Going Male: Amish Romance Novels
Cool Amish guys have replaced the dreamy looking girl with a huge covering and plain dress popular on the cover of some Amish romance novels. The images have done a flip. Now the young Amish-man with suspenders and broadfall pants and straw hat takes center stage....
A Corny Post
The Corn Palace Bird beaks peck away at grains of corn on the walls of The Corn Palace. Still, the murals created with several colors of dried corn and grain arrest the eye. On our trip West we visited this grand monument to farmers and the grain industry they...
Mennonites and the Marlboro Man
The Marlboro man, pictured as a cool-guy cowboy in a fresh country setting, ruled cigarette advertising from 1954 -1999. Smoking then was considered glamorous and cool, a way to fit in with the crowd. One of our most popular presidents, Ronald Reagan, was formerly a...
Two Mennonite Girls: a Cross Country Road Trip, continued
The postcard says Metzie and Molly if you look closely, but Joann and I were unofficially known as Mighty Metz and Sister Styx, the dashing duo that rode in the back seat of a Chevy Impala on a road trip with Joann's parents, John and Mary Metzler. Feeding a...
Two Mennonite Girls Survive a Cross Country Road Trip
Yes, imagine two Mennonite girls tripping across the country . . . In a blue-gray 1958 Chevy Impala sedan With a chauffeur and navigator Through 47 states + Mexico Five weeks in 1964: July 18 – August 24 My Travel Partners: The Metzlers, whom I call Aunt and Uncle,...
Jenna’s Rainbow Cake: A Pot of Gold?
Grand-daughter Jenna and I decided to make a rainbow cake on Memorial Day weekend. We were hoping for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the cake-making process wasn't that easy! Here's our step-by-step process with a few glitches noted: First, we put on our...
Purple Passages: Secrets of Grimke House, Charleston
"Heidi, would you mind stopping by 329 East Bay Street before we leave town?" We were on our way out of Charleston during our recent road trip, and my niece Heidi graciously agreed to stop her SUV long enough for me to catch a snapshot of the Grimké House basking in...
Memorial Day Snaps: A Truck and a Quilt
Catchy caption needed. Your suggestions please! Just as every issue of The New Yorker features a cartoon in need of a caption, today's post offers a photo calling for your input. There's one below to get your wheels turning, but I think there are other possibilities....
My Dad’s Bachelor Trip to Florida
Nose-to-the-Grindstone, that's my dad. But I have proof in pictures that he once took a fling to Florida with his Lancaster County Mennonite buddies. Judging from the photos that remain and Mother's comments, I can pretty much guarantee that there were no stops at a...
The Longenecker Sisters’ Road Trip, Part 2
We pile into Heidi’s shiny black Toyota 4Runner in Jacksonville and off we go, zooming across state lines, first Florida, then Georgia, and finally South Carolina, our voices twanging to Doo Wop tunes of the 50s and 60s: All Good Vibrations as miles melt away....
The Longenecker Sisters’ Road Trip, Part 1
Girls’ road trips are part of the landscape of American pop culture. Who can forget Thelma and Louise? Wanting to take a short vacation from their dreary lives, Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) head out from Arkansas to the Grand Canyon in a 1966 Ford...
An Orphan Speaks on Mother’s Day
This is my first Mother's Day without my mother, Ruth Metzler Longenecker. To say I miss her is an understatement of the highest order. Technically, I could be considered an orphan with both my mother and father gone. However, with my own extended family and...
Mennonite Girls Can Cook
Yummy Recipe Last week I was in the kitchen with my nearly vintage Mennonite Community Cookbook (1978) creased open to page 155 where I checked out the recipe for sautéed (Okay, I’ll admit, it’s fried!) egg-plant. Hours later when my new and improved Mennonite...
Rhubarb in Grandma’s Garden
Grandma and I in the Rhubarb Patch It's me, pigtails flapping in the May breezes, skipping beside Grandma toward the rhubarb patch. Behind Grandma’s house toward the woods a thick nest of rhubarb stalks stands sentinel over a ridge facing the twelve sweet cornfield...
Lincoln, Lilacs, and Grandma’s Outhouse
Lilacs in Washington State Earlier this month, my husband Cliff and family laid to rest his father Lee Beaman in a tiny urn above the coffin of his wife in the cemetery adjoining the church. Across the street from the simple, white-plank Methodist Church near...
Carole Parkes and the Written Acts of Kindness Award
Thank you notes are usually written privately, but this one is a public thank you to Carole Parkes, a writer friend who just recently nominated me for the Written Acts of Kindness Award, an award given from one blogger to another to let them know their words bring...
My Little Black Bookends Tell All
Growing up in rural Lancaster County in the 1950s, I had very little opportunity to meet people of other ethnic groups, but I did have a Little Black Sambo book that introduced me to a culture different from mine. So, I have not always been embarrassed by this book....
Purple Passages with the Bard of Avon
Spring cleaning! I have thrown out (read that, recycled) piles of files during the past two weeks. One I kept, though, was a Shakespeare file. I take my discovery of this file as an invitation to play teacher once more. Actually, another good reason is that tomorrow,...