by MarianBeaman | May 10, 2017 | blog, Cliff Beaman artist, Memory, Uncategorized
“What are these?” I queried, opening a photo sleeve in Cliff’s art studio. “Oh, my word!” I announced to no one in particular as I fingered the first picture. Then I laughed, paging through all the photos, fondly called Clifftoons my...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 26, 2017 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Uncategorized
My Grandma Fannie never graced a pulpit wearing clerical robes. She did not have a theology degree either. Certainly, no one ever addressed her as a Reverend. Yet one spring day in 1951 Fannie Martin Longenecker preached to the residents at Orville Mennonite Home. Her...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 12, 2017 | blog, Cliff Beaman artist, Easter, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Uncategorized
Easter Greetings: The Sacred, the Secular, and the Natural Many other postcards have been posted on this website since my sisters and I have been sorting through the house Aunt Ruthie shared with my Grandma Fannie. You can visit them here and here. This season I share...
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...
