Faith, Folklore, and Friends

The winter deepens, the new year is still brand new, and once again, I am beset with the mood to cut fabric into little pieces and sew them together again. Our Christmas break from school was always highly anticipated, and we loved every minute of it until Christmas was over.  Then, the days became boring, the weather keeping us inside with nothing to do.  The only electronic entertainment we had was a radio with a dial and a daily market report lamenting the fluctuating prices of corn and pork bellies. My Grandma Gean lived within walking distance of our house, so just about every day, I walked to her house to 'quilt piece'.   Grandma was the neighborhood seamstress, and her patrons usually gave her the leftover fabric scraps from their projects.  She had to use the larger scraps for her own quilts, of course, but she saved the smaller ones for me and my lil' ole sister. Grandma would cut squares or other shapes from the omnipresent Sear...

When you are tired, weary, angry, stressed, depressed, or just generally having a bad day, there's nothing like a walk in the woods to revive your spirit.   Is it the fresh air, or the bare trees, or the leaf-covered path?  Could it just be the silence?   God of Zion, to you even silence is praise.  Psalm 65:1  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  Psalm 46:10 Slow down!!  Listen. . . .

Today's blog is for a dear friend who is recovering from oral surgery.  I can think of only one thing good about that--we still have our teeth!  Back in the day, most women lost their teeth during their birthing years, when the body needed more calcium than it could possibly get. Culpeper's Complete Herbal, published in 1814, offered this advice for keeping healthy teeth: 1.  If you will keep your teeth from rotting, or aching, wash your mouth continually every morning with juice of Lemons, and afterwards rub your teeth either with a Sage-leaf, or else with a little Nutmeg in powder; also wash your mouth with a little fair water after meats; for the only way to keep teeth sound, and free from pain, is to keep them clean. 2. To keep teeth white, dip a little piece of white cloth in Vinegar of Quinces, and rub your gums with it, for it is of a gallant binding quality, and not only makes the teeth white, but also strengthens the gums, fastens the teeth, and also ca...

For the past few years, some of us have named the new year coming. 2011 has been the year of laughter. There are many studies that conclude that laughing is good for you physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I have proven them right! Actually, finding things to laugh about is quite easy around here. And if all else fails, there is always Everybody Loves Raymond reruns. I plan to continue this practice of laughing every day just because I like it. Naming 2012 has been a little difficult because there are so many options. Some of my friends have chosen 'joy', 'yes', 'learning', 'travel', to name a few. For me, it will be the year of 'changes'. One major change is coming in February, when Hub will retire after working 42 years at the same place. He is so ready and looking forward to it! There are other potential changes that I can't talk about yet, but just the possibility has created some excitement for us. The verb change means...

On January 30, my Christmas 'tree' is lovely, still bearing its ornaments and lights, still radiating with fiber optics. It hasn't shed one needle. It probably never will, because the people who made it used fine machines and glue and paint to construct it, giving it the general shape of a tree. The closest it ever came to a tree was when it was in a box in the back of the truck, coming home from Sam's, when we were driving through Forest Hills. It does not make my house smell like Christmas. It used to be different. As soon as our school dismissed for Christmas break, my lil' ole sister and I went to the woods in search of a Christmas tree. We ambled in woods not our own because we wanted to find something we hadn't seen before. A few times, it is possible we wandered onto government land, but it has been over forty years and we don't fear prosecution at this point. Cedars were the best; they had much thicker foliage than the scraggly lobl...

It has been said that when somebody gets married, they are marrying a whole new family. I don't know how accurate that is, but in my case, I got a new brother and two new sisters. The brother was still a teenager, and the sisters, both skinny with long, dark hair, became my new best friends. We are still hanging out together, these forty-two years later. The oldest rambled some, living in the frozen north and the very Hotlanta for a while. The youngest stayed here, briefly living in Muscle Shoals (which is just across the river), but has never left Alabama. For years, we lived within a ten-mile radius, but somehow managed to never see each other. We talked on the phone regularly, but we might go months without actually being in the same room. December, 2008. The three of us managed to get together for lunch at Legends Steakhouse. On that cold Wednesday, we made a goal to meet for lunch every month the next year. It was a goal we set together, but none of us really believed it would...