Blog – Page 27 – Plain and Fancy

Survivor or Thriver? A Beauty Queen and Some Tips

October 26, 2013October 26, 2013 marianbeaman18 Comments

Are you thriving–or just barely hanging on? This is a close-up of the logo from a woman’s retreat I attended a few months ago featuring Leslie Nease, Mrs. North Carolina 2001 and contestant on Survivor China 2007.

A fitness trainer, she has written a book on physical, emotional and spiritual fitness called Body Builders. Leslie has had to overcome many obstacles in her life journey, but she shares these with touches of humor. Her new book Wholehearted: Living the Life You Were Created to Live (2013) describes how God transformed her from the inside out with an experience she refers to as a heart transplant. Her goal: to live every day with purpose and passion. To thrive, not just survive.

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

II Corinthians 4:16

The desire to thrive, not just survive, is described in psychological terms as well. The book Love, Medicine & Miracles by Bernie S. Siegel, M. D. contains a description of the survivor personality traits. According to psychologist Al Siebert, there are observable indicators of self-motivated growth:

1. A sense of aimless playfulness for its own sake, like that of a happy child.

2. A child’s innocent curiosity.

3. The ability to become so deeply absorbed in an activity that you lose track of time, external events, and all your worries . . . .

4. An observant, non-judgment style.

5. Willingness to look foolish, make mistakes, and laugh at yourself.

6. An active imagination, daydreams, mental play . . . .

7. Empathy for other people, including opponents.

8. Recognition of . . . intuition as a valid source of information.

9. Good timing when speaking or taking original action.

10. The ability to see early clues about future developments and take appropriate action.

11. Keeping a positive outlook in adversity.

12. The ability to adapt to unexpected experiences. (Plan B!)

13. The talent for converting what others consider misfortune into something useful.

14. Feeling yourself getting smarter and enjoying life more as you get older.

What can you add to the list above?

Are you a thriver? A survivor? Share a story please.

Your comments welcome! I always reply.

Great Grandpa Sam: A Hoot and a Holler

October 23, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman21 Comments

Samuel Brinser Martin 1863 -1957 Victorians didn't smile for photos! — Samuel Brinser Martin 1863 -1957 Victorians didn’t smile for photos!

Wiry Grandpa Martin, was a jolly little man. He had an Old MacDonald-type farm with chickens, a couple of cows, two horses, and maybe a pig though I never heard an oink-oink-oink either here or there.

Sycamore tree and bridge along lane leading up to the Martin farm Oil painting by Ruth Martin Longenecker — Sycamore tree and bridge along lane leading up to the Martin farm
Oil painting by Ruth Martin Longenecker

Theirs was a Jack Sprat-type union, with his wife Mary as generous as she was ample. Great Grandma Mary died before I was born, so I never met the big-hearted woman who often invited strangers to the family table.

My Grandma Longenecker’s dad, Great-Grandpa Samuel Brinser Martin, came to live with his daughter Fannie and grand-daughter, my Aunt Ruthie, in his later years. My sisters and I found him curious and amusing.

Great-Grandpa Sam has no teeth to speak of. What he had were rotted and drew his mouth into an O like an old mountaineer’s. After meals, he shook some salt into his hand, threw his head way back, opened up and sucked in the salt. It made a loud POP, his mouth an echo chamber.

He came to Grandma’s house toothless, blind, and deaf but not dumb. He was smart enough to know that we stole candy from his stash below his Emerson radio turned to high volume with static near the kitchen window. When he offered us pink Pepto Bismol-like lozenges, we snuck back and snitched the chocolate covered mints. Both his eyes were blind, but one eye was glass and sometimes rolled out of its socket and onto the green, beige, and brown blocked linoleum floor where it picked it up speed.

There were other sneaky things, too, some not involving us. His minister from Geyers Church near Middletown, Pennsylvania would visit, coming in the door with a Bible under one arm and a long, flat, telltale something or other in a brown bag under the other. As the minutes went by the laughing and talking in the upstairs bedroom got louder and louder, revealing the effects of the liberal libation of liquor the two were imbibing, for medicinal reasons of course. We observed the literal interpretation of the biblical teaching that “A merry heart doeth good like medicine.” Obviously, his preacher friend was not a strict Mennonite like us nor in favor of prohibition or abstinence.

Grandpa would tell us often: “There’s no feller quite so yeller like my liver.” Then a guffaw! He could pack a punch too. Asking me to make a fist to show my muscle, he’d pound the little mount of bicep flesh hard enough to make a dent.

When he died, there was a quiet spot near the bay window in Grandma’s kitchen – no candy – no tricks – no loud music. We missed Grandpa Martin.

We all have relatives, past or present, who are curious and interesting. We’d like to hear about yours!

Your comments welcome. I will always reply.

Homecoming: Old Friends, New Friend

October 19, 2013June 13, 2014 marianbeaman18 Comments

“Going Home, going home, I’m just going home . . . .” William Arms Fisher wrote a spiritual tune with nostalgic lyrics adapted from the famous largo in Dvorak’s 9^th Symphony that hints of going home “through an open door.”

Last Saturday I walked through the open door back home to my college reunion during Homecoming weekend at Eastern Mennonite University. Nestled among the purple mountains of Virginia in the lush Shenandoah Valley, EMU‘s banner proclaims itself “A Chritian University Like No Other.”

EMU was just a college when I attended. Now the campus seems twice as large and current students way younger than I remember. I kept having to adjust to the sensation of flipping between decades as I viewed the campus and my classmates in a time warp.

There were other adjustments too. College girls now were sporting blue jeans and serious jewelry; my female classmates, like me, all wore braids or buns with prayer coverings.

Our class gift was the donation of the campus’ first piano. Now there was a magnificent pipe organ in the sanctuary, string ensembles playing folksy tunes, and (gasp!) a theatre department.

“Scatter seeds of loving deeds . . . till we are gathered home at last.” Walking Roots Band

Old Friends

My college room-mate Verna Mohler Colliver and me

Other room-mates and friends: Our name tags imprinted with college yearbook photos.

Raymond Martin, motorcycle ridin' class-mate — Raymond Martin, motorcycle ridin’ class-mate

Yes, we have all changed. The institution has changed too, outwardly at least, but the mission of the university has remained the same: commitment to rigorous academics with an invitation “to follow Christ’s call, to bear witness to faith, serve with compassion, and walk boldly in the way of nonviolence and peace” in true Anabaptist Mennonite tradition. The motto that was displayed front and center in the sanctuary of the chapel when I was a student still remains: Thy Word is Truth John 17:17.

New Friend

Shirley Hershey Showalter and I have been getting acquainted in the blog world by visiting each other’s websites since March 2013. In September of this year her memoir, Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets and Glittering World was published and she has been on a whirlwind book tour, yet she made time for us to meet and visit over breakfast at her home in Harrisonburg, VA on the edge of the EMU campus.

Her breakfast room and office space overlook the gorgeous Massanutten Mountains. The office space includes what you would expect from a college English professor, turned college president and now author–tons of books and orderly files. However, I discovered that there is a special chair where she weaves the magic: a red upholstered swivel chair facing the mountain view. No wonder her book sings!

“I promise: you will be transported,” says Bill Moyers of her memoir. Part Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, part Growing Up Amish, and part Little House on the Prairie, this book evokes a lost time in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when a sheltered little girl with big dreams entered a family and church caught up in the midst of the cultural changes of the 1950s and `60s.

Her website and blog: http://www.shirleyhersheyshowalter.com

Carolyn reports that she loves, loves, loves the book and has underlined certain passages and even inserted little pink sticky notes to earmark special pages. (Stickies concealed for photo!) Carolyn’s name was chosen in a drawing by commenting on my review of Shirley new book: Book review and Contest

Your comments welcome! I will always reply.

Mom and Gus: PA Dutch Fare

October 16, 2013October 16, 2013 marianbeaman21 Comments

My mom’s sacred space is her kitchen where she offers the sacrifice of her heart and hands to those in need and indeed her family. On my last trip to Pennsylvania, Mother made chicken corn soup from a recipe in her head. When I ask her how much of this or that, her quick reply is always, “Just how you think.” I don’t know what to think, so I always try to extract some measurements out of her. Her current “guess” for our favorite harvest soup:

Mother Longenecker’s Chicken Corn Soup

Cook 5-6 pieces of chicken, breasts or thighs. Set aside.

In broth from cooked chicken, add 1 ½ – 2 pints of corn, fresh or frozen.

Dice 4 hard-boiled eggs.

Now, add chicken breasts, chopped up

Season with salt & pepper to taste

Mom's Chicken Corn Soup without Rivels — Mom’s Chicken Corn Soup without Rivels

Rivels: dough-y lumps can be added to soup for more texture

1 beaten egg

Add enough flour to make a moist doughiness of the mixture.

Break into small dumpling-like pieces and add to soup.

* * * * *

About 2 miles east of Mom’s house near Mt. Joy is Gus’s Restaurant. Gus is Italian, but his eatery is in Lancaster County, so aside from spaghetti, fish dishes, and fancy desserts on the menu, he offers ham loaf and pork and sauerkraut dinners with mashed potatoes for hearty Pennsylvania Dutch appetites.

A heavy meal, this dinner will give us enough fuel to make it to the Philadelphia Airport and then home to Jacksonville. Gus’s food is tasty, but Gus’s is a public place without a hoard of cooking aromas and shared memories from Mom’s Kitchen, her sacred space. In fact, it’s not a fair competition at all.

There’s no contest!

What favorite recipes do you savor during the fall season?

What are your memories of special dishes around the table with friends or family?

Coming next: Old Friends, New Friend: Homecoming @ EMU

Your thoughts welcome! I will always reply.

Purple Passages with a Pig – October 2013 edition

October 12, 2013October 11, 2013 marianbeaman11 Comments

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. Maya Angelou

READING

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” Mason Cooley, aphorist (1927- __ )

“Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head.” Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

8.28.97 Cats look down on you, dogs look up at you, but PIGS look you straight in the eye!

Peter Mayle, Chasing Cezanne

BOOKS

“A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.” Franz Kafka

“Book love . . . . It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.” Anthony Trollope

“A house without books is like a room without window.” Heinrich Mann, novelist (1871-1950)

“It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that’s why it survives.” Anna Quindlen. “Turning the Page.” Newsweek: April 5, 2010, (53).

* * * * *

8.28.97 Sometimes life is a bowl of harries! “plain and fancy girl”

10.16.98 When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Your comments welcome. I will always respond!

Great Hearts

October 11, 2013October 11, 2013 marianbeaman14 Comments

Linda Garber and Dr. Ty Graden will probably never be featured on the Making a Difference segment of the NBC evening news with Brian Williams, but they do just that every single day.

Yesterday morning before Mother’s eye doctor appointment, her pastor’s wife Linda calls. I hear one side of the phone conversation:

“Yes, we’ll be home around noon.”

“Well, you don’t have to do that, but it would be a bright spot in the day. Thank you!’

“How many? It will just be Marian and I.”

“See you around 12:00.”

In pouring down rain, Linda arrives with a hamper full of home-made goodies, and we share a scrumptious lunch, all fresh from her home: potato-zucchini soup, deviled eggs, bread with strawberry jam, cabbage salad, and apple sauce with a jar of M & M’s on the side.

After the meal and pleasant conversation, Linda promptly gets up, helps me carry the dishes to the kitchen and fills the sink with Dawn and hot water to wash the dishes. It’s part of the “gift,” I assume. The Mennonite way.

Earlier I helped Mother wheel her way into Dr. Graden’s office in Elizabethtown, PA for her annual eye exam. She’ll have 20/20 vision with the new prescription, the doctor reasssures her. I remark that I need to get my eyes checked when I get back to Jacksonville. He says, “Well, I’ll can just check your eyes now before you leave.”

I have never met this man before and obviously don’t have an appointment, but I sit on the chair, and Dr. Graden clicks to a different set of letters “in case you memorized the ones I used for your mother,” he chuckles.

The doc is reassuring: “Well, you did pretty well—no cataracts to be concerned with, and you still have 20/20 vision with your glasses.” We leave the office, Mother’s visit filed with insurance and no charge for me.

Good Lancaster County people. Great hearts!

Birthday # 95: A Tribute & Party

October 9, 2013October 10, 2013 marianbeaman29 Comments

Aunt Ruthie age 89 mowing an acre of lawn

July 2013 phone conversation between Aunt Ruthie and me:

M: Well, Ruthie, how are you doing?

AR: Well, I’m puzzled!

M: Puzzled? What about?

AR: I’m doing puzzles, doing “word find”! Ha ha ha! (Still witty at 95)

Teaching: Adoring teachers surround their retiring principal at Rheems Elementary School

Living for Others:

Receiving Salt of the Earth Award from Lutheran Social Services for ministry to refugees and immigrants

Music:

Back to the piano at Rheems Nursing Home: Of the residents, many of them younger than she, her response: “They are poor souls. They probably wouldn’t recognize it if I repeated songs.”

Her schnauzer, Fritzie IV:

January 4, 2012 When her care-giver, nephew Mark has surgery, she remarks: “You and I, Fritzie, are orphans now.”

* * * * * * *

The school-teacher, principal, tax collector, family and church accountant, “mother” to dozens of refugees and immigrants has now landed on the spot of the calendar that says 95.

In July 2013, after falling at home, she recuperated at a rehab center and is now living at Landis Homes, a residence for seniors, many of whom are Mennonite, near Lititz, Pennsylvania. She has survived a pacemaker procedure and pneumonia in 2008, a hip break in 2010, and another fall this year. Yet she can still get out of bed, dress herself, and go places with her walker.

Hobbled by her falls and the natural progression of age, she’s no spring chicken, but she is still mobile. However, she finds her memory loss harder to deal with. The pilot light in her brilliant mind (she skipped 2 grades and had to have a chaperone at college because of her age) is now flickering during these last few years:

May 15, 2010 “Am I out of it?” she asks, dealing with the confusion that has set in.

May 17, 2010 “Sometimes I feel as though I must guard against a mental relapse.”

May 22, 2010 “I feel like a monkey on a stick.” Or a doll – Sue (then her housekeeper) comes “in the door, takes me off the shelf, dusts me off, and puts me back up again.”

Feb, 27, 2011 “I took care of my grandfather, my mother, and now, I have to be taken care of. I was hoping this wouldn’t happen to me!”

January 11, 2012 “I don’t trust myself to say the right answer.”

April 13, 2013 Though there is confusion about where she is and the day of the week, she still notices that the hands on her Bulova Caravel watch have stopped. She gets a new piece of jewelry on her wrist today–and a touch quilt!

TODAY IS HER 95th PARTY: Time to Celebrate

Sister Jean and Aunt Ruthie at the 95th Party

Aunt Ruthie and Colleen's touch quilt — Aunt Ruthie and Colleen’s touch quilt

Her Wit: She gets the Last Laugh!

At Landis Homes, conversing with her sister-in-law, my mother, who is the same age, has the same name, down to the middle initial:

Aunt: I want to go home to my house, my dog, my things . . . .

Mother: You have it good here, Ruthie.

Aunt: All I do is sit here. I could just as well do my sitting at home.

Mother: Here you have nice people to help you, good food, pretty flowers all around. Virginia Hoover, Simon and Mary Jean Kraybill from church, even Cecilia Metzler, my sister-in-law live here. And they all love it!

Aunt: Why don’t we just exchange places then? We have the same name. You could sit here just as well as I. No one would ever notice.

Ha! Ha!

Your comments welcome! I always respond.

Once Upon a Time: The Tale of a Snow Globe

October 5, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman19 Comments

Announcing the WINNER of Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World

And the Winner is (drum roll, please!) Carolyn Stoner! Thank you one and all for participating so heartily by commenting on my review of Shirley Showalter’s memoir BLUSH. Carolyn, you will receive your copy of Shirley’s memoir shortly.

* * * * *

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Curtis, who lived on Greenfern Lane in a very big city called Jacksonville. His Mommy Sarah and Daddy Joel invited his grandparents to feast on a wonderful meal with them one day.

While they were eating home-made spaghetti and telling stories around the table, his NaNa Marian told a new story, “The Tale of the Snow Globe.” Now when Curtis was new born, his Great Grandmother Longenecker came to visit him in the big city of Chicago. She wanted to see her new grandchild for the very first time. Of course, she had visited towns and villages and the cities of Lancaster and Harrisburg many times. She had even gone as far as Niagara Falls on her honeymoon. But she had never seen a big, big city with dozens of skyscrapers.

And then Great Grandma told how she went up, up, up many, many of stories onto the top of the Hancock building, where she could look out and see the Sears tower, the Amoco building and beyond. For a very long time, she stared and stared at the giant buildings and the miniature cars and buses below. Then she went to the gift shop and bought colorful souvenirs: tile coasters, postcards, and a beautiful snow globe with white flakes drifting down on the skyscrapers of Chicago she had seen. Her special souvenir was the snow globe, of course, which sat on a table by her telephone where she could see it day or night.

One day her special prize disappeared. She looked and looked, and had other people look with her, but the snow globe was nowhere to be found. Who could have taken it? Her cleaning lady? Visitors? Was there a break in she wasn’t aware of? The loss and the scary thoughts made Great Grandma very, very sad, NaNa Marian said.

At that very moment, Curtis said to his Daddy, “May I be excused?” After his Daddy said “Yes,” Curtis hurried into his bedroom and came back with his own Chicago snow globe, a larger version of his Great Grandma’s. “Here,” he said. “She can have this!”

“But, Curtis, you brought this down from Chicago to Jacksonville when you were only two. This is a special thing. Are you sure you don’t want to keep it?”

“Oh, I know, but I want Great Grandma to have it. It will make her feel better. You can take it to Pennsylvania in your suitcase the next time you visit her.” And that is exactly what happened.

And then tears . . .

Appreciation too

And finally, a grateful Great-Grandmother!

Your comments welcome! I always respond.

Clean Sheets: It’s a Breeze

October 3, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman20 Comments

My sheets are pinned to the backyard clothes line now, flipping in the breeze. Today I’m celebrating the end of our torrid Florida summer by hanging our sheets outside in the fresh fall air. Very old-fashioned and very retro. I guess I’m an Urban Mama!

Sheets blowing in sync with frond on banana tree in background

We live in the city, and I have a clothes drier, but today I am savoring the slow, sweet, luxury of sheets line dried fastened with wooden clothes pins, the kind with metal springs. No extra electricity, no pain for the sheets twirling endlessly in a hot, round drum.

When I was born, there were no automatic washers and driers. Most housewives back then used electric washers with wringers, not washboards. But clothes were dried by solar and wind power. A “new baby” card sent to Daddy from my Great Uncle Fritz attests to the line drying of diapers, the gauzy cloth variety fastened with medium-sized safety pins. But, trust me, my dad never hung a diaper or any other article of clothing on the line.

What are your childhood memories of doing the laundry?

What unusual ways of drying clothes do you know about or practice now?

Your comments are welcome. I always respond!

Babes in an Urban Woods: Part II

October 2, 2013October 4, 2013 marianbeaman11 Comments

Map of Harlem, neighborhood in northern Manhattan, NYC

On the ground floor again, we breathe a sigh of relief as we spot the bus two blocks away ready to pick us up to go back to the mission. On the way to our mobile haven, we pass pawn shops armed like fortresses, lurid adult bookstores with XXX ratings, filthy-looking lounges, a stark store-front church.

Then we spot a gargantuan black woman with a red satin turban and purple robe–a bathrobe? a graduation gown? She’s “preaching” about Jehovah God in the middle of the sidewalk. I think she’s preaching until I see she is holding an upside-down Sears and Roebuck catalog as her bible and then inhale alcoholic fumes emanating from her body. We try to go around her, but this frightful creature grabs me by the shoulder in a death grip, and I am spun round and round in dizzying circles. There is little I can do to resist the grasp of this drunken prophetess. “Hazel, Hazel, help me,” I call out with a voice that feels somehow disconnected from my body. Hazel is astounded too and stands there immobile. I fall onto the scorching pavement as the woman lets go of me mid-air. By now Brother Paul and Sister Lois have raced up the street to our aid.

Someone deposits me across two empty seats on our bus. I am aware of heads hovering over me as a blurry hand wipes my face with a cool, wet handkerchief. We are going back to Brother Ernie’s mission on Eighth Avenue for lunch. It’s quiet for a few minutes. Then Brother Frank leads everyone in singing “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, I’ll Be There” as we bounce across the avenues.

But I don’t join in. My head is buzzing with the pain of too many unanswered questions. Did the church elders know about the risks and think that telling us would discourage us from going? Did they come here innocent and ignorant like us and also get a rude awakening? Why didn’t Brother Ernie, now almost a New Yorker himself, give us more pointers?

Back at the mission, I have recuperated enough to eat our meal of home-made egg salad sandwiches and chicken corn soup brought up from home in ice chests, relieved that I have survived the jungle of Harlem.

BLUSH Contest closes tonight, October 2, 2013, at midnight! Here’s the link to the Contest Rules for a chance to win a copy of Shirley’s memoir:

Review of Shirley Showalter’s BLUSH and Book Giveaway

Your comments welcome! I always respond.

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