It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
The weather is so cold in our area that we are doing our best to conserve heating oil by dressing in layers, wrapping ourselves in blankets, and using microwavable rice packs to warm our feet and laps. This might sound dystopian to some, but I have actually been having fun with it and enjoying my little blanket nests and my warm rice packs. Check back after our planned arctic cold snap this week and see if I still see this all as an adventure. Of course, my attitude will also plan on whether or not I need to go out in the cold on any of the days that the weather is supposed to be so cold.
I talked a little about what else has been going on in our world in my Saturday Afternoon Chat yesterday.
I’ve been switching between The Tuesday Night Club (Miss Marple) by Agatha Christie and Every Living Thing by James Herriot.
I read Miss Marple during the day, usually, and James Herriot right before bed.
I am enjoying them both, but Herriot’s a bit better. Both are a collection of short stories with some connections, such as characters. I am not a huge fan of Christie’s writing style at times and this format, which involves people sitting around and telling each other stories, is a bit dry to me. The stories are good but it does get repetitive for every story to feature someone telling a story they supposedly don’t have an ending to, Miss Marple to solve the case, and then the person telling the story to go, “Actually, I do know what really happened. Let me tell you.”
It’s all a bit tedious but there are some humorous moments and quotes from Miss Marple so I am pushing through.
I also just started Nancy Drew: The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene.
I am itching for a good novel after these two, which I will finish this week, so I am planning to start A Fatal Footnote by Margaret Loudon, which is a cozy mystery.
I am listening to Frankenstein while doing my dishes.
Little Miss and I are also reading Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare.
She is reading (here and there) Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban.
The Husband is reading Starter Villain by John Scalzi.
This past week The Husband and I watched the first part of Going Postal on Peacock. I watched a lot of Victorian Farm and more All Creatures Great And Small (even going back to the beginning for fun).
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
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Christy by Catherine Marshall is a very dense book. It is full of life lessons weaved between poetic prose and hard realities of life in the Smoky Mountains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the story of fictional 19-year-old Christy Huddleston, the book is fiction but based, very loosely, on the real-life experience of Marshall’s mother, Leonora Whitaker Wood.
The CBS series, Christy, starring Kellie Martin, and a couple of made-for-TV movies were based on the book. I watched the show in the 1990s but had never read the book. I didn’t even know the TV-movies existed until I was doing research for this post.
In both the show and the book, Christy travels to a small mission in the mountains of Tennessee from her home in Ashville, North Carolina to teach in a school full of mountain children who have very little material items but a lot of heart and heartache.
The small area where these children and their families are from is called Cutter Gap. The fictional area isn’t really a town since it is only a collection of cabins scattered across the mountains and through the woods, but there is a fiction town called El Pano, located near it. The families in Cutter Gap are poor, uneducated, and fighting for their lives against disease and judgment.
Christy arrives at the mission after listening to the mission founder speak about it and begins her work with Miss Alice Henderson, a Quaker woman, and Pastor David Grantland, a minister who has been assigned to the school.
Once she arrives she meets other colorful members of the community — Dr. Neil McNeil, resident Ruby Mae, and resident Fairlight Spencer (who becomes her best friend), as well as other colorful (shall we say) characters. She also begins to learn more about the history of the area, the hardships they have faced since the 1700s, and the way some of the men feel they have to take a criminal route in life to scrape out a living.
There is a lot of beauty mixed in with some very ugly tales within the 500 pages of Christy. I marked up a lot of the book to remember parts of it later. Even though I found parts of the faith message of the book contradictory and a little confusing at times, there were many parts that were extremely thought-provoking and moving to me.
Most of what I underlined in the book were quotes by Miss Alice, who was my favorite character in the book besides Fairlight Spencer. In the beginning of the book, I found it hard to connect Christy who was very hard-headed and brash at times. She came to the mission with head knowledge of God but not heart knowledge of him.
I couldn’t stand David Grantland through most of the book and wasn’t sure what to make of Neil McNeil.
I wanted to shake Christy a couple of times throughout the book and tell her not to rush into dangerous situations. Toward the end of the book, though, when she truly struggled with the faith that she had only really found since working at the mission, I related to her immensely. So much of what happened to the people she’d come to love in Cutter Gap seemed so cruel to me. Even though the book was fiction, I found myself questioning the goodness of God, thinking about some similar cruel situations of those I’ve known over the years. It’s something I had to sit and wrestle with mental and spiritually in the moments, hours, and days after finishing the book. In many ways I am still struggling with these questions about God and the goodness I sometimes don’t see.
Some of the sections I underlined in the book included:
“Evil is real – and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where WE stand, how we’re going to live OUR lives. We can try to persuade ourselves that evil doesn’t exist; live for ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn’t so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it and say it’s none of our business. Or we can work on God’s side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.”
“What do you do when strength is called for and you have no strength? You evoke a power beyond your own and use stamina you did not know you had. You open your eyes in the morning grateful that you can see the sunlight of yet another day. You draw yourself to the edge of the bed and then put one foot in front of the other and keep going. You weep with those who gently close the eyes of the dead, and somehow, from the salt of your tears, comes endurance for them and for you. You pour out that resurgence to minister to the living.”
“I’d long since learned that no difference in viewpoint should ever be allowed to cause the least break in love. Indeed, it cannot, if it’s real love. …But relationships can be kept intact without compromising one’s own beliefs. And if we do not keep them intact, but give up and allow the chasm, we’re breaking the second greatest commandment.”
“The secret of her calm seemed to be that she was not trying to prove anything. She was—that was all. And her stance toward life seemed to say: God is—and that is enough.”
This was one of the few books I’ve read that I became completely immersed in when I read it. Everything around me disappeared – the language and descriptions were so vivid. I could see the mountains, picture the cabins and the people, and sometimes even smell, sadly, the smells.
It took me a little over a month to read through the book because it was so dense. I felt like I really got to know the characters that way and this was both a good and a bad thing.
It was a bad thing because, toward the end, some of the events hit me so hard and left me on my couch on a cold Sunday afternoon with a warm fire in our woodstove burning and me crying until my sides hurt.
I like to be immersed in books but at that moment I thought that maybe I wouldn’t like to be so immersed if it was going to be this painful to continue to read on.
I won’t give away too much but there was a death in the book that I could not make sense of in the least. Much of the book seemed to want the reader to see that there was hope still available, even in the midst of darkness, anger, and sadness, but when we had almost reached the end it was like that message was yanked out from under us with such a ferociousness that it made my head spin.
When I was reading the book, I was thinking, “Wow. There are so many deep messages about our relationship with God in this book” but then I was like, “But there were some really theological muddy waters in this book and I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
There was a lot of talk about superstitions and instead of dispelling them by saying God is in control, there were times the characters tried to explain it away by science or simply telling the mountain people that their beliefs were faulty. There is little to no mention of Jesus in this book. Yet this book is marketed as a great Christian book. That confuses me a little. Still, the story, overall, was very compelling, interesting, and realistic (maybe a bit too realistic).
I saw a review of this after I read it that tagged the book as being “heartfelt” and “family-friendly.”
The book was NOT family-friendly. There are discussions of rape, abuse, murder, molestation, and many other disturbing and triggering topics. There are not, however, extremely graphic descriptions of these subjects.
There are times this book seems to push that there is truth in superstition, even though, I’m sure that’s not what the author, a well-known Christian author, meant to do.
In the end, Christy was a painfully beautiful book that wrung me out emotionally. It challenged my thinking, built me up, tore me down again, and left me with a glimmer of hope that Christy and the people of Cutter Gap found some joy and happiness beyond the time frame addressed within the book’s pages.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that the ending of this book is very open-ended and, to me, somewhat abrupt. It does not answer all of the reader’s questions. Or it didn’t answer some of my questions at least. It left me with a bit of mystery and with a strong desire for a sequel.
According to more than one article online, notes for a sequel to the book were discovered in Catherine Marshall’s things after her death by her family. Those notes have never been revealed, however. Part of me would love to know what happened to Christy after the events at the end of the book (which were wrapped up a bit too quickly for me), but part of me agrees with the blogger of Taking Up Room who wrote, “Christy ending on a question mark has never failed to get my brain thinking, even after dozens of times of reading the book. In a way, it means the story never really ends. Adding more might just spoil whatever ending fans have come to in their own minds, and that’s no fun. I say keep the mystery.”
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It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
The other day I became overwhelmed with worry that I have failed my son, the high school senior. Like maybe I didn’t teach him enough or well enough during our six years of homeschooling. The last two years have been tough. He’s had senioritis both of those years. He’s so ready to be done with high school. Getting him to do his schoolwork has been torture.
I went to him a couple of nights ago while he was preparing his dinner plate and felt very overcome with emotions. I apologized to him and told him I hoped I had taught him what he needed for the future. I told him that I did my best but sometimes it was hard when he didn’t seem interested in learning so I would try to back off and let him explore the subjects he was really interested in. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do, I told him. Maybe I should have been more strict or —
I looked at him and my kid has this dumb grin on his face.
I’m practically crying and he’s grinning at me? What’s this about?
He’s not really looking at me either. So —
He laughs this really stupid laugh , looks up at me, and his smile fades. “What?” he asks. “What’s going on? Why do you look like you’re going to cry?”
That’s when I remember that my son’s long hair covers his ears and in his ears are probably . . . Yes. Earbuds.
He’s been listening to a podcast the entire time and didn’t hear even one part of my lamenting speech.
“Were you saying something serious?” he asks. “What happened?”
I fill him in briefly and he laughs another stupid laugh and sas, “I was totally not listening at all.”
Apparently he isn’t really concerned that I might have screwed up as a parent so I suppose I shouldn’t be either.
I told him not to worry about it and walked back into the living room shaking my head. Sheehs. Kids. *wink*
Did I write last week that I decided not to finish The Definitive Oral Biography of Anthony Bourdain? I could go back and look, I suppose, or I could just run the risk of repeating it. I’ll run the risk.
So, yes, I DNF’d that book on Anthony Bourdain. I was terribly bored and a few chapters in I realized that reading broken up tidbits of people’s memories of Anthony wasn’t very interesting. There really wasn’t a story to the book. It was more like random memories and thoughts and interviews just tossed together in written form. If it had been filmed and I had been watching it, I might have been a little more interested, but this simply did not hold my attention.
I did enjoy reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony himself — even though I didn’t enjoy aspects of it (how many times did he need to share the crude nicknames he had for his co-workers or how many times he shot up or snorted something before going to work on the line at well-known restaurants?). I did not enjoy reading how others met him or what interactions they had with him as much.
Anyhow, moving on to my current reads. I am reading The Tuesday Night Club, a series of short stories with Miss Marple, by Agatha Christie.
I also decided I needed something sweet and light one night this past week and got caught up in Every Living Thing by James Herriot, so I am also reading that. I absolutely love the sweet and interesting stories in his books but this one, where he is now older with children, is especially endearing.
I am listening to Frankenstein but I keep getting distracted so I may switch to actually reading it. I do enjoy Dan Stevens narration.
Little Miss is getting close to the end of Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban.
The Boy is listening to Frankenstein. Okay, he isn’t, but he will be soon because even though I am “making” him do it for school he does actually want to read it.
This week I watched The Exile with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., The Victorian Farm, All Creatures Great and Small, and a couple episodes of The Dick VanDyke Show.
Up next in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. movie marathon was supposed to be Chase a Crooked Shadow but I can’t find it streaming anywhere. I did find it on DVD and do plan to order it because it looks good from the trailer I found. Anyhow, I am switching to Angels Over Broadway, which I found on YouTube, for this week.
I really swear I checked some of these before I put them on the list and I swear that they were streaming but now they are not. I will update any of the movies I can’t find streaming in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. post this week.
So far it looks like the rest are on Amazon, Hulu, or other streaming services.
I am listening to Frankenstein, narrated by Dan Stevens, but I have a hard time focusing on it so we will see how that goes. I may have to switch back to the book again.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about them.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
I hope that you will look through the links and click on some and find a new blogger or two to follow. First, I’ll introduce you to our hosts:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello! This week we are spotlighting Mummabstylish!!
A little about the Mummabstylish blog:
I’m Jacqui a 59 year old fashion and lifestyle blogger. I’ve been married to my soul mate David who I met over 40 years ago at college! I’m a mum of five children, three girls and two boys have 7 grand-kids who keep me very busy.
I started Mummabstylish back in 2016. I reached a time in my life where I felt I’d lost my way in life. The kids didn’t ‘need’ me anymore and although I help my husband at work don’t have a role anymore.
It’s important to me that I keep myself available for David and the family, but I still needed to find my place in the world!
So I started blogging. I looked into what fashions & styles I should be wearing at my age, but soon realised it’s quite the opposite, there are no set rules as to what you should wear at any stage of your life and basically learnt you should wear what you feel good in and like.
Thank you for linking up to Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, Jacqui!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up! Please remember that this is a link-up where you can share posts from the previous week or posts from weeks, months, or years ago. All we ask is that they be “family-friendly”.
The Body in the Library (A Miss Marple Mystery) by Agatha Christie
Description:
It’s seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing an evening dress and heavy makeup, which is now smeared across her cheeks. But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry?
The respectable Bantrys invite Miss Marple into their home to investigate. Amid rumors of scandal, she baits a clever trap to catch a ruthless killer.
My impressions:
The Body In the Library is a very interesting and complex mystery that kept me turning the pages.
Part of the Miss Marple series by Agatha Christie, the book tells the story of a high society family who wakes up to find the dead body of a young woman they don’t know in their library.
The wife, Mrs. Dolly Bantry, is quite thrilled with the discovery and contacts her friend Jane Marple to help investigate, even though Col. Melchett and Inspector Slack, as well as Superintendent Harper are on the case.
“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one’s house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean,” Dolly tells Miss Marple.
Despite Mrs. Bantry’s fascination with it all, this is a serious crime and how serious it is becomes more apparent as the days go on. How it is going to affect her husband is becoming more clear as well. The town gossip starts up immediately. A dead body in the library of Col. Arthur Bantry? Well, well. Maybe the old man was a bit of a pervert having an affair and things went wrong, eh?
Miss Marple doesn’t think so, but she keeps her ideas mostly to herself. In the mean time Melchett, Slack, and Harper are busy questioning potential suspects and their points of view carry us through most of the story. Harper, does, however, suggest that Miss Marple be consulted.
He tells Melchett at one point, “Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all as in the day’s work….where crime is concerned, she’s the goods.”
The inspector laughs this off but as the book goes on we realize that Miss Marple enjoys being underestimated and has been formulating her idea of who is guilty all along. She even steps in for a little sly sleuthing herself, pretending to simply be a concerned neighbor. She has experience in these things because of all the “goings on” in the little village she lives in, she says, and likes to use references to those situations to draw conclusions about the current mystery.
I enjoyed the twists and turns of this one, things I didn’t see coming. I had the mystery possibly solved before the end, but that didn’t take away from the enjoyment of hearing Miss Marple explain how she’d decided who the guilty party was.
Like in Murder in the Vicarage, my first Miss Marple read last year, I wanted there to be more Miss Marple in this book because she is so fun. At the same time I like how she is always a more subtle character who the investigating officers always have to consult, whether they want to or not.
I decided to release the third book in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series on Tuesday. Well…..I actually wanted it to release today (Wednesday), but Amazon decided to actually publish the book early after telling me it could take 72 hours to go live.
I had said I would release it on February 19, but…it was ready to go so I hit publish.
New here and not sure what I am talking about?
I have published fiction books over the years and my most recent series is a cozy mystery series featuring my main character Gladwynn Grant.
I am sharing chapters of the first book, Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing, on Friday for my Fiction Friday posts. You can also buy the books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
They’ll be live on there later this week…even though I have no idea if anyone buys ebooks on there anymore.
If you want to know a little more about Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree, here is a quick description:
Working as a small-town newspaper reporter and trying to keep up with her grandmother, Lucinda, has kept Gladwynn Grant busy, but, otherwise, life has been quiet.
Everything changes, though, when her older, aloof sister, Sheena, shows up unannounced at the front door.
As if that isn’t enough to deal with, she finds one of her interview subjects dead.
Once again, she’ll have to deal with State Police Detective Tanner Kinney and his stiff-upper-lip-attitude while doing her best to avoid Pastor Luke Callahan who she accused of murder the year before.
When it looks like Sheena is somehow mixed up with a suspect in the murder, Gladwynn’s stress levels rise to an all time high.
Will Gladwynn be able to help solve the murder and find out why her sister has shown up after not visiting for the last six years? And who wrote a stack of love letters stashed in a storage area under her grandmother’s stairs?
Join Gladwynn, Lucinda, Tanner, and Luke Callahan for another modern mystery with a vintage feel.
If you’ve been following along on my blog you know that I have been watching Douglas Fairbanks Jr. movies this winter.
I was supposed to watch Having Wonderful Time this week, but it turns out I didn’t do a very good job making sure these movies were streaming somewhere and can’t find this one before Thursday.
So….I’m substituting a movie called The Exile from 1947, which I found on YouTube:
Today is a day of relaxing and taking part in the Crafternoon zoom event with some other ladies and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. We are going to do crafts and chat on Zoom. It should be fun.
I am still reading the same books but have added Frankenstein which I will start this week to read with The Boy for school. I had planned to start reading it last week but got caught up in Christy and Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever. I won’t lie — I am probably going to listen to Frankenstein on Audible with Dan Stevens narrating it. I’ve already listened to about five minutes and after seeing him in The Man Who Invented Christmas, I know he can pull off the voices and intonation needed for the story.
In February I hope to read more of Little Men by Louisa Mae Alcott, The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, and The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene.
The Husband is reading a book by Nelson Demille that I forgot the name of.
Little Miss is reading Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban.
Last week I watched Gunga Din. Yeah…so that was interesting … and I blogged about it. I also watched a lot of Edwardian Farm and an episode of All Creatures Great and Small (the newer ones).
I am getting ready to release Gladwynn Grant Shakes The Family Tree, the third book in my cozy mystery series February 19 (or maybe sooner). If you want to know more about it or pre-order an ebook copy, you can click HERE.
This Friday I will also start sharing a serial version of the first book in the series Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing. Blog readers can follow along each week or choose to purchase the book instead on Amazon.
This past week our area was plunged into an arctic cold that had me wishing I could wrap myself in a cacoon of blankets and only crawl out to use the potty and get snacks.
I spent much of the beginning of the week acting like anyone who stepped outside our door into the arctic cold would immediately turn into ice and shatter.
“Don’t go out there!” I’d cry. “It’s so cold and you could get hypothermia! Frost bite!”
“Mom,” The Boy would say. “I’m just going to get some wood from the woodpile. Chill.”
Our animals stared forlornly out the windows at the snow that fell right before the temps dropped into single digits. Sometimes the cats would stare sadly at the back door and I would let them out. Sometimes less than ten minutes later they were looking in the window in our kitchen from the outside, their little faces panicked, as if I didn’t just tell them it was deathly cold outside.
Our cats have been curling up in front of the woodstove on most days and nights. They are much more cuddly than in warmer weather, as I have mentioned before. The youngest, Scout has even started curling up with me in the mornings before I am out of bed and it is during one of these cuddle sessions this morning that I was reminded how evil cats are. I am convinced they are sorcerers or sorceresses.
What Scout does is climb on my chest already purring. Then she bumps her nose against my nose and licks my chin. Her eyelids are all heavy and she sniffs the pillow next to me, bumping her head against my cheeks and chin and then finally curling up against my arm, next to my neck and shoulder. She snuggles as close to my face as she cans and begins to purr more in earnest, all while watching me with half-open eyes, drawing me into her spell.
Sometimes she stretches her legs and paws out across my chest and purrs more, urging me into a deep sleep after I have already said I need to get out of bed and get the fire started.
“No,” she seems to say. “You will lay here. You will fall into a deep, all-consuming slumber. You will be delayed in starting your day. Why? Because I, your cat overlord, demand it. You are losing willpower. You are growing warm, cozy, and, most importantly, sleep. There you go. That’s right. Don’t fight it. Ignore the dog. She can pee later. What you need is me, your warm cat overload, your warm blanket, and the dreams of walking in a peaceful forest that I am now planting in your head. That’s right…you’re getting sleepy….”
Sometimes I wake up and she’s snoozing next to me – like she got some of her magic sleep dust on herself. Other times I wake up and she’s gone, and I wonder if she cast her spell so she can get up to some mischief elsewhere in the house.
This morning I fought her hard and finally managed to crawl out of bed and find some sunlight coming into our living room, which is welcome, but misleading since it is still only 25F (-3C), which is much better than 8F (-13).
It was so cold last week that not even our furnace, woodstove, and electric heat upstairs could seem to drive the cold out of our rooms.
I spent most of the week locked inside, watching Edwardian Farm, All Creatures Great and Small, and old movies.
I also read quite a bit.
On Thursday I was finally able to break free (“ I want to break free…I want to break free….” Sorry. I always end up humming songs with lyrics that matched what I just said. I know. I’m weird.) and go visit my parents while The Husband stayed at home and suffered through the cold the kids had had earlier in the week. I hadn’t seen my Mom since January 8 and had only briefly seen my dad during that time. Either it was too cold or I had sick children and was worried I’d be next and pass whatever virus we had on to them.
Somehow, I either managed to avoid the illness or had such minor symptoms that it did not hit me as hard.
At my parents I looked through a bunch of old photo albums and found some interesting photographs. One of those photographs I will share in a future blog post to tie up my posts about letters written between my great-great grandfather and his brothers during the Civil War.
Other photographs are photos I have seen many times over the years. They are from a photo album that my grandmother said belonged to Ivy, her aunt. I don’t know if Ivy took all of the photographs, but Grandma said she believed that she took some and collected the others. There are photographs of her sisters and my grandmother and her sister when they were babies. My grandmother was born in 1909 and Ivy died in 1915 so Grandma didn’t really remember her, but she remembered stories about her. Ivy passed away at the age of 29 from a kidney condition.
Based on the photographs of her and others in the book, she seemed like a very adventurous and fun person.
My favorite photo of her is this one:
This is her and her sister Carmen.
Second is this one:
I also like this one and wonder what she’s doing in this photo.
And I love this posed shot with these four women, though there was nothing written in the album to tell me who they are. I think one is Ivy and maybe Carmen again.
I just love their poses and the artistic elements of this shot.
The album, by the way, is made with photographs glued to black pages with no plastic to protect them.
I used to sit in the floor of my grandma’s living room, haul that album and other old loose photos out of a box and just pour over them. They fascinated me — the outfits, expressions, locations I could recognize from the tiny village I grew up in – a portal to life long ago.
There used to be a train station in the little village (which is only a few houses and an old church and cemetery) I grew up in. There is a path by the creek that is overgrown but yet still features a cleared path where the train tracks used to be and that never seems to grow over no matter how many years have passed. Parts of the stone used to build the railroad bridge is still located there, but most of the railroad tracks themselves are gone.
There is one photo in this book of a group of women and a few men sitting along the tracks and the platform. As I was preparing this post I noticed I had not taken a photo of that photo so I can’t share it here. That’s probably because it was a pretty dark photo – so dark I could barely make out the three men sitting behind the women in all white.
In the photo, though, I can recognize the exact spot it was taken even though it was 116 years ago. Behind the group, to the left would be the field where cows now roam and beyond that field is the house that I grew up in — a house built maybe 150 years ago.
The house is still standing but in not great shape and no longer owned by us.
The photographs that really interest me in this book are the unique ones. The ones where no one is looking at the camera or if they are they are doing so it is in a playful way.
There is one photo where we can see a man through the bushes and I imagine he is on his way to the shore of the pond that used to be there behind the cemetery.
I have created this story in my mind that Ivy took that photograph of him secretly because she had a crush on him, or maybe they were an item. Further on in the book there is a photo of her with this same man. They are sitting in the buggy of a horse and carriage.
Maybe they weren’t “an item.” Maybe they are related somehow, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the name in the genealogy.
It’s always made me wonder if they ever had a relationship, but it ended because of her health issues. She never married before she passed away.
I’d better stop rambling about family history or this blog post could go on for a long time.
This is a subject I find myself blathering about to people who probably consider faking a heart attack just to get away from me.
We are expecting cold weather again this upcoming week but we have nowhere to go, other than maybe visiting my parents once or twice.
What have all of you been doing? How is the weather where you are? Do you have anything exciting going on during the upcoming week?
