by MarianBeaman | Jul 24, 2014 | Family / Nostalgia, Nostalgia, Recipes, Southern lady friends, Uncategorized
You may remember when I visited Pennsylvania last month we made butter the old-fashioned way, my mother, sister and I shaking cream in a 2-quart jar. This week my Southern friend Carolyn threw a birthday bash that included friends making butter together. We did...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 23, 2014 | Coming of Age, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Uncategorized
My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it. – Boris Johnson * * * July is the birthday month for four our immediate family. If you count our extended family, there are three or four more birthdays this month. This month I celebrate the...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 19, 2014 | Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Recipes, Uncategorized
In June, my sister Jan and I visited our Longenecker kin in Elizabethtown and the village of Rheems close by. One morning we took a stroll around the square in E-Town and found that though the town clock was still planted in place, the merchants we knew had...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 16, 2014 | Literature, Memory, Purple Passage, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
Birthdays The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been. – Madeleine l’Engle The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. – Aldous Huxley...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 12, 2014 | Coming of Age, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Reflection, Uncategorized
We have to try it again. Here’s another shirt,” Jane said as she plucked one of Dad’s blue work shirts out of a plastic bag full of shirts—clean, sprinkled and rolled—all ready to iron. “Start with the yoke,” she directed. I grabbed the damp shirt out of her hand...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 9, 2014 | book review, Coming of Age, Conflict, Education, Literature, Quotations, Uncategorized
Sarah’s Flair for House-keeping She was the kind of woman who took the trouble to tie her hair with a ribbon for breakfast when many wives came down tousled; who spent an extra minute to stamp a design on a block of home-churned butter; who knew how to give a...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 5, 2014 | book review, Education, Literature, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
In case you thought I would be writing an exposé about my difficult marriage to artist Cliff, you’d be wrong. I may write about my own marriage at some point, but it would have a different title. The marriage under the microscope is that of Sarah Edwards to the...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 2, 2014 | Coming of Age, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Reflection, Travel, Uncategorized
Atlantic City, New Jersey was the beach mecca for vacationers on the East Coast in the early 1900s. Still dressed in fancy Victorian formality, vacationers caught the salt air as they strolled along the famous board-walk at the Steer Pier, a combination theatre and...
by MarianBeaman | Jun 28, 2014 | Family / Nostalgia, meditation, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Tips, Uncategorized
This week at Mom’s house, I attempted to re-create a scene from my childhood – in the same house, on the same chair, with one of the same Ball-Mason jars from the mother’s stash in the cellar. The kind with tiny bubbles crystallized within the glass...
by MarianBeaman | Jun 25, 2014 | Conflict, Literature, Memory, Nostalgia, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
Jane Martin Walters never attend another Elizabethtown High School Class Reunion, and Dr. Norman P. Will no longer attends college graduations as a president emeritus at Florida State College at Jacksonville. Yet, they both linger in my memory though Jane died in her...
