Childhood memories Living in Greeley, Colorado, as a child, water conservation made perfect sense. My mother used a wringer washing machine with two tubs of rinse water. After hanging the wet clothes on the lines, she emptied the tubs by carrying buckets of the water to the strawberry bed, the potato patch and the pea […]
“How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him–he has known a fear beyond every other.” John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath Sunshine in a Jar Stock photo Having been raised in farming country by a frugal mother, […]
In most cultures, the older women pass on the skills they have acquired over a lifetime to the next generation like a needle pulling thread in a running stitch. Just as my life as a mother and wife started and my mother’s wealth of knowledge of all things domestic was needed, she passed over Jordan […]
quilt“God uses beautiful mathematics in creating the world.” – Paul Dirac, theoretical physicist Quilt made by Polly, a Hidatsa-Arikara artisan Ask a quilter if they are good in math and most will answer, “Not really.” But glancing at any comforter, one realizes that quilt makers need to apply a working knowledge of linear […]
The conditions of the Dust Bowl pressed the farmers and ranchers into despair. Too many days with the sun blocked out by the Black Blizzards. Fine grains of sand covering everything, including the linings of the lungs. A losing battle with locust, grasshoppers and drought that devoured any hope of a crop. Watching children lose […]
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stoop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” -Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Life in the dust bowl on isolated homesteads presented challenges to the lonely farmers and […]
With the perspective of youth, Dennis McCann observed, “Those must have been depressing times, those long ago days of bread and milk, of feedbag clothes, and canned tumbleweed dinners. Of little or nothing.” Jane Tamse countered in her feeble, quivering voice, “Those were frugal days, but they left us with a happy childhood.” Making of […]
With the perspective of youth, Dennis McCann observed, “Those must have been depressing times, those long ago days of bread and milk, of feedbag clothes, and canned tumbleweed dinners. Of little or nothing.” Jane Tamse countered in her feeble, quivering voice, “Those were frugal days, but they left us with a happy childhood.” Making of […]
“The people in flight from the terror behind had strange things happen to them: some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that their faith is refired forever.” – John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath Leo Hart refired faith. Maybe Leo Hart, Superintendent of Kern County Schools in the 1930’s, developed his own faith growing up in rural […]
“When life gives you scraps, Make quilts” -anonymous My mother’s diary is filled with entries describing the latest finished quilt square that she hand-stitched in cabin camps, tents and a tiny wooden trailer while moving from job to job with my father during the 1930’s Dust Bowl. As a young child, I lived with my […]