by MarianBeaman | Apr 23, 2016 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Recipes, Uncategorized
“It’s a spring cleaning ritual – but for your body,” touts reporter Jennifer Sheehan, extolling the merits of eating dandelion. “It cleans your blood and you get a lot of good vitamins from it,” another endorsement I read in Sheehan’s article from Lehigh Valley’s The...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 20, 2016 | blog, Cliff Beaman artist, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
My mother wore many hats both literally and figuratively. Most of her head coverings were prayer veilings worn every day. As a young woman, her coverings were large, decreasing in size as she got older and church rules had progressively relaxed. Mother wore a...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 13, 2016 | Easter, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
Little Mennonite girls could be fancy before they became plain. They could wear hats. Their mothers may have worn flat, black bonnets on top of their prayer veilings (coverings) at Easter, but they couldn’t wear hats with ribbons and flowers. At least not in Lancaster...
by MarianBeaman | Mar 23, 2016 | blog, Easter, Family / Nostalgia, Literature, Mennonite History, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
At Easter-tide I’m dipping once again into my Grandma Fannie Martin Longenecker’s stash of vintage post cards. Here is one dated April 1908 from “your RBC,” it says, with the postmark wrapped around the face of the card. Another, from...
by MarianBeaman | Mar 9, 2016 | Cliff Beaman artist, Education, Literature, meditation, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
Is there a drop of Irish blood in my veins? I doubt it. I grew up Mennonite in the Longenecker family in Pennsylvania Dutch country, a hot-bed of Swiss-German ancestry. Still, the Irish-named Donegal Springs is a mere 3-mile, 5-minute drive from Rheems, Pennsylvania...
by MarianBeaman | Jan 20, 2016 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Literature, Memory, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Reflection
A long, wavelike ridge of snow . . . formed by the wind: Sastruga, a word of Russian origin. A snowdrift is a beautiful thing if it doesn’t lie across the path you’ll have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination. Prehistoric Humps James...
