by MarianBeaman | Dec 19, 2018 | blog, book review, Family / Nostalgia, Quotations, Uncategorized
Did you know the name Matryoshka means “little matron,” or “mother” in Russian? Do you have a set of nesting dolls? My friend, Kathy Gould, who manages a charity fund ministering to families and children in Ukraine, gave me these dolls years ago. They enjoy...
by MarianBeaman | Dec 12, 2018 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
I have a quilted green robe. It feels like silk, but the fabric is probably rayon. It has hung on a bathroom hook for a long, long time. It has a history My mother-in-law gave me this robe as a Christmas gift before our children were born. It came...
by MarianBeaman | Dec 5, 2018 | blog, British History, Education, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Nostalgia, Travel, Uncategorized
Do you remember where you were when . . . President Kennedy was assassinated? The Challenger exploded? Planes hit the Twin Towers in New York City? You can probably easily call up your surroundings when these cataclysmic events happened. But you most likely don’t...
by MarianBeaman | Nov 28, 2018 | blog, book review, Cliff Beaman artist, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Quotations, Tips, Uncategorized
My Mennonite parents laughed very little, except when relatives and friends tickled their funny bones. They took the business of parenting very seriously. Other relatives lit up with a sense of humor: I carry an image of my Grandma Fannie and Aunt Ruthie once slapping...
by MarianBeaman | Nov 21, 2018 | meditation, Memory, Nostalgia, Reflection, Uncategorized
This post was first published for Thanksgiving 2013, the year I began blogging. I did not know many of you as friends then, so I’m posting this again for our season of gratitude in 2018, keeping in mind those victims of California wildfires and senseless...
by MarianBeaman | Nov 14, 2018 | blog, meditation, Mennonite Lore, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
Spiders, snakes, heights, tiny space . . . what feels scary to you? Other things that scare us: mud-slinging politicians, school shootings, low cash flow, a health blow Studies show that 95% of what we fear is baseless, and the rest are things we must learn to live...
by MarianBeaman | Nov 7, 2018 | blog, Coming of Age, Uncategorized
Who? What? When? Where? Your thoughts welcome . . .
by MarianBeaman | Oct 31, 2018 | blog, book review, Coming of Age, Mennonite Lore, Quotations, Uncategorized
A Real Book “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It...
by MarianBeaman | Oct 24, 2018 | blog, Cliff Beaman artist, Family / Nostalgia, Travel, Uncategorized
“Another anniversary. After the 50th, what’s so special about that?” Quite a lot, it turns out. Cliff and I observed another anniversary on August 5. We had just returned from a trip to Asheville this summer (where we spent our honeymoon 51 years earlier), but I...
by MarianBeaman | Oct 17, 2018 | blog, Literature, Quotations, Tips, Uncategorized
Inquiring Minds want to Know . . . Who Put the Butter in Butterfly? a book that survived my Great Book Purge of 2016, was a birthday gift from the Dean of Liberal Arts at my college in 1993. It is billed as“compulsive reading for anyone incurably curious about the...
