Elinor Nauen

I just reread Edward Foster's modest, insightful, moving little chapbook, Code of the West: A memoir of Ted Berrigan. It weaves in a cross-country trip he took by motorcycle with notes on his friendship with Ted & on Ted's work. Originally published in 1994, it's worth tracking down. 

Happy 136th birthday to my grandmother, Alice Woodland Phillips (1885-1982), on the right in this picture with her four sisters, Nellie, Jessie, Eva, and May. I knew all of them. I was at Eva's 100th birthday party in 1979 in Cowbridge, just outside of Cardiff. She had one of those chuckle-laughs that made everyone around her laugh along. Auntie May I visited many times in Cardiff—I adored her. We had a real friendship. Jessie & Nellie I didn't know as well. Their mother was Annie Spruce, who married Bill Woodland and had 10 or 11 kids, all of whom or all but one of whom survived into adulthood. Annie, known as Nana, lived to be 100 or thereabouts & most of the others lived into their 90s. In my family someone is "taken so young," always said in hushed tones, if they only make it to 80.