Moving: An Adventure in Four Parts (3)

31Jan09

Once we were actually on the road, life seemed better.  The last time we had done this, I had had two cats, a  one-year-old, and a 16-year-old nephew in the van, while Robert towed the car with the truck.  This seemed simpler.  We were aiming for Greenville, Texas, east of Dallas, where our daughter would [...]

Filed under: News and Musings   |  Leave a Comment

Moving: An Adventure in Four Parts (2)

30Jan09

My son and husband discussed what to do.  Clearly, we needed a place to spend the night, and to finish packing.  Robert was very calm about being able to fit everything in.  We went back to the house, where our neighbor Juliana was in her yard.  She took me in, installed me on the sofa [...]

Filed under: News and Musings   |  Leave a Comment

Moving: An Adventure in Four Parts (1)

29Jan09

It’s been over three weeks, and the trauma has faded.  And it has been a hard winter for many friends, making my troubles seem small.  I keep telling myself that my pioneer ancestors had it a lot tougher.
It started with the loading, the day after New Years.  Having spent the week packing, we still weren’t [...]

Filed under: News and Musings   |  1 Comment

The Great American Affair

28Jan09

We went to get our car title and driver’s licenses transferred the other week.  It was curious to me that this seemed to involve more paperwork than buying the house had.  And to have a baby, a helpless human being for which you are completely responsible for the next 18 years, requires no paperwork at [...]

Filed under: News and Musings   |  Leave a Comment

Snow

27Jan09

Perhaps in a few years I will tire of the snow, but I don’t think so.  After 23 years in Austin, Texas, where a dusting occurred every decade or so, prompting the neighborhood to stand in the streets staring, I am ready for four seasons again, including lots of snow.
I love the look of the [...]

Filed under: Nature, News and Musings   |  Leave a Comment

The People’s Peace

17Jan09

There is nothing quite like twilight on a snowy evening, especially seen from a window in a warm room.  It always reminds me of one of my favorite hymns.
The People’s Peace
Peace is the mind’s old wilderness cut down -
A wider nation than the founders dreamed.
Peace is the main street in a country town;
Our children named; [...]

Filed under: News and Musings   |  Leave a Comment

Morning Porch

15Jan09

Dave Banta, a poet who lives in Plummer’s Hollow, Pennsylvania, has a Morning Porch blog, where he reports on each morning in haiku-like poetry.  I too go out each morning to greet the day.  In Austin, it was first on the front stoop, and later on the back screen porch we built.  The view was [...]

Filed under: Nature, New Old House, News and Musings   |  Leave a Comment

Gauley Mountain

14Jan09

Every time I hear about the mountaintop removal of Gauley Mountain, I cringe at the irony.  The best known work of the late West Virginia Poet Laureate, Louise McNeill, was Gauley Mountain, a set of poems about the people in one small place in the hills.  Her genius was relating the very particular detail of [...]

Filed under: News and Musings   |  Leave a Comment

Elizabeth Ann Stalnaker

12Jan09

This is my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Ann Stalnaker, at 19, holding her second-born, Romeo Hersman.  Her first-born, Harvey, died the day before Romeo was born.  He was not quite two.  She went on to have another son, Bruce, and then five daughters, my grandmother Maud the eldest.  Married at 17, she was just 32 when she [...]

Filed under: History and Genealogy   |  Leave a Comment