O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

I belong to a wonderful writer's group called Foothills Writers. This year for our Christmas celebration we decided to do something different. Well, the delicious food we shared was the traditional, but the comparisons to Christmases past ended there.

We regifted for our Dirty Santa. You read it right. We brought gifts that we had received from others through the years that we had finished with and were ready to pass along. I had a myriad of such to select from, like shopping in one of those specialty boutiques. Swapping (and Dirty Santa stealing) these gifts resulted in many a laugh.

One other thing, we each were asked to write a Christmas poem. I anguished about this for days. Should it be one of jolly joy, or of reverent faith. When we read our poems aloud to the group, I found a little of both. Mine mingled a little of both as well. It was from the heart and pretty much explains this year's Christmas cheer. 

Here it is, for your Christmas entertainment:

               A CHRISTMAS POEM

          Never did I think there’d ever be 

A year without a Christmas tree.
But this year, it’s not meant to be.

Never did my dad neglect to chop a backfield pine

Though it made my mamma sweep the needles everytime.

He untangled strands of bubble lights

And strung them round to our delight.

My father’s death took out her joy

But the hope of Christmas it did not destroy.

Never did my mom not have the spinning light

To shine on her silver tree at night.

Never did we newlyweds neglect to have a tree

It might have been a Charlie Brown, but it was fine for me.

Our meager gifts we placed beneath

And on our door we hung a wreath.

The babies grew and began to trim.

Year by year through thick and thin

We never didn’t have a tree

But this year, it’s not meant to be.

Off to college they both went

A welcome home tree was our intent.

It cheered them to know they were home

No longer did they have to roam

The tree was where it was meant to be.

It’s shining lights saying come in, let’s see.

Their lives they led apart from us,

Without the tree they would have made a fuss.

Soon our grands were doing the trimming,

Hot chocolate mugs for them were brimming.

But alas, they too have grown and gone

And now we two are back alone.

This year remodeling is our gift

Nothing about that can be swift.

So amidst our mess and moving the clutter

We’ve failed to have a single flutter

Of pine needles and light strings

And ornaments that joy will bring,

Full of memories of years past

Joys and love that long will last.

A ceramic tree we chose to light

It brings color and joy each night.

But still it isn’t quite the same.

In fact it seems a little lame.

Never did I think there’d be 

A year without a Christmas tree.

Yet the spirit of Christmas still lives on

In the night and early dawn.

It’s not the usual, but it will set 

Our focus on the One who paid our debt.

The tree reflects the joy we know.

And sets our hearts at last aglow.

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Thankful

On this 2023 Thanksgiving Day, I am more thankful than ever. I've always felt blessed with my loving husband and children, but something happened to me this fall that has shown me even more what blessings they are to me.

In early September I fell and broke my leg, only I didn't know it was broken. I thought I had twisted my ankle, so I walked on it for ten days until I finally listened to my friends and went to the emergency room for X-rays. Bingo. Broken.

The next day I was at an orthopedic surgeon's and the next, into surgery. Talk about thankful! Physicians and nurses and X-ray technicians were the answers to my prayers. They patched me up and sent me on my way with very specific instructions to not put weight on it.

That meant renting a knee scooter and being thankful such an invention was ever thought of. That also meant my husband became a constant caregiver. I never can say thank you to him enough, or thank you to God enough for sending him to me those fifty-five years ago. We celebrated our fifty-fifth anniversary of "for better or for worse" during this not-so-better time.  My children stepped up and cared for me when he wasn't available. Blessings all around. They pushed me in a wheelchair to my various activities once I was able to be out and about.

Friends, too, took their time pushing me around or catering to my every need. Wow, they were so patient. I went through being a participant in the Mitford GetLit writing conference and a book launch/book signing, all with being good and obeying the doctor's order to keep the weight off my patched leg. 

A friend of mine from Florida makes a yearly journey to be dazzled by the fall leaves (with the rest of the million or so leaf peepers). She carted me around, wheelchair in the back of her car, as we went about our normal tour of local wineries and curvy mountain backroads. Was it just me, being so thrilled to be alive and out in the world after weeks of staying in the house, or were the leaves the best ever?

We made a stop at a wonderful gift shop in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, the Market on Oak Street. They carry my books there and I replenished their supply. I also posed for this picture.

There I am in all my glory, hanging out in my air boot in the children's corner of the store. If you look on the shelf, you'll see how they displayed my books. I'm blessed that others see something of value in my work.

For a special blessing, my Florida friend (Sara) drove us to a winery meet-up with my Ohio friend (Inez). I tried to hide the wheelchair best I could in this picture:

My husband and I started our Christmas shopping right after the doctor gave me the okay sign to start putting weight on it, boot still on leg, however. First stop, Mrs. Hanes cookie store:

Now I'm off the boot, a blessing of its own, and nearly back to normal. I've learned much since this first happened on September 9th. I've learned to be thankful daily, not just on Thanksgiving Day. I've learned to appreciate the plight of handicapped individuals as they move about in society. Staying home would have been so much easier, but I forced myself to suck it up and go on with my life. I admire those people who, despite the cookie that life crumbled on them, persevere and fight on. I now have a greater empathy for them. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Catch of the day, 

Gretchen

A Week to Remember

In honor of my upcoming seventy-fifth (yes, 75!) birthday, I have ventured into a new style of publishing, Kindle Vella. Actually, Vellas aren't new. They are stories that are released in episodes on a serial basis, a publishing technique used by Charles Dickens years ago, and more recently by Jan Karon, and even more recently by a gaggle of authors, including my Foothills Writers friends. My earlier Vella, Prompt and Circumstances, was my first dabbling into this platform. 

Let me introduce my newest Vella - The Great Donora Smog and Other Grand Stories: A Memoir of Sorts. It's the story of my hometown, Donora, Pennsylvania, framed around my perspective. A tragedy happened the week before I was born. I missed it all, but I've heard about it since I was a young child. I've also researched it for years and now I am ready to share my story with you, one episode at a time.

Like print books and ebooks, a vella has a cover. I chose a photograph I took of my daughter walking behind my husband through the fog.

Okay, so this picture was taken far from Pennsylvania at a favorite spot of mine, Max Patch, in the mountains of western North Carolina, but it conveys an aura around fuzzy images in the distance. The reality of the day I took the picture was that I really, really wanted my daughter to see the spectacular view from the top of this mountain on the Appalachian Trail. Unfortunately, the fog had set in and the view was not even ten feet, much less ten miles. She didn't see anything!

Toward the end of the Donora Smog incident in 1948, people couldn't even see their hands in front of their eyes. The fog they walked through, however, was a smoggy mixture of evil chemicals that killed over a dozen residents before it lifted. Therein is my vella. That and related family stories involving my greats and grands, and how I came to be born in a city in the Monongahela River Valley, and how I came to be raised in North Carolina. 

Add to that picture the title. Voila! The cover:

 

I included the phrase, A Memoir of Sorts, because it is and it isn't my memoir, not in the traditional sense. It's sort of my memoir. I've mixed in various snippings of my life that I actually remember, but much is from life stories of my ancestors told to me over and over, or memories of those who told me about living through the tragedy in my interview with them, or from research I found published by accomplished scientists and journalists. The week I wrote about in my vella was so significant that the Weather Channel featured it in an episode of "When Weather Changed History." It changed my history, of that I am sure. I can't wait for you to read my episodes and see how!

In order to access them, you must have an account with Amazon.com. It's that simple. Click on the link here and it should take you directly to episode one, which is free to all. So are episodes two and three, which you can access through your account. At the end of each episode is a thumbs up. I would appreciate your clicking on it so Amazon/Kindle knows I have readers. Also please click on "follow." That would be so kind!

When you end episode three (the one about my father's side of the family) you will reach a gate that must be unlocked, and to do that you need tokens. You will be able to purchase tokens there on the spot. Follow the directions; it's that simple. Each new episode charges a number of tokens based on the number of words, a token per hundred words, rounded down. 622 words takes six tokens. So does 698. The cool thing is that each token costs a penny. A penny!!! So if unlocking the upcoming episode costs six tokens, that means six cents. Best entertainment ever for the cost! Fifteen tokens, fifteen cents. 

You purchase in lumps of $1.99 for two hundred tokens, so you'll have plenty to use on this vella. You will be able to finish it entirely with tokens left over to browse other vellas.

The best element of the Vellaverse is that authors and readers have a means to interact with each other. At the end of each episode is a comment section for you to talk to me, visit with me, ask questions, tell me your experiences. Please do!

Just in case, here's the link again, The Great Donora Smog and Other Grand Stories: A Memoir of Sorts. Do drop in!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Cover Reveal

It's COUNTDOWN week to launching my newest book, Fly Fishers of the Caldwell County Area, and I'm getting excited. This book has been years in the making, ever since its predecessor (Fly Fishermen of Caldwell County) came out in 2015 and people realized we had left off their family members. The word got out, and here it is...well, here it will be at the book event on Friday, October 6 from 5:00-8:00, I better say p.m. because only these fly fishers would consider having an event at five a.m., on their way to the creek. No, this will be at the HUB, the old Hudson High School Building, on completely dry land, and in the evening.

But first, allow me to reveal the front cover. TA-DA!!!

Unlike the first book, this newest one includes the women who fly fish in the area. We wanted to emphasize the family-ness of the sport and showcase that theme starting from the cover. We chose this photograph of Peyton Beane, granddaughter of Ron Beane who first came up with the concept of a book about individual fly fishers.  

Join us next Friday as we celebrate the fishers and the life stories we captured in the book.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Coming Soon!

Soon after our book, Fly Fishermen of Caldwell County, was released, co-author Ron Beane and I realized we would need to do a follow-up book to fill in the rest of the story. Each time we crossed paths we said, "Next year." Then covid came along. Finally, another fly fishing author, Alen Baker, approached me and with a nod from Ron, we began working on book two. Fly Fishers of the Caldwell County Area. The subtitle tells it all: Life Stories of the Men and Women who Fly Fish in and Around Caldwell County, North Carolina.

Book one was mainly about those legends of fly fishing here in the county. I never claimed it to be a "how-to" book. I always considered it a "how-they" book. The stories were beautiful testimonies to the featured men. 

This new book ventures into the streams to tell the stories of the next generation of fishers, men and women alike. It is more family-oriented, showing how the fishers pass along their passion and their skill to the children and grandchildren in their lives. 

I'm showing a teaser here, the back cover. 

The front cover I'll release next week. I can't wait for you to see it!

We're having a celebration soon, a book launch that will give a proper send-off to the book. October 6, from 5 to 8, during the First Friday event at the HUB, Hudson Uptown Building, in Hudson, NC. Whether you're a fisher or not, please come and visit with those who wrote their life stories. They have some whopper fish stories to tell!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

A Different Kind of Writing

I'm experimenting with something new in my writing life. Kindle Vella. It's actually a long estabised kind of writing that the likes of Charles Dickens once employed - serial writing. His novels started out as weekly newspaper installments, as did Jan Karon's Mitford series, book one.

Now, Kindle Vella offers writers a chance to publish in online episodes rather than print or ebook formats. I'm game!

For several years, I've planned to write my life story, but I'm not ready for that yet. First comes these dabblings into various situations I've experienced. Then will come the biggie, in my second vella coming in October.

My writing career has been enhanced, I'm sure, by my being surrounded by other writers. I'm in a critique group whose members write children's books. I am also with Foothills Writers, a mishmash of talented people who have taught me so much about the writing process. 

Our weekly sessions are well-planned. For the first thirty minutes, we meet and greet and eat whatever lunch or goodies we packed. The last part of the day is the core of the meeting, a skills lesson taught by one of us. Between those two elements, we have what we call, the prompt. As we enter the room we can see the prompt of the week written on the board so we can ponder the topic during mealtime. Sometimes I struggle just to come up with a response to the prompt. There was one, Boxers or Briefs. Major flop for me. 

Our lessons for the past weeks have been about Kindle Vella, and the leader challenged us to create our own vellas using the prompt responses we've written over the years. 

I present to you my vella: "Prompt and Circumstances." It's been my learning curve and already I see things I need to adapt. Link to it here.

Each vella has a shrunken version of a book cover to use as a logo. I wanted something pompous to match the title, something that exuded confidence and variety. I knew exactly the photo I wanted and went searching for it in my photo files, one I had taken several years ago at the Divine Llama Winery here in western North Carolina.

With this regal fellow watching over the episodes, I can't go wrong. Today I'm inviting readers to join me in this new venture. The concept is simple. Read an episode at a time. The first three episodes are free. Only at the fourth level must the consumer pay, and here's how that works.

The consumers purchase tokens from Amazon to unlock each upcoming episode, and they don't need to have a Kindle to access it. Two hundred tokens cost a dollar ninety-nine, which means each token costs a penny! My episodes cost anywhere from six to fifteen tokens, mere pennies! Any leftover tokens are kept in reserve and applied wherever and whichever additional vellas the reader chooses. I only have five episodes posted at this point, so you'll have plenty of extra tokens to explore the vella universe.

If you are game, please go to my vella, Prompt and Circumstances, by clicking here on the link and start reading. The first three are free, so give them a try at no expense. At the end of each, there is a thumbs up to let me someone has been reading. There are also places to comment and interact with me so please go for it if you wish.

You might find out all kinds of things about me!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

PS Here's another llama from the winery I almost used for the cover, but decided against. He was too perky! I needed regal.

Cover Reveal

 I'm excited to share the cover of my newest nonfiction book, Separated by Oceans but Connected by Love, (coming soon). 

It is made up of several elements I've shared with you before, and a few I haven't. 

The background:

The portrait:

Put them together and TA-DA, the front cover:

The back, you've not seen. It shows the climax of the book, where a sister, Wongalee, meets her long-lost family. That's the whole story in one back page, the search for her father.

I can't wait for you to hold it in your hands and see the beauty of the book and read the wonder of the story.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Artists

There are artists. And then there are Artists. In my latest nonfiction, Separated by Oceans but Connected by Love (available soon), I introduce two Artists, Erwin de Vries and Quintas Jan Telting. The two of them were contemporaries with my main character Humphrey Tja-A-Lien. All three were from Suriname. All three were adventurers. All three came and went and came and went in each other's lives. Both artists drew sketches of Humphrey that the family graciously allowed me to include in the book. In fact, one portrait of him is on the cover. This one:

by Erwin de Vries

It currently hangs in the home of one of Humphrey's sons. De Vries is considered by some as the "Rembrandt of the Caribbean." In his inscription in the bottom right corner of the picture, de Vries signed it "to Chino" using the nickname for his friend. You'll have to read the book to see why he called him that. Long story.

Another part of the long story is Humphrey's connection to Qunitas Jan Telting. As young adventurers, they stowed away on a ship and went ashore in New York City back in the late forties. Jan returned to the ship. Humphrey didn't, and that, dear readers, is the gist of this book. The two met again in Amsterdam where Humphrey worked at the Van Gogh Museum. In my research, I ran across a post on the AFRICANAH.org site about Telting that included a powerful quote from him, "I am an artist, and being black, I find it my duty since I have a gift to create, to create with a purpose..." Create he did - this sketch of Humphrey that found its way here to his daughter in North Carolina:

by Qunitas Jan Telting

The dedication in the corner, enlarged:

You'll just have to read the book to understand that inscription!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Now you see it, Now you don't

Once upon a time I could look at a picture and know it showed reality. Those days are over. Now I wonder about every picture. Is it real?

Take for example the background picture I'm using on the cover of my upcoming book (soon to be released). 

I took this photograph last fall at Oak Island, North Carolina, when I was on vacation with my family. The colors fit the mood I wanted to set for my book cover. The ocean plays an important part in the book, in fact, the word "ocean" is in the title. So bingo. That fit what I wanted. 

I began to add layers. Text. Other pictures. But the fisherman didn't quite fit into the time period, the fifties, when my main character left. So I got rid of him.

Here's a close up of my first tampering efforts. The man is gone. Poof.

I left the beach chair because I knew it would be covered by the featured portrait of my main character. (I can't wait to tell you more about that!)

Then I realized the man's fishing pole was still visible. Look carefully at the edge of the water and you'll be able to see the pole floating around as if it is Harry Potter's wand.

So I tampered more. I erased the fishing pole. I also deleted a light that was in a building on the right, but I still left the beach chair.   

And there it is. A picture that fits my needs exactly as the background of the book cover. The fact that it isn't real doesn't matter in this case. I got what I needed.

But still. If I can play around with a picture and eliminate a person as if said person never existed in the picture, then wow, is it real? This tool is not a toy despite my joy at being able to alter reality to fit my needs. Imagine the future with photograph manipulations as the norm. What can we believe?

Scary.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

 For the second year in a row, I participated in a charity event that is dear to my husband's heart, a fundraiser for All God's Children group home. I sponsored a hole in a golf tournament this organization held. 

Back during covid, I played a lot of golf and even wrote about it in a blog titled Golf Saved Us and it did. When all else closed, the golf course stayed open. Walking the course was not only exercise but a mental release from the tribulations around us. So when I chose this as altruism for my hard-earned money, I had a connection of appreciation for the sport as well as to the purpose of the event. 

Years ago my husband and I were licensed as foster parents and we were blessed to house, and home, three children. The experiences of nurturing these children have remained in my heart. I had to give back.

All God's Children is a home for foster children who have been taken from their natural families and placed into a less traumatizing environment while the adults in their lives get themselves together. My husband has been involved with it from the beginning when a friend offered his ancestral home to be the residence for a family setting, ancestral being the operative word here. The house needed much repair and teams of workers from across the county stepped up and stepped in to remodel it to the required standards under the laws involved with foster care institutions.

Support has come from a wide range of individuals, businesses, and churches:

In case the print is too small, I zoomed in for you. There I am between First Methodist and Rudisill's Grocery.

One thing I've learned. It takes a village to raise a foster child!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Into the Swamp and Out

My husband and I recently went on a side trip to the swamps of Conagree National Park in South Carolina. My jokes and frets about being eaten by alligators were unfounded, I'm pleased to report. We stayed on the boardwalk on a safe two mile hike through the swamp.

It's another world out there! I expected water, and I got water. After all water makes a swamp. I expected creatures, and I saw none. They probably saw us as we wandered, but they kept quiet about it. What I saw mostly was healthy, happily growing trees. Cypress trees to be exact.

Those are knees around the bald cypress tree. According to wikipedia, the function of these knees is not certain. One idea is that the knees provide aeration for the roots. The knees provided a strange kind of beauty for me, one that set my imagination reeling at the idea of tiny swamp gnomes rising out of the mud and swirling a macabre dance around their mother tree.

We came into the swamp at a great time of year, the all clear time. Nary a mosquito in sight. The welcome center's mosquito meter keeps up with biting conditions. Imagine being there on the continum above ruthless. War Zone!

For several years while our son was a cadet at the Citadel in Charleston, we drove on Interstate 26 past the brown sign advertising Conagree National Park, but never had the inclination to stop and smell the swamp roses until this spring. Brown signs are notoriously apart from main roads and the curious must often drive miles out of the way. Attending park rangers award the wanderlust who do show up in their facility with a stamp like this one. We surely earned it, and I added to my collection.

I became a brown sign enthusiast years ago and wrote about my experiences in a collection of stories compiled by Randell Jones. It was later made into an audio version here in his six minute stories. Give it a click and a listen. And while you are at it, check out Randell's series of books in the Personal Story Publishing Project. Mine is published in the 2019 book, Exploring. Wait until you read the other fantastic stories!

If you ever find yourself on Interstate 26 in South Carolina, or even Interstates 77, 20, or 95, take time to make a slight detour. You'll find the swamp between those four major roads, on a forsaken path in the depths of lowland country. You'll not be disappointed. Just check the mosquito meter before you go!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Back on Facebook Again

I'm back. Did you even miss me? I've been on a self-imposed exile from Facebook during the days of Lent and I'm here to tell you that I came out the other end with a new appreciation of time.

Time was at the root of why I chose to avoid Facebook as my Lenten discipline. About a week before Mardi Gras the powers that be (who seem to know absolutely everything about me) sent my timeline chart showing how many hours I had spent browsing through their wonderous social media format. I'll never reveal this embarrassing amount, but suffice it to say the bottom line forced me to take a new look at how I spent my hours. Sure, I enjoy keeping up with friends I've accumulated along the way, but were those video clips of cute puppies and grouchy old cats and strangers falling on ski slopes...you get the picture...robbing me of more noble pursuits? 

I clicked my final click just before my husband and I attended Ash Wednesday services at my church. Once the minister painted a cross on my forehead with the ashes of last year's Palm Sunday celebration, that was it. I was changed. My goal was to immerse myself in spiritual readings, and I did manage to follow through with some of that part of my Lenten goal: replacing frivolous with mindfulness. 

The surprise is, I didn't miss Facebook. I read a few books. I wrote a few books, well, I tried, anyway, and actually finished one. I slowed down. I smelled the proverbial roses since the seasonal ones weren't yet in bloom. I watched the local news and the thirty-minute evening news, but I didn't read people's comments on Facebook telling me what I should think about the news. That in itself was a blessing.

Okay, so I did miss wishing Happy Birthday to my friends. If you were one of those I slighted, consider yourself wished. I also missed a few event announcements that friends had shared with everyone but me. Instead, I received after-the-fact, in-person comments, "Why weren't you there? You would have enjoyed it." Drats. And I missed sharing my life with all of you. I went on an adventure to the swamps of the South Carolina low country that, rather than immediately telling you about, is now the topic of a future blog.

I assumed I would pick up my cell phone and jump right back into the thick of things when I came home after Easter morning services, maybe even in the car on the way home, like in the old days. But no. That didn't happen. I spent a little time scrolling to catch up with my friends, but the puppies and cats and unknown children hunting Easter eggs, not one click.

I've earned time back and I'm going to savor it. Thank you, Lord.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Until later

I'll be taking a timeout from social media starting tomorrow. It's the discipline I chose to honor for Lent. I spend way too much time on Facebook that I could spend doing more faith-based activities, like reading scripture or holding devotions. That's the plan.

Often I arbitrarily pick an item like chocolate or red meat to deny myself during the forty days of Lent. I learned very quickly that forty days is a long time, longer still when Sundays get added in. Forty seems to be a Biblical number of enduring. Noah and the animals lasted forty days on the ark. Moses and the Israelites wandered for forty years. Jesus was tempted in the desert for forty days. 

Today is Mardi Gras, the traditional day we believers squeeze in any last-minute chocolates or red meat or other delights we might have chosen to deny ourselves until Easter. I'll certainly follow suit and today view the last memes of prancing puppies or mischievous cats that my friends invariably post.

Take a look at this postcard meme from 1910.
There's nothing new under the sun. Just sayin'

Will I be able to do this? Can I overcome the temptation to peek just once? I'm nowhere near Christlike and fall short way too many times, but surely I can resist the ping of my cellphone telling me there is something juicy on Facebook that I just can't miss.  There will be one way to do this and one way only.

 Prayer. 

When I come out the other side, it will be time to celebrate the resurrection of our Christ. 

Talk to you then,

Gretchen

Morning Rituals

Today is the first day of my new morning ritual, not that I chose it or anything. It was forced on me by a change at the newspaper office. First, they converted to only three days a week, which was disappointing enough. But their latest decision is a whole different ballgame. No more delivery boy. From now on, our newspaper will arrive by the US Postal Service. Starting today. It's morning, and I have no newspaper waiting for me to wade through as I eat breakfast. Drats. What now?

We've received the morning paper ever since we moved into this house. It has been a part of my daily ritual. When I heard the unmuffled sound of the car bringing the paper in the wee hours, it gave me a certain comfort. All was well with the world; the paper had arrived. My routine could start. Even during my career/motherhood busy years, I always found time to read the paper before I left home for the day. Finding the rolled-up paper on the driveway in the freshness of the morning was my husband's chore, and he did it with such efficiency. Sometimes it was in the wet grass, tossed there by a substitute delivery boy who didn't realize the irritation of reading soggy newsprint. On rare occasions, a neighborhood dog took a little chew of it as he went about his rounds, and we read the paper shred by shred. Eventually we purchased a delivery box and aligned it with the mailbox at the corner of our lot.

I guess now the paper box can go the way of other obsolete artifacts that have come and gone in the history of our married life. However, this is different. It marks the end of an era. More than that, it marks a change in the way I approach the day. I'm not so sure I'm happy about it.

I remember when the change came to my parents. It was as unsettling to them back then as it is to me now. We lived near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which had two newspapers at the time. The Journal and The Sentinel. One was morning and one was evening. We subscribed to the evening paper and hearing the paper's thud on the drive was key to my family's clockwork. My brother and I competed as to who could get to the paper first. He usually won. Reading the paper was my father's way of decompressing from his workday. It was my mother's afternoon joy before starting supper chores. We bonded over the comic section that my father read aloud to us.

And then the two papers merged. No more evening paper. No more family rituals because our mornings were hectic enough without bonding over Little Orphan Annie. That era ended and life went on.

Now it's my turn to change. So many of our friends dropped the paper years ago and relied on television or word of mouth to garner the latest news. Not us. We wanted it in our hands to point things out to each other, to clip pertinent articles to pass along to those very friends who had dropped the paper. Most satisfying of all, I worked the crossword puzzle and my husband worked the Suduko puzzle. Daily. Faithfully. It set the day off for us both, and now what? That routine is over. 

I'll have to rely on Facebook for interesting tidbits to share with friends as we walk laps. In fact, my entire morning ritual, sans crossword puzzles, will have to rely on my smartphone. Working a crossword puzzle on a screen is not my way of gearing up for the day. So I will adapt to getting the paper when the mail arrives after lunch and working it then. It will just take some time to reconfigure my brain. I will not follow suit with others and drop the paper. Small-town local papers are essential to democracy and I will do my part to support that institution. Just like my parents, I will adapt.

It's the early morning crossword puzzle that I grieve the most. Sipping Earl Grey tea while wordling just isn't the same.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

A Sad Find

In the spirit of Look-What-I-Found-While-I-Was-Looking-Something-Else-Up, I unearthed a sad story that seems to epitomize the tragedy of young lives lost in battle. I had been searching for information about a family in Caldwell County, North Carolina during the Revolutionary War when I found it in one of my go-to books for local history. These were written by great historians of our county, WW Scott and Nancy Alexander. They caught stories, just like I do, and they published them for future generations to learn about the past, just like I do.

In his Annals of Caldwell County, author Scott didn't format it to be in chronological order, but instead chose to arrange it as if he would have collected his wits for the day and plopped down a new story he caught. Just like I do in this blog. 

So he has an article about the Confederacy early in the book, followed by visiting his neighbors in the 1930's (which is when the book was first published), followed by the colonial times, and then a few Revolutionary War stories inserted at will. Reading for what I wanted involved page by page reading (or is that an excuse since there is an index...which didn't even have the family name I was researching).

I became enthralled by these stories, but the saddest of all, probably the saddest of nonfictions I've read recently, was on page 42, the story of Captain John Thomas Jones, born in 1841. He was at the university in Chapel Hill when he left to join the Twenty-Sixth Regiment, Company I, of the Confederacy. A born leader, he soon became a second lieutenant, then captain, then major, and finally lieutenant-colonel. He fought in several battles, most famously at Gettysburg. 

Later, at the Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864, he stepped up when his colonel was wounded and led his regiment "in a charge against overwhelming numbers." Do the math. He was twenty-three years old. And mortally wounded in this "charge against overwhelming numbers." 

The surgeon who attended to him told him there was no hope and he would die from his wound. He later reported the death scene, "With a most yearning expression he replied, 'It must not be. I was born to accomplish more good that I have done.'"

My heart melted. He didn't live long enough to accomplish his goals. His life was snuffed out, taken from him like a candle in the wind.

And that is what war does.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

A Pot Full of Orchids

Orchids were never on my radar to look at, much less raise. 

But.

For over a year now, I've been tending this one pot of orchids. I inherited it from my Aunt Lorraine, my Salvation Army connection that lived with us the final months of her life. I watched her care for it and when she could no longer walk, or no longer cared to care, I took over. 

My joy has been in watching it bloom this year after her death. 

We're up to three blooms now with a promise of more to come. I posted pictures on my facebook account and some of you have been watching the journey with me. One friend even sent a link to caring for the plant. Check out this Phalaenopsis Care website. The pictures and circumstances of growing my orchid fit exactly with mine. I was most excited with the statement that the plants will be in bloom for months. 

It's really been quite easy following Lorraine's instructions: Water once a week, using only one cup. She made sure she measured exactly one cup, and so do I. Let it sit for one hour, and believe me, Lorraine timed it to one hour. Then pour the water out. And that's it for all the care I did. I set it in the kitchen window where it receives a little morning sun. 

Now I'm reaping the benefits of beauty while I'm remembering the beauty of family ties. Wouldn't Lorraine be happy!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen