by MarianBeaman | Dec 2, 2015 | blog, Conflict, Education, meditation, Mennonite History, Reflection, Uncategorized
My Pilates instructor is a spring chicken, and my writing coach is young too, just thirty-nine years old, younger than either of our children. Still, They are teaching me. Since childhood, we have been conditioned to think of our teachers as older than we are. Such a...
by MarianBeaman | Nov 14, 2015 | blog, Coming of Age, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Travel, Uncategorized
Every week, The New Yorker magazine features a Cartoon Caption Contest, inviting readers to submit a caption for consideration. After three finalists are chosen, readers vote for the winning caption. Recently, in my cache of Kodak carousels I found a slide from the...
by MarianBeaman | Nov 11, 2015 | blog, Cliff Beaman artist, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
My brother Mark was my first baby. He was born when I was 12, and I soon became a mother to him. I even have a picture to prove it, a blurry movie still from one of Aunt Ruthie’s 16 millimeter camera shoots. I most certainly bottle fed him and changed his...
by MarianBeaman | Oct 28, 2015 | blog, Coming of Age, Education, Family / Nostalgia, meditation, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Romance, Uncategorized
MY STORY Dorothy had the Good Witch of the North to give her “magical protection from fatal harm” on her journey to the land of Oz and back. Yet she followed an uneven path, using her brain, sometimes thinking with her heart, and slowly but surely developing courage....
by MarianBeaman | Oct 21, 2015 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, meditation, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Reflection, Romance, Uncategorized
True Love This month would be the 75th wedding anniversary of my parents, Ray and Ruth Longenecker had they lived. True, they bickered from time to time, but I knew their love was deep and abiding. I rested in the assurance that they would never divorce. There were...
by MarianBeaman | Oct 14, 2015 | blog, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Reflection, Uncategorized
Great Aunt Mary Grace would turn 117 this week on October 14 if she were still alive. When I was young, the Longenecker family visited Mary Grace Martin at her cottage at Mt. Gretna, PA. What I remember most about her appearance was her pleasant aura and a gap-toothed...
