Blog – Page 20 – Plain and Fancy

Hats Off to Dad!

June 14, 2014June 13, 2014 marianbeaman33 Comments

My father wore many hats. Work hats mostly, but also a goofy blue derby hat I faintly remember stashed high up on a closet shelf, and a fedora reserved for Sundays or other special occasions. Through his long history at the shop, Daddy sold a wide array of tractor brands which supplied him with hats embroidered with their company logo: Massey-Harris, Minneapolis Moline, New Idea, Fox, and Deutz.

His hats changed with his loyalty to the brand of farm equipment he was promoting. None made him happier, however, than the hat he wore with one of his first purchases after his father, Henry R. Longenecker, passed the business on to him. With the tag still attached to the grill, Daddy proudly drove the new Massey-Harris tractor back and forth in the alley next to the shop in Rheems, his sister Aunt Ruthie recording the spectacle with her new 16 mm movie camera.

Shop Hats

The Welding Helmet Invented by the German Hans Goldschmidt in 1903, welding was one of my Dad’s specialties, a boon to farmers with harvester units or even plow shares needing repair. A free-standing acetylene cylinder and oxygen tank for welding stood near one of the double wooden doors. This allowed easy access for welding repairs as a tractor or harvesting equipment was pulled through the giant, wheeled doors that ran back and forth on a metal channel.

I watched Daddy slap a Darth Vader-like helmet on his head, don long, flared-sleeve gloves, and use long, skinny welding rods to fuse broken parts together. Sparks flew everywhere in this Fourth of July fireworks show extending into August, the height of the harvesting season.

Along the back of the dark recesses of the shop was a large grinding machine that could sharpen a 6 to 8-foot section of blade used for scissoring hay, wheat or barley.

Daddy did most of his work in his shop but occasionally he was called to the field. A doctor of motors, he made “house” calls to the fields of anxious farmers, work stalled with broken-down equipment.

Farm Hats

My father was first of all a farm implement dealer and mechanic, but he also farmed ten acres of land in Bainbridge, Pennsylvania combining corn and tobacco crops and then later corn with tomatoes. Farming is serious business in the searing sun requiring a cap with a long bill. The result: a white “farmer” forehead and red-brown cheeks and arms. My mother and Aunt Ruthie often wore sun bonnets, in the field but as you can see, we were bare-headed and probably bare-footed too.

Cultivating land for tomato crop in Bainbridge

A beekeeper too, my dad wore a bulky hat complete with a mesh veil to smoke out the bees.

Fancy Hats

Church, weddings, funerals – all were occasions for a fancy fedora. But one occasion in particular required dressing up: posing on the steps of the U. S. Capitol building ready to meet with congressmen regarding the threat of a proposed air base to some of the rich farmland of northern Lancaster County. A sizable delegation of plain people (many of them Mennonites) including my dad in his fedora and Grandma drove to Washington D.C. to make their case with government officials. When a follow-up investigation was conducted, sink-holes had reportedly been found in the farm-land around Bossler’s Mennonite Church. The case was subsequently closed.

Sadie Greider, Grandma Fannie Longenecker and Ray Longenecker on steps of the Capitol in Washington, D. C.

Tell us about your dad’s hats – what he wore, or any other “Dad” memory you want to share now.

Purple Passages with a June Bride

June 11, 2014June 10, 2014 marianbeaman29 Comments

Creativity

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use the more you have. ― Maya Angelou

[Hear her read her valiant poem “Still I Rise” here.]

Creativity is intelligence having fun. ― Albert Einstein

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

Galatians 6: 4-5 The Message

Giving and Health

Dr. Stephen Post conducted a survey at forty-four major universities that revealed that giving protects your overall health twice as much as an aspirin protects your heart against disease. Why Good Things Happen to Good People (7)

Original art: C. Joel Beaman — Relief print: C. Joel Beaman

Being Young in Heart

Another belief of mine is that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise.” ― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

June Brides & Marriage

Wedding of Ruth Longenecker and John Weaver, 1950s — Wedding of Ruth Arlene Longenecker and John Weaver, Bossler’s Mennonite Church, 1950s Bride carries white Bible with lacy handkerchief Groom wears plain (frock) coat

Marriage is more like an airplane than a rock.

You have to commit the thing to flight, and then it creaks and groans, and keeping it airborne depends entirely on ~~altitude~~ attitude. Working at it, though, we can fly forever. ― Michael Grant in the San Diego Union

The Educated Mind & an Opposing Viewpoint

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

― Aristotle, Metaphysics

Life’s Irritations

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. ― Psychiatrist Carl Jung

Memory and Time

Remembering is so basic and vital a part of staying alive that it takes on the strength of an instinct of survival, and acquires the power of art. Remembering is done through the blood, it is a bequeathment, it takes account of what happened before a man is born . . . . It is a physical absorption through the living body, it is a spiritual heritage. It is also a life’s work. ― Eudora Welty in her book On Writing in which she quotes Faulkner (103).

In fiction, time can throb like a pulse, tick like a bomb, beat like the waves of a rising tide again the shore; it can be made as the whisper of attrition, or come to an end with the explosion of a gun (98).

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events. ― Albert Einstein

Memory. . . is the diary that we all carry about with us. ― Oscar Wilde

* * *

Add more color to June’s Purple Passages!

Reply with your own quote. Or respond to one above.

I promised an answer to the puzzling question from the last post.

How did this happen? Here is our best guess:

Our children, now in their forties, were in their late teens when Cliff and I decided to leave them at home alone while we took a short weekend trip. One of the children was very mature and responsible (or so we thought), so we felt safe to leave. When we returned home, pictures on the walls were askew, there was evidence of under-age drinking, and one leg on the piano bench had obviously been broken off but bandaged up with rough, brown U-Haul tape. Our kids’ explanation then was that they had a small party but more came, uninvited, when word spread that there were no parents at home. Yes, the cliché fits here exactly: “When the cat’s away . . . !”

At the time of the first break, Cliff repaired the leg with a wooden dowel, which has lasted until a few weeks ago. Then Mr. Repairman had to reinforce the leg with a sturdier steel dowel. The END. (We hope!)

Coming next: Hats Off to Dad

Moments of Extreme Emotion: A Broken Leg & Ecstasy Expressed

June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 marianbeaman24 Comments

Moment of Exasperation

One of the mysteries of life is how things happen at our house. Specifically, how did the leg on this piano bench break? We still haven’t figured out the answer for sure though we have speculated on some possible explanations.

BrokenPianoBenLeg

How did this happen? Vote in this short quiz:

a. Piano bench overloaded with music books

b. Over-weight pianist

c. Kids had wild party while parents were gone

d. All of the above

e. None of the above

(Answer on next blog post.)

Mystery Moment

Completely befuddled, Patrick and Curtis react to the Mystery Trip announcement sponsored by Grandpa and NaNa:

Patrick: What’s a mystery trip?

Curtis: Is it safe to drive with Grandpa?

Moment of Extreme Ecstasy

Patrick and Curtis about 6 years ago at O’Charley’s

Grandpa’s paying!

Have you had a moment or two of extreme emotion lately? Or long ago?

Thank you for adding your story to mine!

The Good Ole Summertime & the Simple Life

June 4, 2014June 4, 2014 marianbeaman29 Comments

“In the Good Old Summer Time” shares nostalgic space with another old, familiar tune of the season: “Summer time and the livin’ is easy.” Summertime for the Longenecker family may not have been easy in the 1950s what with tomato field hoeing, canning, freezing vegetables from the garden, but it was simple.

This is a pict-o-logue of summertime for me from 13 months to about age 13.

“Naked in a tub” would be a sensational caption for this photo were it not for the fact that I’m only 13 months old. Later I recognize that this glistening galvanized tub is also used for blanching sweet corn ears from the garden lot.

I'm sitting in high chair to the right at Metzler reunion picnic — I’m sitting in high chair to the right at Metzler reunion picnic

Reminiscent of Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe (yes, it’s a stretch) but in a far simpler, Mennonite style, the Metzlers on Mother’s side of the family gather for a Sunday summer picnic In Uncle Clyde’s meadow, large crates holding up the table. After dinner the children scatter, the women clean up, and the men take down the table. I won’t be surprised when one or two of my uncles might light up a cigar rolled from home-grown tobacco.

Uncle Leroy and Aunt Clara’s farm is the perfect place for a summer Sunday dinner on the lawn. Hefty barrels hold up this groaning board as we pass around the seven sweets and seven sours, every family bringing a dish to another Metzler reunion.

In Middletown with Daddy's cousin Janet Martin — In Middletown with Daddy’s cousin Janet Martin

I also have a turn visiting Uncle Frank Martin’s household, one of Grandma Longenecker’s younger brothers. Aunt Mattie braids my pig-tails every morning as I sit in her kitchen looking up at the tall ceilings. She plaits very slowly because she doesn’t have much experience with little-girl hair. Her girls, Joyce and Janet, are not plain and have naturally curly hair that hangs free. They both wear shoes with open toes, a detail not lost on me. Cousin Sammy likes to tease me, but his sister Janet takes me on walks around the block because their house is in town, Middletown, Pennsylvania, my first taste of life outside of the country.

After I reach school-age, summer is a time for the cousin exchange. My favorite summer visits are with Cousin Janet, of all the Metzler cousins the one closest in age to me. I am fascinated with her strawberry blond hair and lighter skin. All of my family have an olive complexion, dark hair. We play with fat, sticky strands of Cinderella hair on our dolls and make up stories upstairs in the small bedroom. Soon Mom will call us down to the kitchen for root-beer floats sipped with plastic straws probably saved from last summer.

The next time I go to Janet’s house for a week in summer, I fall off my bicycle onto the gravel, grinding sharp bits into the skin around my kneecap. Though the bruise starts to recover, I don’t bounce back from the tumble. In the day or two following, I have crying spells, so Aunt Jenny calls my parents. When they pick me up, I feel both embarrassed and relieved.

* * *

Tell us your summer vacation memories. We’re all ears.

Home-grown Miracles: See, Taste, Touch

May 31, 2014May 31, 2014 marianbeaman33 Comments

EGG

Reader, in your hand you hold

A silver case, a box of gold.

I have no door, however small,

Unless you pierce my tender wall,

And there’s no skill in healing then

Shall ever make me whole again.

Show pity, Reader, for my plight:

Let be, or else consume me quite.

– Jay MacPherson

All poems from Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Poems About Small Things, selected by Myra Cohn Livingston, HarperCollins, 1994.

* * *

Barbara Kingsolver, author of several New York Times best-sellers including The Poisonwood Bible, published her first work of non-fiction, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food in 2007, which makes the case for eating local. Here is an excerpt from the book:

“This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.”

The blurb from GoodReads website entices to read more:

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that’s better for the neighborhood and also better on the table.

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

Depending on where you live, you are enjoying some fresh fruits, vegetables, or flowers this time of year.

What appeals to your senses right now?

Two Vignettes: Mom’s Green Stamps & E-town’s Rexall Drug Store

May 28, 2014May 28, 2014 marianbeaman38 Comments

“Mare – yun,” my mother calls (yells, actually), “It’s time to lick the green stamps again. The books are on top of the kitchen table.” Mom likes to interrupt my reading. To me time with my books is serious business but to her it’s play. Not working. Wasting time with books unless it’s homework, she thinks.

As I moisten the stamps with my tongue, the glue tastes gooey and sweet. Mom usually receives one Green Stamp in exchange for every dime spent at check-out. I fill the two or three green books until they are fat, each stuffed with 24 pages of unevenly gummed and incompletely perforated paper rectangles. Books of these items can be redeemed for gifts. Mother gets a catalog from the stamp company’s showroom, then matches the item she wants against its price in stamps, paying for it with stamps rather than with cash. She probably has something picked out already. I notice the cover on the ironing board has lots of scorch marks and is wearing thin, so I guess she’ll get an ironing-board cover with one of the books.

The gifts are usually household items like a set of mixing bowls, an ironing-board cover or something big, as writer Phyllis Tickle describes when she traded her green stamps for her daughter Nora’s baby stroller:

Surprisingly cheap is usually just cheap in premium exchanges, I have found. It certainly was in this case. The thing was made of aluminum so light and thin that the frame itself could not have weighed in at a full pound. The whole stroller did not weigh in at two. The wheels were scarcely a half-inch wide and definitely not a quarter-inch thick.

The sides and back of the contraption were of a plasticized, loosely woven plaid fabric neither Sam [husband] nor I could identify. The result was a kind of sling-on-wheels that had grown less and less appealing to my maternal instincts as I had become more and more of a mother and less and less of a mother-to-be. However, we did have a stroller. Hmmmm . . . .

Later, she concedes though “those were the good old days when strollers were strollers and not miniature, padded tanks.” (294).

A shoppers’ rewards program for loyal customers, the Sperry and Hutchinson Company dates as far back as 1896. During the 1960s, the company issued three times as many green stamps as the U.S. Postal Service. After a series of recessions and the decreasing value of the stamps most house-wives didn’t think saving stamps was worth the trouble. However, green stamps still persist in popular culture. In A Hard Day’s Night (1964), starring the Beatles, John Lennon mentions Green Stamps when joking to Paul McCartney that he’ll get the best lawyer they can buy. In the hit “Speedy Gonzales” (1962) by Pat Boone, Mel Blanc sings the final words of the song in Speedy Gonzales’ voice, “Hey Rosita, come quick, down at the cantina they’re giving green stamps with tequila!”

* * *

Mother doesn’t drive to the Green Stamp showroom on her own to redeem her stamps because she doesn’t have a license. But there’s a Lancaster – Elizabethtown bus that goes right by our house along Old Route 230. She knows when to tell me to pull on the cord over-head that buzzes to tell the driver where to stop in town. We’ll go to the W. T. Grant store because it has most of what she needs. Our next stop is the Gladdell Shop with pretty dresses. In the window I see a sleek, lavender dress made of chiffon fabric on the mannikin. It’s pleated at the waist and has a belt with a rhinestone-studded buckle. I imagine jut how slithery and cool it would feel gliding over my skin. I would be instantly chic and stylish, not plain. But Mother is completely blind to the fancy frocks and heads for the lingerie department. A night-gown? Some hosiery? (She always orders a boring shade called “gun-metal.”) No, she has picked out a smocked, tricot bed jacket in blue with a bow to wear in the hospital over her gown when Mark is born and visitors appear.

The shopping trip gets even sweeter near the end. Mom will check her watch, so that we will have just enough time to go to the Rex-All Drug Store before the bus picks us up heading back east. Dr. Garber usually dispenses pills in little white envelopes from his office, so we are not interested in the pharmacy at the drug store.

Instead we head straight to the soda fountain which is as close to theatre as I’m going to get. Stepping inside the chrome rails that mark the fountain area off from the rest of the store, we sit on the red leatherette cushioned stools that spin. Fluorescent tubes of light above the fountain equipment advertise bubbly ice cream sodas with a straw. Above it like rays from the aurora borealis but stretched around the perimeter of the fountain area is a glow of bluish-purple lights illuminating the walls. Then I look up and see stars sparkling from the ceiling. I’m in heaven. Until the bus comes all too soon.

What story can you tell about green stamps or soda fountains?

Something you can add about a different memory from the 1950s or 60s?

Kathy Pooler and Independence Day: Her Story of Freedom

May 24, 2014May 24, 2014 marianbeaman44 Comments

This July, my friend and author Kathy Pooler will be celebrating Independence Day in a big way launching her memoir in early July. The book’s title Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away from Emotional Abuse hints at the road Kathy has traveled from victim to victor with faith as her guiding light. Her story speaks of the liberation she experienced as her renewed faith enabled her to cope with multiple family upheavals including a spouse’s alcoholism, domestic abuse, two divorces, and her own struggle with cancer and heart disease.

Faith is walking to the edge of all the light and taking one more step. Author Unknown

Kathy’s Story:

As a “cradle Catholic,” I was born into and brought up with all the traditions and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic faith. I have, by conscious choice and deepening desire, remained true to these beliefs and teachings, except for a period in my twenties when I questioned and even rejected them.

As is often the case, my faith did not deepen until I had to face several life-altering challenges. It was then that my religion became my faith and my spirituality, the source of comfort and meaning in my life. Therein lies the heart of my upcoming memoir, Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away From Emotional Abuse.

One of the threads in my story is the role my faith played in getting into and out of two emotionally abusive marriages.

I asked myself as I wrote my memoir “How does a young woman from a stable, loving Catholic family make so many wise choices about her career but so many poor choices about love that she ends up escaping with her two children in broad daylight from her second husband for fear of physical abuse?”

The truth was this: A loving family, a solid career and a strong faith could not rescue me until I decided to rescue myself.

So what does faith have to do with all of this?

Faith has been a way to nurture my own soul. I know spirituality is a very personal issue, but I do want to say that finding meaning in our lives is very important. It does not have to but this search for meaning can involve religious traditions. As mentioned, I am a Roman Catholic and find great meaning in praying and observing many rituals of my church including Holy Communion. Some other ways I nurture my soul is through Al-Anon, family friends, and following my passions of writing, exercise, reading, playing the piano. The main point is that we each need to find what works for us just as we respect each others’ right to do the same.
Honor yourself: When I learned to sit still long enough, I found what I wanted and needed and then learned to honor myself and my needs. I was able to carve out my own time and space to “follow my bliss.”
Hope matters: And perhaps the most important for me: Never, ever give up hope.

Excerpt from her book:

Tuesday was Ed’s bowling night. As my belly began to swell in my third trimester, my weekly vigil became more difficult. I sat by the bay window wondering when he’d return home and what condition he’d be in after his night of drinking.

My slow rhythmic breaths echoed through the quiet darkness and steadied the anxiety bubbling up from the pit of my stomach, colliding with my view of what I wanted and needed. My thoughts drifted to my great-grandmother. The visions of that tiny woman with her unwavering faith came to me in whispers and glimpses throughout my entire life.

Great-Grandma Ranze, Mom’s grandmother, had been pregnant with her ninth child when her husband died at the age of thirty-three. Surely I could get through this. The memory of watching Grandma Ranze praying the rosary when I was eight years old warmed me as I sat by the bay window on that cold night. I grabbed my rosary beads and started praying. It made me feel close to her.

* * *

This was one of many times in my life when my faith in God bolstered my hope and gave me strength for the battle. Faith is a gift given to me and nurtured in my childhood by Great-Grandma Ranze. She planted the seeds of faith in me as I faced my own challenges. She is still with me when I say my daily prayers.

Kathy’s Faith and Her Career:

My faith in God also guided me throughout my entire career as a nurse and nurse practitioner.

Every morning on my way to work, I prayed that I would remain open to being God’s servant in caring for the ill or in carrying out whatever role I happened to be in at the time—clinician, educator, administrator. I often prayed with or over patients with their permission. I said many silent prayers for those who were not comfortable.

I also prayed for the strength to deal with whatever I had to face—a dying patient, a difficult family/coworker/physician. Jesus is the Divine healer and if Jesus is in me then I am the vehicle for carrying out His will.

This is the faith that enabled me to walk away from two emotionally abusive marriages with two children. It has been through these challenges that my faith has deepened, and I have found freedom from emotional abuse.

Kathy asks: How about you? How has faith worked in your own life?

Kathleen Pooler is a writer and a retired Family Nurse Practitioner who is publishing on a memoir, Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away From Emotional Abuse and working on a sequel, Hope Matters: A Memoir about how the power of hope through her faith in God has helped her to transform, heal and transcend life’s obstacles and disappointments: domestic abuse, divorce, single parenting, loving and letting go of an alcoholic son, cancer and heart failure to live a life of joy and contentment. She believes that hope matters and that we are all strengthened and enlightened when we share our stories.

She blogs weekly at her Memoir Writer’s Journey blog: http://krpooler.com

Kathy’s Links:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

Goodreads

Facebook

Pinterest

One of her stories “The Stone on the Shore” is published in the anthology: “The Woman I’ve Become: 37 Women Share Their Journeys From Toxic Relationships to Self-Empowerment” by Pat LaPointe, 2012.

Another story: “Choices and Chances” is published in the “My Gutsy Story Anthology” by Sonia Marsh, September 2013.

* * *

Can you relate to any part of Kathy’s story?

What questions do you have for Kathy?

Both she and I will join in the conversation today. You can bet on it!

The 30-day Pubslush Crowdfunding Campaign for my memoir, Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away From Emotional Abuse was launched on May 12 and ends at midnight on June 11.

By making a contribution you will help spread the messages of hope, resilience and courage to those seeking freedom from abuse. Here’s the link to the campaign:

http://pubslush.com/books/id/2076.

If you are unable to make a contribution, I’d be most appreciative if you would share this link with others. Thank you!

Two Mennonite Nonagenarians: Mother Ruth & Aunt Cecilia

May 21, 2014May 21, 2014 marianbeaman41 Comments

Here is my mother’s family of four brothers and one sister in a farm meadow in the 1940s. They are children of Abram Hernley Metzler and Sadie Landis Metzler, a Mennonite family of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Standing in birth order are her brothers Landis, Leroy, Clyde, Abram, Jr., with my mother and her sister Verna. Two of her siblings died in their sixties, the others in their seventies. Only my mother is still alive at age 95.

When Mother turned 90 in 2008, her 94-year-old sister-in-law Cecilia Metzler, married to my Uncle Clyde, said to her: “Ninety’s nothing . . . . You have to live past that to make your mark these days.” (Then I saw a quick smile and heard an I-got-you-there chuckle.) Aunt Cecilia, who calls herself Cece now, has always been energetic and feisty, a farm wife and a pastor’s wife. Up until 2011, she has sent me Christmas cards – always the first week of December. And via her daughter Erma’s account, I would occasionally even get email messages from her.

Mother too has always been strong and hardy all these years. She still lives alone but has watchful neighbors along with my brother Mark who checks in with her regularly. Her mind is still sharp though her hearing, which has always been in a category I’d call bionic, is failing now. When I asked her a few weeks ago, “Do you remember wearing Evening in Paris cologne?” She questioned me back, “Carrots, what do you mean carrots?” This from a woman who most of her life had to hold the telephone receiver away from her ear because the sound was too loud. Oh, my.

I call her often, but she says she likes to get something in the mail, a letter with a stamp on it, she hints. As if to demonstrate how it’s done, last week she sent me a short note with concern about a friend’s health along with a check for special vitamins I send to her. Yes, she still pays her own bills.

"Cecilia Do you really think we are going to live to be 100?" my mother might be asking. — “Cecilia, do you really think we are going to live to be 100?” my mother may be asking. (Photo: Mother’s 90th party at The Gathering Place, Mount Joy, PA.)

* * *

Recently, “60 Minutes” aired a show entitled Living to 90 and Beyond hosted by correspondent Lesley Stahl. The show featured interviews of some of the more than 1600 men and women who participated in a study named “90+” funded by the National Institute of Health. All of the data was collected in the 1980s from residents of a community south of Los Angeles called Leisure World, now re-named Laguna Woods. The study was launched to determine the secrets of longevity and perhaps find clues to preventing diseases like Alzheimer’s often associated with advancing age.

On air, the interviewees, all over 90, were shown undergoing physical testing: reflexes, pace of walking, how quickly they could sit down and stand up again. Their mental acuity was checked as well: Tell me today’s date, spell w-o-r-l-d backwards, remember these words (brown, shirt, charity) – I’ll ask you to repeat them to me in a minute. And so on.

Claudia Kawas, spokesperson for the NIH study, concluded with some statements that weren’t at all surprising. And some that were:

People who exercise definitely live longer than those who don’t.
Board games, socializing with friends, working in the garden enhance mental health.
Taking vitamins doesn’t seem to make much difference.
It’s not good to be skinny when you are old.
Drinking 1-3 cups of coffee seems to be beneficial.
One or two glasses of wine daily is recommended.

My Mother, almost 96, and Aunt Cecilia, now age 99, were part of the “Game Girls” crowd in their prime. They loved playing Uno, Skip-Bo, and Hand & Foot with friends. And they probably both still drink one or two cups of coffee with breakfast.

But rest assured, neither of these good, elderly Mennonite ladies ever imbibes a glass of wine with dinner.

* * *

Most of us know one or more friends or family members over 90. Does longevity run in your family?

Do you have a story about a nonagenarian you know?

Coming next: A visit with author Kathleen Pooler and introducing her new book!

Where the Magic Happens

May 17, 2014May 16, 2014 marianbeaman37 Comments

I am happy to introduce a new writer to these pages, Mary Gottschalk. Actually you have already visited Mary’s website if you read my recent post on her blog Flying the Coop: Leaving Mennonite Land. But though she is new to my blog, Mary is certainly not a new author, having published a memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam in 2008 and just off the press her first novel, A Fitting Place (May 2014).

Mary will tell you that she and I have competely different life experiences and views of the world, but our writing shares a common theme of willingness to leave our comfort zones.

Mary’s Turn: Unlike Marian, I didn’t grow up in a religious environment or have a close-knit family. I first left home at age 13 to go to boarding school, and never lived at home again for more than a month. The love of my life did not show up until I was in my 60s. Much like Marian’s journey from plain to fancy, however, I have been perennially in search of new ideas and new perspectives. I’ve often had to lose sight of the metaphorical shore in order to find them. Ironically, the most dramatic change in my perspective came when I had literally lost sight of the shore, a day when I was roughly a thousand miles out into the Pacific Ocean, heading west along an unmarked route. That day, my husband and I were two years into a planned circumnavigation of the world in a 37-foot sailboat. Much as Marian chose to leave her natal community, I chose to abandon a successful New York career in high finance to explore the larger world.

Throughout our cruise, we’d often had to trim our sails to unpredictable winds and set our rudder to compensate for erratic currents. We sailed as close to our intended course as we could, but all too often, we ended the day someplace other than where we’d set out to go. As good sailors on a well-fitted sailboat, not much could go very wrong, but we knew that if something did, we would probably die. Life and death were pretty much out of our hands. That watershed day, a sunny afternoon with clear skies and calm seas, it struck me that sailing was a metaphor for life. I suddenly understood that I’d had no more control over my life and death when I lived and worked in New York City than I did while sailing on the Pacific Ocean. And it seemed obvious that if I couldn’t control my fate, I might as well spend my days doing something meaningful and satisfying, rather than wasting precious time and energy trying—all too often in vain—to meet the expectations of others. It seemed equally obvious that if I hadn’t decided to sail away from the metaphorical as well as the geographic shore, I’d still be living under the illusion that I could actually control my life.

It is this last concept—that you grow the most when you step outside your comfort zone—that has been the driving force behind my life as an author. My memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam starts with my decision to step out of my comfort zone from a professional and cultural perspective. It ends as I begin a new, more purposeful way of life that has sustained me for a quarter of a century.

But few people can quit their jobs and head off into the sunset. I wanted to explore the growth that can take place when a woman stays close to home. In my novel, A Fitting Place, Lindsey Chandler is hurtled out of her psychological comfort zone by the betrayal of those she most trusts. Her journey to emotional maturity begins when she begins to re-examine her entire value system, including loyalty, marriage and gender roles.

Mary asks you, “How has stepping out of your comfort zone changed your life?”

* * *

More about Mary:

Mary has made a career out of changing careers. She spent nearly thirty years in the financial markets, including consulting projects in New York, New Zealand and Australia. Along the way, she dropped out several times. In the mid-80s, at age 40, Mary and her husband Tom embarked on the three-year sailing voyage that is the subject of her memoir, SAILING DOWN THE MOONBEAM. When the voyage ended, she returned to her career in finance, but dropped out again to provide financial and strategic planning services to the nonprofit community. In her latest incarnation, she is a full time writer. Her first novel, A FITTING PLACE, was released May 1, 2014. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa.

Contact Mary:

Links to her Books:

Sailing Down the Moonbeam

A Fitting Place

Purple Passages and a Laugh: May 2014 Edition

May 14, 2014May 23, 2014 marianbeaman23 Comments

Miracles & Problems

Uncertainty & Faith

The opposite of doubt is not faith. It’s certainty. Faith based on certainty is no faith at all. Anne Lamott

Embrace the present. Uncertainty is no excuse for paralysis. Do not wait for good to happen for yourself in order to do good for others. Leymah Gbowee

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:1 NIV

Tea and Books

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me. C. S. Lewis

Mothers & Mother’s Day

This year has celebrated its 100th anniversary in America

Mother jivving to "Turn Your Radio on and Listen to the Music in the Air" — Mother jiving to “Turn Your Radio on and Listen to the Music in the Air” on my iPod

A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

Honore de Balzac

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

E. M. Forster

Roses and Love Life

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall. Eleanor Roosevelt

Laughter is carbonated holiness.
― Anne Lamott

* * *

Add a quote or comment on one you’ve read. Please do!

And you can be sure I’ll join the conversation.

(Coming next: “Where the Magic Happens” showcasing author Mary Gottschalk)

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: