All the good things that I am, came from my parents. The not-so-good? Well, I’veĀ managed those things on my own. This morning I was thinking about things my mother taught me. I had never really tried to itemize them, they were just there. To list them would be like trying to draw a diagram […]

Goose Summer
·From The Heritage of Etta Bend by Susie Latty Day. Time: around 1918, Place: the Latty Farm. In the fall come rare, sparkling days that are warm and bright, with very little wind, when nature seems to savor the last remnants of summer. Spider webs break loose from their moorings and float through the air, […]

In the Walnut Woods
·From The Heritage of Etta Bend by Susie Latty Day. Time: around 1918; Place: A small farm in Oklahoma. Autumn, on our farm at Etta, had its special joys. East of the spring branch, maples blazed in gold and russet. Oaks wore yellow and brown. Walnut trees dropped their leaves, then shed their green-coated nuts […]

Changing Times
·I have an 1888 Noah Webster blue-backed spelling book. It’s fascinating to look through at the illustrations, words, and stories. Times have changed greatly and so have teaching methods, even the words we use. The book has some fables and other short stories. This is one of them: Of the Boy That Stole Apples An […]

Hats Off to Galveston
Yesterday was the anniversary of the 1900 hurricane that wiped out a good portion of the island of Galveston, Texas. I couldn’t let that date go by without mentioning it. If you haven’t read much about it in history, let me tell you that it is an amazing, true story of devastation and horror and […]