by MarianBeaman | Nov 28, 2018 | blog, book review, Cliff Beaman artist, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Quotations, Tips, Uncategorized
My Mennonite parents laughed very little, except when relatives and friends tickled their funny bones. They took the business of parenting very seriously. Other relatives lit up with a sense of humor: I carry an image of my Grandma Fannie and Aunt Ruthie once slapping...
by MarianBeaman | Nov 14, 2018 | blog, meditation, Mennonite Lore, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
Spiders, snakes, heights, tiny space . . . what feels scary to you? Other things that scare us: mud-slinging politicians, school shootings, low cash flow, a health blow Studies show that 95% of what we fear is baseless, and the rest are things we must learn to live...
by MarianBeaman | Oct 31, 2018 | blog, book review, Coming of Age, Mennonite Lore, Quotations, Uncategorized
A Real Book “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It...
by MarianBeaman | Oct 17, 2018 | blog, Literature, Quotations, Tips, Uncategorized
Inquiring Minds want to Know . . . Who Put the Butter in Butterfly? a book that survived my Great Book Purge of 2016, was a birthday gift from the Dean of Liberal Arts at my college in 1993. It is billed as“compulsive reading for anyone incurably curious about the...
by MarianBeaman | Oct 3, 2018 | blog, Cliff Beaman artist, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Uncategorized
My Aunt Ruthie died at age 98 1/2, so she never reached 100, a goal I sensed she hoped for in her healthy years. But she did celebrate birthdays on October 4 every year before then. Some happily in elder days. Other celebrations had mixed results as her...
by MarianBeaman | Sep 26, 2018 | blog, book review, Coming of Age, Memory, Quotations, Tips, Uncategorized
I’ve been writing memoir for 3 ½ years now, three more if you count years spent blogging snippets that have become memoir chapters.. Truthfully, I’m ready for this part of the process to end. And it will soon. The Tricky Mind Since 2015, I’ve taken memoir-writing...
