Magical Memoir Moments
Rest, Rock, and Roll: Some Thoughts about Rhythm from the Road
We’ve been a rockin’ and a rollin’ again! We don’t exactly jitterbug like these couples, but we are on the move! In fact, I’m writing these words in Indiana on the way to Ohio. Last week we visited Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. This morning we started out with breakfast with a dozen people who attend…
Prairie Lights Bookstore, Faulkner, Carol Bodensteiner, and Me
Stuart and I are on the road again. This time we are driving instead of taking Amtrak. The prairie is our playground and this Sunday October 19 2-3 p.m. Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City will be our destination. In the meantime, we visit friends in various Wisconsin cities and Kalona, Iowa. Finally, I will…
Grandparenting: How it Helps Us to Simplify
I’m sitting at my desk, looking out at the mountains, and thinking about speaking to more than 100 Mennonite women this Friday night at the Amigo Centre, a place I know well, not too far from Sturgis, Michigan. The subject is Recovering Simplicity, a topic that Mennonites have grappled with for a long time and…
Black Like Me: What I Learned by Listening to Black Voices Then and Now
Even though no black students were enrolled at Warwick High School in Lititz, Pennsylvania, 1962-1966, the years I attended, I was not completely unaware of the Civil Rights Movement. I had Mr. Price for my American history teacher. He urged us to read about injustice and imagine what it must be like to deal with…
Taking a Turn Toward the Sixties, Mennonite Memoir Style
1966 That’s the year I heard the gravel crunch in the driveway of our Pennsylvania farm as my parents drove me and a few worldly possessions to Eastern Mennonite College. Today I’m suddenly curious about the world I lived in then and alert to the many other windows to the past currently online. Today I’ll…
Building "THIS": How an Online Course Has Inspired Me to Continue Blogging
A confession. After blogging for six years, I sometimes wonder if it is time to let go. Float away past the ether . . . Instead of blogging, I could take photography and painting classes that are part of the “road not taken” I want to travel. And speaking of travel, there’s that long bucket…
Does BLUSH Have a Sequel?: The Box in the Basement
Readers have been asking if Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World has a sequel. My honest answer is that I don’t know. However, this box has been whispering to me. “Come look.” From out of the stack of albums pictured below, a little voice squeaks: “Play me, Shirley, Shirley bo burley.” So, I am…
Blog Post #500 and a Six-Year Anniversary Milestone
It all started with a gift and a milestone birthday. I was sixty. My tech-savvy son Anthony was approaching age thirty-two. I cashed in his “gift certificate” in the next month and started blogging — without having a clue. No pictures. Just a few random words. But I at least had a subject. The blog…
Carpe Diem: A Tribute to Robin Williams
When I heard the news of Robin Williams’ death on August 11, 2014, I felt it viscerally, along with so many other people around the world. I’ve seen most of his most famous movies, but the one I thought of immediately was Dead Poet Society, a film I have often watched with English majors. The…