Lily Dale: A Village of Psychics and Mediums

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Word of the day: Medium (me’-de-əm) “a person through whom the spirits of the dead are alleged to be able to contact the living.”

Have you ever heard of, or been to, the little village of Lily Dale, New York? It is about an hour southwest of Buffalo. I have been there three times and would love to visit again. Lily Dale dates back to the 1870’s and was founded as a summer retreat location for members of the Spiritualist Church, which was quite prominent in the US in the late 19th century.   There are around 150 quaint Victorian cottages and homes, plus two hotels, a couple of restaurants, a meeting hall, a museum, and, of course, the obligatory gift shop.

Blor Pictures-Lily dale

Everyone who lives there is a practicing medium or psychic. The entire village is owned by the Lily Dale Assembly which grants long-term leases to carefully screened residents. Just think, when you and I purchase a house, we have to worry about our income, our debts, and the all important credit score. If you want to live and work in Lily Dale, you also have to worry about your “psychic score” and passing the admission test.

When we lived in Buffalo in the mid-90’s, several of my friends and work colleagues had told me about Lily Dale. They knew of my long abiding interest in all things metaphysical. My first trip to Lily Dale was pretty mundane. I have long been a fan of the books of Dr. Wayne Dyer, and I had signed up for a seminar he was presenting there. It was a beautiful early fall day, and the seminar was great. During the lunch break, I wandered around the little village, but I can’t say that I felt any particularly strong psychic vibes. I especially enjoyed seeing the interesting little houses, each with a shingle hanging outside proclaiming the offerings of that particular medium or psychic.

Blog pictures-Lily dale Inspiration StumpI spent several very tranquil minutes sitting by the famous Inspiration Stump and the Pet Cemetery. That Cemetery in a little clearing in the woods is such a loving tribute to so many animal friends who had passed on.

My next visit to Lily Dale came in the late spring the following year. My Mother was visiting us, and we decided that a day trip to Lily Dale would be a fun way to spend the day. As I had done previously, we wandered around the little village together. We had already decided we would try a reading, but the problem was, which one to select? We finally selected one little cottage and paid the resident medium for a reading. I have to admit to a high degree of skepticism about some of these things. Obviously, it was quite apparent that we were mother and daughter, so when my father’s spirit came through, I wasn’t sure there was anything I could really validate. I certainly couldn’t disprove it, but at the same time, I wasn’t totally jumping on the bandwagon of belief either.

Blog Pictures- Lily Dale HouseThen the medium looked at me and said there was another spirit present who wanted to communicate with me. My grandfather? My deceased uncle? No, it was the spirit of my husband’s step-father, who had passed away the previous December. We had always gotten along quite well, but when he passed right before Christmas, my husband, Bill, and I had decided that I would stay home as our sons were flying in, and that he would go back to Texas alone to the funeral. This spirit, presumably my late father-in-law, said that he didn’t get to tell me goodbye and wanted to now. He also said that he didn’t yet have a tombstone and wanted one in pink granite in a rounded shape. At this point the medium moved her hands in the air to show me the shape of the tombstone.

My husband and I had no idea that my husband’s brother had not yet ordered a headstone for the grave. We didn’t mention my strange message to anyone in the family other than to inquire if the headstone was in place yet, which it was not. On our next trip to Texas a year or so later, we did pay a visit to the gravesite.   There was the headstone in a grey granite with pinkish flecks in it in the exact same shape the medium had drawn in the air with her hands! You can imagine my shock at seeing that headstone.  Was this a valid message from the spirit side?  I don’t know. I guess we each have to accept or reject this sort of thing based upon our own belief systems.

I made one last visit to Lily Dale that summer, shortly before we moved back to Colorado. I didn’t visit any of the mediums then, just wandered around the picturesque streets and woods and enjoyed the peace and tranquility of the setting. If your travels should take you to the vicinity, I would definitely encourage you to take the time for an excursion to the enchanting little village.

©2015, Home Again, A Spiritual Journey

If you liked this, please take a minutes to like and share on Facebook or Twitter.  Stay tuned next week for “Pet Peeves.”  I have to warn you that every now and then I get into the language thing!

 

 

Spring at Last!

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Word of the Day:  Vernal (vur’ nəl)  “pertaining to, appearing in, or occurring in the spring.”

Last week I chatted about our big April snowstorm.  Since then we’ve only had a couple more inches a few days ago.  Patches of earth are starting to peek out from beneath the snow.  The dogs are roaming the yard more extensively now and getting out of the poop loop which sufficed them for a few days.  This afternoon I finally received the official message that spring is here; a hummingbird dive-bombed me while I was standing on the deck.  Demanding little creature!  Hastily, I ran back into the house to cook up the first sugar syrup of the year.  We go through very little sugar at our house; that is until hummingbird season starts.  Then we go through pounds and pounds of sugar until cold weather returns in the fall, and they hitch a ride south with the Canadian geese.

I am reminded of one summer day several years ago.  Chris, Sonja, and the grandsons were at our family cabin about nine miles from our house.  They called to ask about  the proportions of water and sugar for the solution for the hummingbird feeders.  I told them I usually did a 3:1 or a 4:1 water to sugar ratio. Later that day I got another call from them stating that the hummingbirds weren’t eating from the feeders.  I asked them, “You did let it cool enough after you boiled it, didn’t you?”  There was a moment of silence, followed by “Boiled it?” Ah yes, it has to be boiled into a simple syrup!

The first hummingbirds to arrive are the Western Broad Tailed Hummingbirds.  People often refer to them as Ruby Throats, but we don’t actually get the true Ruby Throats here in Colorado.  They are only found on the east coast.  To be such tiny little creatures, they are surprisingly feisty.  In late July the Rufous hummers arrive for a few weeks on their annual journey from their breeding grounds in Alaska back to their winter habitat in Mexico. They are a bright orange color with a dark throat band and are even more feisty than the others.  This commences what we call the Hummingbird Wars, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Wars of the Roses in English history.  The males of the two species spend  entire days driving one another off from the feeders.  The two types of females can’t be worried with this show of male dominance and will share the feeders with one another.  I wonder if this has applications for the human species as well?

Those of you who know me know that I am an amateur bird-watcher.  I have counted well over twenty different species of birds hanging about on our deck at various times.  We feed and water them year round, and they reciprocate by serenading us morning and night and sometime pooping on the deck railing.  Having  a heated  birdbath gives them much needed water during the winter.  Yesterday a red-tailed hawk stopped by for a visit on the railing.  All of the little birds and squirrels quickly vanished.  Somehow I think the hawk was looking for a live snack and not my sunflower seed!

It is sort of ironic that we now live so close to the cabin and property my parents purchased over fifty years ago.  For many years it was our go-to place.  Now that we live so close, we don’t go as often, especially since I can sit on my own deck and gaze at the Indian Peaks and the Continental Divide.  Some days we ask ourselves how much longer we can cope with the snow and the inconvenience, but then I look at the white-capped peaks, the bright blue sky, and the vivid green pines and know this is home!

©, 2015, The Eclectic Grandma

Be sure to check in on Friday for my visit to the Spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York!

 

Let Them Eat Pheasant!

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Word of the day: Peripatetic  (per’ i pə tet’ ik)  “Walking or moving about; not staying in one place; itinerant.”

I love the word peripatetic! It sums up so much of my life. I was born in Philadelphia from a long line of ancestors born in Philadelphia and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In fact, my ancestors were in what is now Philadelphia long before the late-comer William Penn ever showed up. To this day almost all of my relatives still live in this region. My parents were the black sheep of both families because they were the first to ever move away. After the War ended, my Dad was still in the Army, and we briefly relocated to Ft. Hood, Texas. Outside of some old photographs, I have no memories whatsoever of this brief interlude.

After the Army, my Dad went into sales and we moved a great deal.  We lived in Denver, Colorado; Memphis, Tennessee; and Glen Head, Long Island, New York before the move to Texas that I told you about a couple of blogs ago. My little sister, Suzanne, was born in New York, which technically made her more of a Yankee than me, or so I thought.  As an adult, my husband and I have carried on the itinerant family tradition. We have lived in Fort Worth, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; Greeley, Colorado; Bangor, Maine; Buffalo, New York; and back to Colorado. This doesn’t even count our moves within each state.  My Mother used to say she needed one address book just for us to keep writing in our new addresses.

Life in sales was not always so good, and my Dad rotated among various companies, selling carpet, well parts, and even Stetson hats. During some of the lean times, there was often not enough money to pay the rent on the drafty old farmhouse on Willow Brook Road. Our landlady was a delightful woman, who was also named Bess, the same as my horse.  She actually lived down the street from us and raised game birds for local restaurants. I used to love to spend long afternoons at her house and help feed all the beautiful fowl.  During one of the dry spells for my Dad, Bess, the landlady, not the horse, kept us supplied with an endless stash of frozen pheasant. I am not sure I appreciated her generosity at the time though.

We had fried pheasant, grilled pheasant, baked pheasant, pheasant fricassee, pheasant salad, pheasant and dumplings, and the ever-famous pheasant noodle soup.  My usual question of “What’s for dinner, Mom?” was met with the usual answer, “Pheasant.” I thought I was going to start growing pin feathers!  My Mother was a wonderful woman, but she never quite made the ranks of Gourmet or Bon Appetit.  A few of her other more famous dishes were Doggie Stew (No, not real dogs–a boiled up concoction of sliced hot dogs and diced boiled potatoes, which turned a ghastly orangey color from all the coloring in the hotdogs), Spanish Dish (A casserole of hamburger, macaroni, and tomato sauce), and the all time family favorite of the ’50’s, baked Spam and beans.

Despite what were no doubt tough times, my parents always managed to keep my sister and me protected from how bad things actually were. It wasn’t until I looked back at my childhood with the far more realistic eyes of adulthood, that I really appreciated my parents’ selfless love and Bess’ incredible generosity. However, I don’t think I have ever ordered pheasant on any restaurant menu to this day no matter how elegant the entrée, and no hot dog or Spam has crossed my lips in many a year!

Somewhere around this time my Mother also started raising chickens to sell the eggs.  My parents bought the fertilized eggs and hatched them in chicken incubators.  I loved seeing the fluffy little yellow chicks emerging.  They rapidly grew into pullets, a fancy word for young chickens.  The pullets quickly grew into mature laying hens, and the poor roosters probably joined their distant relatives, the  pheasants, in the deep freezer.  We had quite a flock of White Leghorns; at least I think that was the breed.  At any rate they were white and laid eggs.  They had free roaming around the fenced in horse pasture and busily worked their way around the pasture eating who-knows-what.  I preferred not to think too much on that, given the ample quantity of horse droppings all over.

One of my daily chores was gathering the eggs from the long rows of boxes in the chicken coop.  I didn’t really mind too much; there is something satisfying about gathering warm, fresh eggs.  You must put them very carefully into the bucket so as not to crack the shells.  Then we washed them and put them into egg cartons, and my Mother delivered them to her growing list of customers.  Gathering eggs was one of the those somewhat mindless tasks that allowed plenty of time for daydreaming while you were doing it.  That is, daydreaming until the day I reached into the hen box and came back not with a nice, fresh egg but with a chicken snake! From then on I always took a cautious peek into the box before reaching for the egg.

Now you may recall,  I had my horse, my red cowboy boots, my tooled leather belt, and my cap guns, but I didn’t have any cattle to herd.   So, what’s a cowgirl to do?  Herd chickens of course!  It wasn’t quite like a real cattle drive, but a couple hundred white chickens squawking, flapping their wings, and running around the pasture with a black horse and Dale Evans in full pursuit was a pretty satisfying experience.  Unfortunately, the stupid chickens stopped laying eggs when they got really upset, and my chicken herding career soon came to an abrupt halt.

©2015, Black Dirt and Sunflowers

I warned you I might get a little woo-woo from time to time, so check in next Friday for “Lily Dale:  A Village of Psychics and Mediums.”

SprIngtime in the Rockies

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Word of the day:  Blizzard (bliz’ ərd) “a severe snowstorm characterized by cold temperatures and heavy drifting of snow; an overwhelming amount.”

I think we’ve been in the mountains too long!  In the past four days we’ve had almost four feet of snow.  Yes, I said four feet, not inches.  Thursday we had about ten inches, not too bad for a spring snowstorm.  We kept up with that by shoveling a couple of times during the day.  The next morning the girls woke me up at 4:30 AM to go out.  Sleepily, I took them to the back door, which opens on to the upper deck.  One look assured me that the little blind girl and the other girl with some arthritis would never make it across two decks and down the stairs.  There must have been twenty inches of white stuff on the deck that had been totally clear when we went to bed, so the girls and I went downstairs so they could walk out on to the patio and head under the decks to do their business.

Normally Colorado snow is light and fluffy, but this snow was leaden.  This was the kind of snow the Eskimos use to build igloos. It broke up into heavy white chunks somewhat like white cinderblocks and about the same weight. I decided I would try the electric snow blower on the decks while Bill tried to plow out front.  Wrong on both counts!  My little snow blower  just said, “No way I’m even trying to move that stuff!”   Our plow truck had the same idea; it couldn’t budge the snow. After a consultation with our neighbor, we all agreed that a front end loader was called for.

This snow was so wet and heavy, I could barely lift my snow shovel.  We actually have multiple styles of snow shovels, one for large areas, one for steps, one for the decks, and so on.  I think that may say we have way too much snow.   Bill likes a big heavy shovel because it is faster, but I prefer my lighter weight little plastic one.  It takes me longer as I plod along with it, but don’t forget, the tortoise won the race!

To top it all off, we had more snow on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning; we even had a bit of thunder snow which is always somewhat intriguing.  I  shoveled a “poop loop” for the girls in the back yard.  When two hundred-pound dogs can’t make it through the snow, you know it is deep and heavy.  While I was doing the poop loop, I worked from both sides; somehow that made the task seem a bit less onerous.  When I finally joined the two excavations in the middle, I knew how the builders of the first transcontinental railroad must have felt when east finally met west.  The yard is beautiful with all the white everywhere, but more suited for January and February.  Finally on Saturday, the guy with the front end loader arrived to clear the driveway, and a good thing it was too as my supply of Kendall Jackson was running dangerously low.

At least snow shoveling is satisfying in that you can clearly see where you’ve been, unlike cleaning house or other repetitive tasks like that.  One of my previous bosses told me that when you got tired of shoveling snow, you should tie a snow shovel to the roof of your car and head south.  When someone asks you, “What is that,” you know you are far enough south.  He may have had a point!

©2015, The Eclectic Grandma

Check in on Friday for another trip to Texas in “Let Them Eat Pheasant.”

Another Move!

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Word of the day:  Arabian (ar-a’-be-en) “Any of a breed of horses raised originally in Arabia and noted for their intelligence, grace, and speed”

Last week I chatted about our move to Texas. I had quickly settled in to the routines of life in University Park. On Saturdays I had my weekly chores to do which included cleaning the bathrooms, picking up my room, and–gasp, choke, horrible– picking up the dog poop in the back yard. I also polished my beloved red cowboy boots every Saturday. Didn’t tell you about those, did I?

Among my new friends was the kid who lived on the corner. He had hundreds and hundreds of little metal toy soldiers and cowboy figures; at least it seemed like that many at the time. We played with them for hours on a big sheet of plywood resting on some sort of short legs. In his yard was a huge old horse-chestnut tree. It served us for climbing, hiding, and was a ready source of ammunition for us to lob at anyone who happened to incur our ire.

Next door was another friend. We watched television together. I don’t think we had a television at that point, so it was a treat to watch at his house. We also played cards quite often, canasta I think it was. His Mother used to lie in their backyard taking sunbaths in her bathing suit! I thought this was the craziest thing I had ever heard of. My Mother would never do anything so ridiculous!

My parents even let me sign up for horseback riding lessons. I took weekly lessons at White Rock  Stables. I suspect those stables are long gone by now. I learned to ride “English” style with a very proper instructor with a German accent. I was petrified of him and his little riding crop which might be used on a misbehaving horse or a rambunctious eight-year old, either one. I used to think he had somehow escaped from Germany to come work in the US. As I look back over the years, I suspect he was probably not quite the villain I painted him out to be in my mind. He was probably some poor soul trying to make a living and cope with annoying little kids. My love of horses kept me going despite the scary instructor, and I soon became a proficient rider.

My new-found happiness was soon to come to an end however. The summer after third grade my parents informed me that we were going to be moving to another house on the west side of Dallas. I didn’t want to move. I had new friends, the swimming pool, my bicycle, and my red boots and cap-guns. Then my Dad said the magic words. The new house was on two acres. It had a stable and a playhouse, and for the final pièce de resistánce, I could get a horse. Obviously, that quickly sealed the deal for me! How soon could we move?

Shortly thereafter we moved from University Park to the west side of Dallas, close to Love Field airport and Bachman Lake.   We lived in a semi-rural area on a short little street calked Willow Brook Road. The old white farm-house had a white fence in the front with climbing red roses all over the fence. I didn’t know or pay attention to it at the time, but my parents rented the house. They didn’t actually manage to purchase a home until my freshman year in college.

Daddy was true to his word, and soon Spot came to live with us.  Spot!  Who would ever name a horse Spot, but Spot it was.  A shaggy old white horse with a few black markings (hence the name), poor Spot was better suited to  pulling a plow than to being ridden by an eight-year old with visions of the Godolphin Arabian (Ever read King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry?), the Byerly Turk, and the Darley Arabian dancing in her head.  Spot tolerated me at best, but for some unknown reason, she took an intense dislike to my Dad.  Every time he came near her, she turned her hind end toward him and let fly with a vicious kick, several of which hit her intended target.

Spot soon left us, and was replaced by Bess.  At my age then it never occurred to me to ask where Spot went or where Bess came from.  I was simply too delighted to at long last have a horse.  Now, of course, Bess was a somewhat simple name for a horse, so I had to endow her with a bit more glamorous title.  Bess became Queen Bess.  Now, if you are wondering where in the world that came from, I was busily reading several books about Queen Elizabeth I who was often referred to as Queen Bess.  Truly a noble name for a horse!  Bess was a small, black mare with white stockings and would be my loyal companion on through my college years.  She soon learned what time I got home from school and would be waiting me at the gate, ready for an afternoon’s ride.

Since my little sister was getting bigger, my parents thought she would also be wanting a horse before long so we next acquired Princess, a young Palomino quarter horse filly.  She was only six months old when we got her.  I don’t think it ever occurred to my parents that training a horse to saddle and bridle wasn’t quite like teaching tricks to the family dog, especially for a family with little prior horsey experience.  Princess, who somehow became Princess Pat, was sent away to boarding school to learn how to become a good riding horse.  Alas, she never completely liked being ridden.  Her specialty was knocking the knees of an unsuspecting rider into the nearest fencepost.  She would then turn around and look at the poor knee-struck person to see what kind of reaction she had generated.  I think she took some sort of diabolical pleasure in seeing her hapless riders give a shriek of pain.

Princess also developed the not so nice habit of biting you on the arm or shoulder.  Now, I don’t know if you have ever been bitten by a horse or not, but it hurts.  A lot!  One day she got me a really good one on the upper arm.  In a moment of pre-adolescent anger, I turned around and bit her right back on the shoulder.  I don’t know who was more startled, Princess or me!  It is interesting to note that, although her little nipping habit continued, she never again bit me.  We had come to our own understanding of acceptable behavior.

©2015, Black Dirt and Sunflowers

If you enjoyed this, please take a minute to like and share on Facebook or Twitter.  Be sure to check in next Friday for “Let Them Eat Pheasant!”

We move to Texas

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Word of the day:  Yankee (yang’-ke)  “a native or inhabitant of a northern state”

I found out I was a Yankee when my family moved from Long Island, New York to Texas midway  in my second grade year.  What in the world is a Yankee I must have wondered?  Little did I know I had just moved to one of those areas where the North-South designation was still alive and well! Dallas in the early fifties was not the cosmopolitan city of today.

Long Island when I lived there was a collection of sleepy little towns and villages, not the habitat of the wealthy and famous that it has become some fifty plus years later.  We lived in Glen Head, close to Glen Cove.  Today Glen Head is supposedly the wealthiest zip code in the United States.  It certainly wasn’t that way when we lived there!  Some people have extensive memories of their past in a completely linear fashion.  I find that my childhood memories of Glen Head are more like a series of old photos all mixed up in a box.  We lived in the top floor of a two-story duplex right across the street from my elementary school.  I always have a chuckle when internet security questions want you to answer, “What was the name of your first grade teacher?”  Excuse me, but I really don’t have a clue.  My most vivid memory of being in the Glen Head Elementary School was drinking an orange soda and throwing up at some school function.  To this day I detest orange soda!

My other outstanding memory of living on Long Island was making a trip into the “City” to Madison Square Garden to see Gene Autry and his horse Champion.  This was definitely one of the highlights of my young life!   I remember the name of the horse but not my first grade teacher; that tells you something about my priorities at age six.  My Dad even bought me a chameleon lizard to take home with me after the show.  Ahhhh, life was good!

Texas, on the other hand, was the land of the wild west, cowboys and Indians, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.  Maybe this move was not going to be so bad after all!  Alas, there was to be no ranch, no horses, and not even a glimpse of Roy Rogers.  We moved to a little house on another quiet little street in University Park, the poor little stepsister to the wealthier Highland Park.  I was quickly enrolled into the local elementary school.  What could be more traumatic for a seven-year old than to change schools mid year.  This school had a cafeteria where you actually went through the line and ordered your own lunch.  Being totally petrified of this new experience, I think I subsisted on a diet of canned corn and a slice of white bread for the first several weeks.   Apparently, I must have gotten tired of this limited diet after a few weeks as I gradually melded into the new environment, ordered a better lunch,  and made some new friends.

By the end of the school year,  I had settled in to my new life in Texas.  I no longer felt like the complete outcast of six months ago.  I had a new bicycle,  complete with training wheels.  It wasn’t quite the same as a horse, but then I had a totally vivid imagination, so it worked for me.  I also had a holster with two silver cap pistols and a seemingly endless stash of caps.  I can still recall the wonderful gun powdery smell of those caps.  I was Dale Evans, Annie Oakley, and occasionally Pocahontas on a rotating basis.

Summer stretched out into long glorious days of firing cap guns, swimming, and roaming the neighborhood.  In the early ’50’s the United States was in a state of post-war euphoria.  The economy was growing; the troops were home.  Parents had not yet become the helicopter parents of today.  We grew up with no organized sports, no lessons on everything from piano to skating to martial arts, and no checking in on a regular basis. We entertained ourselves all day long, settled our disputes with fists, rocks, or sometimes tears.

In the summer we headed off to the local swimming pool daily.  We had little metal tags that our Mothers sewed on to our swim suits.  These were our daily admission to the pool.  I can’t remember not knowing how to swim. Luckily for me, both of my parents were good swimmers, and I learned at a very young age.  During those long days at the pool with no parental supervision, I swam to my heart’s content and often put on my Esther Williams persona.  Besides saving all of University Park from a wide range of outlaws and ne’er-do-well’s, I was also the queen of synchronized swimming!  So many accomplishments at my young age.

On Saturdays  I often walked by myself or with friends to the local movie theater for the Saturday afternoon matinée, two shiny quarters clicking together in my pockets.  I loved all the movies but a good western was definitely the best of all.  There were so many heroes to delight me–Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, and, of course, my all-time favorite, Roy Rogers!  There was always a cartoon, a newsreel, a serial, and the feature movie of the day.  Those two little quarters got me into the movie, plus a Coke, a box of Milk Duds, and possibly a box of Junior Mints or popcorn.

I even had a tooled leather belt with my name embossed into the leather that I wore to the movies on Saturdays.  If I were to be struck speechless upon encountering one of my heroes, I could at least point to my name on the belt so they would know who I was.  After my Mother’s death, I actually  found that old belt among her things.  It gave me a feeling of fond remembrance, like meeting an old friend after many years, but  it must have shrunk over the years. It didn’t quite fit these days!

The scared little Yankee was quickly becoming a Texan.

©2015, Black Dirt and Sunflowers

The Great American Novel

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Word of the day:  Memoir (mem’-war) “a record of events based on the writers’ personal observation”

I’ve always been an avid reader.  From the second or third grade on, I always had a book in my hand.  Like most young girls, I went through the great phase of horse stories and dog stories. There were (and still are) so many great stories out there from the wonderful award-winning Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry, to the wonderful Black Stallion and Island Stallion series by Walter Farley, and to one of my all-time favorites, Big Red by Jim Kjelgaard. That was the book that triggered my lifelong love for the magnificent Irish Setter breed.

In one of my childhood homes in University Park in Dallas, my bedroom had two window-box storage seats with lids that opened up. These little cubbyholes became my secret hideaway. I would snuggle down on a blanket in my little window box and read to my heart’s content with a flashlight to shine on the pages of one entrancing story after another. At night when my Mother had given the “lights out” admonition, I often sneaked into my little secret spot for a few more hours of furtive reading.

Alas, these days I would never fit into such a tiny space, and I would now be way too claustrophobic to even consider it all. What if I couldn’t get out? What if someone put something heavy on the seat? I have the same feeling today when I see TV stories about survivalists who build underground bunkers. What if I couldn’t get out? What if the entrance got blocked? I guess I will just have to take my chances on the surface.

Back to reading, by the seventh grade my best friend, June, and I had pretty well read the entire suggested college bound reading list. We waded through everything from Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre to A Tale of Two Cities and The Red Badge of Courage. That was back in the days when we were actually taught good literature in school.  I do have to admit though that I still cannot stand Silas Marner. I didn’t like it when I was forced to read it in the tenth grade, and quite frankly, I didn’t like it any better when I was obligated to teach it to my own long-suffering tenth grade students. When I was teaching high school, oh so many years ago, I did get in a bit of hot water with the Fort Worth Public School System for teaching Catcher in the Rye. That was way too radical a book for the early sixties, and it had questionable language! It is pretty mild by today’s standards. How times do change.

June and I were each going to write the great American novel! I had romantic visions of being another Thomas Wolfe, scribbling out the five hundred plus pages of Look Homeward Angel in longhand. A few thwarted efforts at writing fiction over the years convinced me that fiction just might not be my forte. My favorite reads today are long, complex historical novels. I especially like the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Her books bring home the literary concept of suspension of disbelief.  In other words, the story only works if you can accept the underlying premise for the moment.  In the case of Gabaldon’s books, you accept the idea of time travel.

I do so admire a writer who can weave a long, continuous story. For me, however, the intricacies of character development and of a complete plot just seemed too complex, so I turned instead to journaling and to more of a memoir type writing.  You’ll be seeing more of this style of writing in blogs to come.

 

Welcome to the Eclectic Grandma!

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Word of the day:  Eclectic (i-klek’-tik) “made up of elements from various sources, as in an eclectic philosophy.”

So why am I doing a blog? Often I don’t sleep well at night because the words are all lined up in my head screaming to get out. As I lie there awake, I mentally keep composing little vignettes. Maybe getting all of this internal noise down on paper (of course, no one really does anything on paper these days) will help me get a good night’s sleep for a change. My muse is way too nocturnal! Hopefully, this blog will calm her down a bit.

I enjoy writing, and often people tell me that they enjoy reading my little narratives.  I even like the pseudo-modest annual Christmas letter, the adult version of “What I did on my summer vacation.”  Writing is somewhat like the sculptor working in clay.  Add a little here and there; shave off some extraneous materials there until just the right proportions are achieved.  I have heard that the sculptor in stone or marble often feels that the statue is already in the stone, and he just needs to chip away the excess to reveal it.  I guess writing is something like that.

I have several books tucked inside me just waiting for their release!  What you will see in my blogs will be excerpts from these little infants as I strive to bring them to life.  You may see some content from Black Dirt and Sunflowers about growing up in Texas in the 1950’s, The Irish Girls which focuses on my wonderful Irish Setters through the years, or Woman in a Man’s World, an account of my encounters with the glass ceilings in life.  From time to time, when I’m in more of a woo-woo sort of mood, you might see something from Home Again, A Spiritual Journey.

Remember, I said this was an eclectic blog!  In other words, whatever I feel like writing about might turn up from time to time.  Hopefully, you will have as much fun reading it as I am having writing it.  Do let me know what you think.  I have a pretty tough skin–I think.