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 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 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 14, 2017 | blog, Memory, Quotations, Travel, Uncategorized
Love Locks Their love, they thought, was an iron-clad statement, fixed to the grill work of Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. Etched with their initials, couples professed undying love as they tossed the key to their lovelock into the Seine. City workers in 2015 with a...
by MarianBeaman | Dec 21, 2016 | Christmas, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite History, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
When I was a little girl, my Aunt Ruthie painted this wooden dish with a lamb and the Bethlehem star. She made one for each of my sisters too. I’m sorry there is no date though I imagine we were in elementary or middle school in the early 1950s. Christmas...
by MarianBeaman | Oct 26, 2016 | Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Nostalgia, Tips
Do you send Hallowe’en cards? Judging from the racks of greeting cards in stores these days, many people do. Stores selling Hallowe’en costumes and party gear are now occupying vacated commercial space. October issues of magazines offer decorating ideas...
