact details, but I felt a kinship with her. She read books, and so did I.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
She had a cluttered kitchen, and so did I. She looked off into the distance and wondered, or called out to visiting friends, or watched her children play. And I understood all of that. People are not so different. no matter what century they live in. When the painting was dry and ready to be rehung, I set it back in its original frame. I'd even kept the tacks and hammered them into place.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Then, at the end of a summer, when kids were going back to school, and the sunlight was just beginning to take on that golden autumn overlay, I'd found a class in the community education brochure for art restoration, step by step, and thought of the painting. In it, a woman in simple clothes looked over her shoulder, out a window, behind her to a green landscape.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
The canvas itself had become a little stretched out with gravity and time. And one step in my process had been to mist some hot water onto the back of the painting and set it out in the sunlight. As it dried, the fibers shrank back into their original shape. and the surface was taut again.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
I'd learned so much over the semester, not just about the process of restoration and conservation, but about what it might be like to capture a moment and save it for another generation. I was proud as I looped the hanging wire over the hook in my wall to have saved this moment, which I would pass down again when the time was right. I stood back a few paces and looked at the scene I knew so well.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
A woman, a book, a window. ordinary magic. Sweet dreams.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
She held a book in one hand, and the room she sat in was paneled in wood, with a shelf full of jars and bottles above her head. There was a dark smudge in one corner that we'd always thought might be a signature. I'd taken her down from her nail and signed up for class. she and I had spent the next few months at the community center, where we'd gotten to know each other a lot better.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
It is a strange thing to spend so much time with your attention centered on one face. It felt like a kind of communion, not just with the subject, but with the painter, whoever they were. And finding out had been the most intriguing part of the process. We'd started, the half dozen of us in the class, plus the teacher, by carefully freeing our paintings from their frames.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
It had taken patience and a bit of hard work to take out the tacks that had been in place so long. But once it was done, we'd each laid our canvases or boards on clean workspaces and looked at their backs. One of my fellow students had a painting found at a garage sale.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And though any work of art has value, his piece, a simple vase of flowers, was being restored more for the experience of working on it than the piece itself. The flowers had been painted on a piece of board, and on its back, we found a signature, an ink pen with a date. It had sent us all into a fever of curiosity. Who was the woman who'd painted the flowers? And what was her life like?
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
We also have links in our notes to our ad-free and bonus subscriptions, our super cozy merch, including our new coloring set and weighted pillow.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Her restorer had eventually found her in a yearbook at the high school, and he'd brought it in for us to have a look at. We'd crowded around his table and peered down at her picture, taken almost 50 years before. She had a big, 70s collar and natural hair in a high puff.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
She'd been in the winter drama that year and played volleyball, and at least according to the date on the back of the board, painted those flowers. I'd sighed with satisfaction when I'd seen her. It felt like reading the last chapter in a good book. I found I appreciated her painting even more. It meant more to me, knowing something about her.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
And it made me even more curious about my painting, the woman seated in that room, and whoever it was who painted her. When I'd first opened the back of the frame, I'd hoped there would be a label, a tag, something to send me in a clearer direction. But all I'd found was a scrap of paper that had a few words on it, and most of them had been cut in half.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
when the scrap was torn from a larger sheet. There was what I suspected was half of a name, a surname that might have been the painter's. There was also a city and a bit of a date. I thought about those scraps of information while I worked on the surface of the painting.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Restoring and conserving important works of art takes a level of skill and study that we knew we wouldn't be approaching in our semester at the community center. We kept it simple. We would clean the top layers of dust and soot from the art with very gentle cleansers and reframe our pieces and learn the best way to care for them going forward.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Now Bob and I are taking this week off, so we're bringing you a special episode. It's a two-parter that has never appeared in front of the paywall. We've put it all together into one so that you get an extra long bedtime story tonight.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
I liked taking a new thin dowel from the tray on my workbench. tearing off a piece of cotton and winding it around the tip till I had a long swab. Most often, I cleaned just with water, working my way slowly over the surface of the painting. As I did, Hidden details I'd never seen before emerged.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
In the green space through the window, I uncovered a tiny hill sitting in the distance, dotted with minuscule houses. Among the bottles and jars on the shelf, was a small black key propped against a cup. What door did that open? The woman herself became much more human. There were lines around her mouth, as if she'd spent many years smiling and laughing.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
and her hair, which had seemed a simple, plain color, turned out to have thin streaks of darker and lighter shades mixed in. It seemed that every time I sat down to work on another square inch of the canvas, Time would race past me, and I'd be shocked to hear that my hours in the studio were up. I got so connected to what I was doing that I lost track of anything else.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
Many a cup of tea had gone cold beside me. as I looked closer at the scene on my easel. When I got to that dark smudge in the corner, I held my breath. My teacher stood beside me, and a few others crowded around. We were all invested. in each of the pieces that we'd brought in and hoped to find enough of a name under the dust and dirt to decipher the artist.
Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep
Restoration & The Lady in the Painting
I'd plucked my swab from the tray, wound it with a fresh bit of cotton, and dampened it just a bit in a saucer of clear water. Then, bit by bit, rolled it over the surface, careful to lift off just the soot and not any chips of paint. A few letters began to emerge, like shapes, coming clear from a retreating fog.