by MarianBeaman | Apr 5, 2017 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
This postcard was sent to Miss Fannie Martin (my Grandma Longenecker) from Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. The postmark, dated October 15, 1909, is intact but the stamp has been cut out, deleting some of the text that would illuminate the meaning of the scene. Your mission,...
by MarianBeaman | Mar 29, 2017 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Uncategorized
A True Story Hilda lived in Pennsylvania. She had lots of friends in her hometown. Then she moved to Maine. When she left she took with her something special. This post will tell you what and how and why. Hilda Zeager loved Lancaster County farmland where she...
by MarianBeaman | Mar 7, 2017 | blog, book review, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Uncategorized
Her Story The title for Rhoda Janzen’s latest memoir, Mennonite Meets Mr. Right, could be recast as Egg-Head Mennonite Intellectual Meets Pentecostal Hunk Mitch. I succumbed easily to her comic style, which engaged me while reading her first memoir, Mennonite in a...
by MarianBeaman | Feb 28, 2017 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, meditation, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
It’s a safe bet that I’d find clothes in your closet, boots, maybe a tennis racket. But I don’t think I’d find an otter hat, a movie camera, a stack of paintings or a ruffle iron. Sorting through ninety years of accumulation, my sisters and I have found all that ~ and...
by MarianBeaman | Feb 22, 2017 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite History, Nostalgia, Quotations, Uncategorized
Five journals, spiral-bound, sit in my writing studio. Their pages, bowed from cargo storage on flights from Florida to Pennsylvania, contain snatches of conversation from the last nine years of Aunt Ruthie’s life. Since 2008, she has had to cope with a pacemaker...
by MarianBeaman | Feb 8, 2017 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Literature, Quotations, Uncategorized
The Lion and the Mouse Once upon a time a mischievous mouse scampered across the outstretched paw of a sleeping lion, awakening him from his nap. The king of beasts clapped his paw upon the pitiful creature that squealed: “ Please don’t kill me! The day may come when...
