by MarianBeaman | Jul 23, 2014 | Coming of Age, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Quotations, Uncategorized
My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it. – Boris Johnson * * * July is the birthday month for four our immediate family. If you count our extended family, there are three or four more birthdays this month. This month I celebrate the...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 19, 2014 | Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Recipes, Uncategorized
In June, my sister Jan and I visited our Longenecker kin in Elizabethtown and the village of Rheems close by. One morning we took a stroll around the square in E-Town and found that though the town clock was still planted in place, the merchants we knew had...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 16, 2014 | Literature, Memory, Purple Passage, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
Birthdays The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been. – Madeleine l’Engle The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. – Aldous Huxley...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 12, 2014 | Coming of Age, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Reflection, Uncategorized
We have to try it again. Here’s another shirt,” Jane said as she plucked one of Dad’s blue work shirts out of a plastic bag full of shirts—clean, sprinkled and rolled—all ready to iron. “Start with the yoke,” she directed. I grabbed the damp shirt out of her hand...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 9, 2014 | book review, Coming of Age, Conflict, Education, Literature, Quotations, Uncategorized
Sarah’s Flair for House-keeping She was the kind of woman who took the trouble to tie her hair with a ribbon for breakfast when many wives came down tousled; who spent an extra minute to stamp a design on a block of home-churned butter; who knew how to give a...
by MarianBeaman | Jul 5, 2014 | book review, Education, Literature, Quotations, Reflection, Uncategorized
In case you thought I would be writing an exposé about my difficult marriage to artist Cliff, you’d be wrong. I may write about my own marriage at some point, but it would have a different title. The marriage under the microscope is that of Sarah Edwards to the...