marianbeaman

Divas of Downton Abbey: Southern Style

December 11, 2013December 11, 2013 marianbeaman32 Comments

Watching episodes of Downton Abbey is like scarfing down balls of caramel corn while swilling champagne. The New Yorker

I encountered Julian Fellowes, writer and creator of the Downton Abbey series, when he played Kilwillie, a distillery-owning character in the British drama series Monarch of the Glen. As an actor, he never succeeded in winning the hand of Molly, the land-rich, but beleaguered widow, the girl of his dreams. But as master mind of an award-winning PBS series set in post-Edwardian England, Oscar-winning Fellowes is surrounded by drama and divas galore.

Presented in an Upstairs, Downstairs format, Downton Abbey, now in its 4th season, depicts the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and the servants who work for them. If you are a devotee, you know that jealousy, revenge, and closely guarded secrets power the plot portrayed by glittering, gossipy, and beguiling men and women against a backdrop of history, politics, and the march of technology.

The series Downton Abbey, a Masterpiece Theatre classic, is now a flourishing brand and there is merchandising to match:

Tuesday evening, my Southern friends and I, escorted by husband Cliff, brave the mild wintry weather to attend a premiere of the 4th season at WJCT, Jacksonville’s PBS station. Period costumes are encouraged and attendees do their best to comply with apparel from the Edwardian period to the flapper age.

We begin with an appetizer at our house:

Tickets and a programme:

Then oohs and aahs over wardrobe choices!

And there is a flapper in our midst, heralding the coming decade!

Finally, the new episode begins!

After the screening, inquiring minds want to know:

What zingers did Lady Violet fire off?

After her period of mourning, who will be Lady Mary’s next love interest?

What new technology is introduced?

Who is in Carson’s arms at the end of the episode?

The mysteries of Downton Abbey are made all the more fascinating by the true story of the castle in which the series is filmed, Highclerc Castle, whose history is recounted narrative-style by its current owner, the Countess of Carnarvon, in her book Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclerc Castle by the Castle of Carnarvon.

Are you a Downton Abbeyite? We are dying to know why. Or why not. Add your bit to the conversation!

There is still time to read and respond to my entry in the My Gutsy Story Contest posted on the website of award-winning author Sonia Marsh:

Rising Above the Pettiness to Focus on the Positive

Purple Passages: December 2013 edition

December 7, 2013January 6, 2014 marianbeaman16 Comments

HOPE

Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul. Emily Dickinson

Hope is like a road in the country. There never was a road, but when many people traveled it, it came into existence. Lyn Yutang

Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate. G. K. Chesterton

There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides. John
Stuart Mill

CHANGE

Change means something good is coming, — even if I don’t yet understand all it will mean. Joe Sherer, Missionary Messenger, November 2011

Until God opens the next door, praise him in the hallway. Orebela Gbenga

PROGRESS

You’ll be amazed how much distance you can cover taking [life] in increments. Little things add up; inches turn to miles, We string together our efforts like so many pearls, and before long . . . you have a whole string!”

Staying the Course by B. J Gallagher quoted in Wednesday, October 12, 2013 entry in Daily Devotional: The Word for You Today

DISTANCE

“Distance lends enchantment to the view,” explaining why events of our youth are enveloped in such a rosy cloud. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Ozarks

Travel helps one see “how [American] ways look from a distance.” Molly Hughes, A London Family (1870-1900)

STRESS-BUSTER

“. . . concentrate on breathing to quell the mind’s restless forays into the past and future.” Geoffrey Cowley, “Stress-Busters: What Works” Newsweek, June 14, 1999.

Quiet zone low light, deep breaths . . . ah! — Quiet zone, low light, deep breaths . . . ah!

Try to let go of being in a state of readiness. Yoga instructor, October 2, 1999.

NIGHT-CAP

Have courage in the great sorrows of life, and patience for the small ones. And when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake. Victor Hugo

‘Tis the Season:

from It’s a Wonderful Life. Clarence the Angel leaves a reminder for George Bailey: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.”

Add a quote or respond to one you’ve just read. I look forward to your comments! And I will always reply.

Below is the link to my entry in the Gutsy Story Contest now in progress on the website of awarding-winning memoirist Sonia Marsh:

My Gutsy Story: Rising Above the Pettiness to Focus on the Positive

Feeling Rich, in Touch with our Senses

December 6, 2013 marianbeaman13 Comments

Diane Ackerman published years ago a “lusciously written” book entitled A Natural History of the Senses. My students enjoyed reading passages from the book for their summary assignments. Both poet and scientist in her approach, Ackerman has since written Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden, a book I have relished reading for its keen observations. Here is a passage:

Many things catch light prismatically–fish scales, the mother-of-pearl inside a limpet shell, oil on a slippery road, a dragonfly’s wings, opals, soap bubbles, peacock feathers, metal that’s lightly tarnished, the wing case of beetles, spiders’ webs smeared with early-morning dew.

Author Kathy Pooler’s blog post yesterday, December 5, 2013 features actor and author Bryan Cohen who shares the knack of tapping into one’s senses to access childhood memories.

Read it here!

Moments of Extreme Emotion Series: My Marriage in Vacuum Cleaners

December 4, 2013February 21, 2015 marianbeaman16 Comments

My Marriage in Vacuum Cleaners

My mom still has the same vacuum cleaner she’s had for decades, a blue, bullet-shaped machine with a snorkel hose at one end. Think of a mechanical Dachshund, a hot dog with a waist-line problem. “It still does the job,” she says.

We are not quite as frugal or married to a brand as Mom though. As newly weds, Cliff and I bought a Filter Queen, a squatty brown thing that rolled along the floor on four little wheels, a vacuum cleaner that came with a great sales pitch: It could suck up marbles and had a Hepa filter: Picture the cone-shaped spaceship that returns from outer space, splashing down in the ocean: that’s the Hepa filter. The salesman also said it was clean enough to use on a submarine. Cliff experimented with the suck-up marble trick, but I don’t think he ever tried it on a submarine.

Vintage Filter Queen vacuum cleaner: image via eBay

A few years ago I was getting tired of my upright Kenmore vacuum, sick and tired of its spewing out more dust than sucking in. Usually we employ due diligence researching a good replacement, but Cliff was out of town on his spring tour, so I thought, “I can handle this myself . . . how hard can it be?” A woman with a mission, I went to Linens and Things, a chain store now defunct in Jacksonville, to check out my options. I totally discounted mainstays like Hoover and Electrolux sitting snugly side by side. Then I spotted a vacuum cleaner at 70 % off. (Going-out-of-business sale!) Overlooking its heft, I compared it to a cleaner parked close by in the showroom, a Dyson, my gold-standard at the time. “It would be perfect, sturdy and top of the line both,” I think.

When Husband came home, he just stared at my purchase open-mouthed and started laughing, then a wild guffaw. His comments: This thing looks like it can suck up the rug in one fell swoop. Why, it could even pull a red wagon with a child sitting in it around the block–a vacuum cleaner on steroids, that’s what it is. A turbo-charged Bissell beast!

I have to wonder: Can a vacuum cleaner help a writer find her voice?

Join the conversation. I will always respond!

Here is the link to my entry in the Gutsy Story Contest now in progress on the website of author Sonia Marsh:

My Gutsy Story: Rising Above the Pettiness to Focus on the Positive

Mom’s vegetable soup, good for what ails you

November 30, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman28 Comments

When our children were little and our family visited Mother and Daddy in Lancaster County, PA , we could always count on an enamel-coated refrigerator drawer full of soup–either chicken corn or vegetable–to get us revived after a long car trip from Florida. Even now after an exhausting flight, we open the fridge and find home-made soup in one of the drawers, ready to heat up.

Mother has seldom used a recipe and when she does the proportions are often not included.

The recipe shows “potatoes” crossed out, but sometimes she adds them.

After a couple of stabs at it, I coaxed Mom into being a little more precise about measurements for her savory vegetable soup:

Start with 2 1/2 pounds of chuck roast. Sear the meat and then bake it at 350 degrees until tender. It should be nice and brown and fall apart when you jab a fork into it! Save drippings.

Cook separately: Carrots, celery and cabbage. Then add green beans, peas and corn. Be sure to keep the vegetable broth.

Now add a quart of tomato juice (preferably canned from fresh tomatoes or tin canned crushed tomatoes.)

1/2 cup Heinz ketchup. Then combine beef, cut up, into vegetable + broth mixture and simmer.

* * *

What comfort food to you associate with your mother? Another relative?

Your comments welcome. I will always reply.

Coming next week! First in a Series: Moments of Extreme Emotion with Original Art by Cliff

Thanksgiving Collection II

November 27, 2013November 27, 2013 marianbeaman13 Comments

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914) Courtesy Wikipedia — The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914)
Courtesy Wikipedia Image

Saying grace before carving the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner in the home of Earle Landis in Neffsville, Pennsylvania 1942

This image is a work of an employee of the United States Farm Security Administration, taken as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

Jonah 2:9 KJV

Every year about this time my Dad would start handing out calendars for the new year, advertising his business, Longenecker Farm Supply. Calendars always featured something inspirational: a glossy, colored photo of a farm scene, happy children at play, or in this case, a family observing Thanksgiving. Daddy died in 1985 and after that time the business was sold, so calendars stopped. But I still keep the “Thanksgiving” calendar in its plastic cradle attached to the inside of one of my kitchen cabinets, with calendar year postings now computer-generated.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise; be thankful unto him, and bless his name. Psalm 100:4

Happy Thanksgiving! Your comments welcome. I will always respond.

Coming soon! A new series: Moments of Extreme Emotion with Original Art by Cliff

It’s the Gym, not a Spa

November 23, 2013November 22, 2013 marianbeaman14 Comments

Tennis, touch football, swimming, sailing, horse-back riding . . . if it involved action, the Kennedy clan, including our 35th President, were at it! Though President Kennedy suffered from severe back pain, he was often photographed participating in sports.

Through Kennedy’s Council on Physical Fitness, Americans in the 1960s were challenged to become more active and physically fit. In these days of remembrance of President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, this post pays tribute to that part of his legacy, a call to shape up!

Decades later, I’m still at it, trying to avoid canes, walkers, and wheelchairs in the near future. And so, fitness classes at the gym have become a metaphor for my life in general: Pilates / PowerPump = hard / harder.

Lift it up!

Step it up!

Roll it up!

Getting ready to roll . . .

Instructor Ananda doing perfect roll-ups.

My roll-ups are not perfect, but I try!

As I said, “It’s a gym, not a spa!”

Your comments welcome. I will always reply.

Upright: Downright Fabulous!

November 20, 2013November 20, 2013 marianbeaman16 Comments

Last Wednesday, into my inbox popped a message which included an invitation to lunch from Karen Bruner Upright, my former student at Florida State College. The last time I saw her, she was a “surprise” visitor at Christmas, marching up the walkway to our house, book proudly in hand, with a chapter she co-wrote with a colleague.

When we first met in my college classroom, Karen was my first-year composition student on her third try at getting through the course. Though she attributes her previous failures to not going to class and not feeling motivated, from the beginning, she was a stellar student, whose essays became examples I repeatedly used as models for other students. Revealing her occupation back then as a restaurant chef, one essay in particular stands out, an illustration-type paper with the line “The heat of a commercial kitchen comes from both the ovens and the chefs” as she proceeds to describe two other chefs and herself as “the most obnoxious chef I have ever known.”

When I pointed out her writing gift, she at first stared at me blankly, almost in disbelief. She has since gone on to complete her M.B.A. degree at Purdue University and is currently employed as Systems Manager for Proctor and Gamble–and become co-author of a chapter in a book about technology for human resources. There is no end to what this woman can accomplish. Oh, and did I mention, she still loves to cook, featuring her savory concoctions on her website plannedovers.com

Along the way, Karen has also become conversant in French, every Friday calling her friend in the south of France, so she can maintain her fluency. Also, she has been featured as a Profile in Success in a college textbook by Susan Anker entitled Real Writing with Readings.

Thumbnail of page 145 in Real Writing with Readings college text, 5th ed.

Of all the students who have paraded through my classroom, Karen Upright stands at the top my list of Students Who Inspire.

Downright fabulous!

Is there some you know, like Karen, who persisted and made it through high school, college–some other challenge? Do tell us about it.

Your comments welcome. I will always reply!

Vials of Venom, Oil of Healing

November 16, 2013November 18, 2013 marianbeaman11 Comments

My mother and I are waiting in Doctor Garber’s examining room, which always has a sharp smell of rubbing alcohol. She’s the patient, and I’m with her sitting on a chair eyeing the metal tray holding at least a dozen tiny vials, so cute they look like they could fit in the kitchen of my doll-house. But they are vials of venom, possible culprits. Nurse Becky Longenecker carefully fills little syringes with each fluid, which puncture the skin of Mommy’s extended arm trying to determine whether it is house dust, hay, mildew, turpentine, or cat dander that is causing her frightful asthma attacks. I watch as some injections leave a puffy patch or a bright red spot. She leaves the office with a paper packet of pills to try. Maybe these will help.

But I guess they aren’t working either. Once again, Mother is propped up on feather pillows gasping for breath, her face blanched white with the effort. It’s scary for Daddy and my sisters too. We feel helpless. But Daddy knows about Ordinance # 7 in the Statement of Christian Doctrine of the Lancaster Conference of the Mennonite Church: “Anointing. According to James 5:10-18 we encourage our members to call for anointing with oil accompanied by the prayer of faith for healing.”

Olive oil in a Vial of Healing — Olive Oil in a Vial of Healing

So my dad has called for Pastor Martin R. Kraybill and Deacon John R. Kraybill, brothers, to come to Mom and Dad’s bedroom upstairs for the anointing of oil as prescribed in the New Testament passage of James 5:14 & 15.

Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church: and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

As Pastor Martin prays and reads the scripture to Mother and to the family assembled around her bed, Deacon John anoints her forehead with olive oil, an outward symbol of the healing that is transpiring within. Mom later describes a tingling sensation like a warm, electrical current radiating from the top of her spine to the bottom. “It felt wonderful!” she says. She has been healed immediately—and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

No more doctor visits for asthma ever again, the vials of venom to test for triggers, a thing of the past. Praise God!

Have you or someone you know had an experience similar to this? We’d love to hear your story.

Your comments welcome. I will always respond!

Thanksgiving Collection I

November 13, 2013April 21, 2015 marianbeaman10 Comments

We have a winner! The winner of Valerie Weaver-Zercher’s Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels is . . .

Gwen Witmer

Congratulations, Gwen – happy reading!

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914) Courtesy Wikipedia

PRAYER

A holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada, Thanksgiving invites us to pause and give thanks as we pray, that mysterious communication between one’s heart and the mind of God. Writer C. S. Lewis declares his attitude before prayer: “The prayer preceding all prayers is “May it be the real I who speaks.” British author W. H. Auden expresses the mystery of prayer in a haiku: “He has never seen God, / but once or twice, he believes / he has heard Him,” quoted in The New Yorker, November 14, 2011. And the British author John Baillie implores of God as he prays:

Let me use disappointment as material for patience.

Let me use success as material for thankfulness.

Let me use trouble as material for perseverance.

Let me use danger as material for courage.

Let me use reproach as material for long-suffering.

Let me use praise as material for humility.

Let me use pleasures as material for temperance.

Let me use pain as material for endurance.

Children in our church’s 2-year-old class learn that prayer is talking to God, and then they do just that when they clasp their fat, little fingers as they sing “God is great, and God is good” before snack time:

“Keeping company with God” is the title of Part One of Philip Yancey’s book with the arresting title Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? He discusses also the language of prayer and the dilemmas of prayer including what one should pray for, the enigma of unanswered prayer, and “un-prayed answers.” (220) Ah, the mystery of talking to God.

PRAISE

Lately I decided to cheer myself up by reviewing the bounty of God’s blessings. When the machinery of life goes awry–the doctor has a dire report, the car breaks down, a friend misunderstands–how can it be that I overlook divine intervention? My memory for blessing is so limited, and so I record evidences of God’s faithfulness:

PETITION

Over the years, in fact since 1984, I have accumulated prayer cards, some printed with typewriter ribbon and later ones two-sided and computer generated. Most of what is on the card are names of family and friends who need help, but sometimes there is a condition humanly unsolvable that I pray God will remedy. The cards are speckled with dates recording what I regard as answers to prayer.

How soon we forget. How necessary to remember!

Denise Levertov, from Sands of the Well, expresses with clarity the “quiet mystery” of communication between God and [wo]man in two stanzas of “Primary Wonder” (vimeo):

Days pass when I forget the mystery.

Problems insoluble and problems offering

their own ignored solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then

once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes; the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed One, you still,

hour by hour sustain it.

How do you practice gratitude?

During this Thanksgiving season do you have a story, long treasured in the family or a newly minted one to share? We’re ready to listen!

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