by MarianBeaman | May 7, 2014 | Coming of Age, Conflict, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Purple Passage, Uncategorized
It’s spring concert time and I’m making my fingers fly fast over the strings of my violin pizzicato style, trying to keep up with the syncopated rhythms of The Typewriter Song. Noah Klauss, the director of our Elizabethtown High School Orchestra, is a fan of Leroy...
by MarianBeaman | May 3, 2014 | Coming of Age, Conflict, Education, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
My mother saved all my report cards. When I retrieved them from the attic, only grade 8 was missing. They are tall documents, sheathed in a coarse, brown envelope. And they speak for me as a student: mostly A’s with a smattering of Bs. Once I got a C- on a...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 26, 2014 | Coming of Age, Conflict, Education, Literature, Mennonite History, Quotations, Uncategorized
Is a family graduation on your calendar this year? As a faculty member at Florida State College at Jacksonville (then Florida Community College), I attended graduation every year in full regalia with hundreds of ecstatic grads, joyful families, and proud faculty and...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 16, 2014 | Coming of Age, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Romance, Uncategorized
This is a sequel to a previous blog post: Flying the Coop: Leaving Mennonite Land with a link to my original story on Mary Gottschalk’s website. His Story: I proposed to Marian my Mennonite girl friend one snowy evening, my car stuck in a snow-bank. When she...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 9, 2014 | Coming of Age, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
Mother Longenecker still lives in the same house she and Daddy bought soon after they got married in 1940. Their bedroom looked the same for decades, but it’s changed over the years. Here’s what is missing . . . and what I remember from so long ago. 1. The...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 7, 2014 | Amish, Amish fiction, Coming of Age, Conflict, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
In the movie based on Beverly Lewis’ best-selling romance novel The Shunning, pretty Katie Lapp senses something is missing in her simple Amish life. Then a fancy woman comes to Lancaster County looking for the baby girl she gave up for adoption nearly 20 years...
