God's Little Firecracker

 7-6-26. Sounds like a good passkey number for me to use, a date easy to remember, so significant in my life. I spoke it frequently for several years when I used the drive-thru at the drugstore, picking up medicines for a special lady I called my aunt, Lorraine Freese. "Birthdate," the clerk would say, and I'd respond quickly, without having to ask her, simply because I had said it so often. The only thing is that twenty-six isn't today, July 6, 2026. It's July 6, 1926 I'm referring to. 

She would be a hundred years old today, and she was sure looking forward to it. A hundred and five was her goal. She made it to ninety-five. She died alone, in a covid restricted facility where I could only visit and let her know I cared by knocking on the outside window of her room. So today I celebrate her century birthday alone, without her. How sad for such an energetic little lady who liked to call herself a firecracker.

She might have been two days late from being born on Independence Day, but she was certainly a firecracker of an independent sort. Her first five years were spent in an orphanage. She was taken in by her aunt's family (my grandmother's), and lived there until she graduated from high school and went out on her own. After a few years of trying to find herself, she joined the army. The Salvation Army.

She was assigned to a mission in western North Carolina and there she found herself and the purpose for which she was born. Because there was already a soldier stationed there named Lorraine, she went by the name Jean. Through years of hard study and commitment, she became known as Captain Jean and then Major Jean, but I knew her as Lorraine. She was full of energy and had no issue about being a woman on horseback going into the backwoods of the Appalachians to knock on doors and tell people about the love of Jesus. When she started driving a scrapped World War II jeep, she learned, in a hard-earned sort of way, to back into people's driveways to make a quick getaway. 

That's her, on the left, with Sib, her friend of many years, standing beside the mission's sign. If you have any inclination of celebrating the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence, might I make a suggestion? Send a check to support this mission that is hanging on through tough times and dwindling interest in mission work. This little firecracker named Major Jean would so appreciate it. Drop a card in the mail to the Shelton Laurel Mountain Mission, 35 Mountain Mission Road, Clyde, NC 28721. The firecracker in heaven would certainly be thrilled. So would the mission, because she was too precious to them, and to the Lord, to be through with her impact on the world. 

One day, years ago, she called me and asked me to write her story. We sat together, talking, her revealing to me a life that was so dedicated and inspiring that I couldn't say no. 

The title of the book, Called to the Mountains, was a no-brainer selection, because time after time she told me she was called by God to go to the mountains to spread the word of God to the people there. I guess a fairly accurate title could have been, God's Little Firecracker, because of her energy and her drive...and the fact she stood barely five feet tall, if that. 

Learn from Lorraine. Go. Do. We all should be firecrackers in our chosen plight in life. 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Childhood Games

I belong to a writer's group called the Foothills Writers. We meet each Wednesday to share our work and learn from each other. The idea is to teach about some aspect of writing and have us to write to prompts, reading them aloud, and then discussing them. A different member moderates the weekly session. We've had some wonderful activities that strengthened my writing ability.

When my turn came up, I keyed in on childhood in the summer. We wrote for about ten minutes and then shared with each other. We are all from such divergent backgrounds that the fun of hearing the varied answers makes for some robust discussions. The prompt I proposed was to write about memories, or a specific memory, of summers as a child. 

After we read our responses to each other, I asked those who wanted to share on our corporate google page to be entered into ChatGPT. We did, and we learned quite a bit about our writing, about what it was getting across to a neutral party who didn't know us from Adam.

Here's my written answer to the prompt: "Summer as a Child." Has anybody ever played the game, Ain't no bears out tonight? There is such a thing. I found it on YouTube, although they politically corrected the word "killed" to "got."

Ain’t no bears out tonight, 

Daddy Killed them all last night

I can hear the sing-song now, playing in the backyard with my friends, summertime, fireflies blinking. Mama hadn’t turned the porch light on yet.

Brenda and Patricia. They lived across the road from me, and I couldn’t wait to finish my chores to run free outside. They were a patient two, sitting on the front stoop while my mother timed my piano practice for the day, saying Are you done yet over and over, Mama shouting, I don’t hear anything!!!

But the evenings were the best. Hot, muggy, dark, in a time before daylight savings was imposed on us, and darkness fell early enough for us to play well.

Our game of choice was a hillbilly version of tag, Aint no bears out tonight. Brenda always called “It,” and she became the bear, hiding behind whichever tree trunk she could find before we opened our eyes.

Patricia and I holding hands, walked together through the woods in the backyard with the moon and the fireflies our only source of light. We sang at the top of our lungs, knowing sometime soon, that bear would emerge, growling, and chasing us back to the side porch. 

Daytime it was Mother, may I, hot afternoons it was read a book. Mornings were chores

But evenings, the bears came out and frightened us.

I miss the freedom of being chased by a pretend bear, the wind blowing in my hair, the thrill. Life has been like that, bears coming out from behind all kinds of tree trunks. The innocence of backyard playing never returned. 

So that was my creation, the playing in the backyard. I inserted what you read above into ChatGPT and instructed it to create a picture that shows what I wrote. Here's what it came up with: 

It was a little dark, so my next instruction was to make it be at dusk before it was dark, and the first picture shows that. One by one I inserted other members' stories into the chat and slowly (the waiting is the pits), a picture emerged. By looking at it, we could tell if we got our messasge across. What do you think of mine, did the AI key in on what I wrote? Scary isn't it, to think that some machine gets it when maybe a human doesn't.

Recently, the use of AI has been a topic of discussion not only in our group but across the internet. We came to no conclusions, but had energetic opinions to give each other. As for me, I will not use AI to write. What I present to others is what I have done, sitting here in the summer doldrums, typing away. No AI for me...unless you count Grammarly!

So there you go.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Adding More to the History Books

One of my favorite parts of being a fourth-grade teacher was the social studies curriculum focusing on North Carolina. I loved learning along with my students. I was faithful to the teaching guides that introduced historical events such as the Lost Colony, the shipwrecks in the Outer Banks, and the Overmountain Men. Little did I know....

Come back, former students! There's more to North Carolina's story.

My new passion is hearing stories that uncover parts of America's past. I do it all the time when I visit with people to start their journey of writing a memoir. But this...this is another story to tell.

I never imagined there was a hidden history not twenty miles from my home. I walked back into that time this past week on a visit to a Spanish fort. Yes! Twenty miles! How far do I live from St. Augustine, Florida, where typical history books locate Spanish forts? A full day. But not here in the foothills of the Appalachians.

I dutifully taught about Governor John White and the colony he established on Roanoke Island in 1587. I enlarged this photo of the historical marker at Fort San Juan so you could read the date...1567. Twenty years earlier! So, the story...

It goes back to Conquistador Hernando de Soto, who explored from Florida, through what we now call Georgia and the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Alabama, to the Mississippi River, the first European to cross the Mississippi. He died there in 1542 of a fever, probably typhoid. Did I ever teach that? Yes, to the conquistadors but no to being in our area of North Carolina.

Spain was determined to establish a road to safely transport the gold they either plundered or received in trade. Spanish ships had been attacked by pirates too often while sailing through the Gulf of Mexico. They reasoned that overland would be safer. With this as his driving force, Juan Pardo later led an expedition setting up forts along the way to use as landing spots for those who traveled with the treasure.

One spot was here in western North Carolina, near Morganton, not all that far from me, between Morganton and my house. His men arrived at the Joara village and announced that they were in charge now, that they needed housing and safety. He didn't speak the Joaran language, and they didn't speak his, but trading and sheer awesomeness spoke for him. The natives erected four houses for them, and a fort. 

All was well for about a year and a half when the Joarans grew restless with these invaders taking over their lives. One night, when the Spanish were asleep, they burned the houses with the men inside, killing all but one. That one managed to escape to another of the Spanish forts along the route. His written testimony is the story that tells us what happened here. 

It didn't tell what happened to Joara after the revolt, however. They disappeared. Over the following four hundred years, the village disappeared, too. Years and years of piles upon piles of dirt, leaves, and dead trees covered it all. English settlers arrived and made homes and planted fields. 

And then, the current landowner asked the right person about his discovery of pottery shards and sherds, pieces of broken pottery, shards for glass or metal-based, sherds for clay-based. (I learned this on my tour.) A team came out and started exploring. The more they uncovered, the more they realized the enormity of what they had discovered. 

Fast forward to this past week, when I observed a team of archaeologists at work. 

So far, teams at the Joara site have uncovered the outline of burned buildings, obvious by the color of the dirt's layer. They've worked enough in the last three decades to determine the village's setting.

A drawn concept of Joara village

The first dig has been covered back. As has the second and third, for several reasons, mainly to deter curiosity seekers who would come and destroy what remained. Also, to preserve what is still to be found, saving that for later advancements in the science of archaeology.

You can read more about this fascinating bit of history by going to their website, exploringjoara.org/the-berry-site/.

But why am I so interested? Because I'm a writer. Because I have a story set not ten miles from there and I want to incorporate some of this into it. It's an historical fiction I started several years ago, and now, I'm at the right place in my writing journey to pick it back up and go with it.

Stay tuned.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

There's a Fire in the Church!

Last Sunday, the church I attend, Littlejohn United Methodist, caught on fire. The United Methodist symbol has a flame surrounding a cross, so fire is part of our DNA. It was also Pentecost Sunday, the day when God sent flames to quicken his people by bringing the Holy Spirit upon those believers who gathered together in prayer after Jesus left them to ascend into heaven. It is a special day of days in the liturgical calendar when we're supposed to catch afire, renewing ourselves in Christ's teachings.

But not really this way. 

Fast forward some two thousand years after that first Pentecost Sunday, and Littlejohn witnessed a fire of its own. Here's what happened. My husband and I were the "greeters" at the front door for the entire month of May, which means we arrived earlier than the nine o'clock time we usually start the service. Except this time, the pianist's husband greeted us, running down the front steps, with his own greeting. "Turn around, the church is on fire!" 

He and his wife had arrived early to set things in motion as usual. When they opened the front doors, thick black smoke gushed out. Instead of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they were met with the stench and misery of the reality that our church was indeed on fire, and not in the Biblical sense. He had already called the fire departments and the pastor. We stood together, watching white smoke billow from behind the main sanctuary. 

Within minutes...no, make that within seconds...the first responders arrived, and then the fire trucks from our own Gamewell Fire Department, followed by nearby Collettsville Fire Department, the ladder truck from the city of Lenoir's fire department, emergency responders from all three entities, plus the county's disaster official. Our parking lots were overflowing by the time members of the congregation arrived. But we made room, and we stood in awe and prayer as we turned our church over to God...and to the men springing into action before their trucks came to a stop.

In the end, it turned out to be an electrical shortage in the wiring of the old section beneath the choir room. It was smouldering, ready to burst, and would have, had it not been on an early Sunday morning, just before church service was to begin, when we would be there at exactly the right time.

We can muse on the "What if's" all day, but I'm not going there. It could have been worse. Much worse. I firmly believe our church was saved by the hand of God and by the dedicated emergency personnel who responded to our call.

Last August, we at Littlejohn celebrated two hundred fifty years of being called by God. This Pentecost we got the call again. Amazing! Our church is on fire!!! 

We held hands in a circle, and the minister led us in a corporate prayer, echoing what we in our hearts were pleading, for the protection of those who rushed into danger and for the restoration of the meeting place of our congregation. 

Many in our group, and many of the emergency personnel who talked with us after all was well, asked about the history of the building. When I got home, I started going through the first book I ever wrote. It was back in 1978 and I had forgotten an awful lot.

I'm sharing with you below the email information I sent people about the buildings that housed the congregation we call Littlejohn. If you have anything to add, please do. We want as much information as possible. Most of all, we want this fire that was lit last Sunday to be the spark that starts a new greatness.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

The History of a Church Building

Our first structure was built in 1775 as a meeting house and was a log house with a “weight pole” roof, poles propped to hold up the roof. Dirt floor. It stood in what is now considered the “old” part of the graveyard. At that time the road between Lenoir and Morganton went directly beside the churchyard and the second structure was on the opposite side of the road, about fifty yards from the first. The third log structure was built in 1825 back across this road in the present location of the current building. The building itself was not destroyed during the Civil War, although the deed to the land where it is located was destroyed when the Burke County Courthouse was burned. A new deed that included three and three-fourths acres of land was created in 1868.

This 1825 structure was torn down to build a new frame church in 1868. The logs from the 1825 building were moved to the Andrew Hull Courtney home and used in the 2006 construction of Courtney Chapel at Lelia Tuttle Memorial Park.

 

Harriett Green drew this picture
of what we think the 1868 church looked like. 

This fourth building was dedicated in August of 1869. This building had two front doors one for the men to enter and one for the women to enter. The furnishing were simple with wooden pews. Men sat on one side, and women sat on the other.

A church conference was held March 20, 1914 to discuss opening a new congregation growing from Littlejohn in the community of Gamewell. Two separate building projects were accomplished, both framed with lumber, one at Gamewell and one at Littlejohn. Our 1914 structure was built on the same foundation as the one already in existence. The sills and sleepers as well as the beams that were hewed in 1868 were retained and are still a part of the current structure. The flooring and framing of the 1868 church were kept, but the exterior was torn off. Two windows replaced the two doors and a single front door was added along with a steeple. Two wings were added to each side of the main buildings with folding doors separating the sections. Two classrooms were added immediately behind the pulpit. (Where the couch is located today.) Heat for the church was supplied by two pot-bellied stoves, one on each side of the sanctuary. This new building was dedicated in 1919.

In the late 1940s the two classrooms were updated with sheetrock. A basement was dug by the men of the church using a team of horses to drag away pans of dirt. The wood stoves were replaced with a furnace that was in this basement.

Two back classrooms (choir room and flower room today) were built in the early 1950s. Johnny Waddell added the nursery and bathrooms shortly thereafter. In 1961 the Methodist Men started repair work on the basement by adding walls and a hallway, creating classrooms and a small kitchen and fellowship hall.

The current education building and the Clay Fellowship Hall were built in 1977. 

Clean Caldwell Day

No Mow May has gone well, at least from what I've seen as I've driven down the road. The weeds are indeed growing tall and their blossoms are plentiful for the pollinators. I see green. It's beautiful.

But these tall weeds are doing something else, something sinister. They are hiding the trash! What we think is beautiful has an underlying pollution of tossed metal cans that can be seen only when the sun reflects their evil. There's white fast food bags that crush the gentle stems as they land. Worst of all, there's styrofoam, the scourge along our roads that will never in our lifetimes disintegrate. 

Which is why Clean Caldwell Day is so important. 

With No Mow May ending, the mowers will resume their assigned jobs of cutting away the beautiful greenery and, unfortunately, laying bare once again, the plague of litter. UGH!

In response to this reality, wise county officials have organized a County-Wide Litter Sweep. It's a last-ditch effort to eliminate as much trash as possible before June 1, when the mowers will grind up the styrofoam and spit them out into fake snowflakes. Instead of dainty yellow flowers dotting the roadsides, there will be aluminum drink cans that the heavy wheels crushed as they did their deed. Please NO!!!

The solution to this situation is to eliminate the litter before the mowers attack. Come on, people, do your part (besides not tossing trash). I've included a link to signing up, so do it now. Choose a road that means a lot to you, one that you will protect by doing this service. By the way, the major highways going through the county (321, 18, 64 and the loop) are maintained by the state, and trash pick-up on those roads is done by paid personnel. 

Then on Saturday, May 30, go to CCC&TI between eight and ten in the morning to pick up the much-needed equipment they will have set aside for you: the safety vests, the grabbers, the trash bags, and rubber gloves. You leave the filled bags on the side of the road, and since you have notified them of which roads you will be cleaning, they will know where to send the truck to pick up the bags. Return the supplies to CCC&TI by one o'clock that same day, or to the Soil and Water Office on Monday. 

Devote a few hours to this project. Most of all, don't be a litter bug!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

No Mow May

It's here, North Carolina people! Have you noticed yet? The bees probably have, and that's the important thing. In fact, that's what No Mow May is all about. 

North Carolina Senate Bill 391 requires that the NC Department of Transportation not mow public roadsides during the entire month of May. What a concept! This fantastic rule will give the wildflower weeds time to prosper and bloom. In turn, they will provide food for bees and other pollinators. 

Here's a busy bee working at my delicious azaleas last month. 

This attempt by our state legislature is a step in the right direction. We must act now, before it's too late to save our beautiful world. 

Life is good. Just ask a bee.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

North Carolina the Beautiful

Those of us living in North Carolina, at least those in our county, have noticed a lot of debris lining the sides of roads. I mean A LOT. What a mess! What an embarrassment! Somebody do something!

A lot of somebodies have! 

I belong to a Ruritan Club in the community where I live, and I suggested to them that we start a petition to show people's concern, which we did. Environment Committee Chair John Clark, along with our club president, Cynthia Hicks, appeared with me before the Gamewell Town Council at its regular March meeting to present the petition calling for action. Cynthia and I then appeared before the Caldwell County Commissioners to present the same petition.

Action has begun, I'm pleased to announce. First, I received an email from the Stormwater Department of the Western Piedmont Council of Government inviting us to join a trash pickup crew. In a "Put your money where your mouth is" kind of way, I gladly went along.

Yes, that's me on the side of the road. And this is me, too. 

You should have seen the before picture!

Somewhere along the way, trashing our beautiful world has become acceptable. Many people blame uncovered trash haulers on their way to the landfill, allowing all kinds of industrial and household litter to fly out the top. Some people blame trailer owners who fail to secure loose papers and cans strewn on the floor. Some people blame fast food restaurants with the modern drive-thru dining style. Some people...and on and on, according to whichever group is easy prey for blaming.

Blaming doesn't solve anything. Action goes beyond that and does something about it, although I must say it's totally NOT FAIR for concerned citizens to pick up the trash left behind by uncaring others. Training the public to care seems like a hopeless case. And yet we must try before we are knee deep in McDonald's bags.

Whatever happened to the anti-litter campaigns I remember from years ago? First up, "Don't Be a Litterbug." Next "Keep North Carolina Clean and Green." Or was it green and clean? Elementary students from the past heard these mottos over and over and over, so the theme should have been ingrained in their minds. They've grown up now. Some of them (hopefully not all that many, but enough to ruin it for others) are the very ones driving their cars, rolling down the windows, and tossing out trash. Hopeless, indeed. And yet we must do something before the sides of our roads become even worse.

I am encouraged by the response. The NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, because of statewide concerns, established the newest campaign, in connection with America 250, "North Carolina the Beautiful." Caldwell County developed a committee composed of members representing different interests: educational, business, civic clubs and government officials. I attended their organizational meeting and plan to go back. This is an action-minded group that has already implemented steps to take. The director of the waste management facility reported on his efforts. Sad statistics here, the Adopt a Highway program in 2025 collected 4.6 tons of trash along the roadsides. In case you missed it, that was TONS. Even sadder, the paid contracted businesses along the major highway arteries in the same year collected 47.6 TONS. I wish I could capitalize numbers to emphasize that ridiculously high number.

 Venting here: we should not have to pay people to pick up after the slobs of this world. We need to get the word out. We are a free people, but freedom comes with responsibilities. Sure we could be free to toss that empty can out the window, but really, folks? Really? This is the United States, a country that works for the common good, as stated in our Constitution.  

Our world is too good to be covered in debris. Join the effort!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Easter Visual

If you keep up with me on Facebook, you already know I enjoy visiting the local North Carolina wineries. Through the years, I have become familiar with those who work the vineyards. I've even gone into the rows of luscious grapes and blueberries to pick the end-of-season leftovers. But I've never been into one in the depths of the off-season, when all is drab and hopeless looking.

I was at one last week walking through the desolate rows of vines, and I want to tell you about my experience. The owner pointed to a vine in the distance and assured me it was indeed healthy, as were the others behind it. Then he said, "Watch this."

He spoke nothing more. He didn't have to. With his head bowed low, and I mean down low, discouraged low, shoulders hunched low, he walked a straight line from where we were standing to the vine. Without explanation, he got as close as he could to the root and turned around, extending his arms to grab the thick branches on each side. He nearly had to stand on tip-toes to keep his balance. He held his legs together, slightly crossing them at his ankles.

No words. Only silence as he stood there, head still bowed down, arms splayed to each side, legs together. Oh my goodness. I got cold chills.  

Jesus knew about vineyards. He wanted his disciples to get a visual of who he was, so he told them, "I am the true vine and My Father is the gardener." (John 15:1) 

His disciples had been around vineyards, so they knew about this strong, main vine that had branches coming from it. They had seen what I saw last week in the waning days of winter. They got it. 

Just like I got it when this vineyard owner appeared to be hanging before me with an Easter visual I will never forget. I hope you get it too, this crucifixion visual on the vine.

Don't let Easter egg hunts and soft cuddly bunnies be your Easter visual. Think of this picture and visualize what I saw. 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Art Took the Runway

When I was a first-time author, I didn't realize what being a "published author" would have in store for me. Sure it meant I wrote a book, and since then, I'm up to twenty. It also meant I was now into the retail side of life - Selling! 

Sitting in front of my computer day after day does not get my work into the hands of people who love reading. That takes effort. So does fitting into an outfit that I wore only a couple times before I gained weight. But I did it!

And here I am in front of my display table

I joined with a group of writers who went from festival to festival, hawking our wares. That was fun and a great training ground for me as we navigated through rainstorms and wind and excessive heat. Now I've limited myself to only two or three outdoor events since I became a member of the Western North Carolina Society of Artisans. I offer my books for sale in our Red Awning Gallery located at the HUB in Hudson, NC. What a creative group of artisans I have chosen to be associated with. 

Each first Friday of the month we have an event. Through the years, I have launched three different books at a First Friday. For the month of March, we decided to go big. I mean BIG! How about renting the large auditorium at the HUB? How about having seating around a carpet? A Red Carpet??? How about showcasing our art on a runway, using models from the nearby community college? The idea grew and grew and grew and finally, the first Friday in March arrived and we had a blast!

 Here's the before picture. 

Note a sketch of me by Rhonda Walker in the lower right-hand of the screen.

During the planning stage I had to rethink book development and train my mind to the concept of book covers as art. I chose three books to feature, one as yet unpublished. I removed the wording and looked at what was left. Art! I went to the local Pack and Ship and had them print enlarged versions of the front covers. I turned in a short script that was to be read as the model walked the runway carrying our art so that our guests could enjoy. 

We kept our art shrouded so that their moment on the runway would be a treat. 

When the time came for music and mulling around, (Oh, did I mention we had live music by the dynamic duo, Paddyak? And three tables loaded with food?) we visited with everyone, enjoying the moment. 

The lights dimmed...

And he was off. My first work was the one I did with Wongalee Thomas. It featured a photograph I took at the beach one year with a sketch in the center by the "Rembrandt of the Caribbean,"  Erwin de Vries, a friend of the subject of our book, Wongalee's father, Humphrey Tja-A-Ling. 

I'm not really ready to reveal to the world this art that walked the runway, so I'm keeping it a little blurry. 

It's my newest book, as yet unpublished, about a 1964 Ford Mercury Comet Caliente. I enlarged the back of the book, without its blurb, but with the car in the center of a collage of snapshots showing individual elements that make it up. You'll have to buy the book to see what I'm talking about.

I was so thrilled to see my third entry almost float down the red carpet. It was my finale! 

It featured a duo biography I wrote about two outstanding members of our community, The Physician and the Forester - Marjorie and Bill Strawn: A Story of Devotion, Service and Faith. In the center of the cover is this duo, taken at a wedding in their time of happiness. Behind that is "Linn Cove," a watercolor done by their son, Matt, a member of our society of artisans. 

Our event, "Art Takes the Runway," was a resounding success. We're already making plans for next year. Keep it in mind. You won't want to miss it!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

My Dear Jasper

Last fall, I talked my fellow author Jasper Reese into reading from his works at the Mitford Museum's poetry night. I knew he was also a poet because we chose several of his poems to include in the book The Way It Was in the Backwoods that we wrote together. 

I knew the audience would appreciate what he had to offer. And they did. 

He read a bawdy poem, "The Old French Broad," about what you might think at first, an old "broad" but with a double entendre, comparing it to the fairly wide French Broad River in western North Carolina. It was fun hearing a ninety-five-year-old man drawing chuckles from the much younger, poet-filled audience. They appreciated him as much as he appreciated them. 

He was so excited about the whole experience that he already knew what he would read for the next poet reading session. Except he didn't have a chance. He passed away last week. If he told me the title, I don't remember, but I'm determined to make a good guess and read it in his honor at the next Mitford Poetry night. 

Another thing he was determined to do was learn to play the fiddle. I'm talking when he was ninety plus years old! He was proficient in guitar and maybe a bit of banjo, but the fiddle was a challenge to him. He screeched through the basics until, at one of my visits, he conned me into playing a duet with him - he on the fiddle and me on the piano. I went home that day, dusted off the ivories, and started practicing until I finally felt comfortable enough to play the song he had selected, "How Beautiful Heaven Must Be." I'm listening to it (and tearing up at the oh so appropriate words) now as I type. It's the version by the Gaither Vocal Band. Click on it and listen to the words as you imagine Jasper finding out how beautiful and wonderful heaven really is. I got a taste of it when I sat at the piano in his living room last summer and fulfilled my promise to him to play this long-overdue duet. We both made all kinds of errors. He sounded a bit like Jack Benny giving the screeching version of music on his violin. Perhaps the two of them are playing music together in heaven! But that day, we certainly weren't up to heaven's standard playing this duet. In my heart, however, (and I think in his), we were making heavenly music as we sang at the top of our voices to drown out all our mistakes. What fun! What a man! I'm so glad he was in my life.

When I am ninety-five, I pray I will be as vibrant and excited about life as Jasper. That's my takeaway, and I hope yours as well. 

Be like Jasper.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

The Number Game

So the word of the year turns out to be a number: 67. What's an author to think? Surely dictionary.com could find more substantial words available to signify the best 2025 had to offer! This site purports to be the "Dictionary for the Real World," in other words, modern, with its nose to the grindstone of creative thinkers who coin words or repurpose them.  

But wait. I can see the logic, even if I'm of a different generation than the one where this number craze originated. It's a meaningless phrase and perfect for now. I'll let the kids delight in it and enjoy the limelight.

What set me off thinking about numbers was a bit of research I did recently, where I came upon a South Carolina town named Ninety Six. Using a number for a place shouldn't have surprised me because in my most recent release, I wrote about a town in Pennsylvania named Eighty Four. It's not all that far from Donora, the setting of my memoir of sorts, The Great Donora Fog and Other Family Stories.

I mention in the book that my husband and I drove through Eighty Four looking for a highway numbered 84 following my uncle's directions. Actually he told us to turn left when we got to Eighty Four, and we assumed he said left on 84. We learned the importance of prepositions the hard way when we ended up nearer to Pittsburgh than we planned! 

A quick Wikipedia search gave me hints for the origin of the name. It was a mere crossroads, founded in 1884. The best explanation, and I quote, "it was named by a postmaster who 'didn't have a whole lot of imagination.'" 

All this came back to me when I dug into a rabbit hole this week looking for information about a Revolutionary War incident that happened at the same location of my newest WIP (Work in Progress). An author friend of mine, Lane Dyer, devoted two chapters of his book, The Tory Oak, to this incident. 

There's an ambush. There's kidnapping and intrigue. There's a quick trial and a hanging, several hangings, on the tree outside the courthouse. It's all true, and it gives a glimpse into the unfortunate tensions and violence of war. I read the two chapters that held what I was looking for, then started back at the beginning just because I wanted to. In my manuscript, I wrote only what I needed to give the reader an idea of why this location was important to the family history I was recording. It amounted to a paragraph, but what a paragraph that is! I will probably leave out the town called Ninety Six since it wasn't significant to my WIP. A family loyal to the crown had plans to flee to Ninety Six from their camp at the Wolf Den in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains. Colonel Cleveland made sure this didn't happen.

The fun of being an author is connecting to the small discoveries along the way. Angels can be in the details as much as devils can.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Inhumanity

Some books are hard to read, not because of the difficulty of sentence structure or word choice, but because of the theme or because of actions depicted. Such is the case of a few books I want to share, two I read recently. One I helped get published years ago. All three of these, in their own ways, incorporated man's inhumanity to man into the theme.

Its title alone should have prepared me - I was a War Child, a memoir by an author I met at lunch one day last May. This elegant lady, Helene Gaillet de Neergaard, at ninety years, was delightful and self-assured, almost dripping aristocracy. I had a hard time picturing the few events she told me about her childhood years. The subtitle, World War II Memoir of a Little French Girl, held more of a clue to the book than the delightful person sitting beside me. I added her book to my TBR stack, but kept selecting other books ahead of it because I just never seemed to be in the mood to read about man's inhumanity to child. Between Christmas and New Year's this year, I had some downtime and looked through the stack. There it was, and maybe I was ready, I decided. I gulped, opened to page one, and dove in. I was immediately sucked into a life I could never imagine, nor hope to imagine for any child now in 2026. 

What happens to children when they hear bombs all night or have to leave their homes because of war? She tells. Give it a read!

Her nonfiction about France during the war years dredged up memories of my reading Kristin Hannah's historical fiction, The Nighengale. This was one of those books I wanted to slam shut the cover and scream, but couldn't bear to stop reading long enough to do it. Two views of war-torn France, often too graphic, yet too necessary not to be. As was the other book by Kristin Hannah, The Women. It too sat on my TBR stack for the same reason as the others - my reluctance to surround myself with stories of war and death and the inhumanity of it all. I read this one in December of this year, when all around me were lights and cheer and gaiety. Instead, I wreathed (what an appropriate word for this time of year) myself in the life of nurses in Viet Nam. It wasn't pleasant. It was hard to take. But if we ignore the inhumanity and skip books such as these, then the act remains hidden and easier to repeat.

The settings of those books were continents away, not here in the United States, where freedom rings. We brag about freedoms. We teach our children that the First Amendment to the Constitution protects free speech and freedom of religion. And yet...

Tell that to the characters featured in Debbra Beecher Nance's book The Picking Bag. Ten years ago (has it really been ten years?), an author friend and I agreed to help Debbra self-publish this middle grade novel. She sent the manuscript and I read it. The theme of inhumanity struck me deeply. Here in America, Mormons were persecuted because of their faith. The novel follows a young boy as his family is forced to move away from the only home he'd ever known. It was not merely a pack-up-and-move story. It was one of death and destruction...and inhumanity.

In my books I have only touched on man's humanity to man once, and it's in my latest release, only a paragraph or two. I wrote a memoir, well, a memoir of sorts, I call it. It delves into my family history and I couldn't leave out the story of my sixth great-grandparents.

While The Great Donora Fog and Other Family Stories concerns a town in Pennsylvania, I included stories about my family that I had heard told over and over. These sixth great-grandparents were killed when their house was burned as punishment for believing as they did, for being Huguenots. Only my fifth great-grandfather escaped, as I write it, "with the family Bible and my genes." That was on another continent, but there was my third great-grandfather who, on US military duty in 1812, was burned at the stake by native Americans who were defending their right to exist. The past should haunt us!

In all these books, without exception, the take-away for me, was survival. Despite what was done to them, people came out the other end stronger, wiser, and with a surprising amount of compassion for others, considering what they had endured.

Books like these are a must-read for us to develop this compassion as well. Civilization depends on revealing the past so we can do better when it's our turn.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen