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Caption Needed: Vintage Postcard

Caption Needed: Vintage Postcard

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,...
Hilda’s Maine Send-off

Hilda’s Maine Send-off

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...
How to Make an American Quilt: Love in a Circle

How to Make an American Quilt: Love in a Circle

by MarianBeaman | Mar 14, 2017 | blog, meditation, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, popular culture, Quilt, Quotations, Uncategorized

How to Make an American Quilt, the Movie Women stitch quilt as a wedding gift for girl Girl doesn’t know whether she wants to get married. Women in quilting circle tell stories about life and love that fit the quilt’s theme Where Love Resides Wrapped in a quilt,...
Moments of Discovery: What’s In Your Closet?

Moments of Discovery: What’s In Your Closet?

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...
Aunt Ruthie: Diary of a Long Goodbye

Aunt Ruthie: Diary of a Long Goodbye

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...
Christmas with the Animals: Treasures from Aunt Ruthie & Fannie and Mary Martin

Christmas with the Animals: Treasures from Aunt Ruthie & Fannie and Mary Martin

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...
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