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Washing Sheets

10 Sep

 

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Some night try crawling between sheets dried outside on the line. There’s nothing like catching a whiff of ozone as you drift off to dreamland.

But what if you’re a homemaker a couple of hundred years ago? How will you get fresh clean sheets then?

Here’s how: set aside the whole day to do the washing. Prepare the meals beforehand. Heat gallons of water in a big pot on the stove and get some strong body help to carry it outside and pour it into a galvanized tub. Pour in some cold water, too, but keep it as hot as your hands can stand. The only way to get a sheet clean is to rub it on a washboard with a bar of soap the ingredients of which are lard, ashes, and lye. By the way, if your teen-age son wants to learn to play a musical instrument, what could be better than a washboard as part of the percussion section with the Saturday night dance band? Then while you’re using it for its real purpose, you can think about dancing and music and at least take a mental break from the toil.

Pour bluing bought at the general store into the rinse tub to make your sheet whiter. Put it through the wringer. You’ve heard people say, “I feel like I’ve been through the wringer?” I know someone who actually has. My husband Bill caught his arm when he was just a kid. It’s a good thing it was already so skinny that it slid right out. That was as recent as 1942.

On the way to the clothesline, be careful not to drag the sheet in the dirt or you’ll have to wash it all over again.

I hope you have help when you hang it; even though much of the water has been extracted, it’s still heavy.

Did your granddad once carve dozens of wooden clothespins without springs that slip over the ends of the sheets? Did you inherit them? Cherish them, they occupied him many winter nights in front of the fire and he made them, not only from necessity, but from love as well.

Hang the sheet in the sun, if you can. It is the best bleach known to man. The neighbors will inspect as they go by to see if it is as white as white as white can be, they will judge your housekeeping by it.

If you live somewhere that has freezing cold winter days the sheet will stiffen into ice by the end of the day and you’ll have to wrestle it into the house. If you live in a desert place and you have a strong wind, it will dry quickly. Nighttime is for going to bed, flying to dreamland, but you may be so tired after your long, physical day’s work that you won’t remember your dreams when you awaken the next morning. Never, mind, you have the satisfaction of a job well done and you can look forward to doing it all again next week and knowing that you are an excellent housekeeper indeed.

Ecclesiastes 9:10

Wednesday we will have Bill’s take on laundry.. …Onisha

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Mozart, Wherefore Art Thou?

3 Sep

My Take

 DiVoran Lites

One day at the bookstore, I saw a book called, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life. The subtitle: 10 proven ways your favorite music can revolutionize your health, memory, organization, alertness and more. It sounded like the all-purpose snake medicine of previous centuries. I bought the book and it’s a great book and a satisfying concept because I LOVE MUSIC, I need it. I crave it. If I don’t get it, I go searching for it.

You see, I struggle with moodiness and I’ve had a campaign for years to combat it in any way I can. My first line of defense is to read the Bible. That always lifts me. I spend time listening to the Holy Spirit and I journal every morning literally getting things off my mind. I like to walk, read, paint, write, sing and be with family and friends. One big help in my battle against the blues is to stop berating myself or in popular parlance, stop beating myself up. Yes, I cook, do laundry, etc. Everything goes better with music.

By the time I use all my little tricks, I’m ready to enjoy life, except for problems, which I’m now prepared to ignore. However, with all my playing around, one tiny corner of my life was falling apart.

It about did me in when the classical station turned into talk radio. My CD players were always breaking down from overuse. Where had all the music gone? I had almost despaired when along came an iPod and Pandora streaming radio. I know, I’m probably already old-fashioned, but I’m stopping here for a while in my drive to keep up with technology.

I placed the music from some of my favorite CDs on the iPod and I use those when I can’t listen to Pandora. However, Pandora is it for painting and writing. When I first signed up, I was allowed 100 radio stations. One Hundred?!? I’ll never want that many, but of course now I do, in fact, if I want to try a new one I have to delete one I’ve already got, and it’s hard to choose.

My current favorite is Dan Gibson Radio. Mr. Dan and his friends have forests, seas, birds, and frogs in their recording studio along with many wonderful instruments that play calm and blissful music.

Sometimes, though, if I am running on empty, I click on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Radio. You’ve seen, “Mozart for Baby,” CDs. You’ve read how some classical music makes the left and right brain work together. It’s all true. If I need to be revived, and energized, Mozart does the job. I also like Alexander Desplat the composer of soundtracks for, “Julie and Julia,” and, “The King’s Speech” (good, clean movies by the way).

Sometimes I like jazz and sometimes I like Jay and Molly Unger Their music makes me feel as if I’m at a dos-si-do dance wearing a fluffy dress and swinging with my partner. I dance in the kitchen, so does our friend, Patricia Franklin. Do you?

The Claude Debussy station seems to fit almost any occasion. One of the things I like best, if I’m not trying to use my brain for writing or reading is, “Amazing Grace Station,” where I can sing along to the songs in my Baptist Hymnal. Music is back in my life and I love it. Oh, don’t forget, Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer, and all those kinds of guys. Bill and I like to listen to those together.

Colossians 3:16

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Book Modus Operendi

27 Aug

 

My Take

DiVoran Lites

 

My mom says I was carrying books around and asking someone to read to me when I learned to walk. They have always been a major passion for me. I’ve hauled home so many books from the library that I can’t even take a count of them. My grown daughter once said, “You were a good mother, when ever we wanted to talk to you, you put your book down, and listened.” My own mother might not quite agree, many a time there was when I burned the dinner I was supposed to be watching because I “had my nose in a book.”

I always thought it would be the berries to be able to buy brand-new hardcover books from the bookstore, and I’ve allowed myself new hardcover references, because, after all, we don’t read those and then leave them on the shelves unused. That is, we didn’t until we started to look up everything under the sun on the internet and then reference tomes took a back seat. Sometimes when I walk past a bookshelf, I hear them calling, “me, me, me.”

Now I buy used hardcover books at libraries and thrift stores and if I can get large print, I do. We have a Dollar Tree in town that sells beautiful brand-new hard cover books for one dollar, so in that way a dream has come true. As for contents, I try to choose carefully, I look at the title, the cover picture and the picture of the author, I peruse the insides of the cover and the back and start reading page one. If I feel compelled to turn the page, I buy the book. But even then only some turn out to be good reads. Sometimes I drag through one, barely enjoying it, and at other times I give up.

After I’m through with a novel, I give it away, either to someone I think will like it or as a donation to the library. I don’t know whether they incorporate it into the stacks or not, sometimes I see my cast-offs in a book sale.

My friend, Onisha, who does all the hard work to send the blogs for www.oldthingsrnew.com, does most of her reading on her laptop computer. She can even lie on her side and read it in bed. She finds many free and low cost books there. She’s convinced that print books are on their way out. I’m not ready to admit that yet. Anyhow, if they are on their way out I want to have a stash of them to fall back on.

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My Favorite Author and Other Important Matters

19 Aug

My Take

 DiVoran Lites

 

My all time favorite author is D.E. Stevenson and I believe she is still www.oldthingsrnew.com, blog mistress, Onisha’s all time favorite too. D. E. Stevenson’s father was first cousin to Robert Louis Stevenson. Many of her books have been long out of print, but Persephone is beginning to publish her again. This I find true: “Her books are avidly sought by discerning readers throughout the English-speaking world: readers who appreciate endearing characters, familiar yet intriguing situations, and darn good stories,” from the D. E. Stevenson official website. She was born in 1892 and died in 1977 at eighty-one years of age. She is buried in the Moffat cemetery on the Edinburgh road. I was in Scotland once and got to walk around the outside of the two-story, Victorian house she lived in. I think it should be a museum.

Her books are an exception to my routine of giving novels away. I made a grand effort to collect as many as I could find. I now have thirty-eight of forty-three. For a long time I was able to buy her books at garage sales and used bookstores, but eventually she became rare. I do read them all through every five years or so. It’s unusual for me to read a book more than once, so that shows you how much I enjoy them. She wrote about love, people, houses, and families.

If I read about books that sound good or if I particularly enjoy an author I try to order the books from the library system. I’m not sure all counties have the arrangement we have, but you can look at the online card catalog and find books and no matter where they actually live in the county you can order them and they’ll be sent to your local library for pick-up. I’m only ordering one or two at a time now and that gives me plenty of time in the three weeks allowed to finish them and get them back.

 

DiVoran is correct. D.E. Stevenson continues to be my all-time favorite author. I love the music of her words, the kindness and insight of her characters. If anyone knows an author of a similar caliber, please share with me.-Onisha

 

 

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Knowing

13 Aug

 

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Here’s something I understood God to be saying to me after pondering and reading I Corinthians 8:3

I planned every step of your life and your children’s lives. I knit all of you in your mother’s wombs, but even before that, I was drawing the schematic for every day of your life. Yes, I did allow troubles to happen, but many of them were the results of subconscious choices you made so that you could go your own way instead of mine. You do have free choice after all.

Here’s a scripture from The Message:

We never really know enough until we know that God knows it all.

Some words from Isaiah 55: 8-13 to back it up.

“I don’t think the way you think.

The way you work, isn’t the way I work.

For as the sky soars high above earth,

So the way I work and the way I think is beyond the way you think.”

Isaiah 55: 8-13

Now I’m thinking that I’d love to hear God’s exciting ideas and experience His surprises, so here’s what I’ll do. I’ll ask, I’ll listen, and I’ll move along with him. I can hardly wait to see what happens. Would you like to try it? It’s free.

 

 

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Old Age is Not For Sissies

6 Aug

 

My Take

 

 DiVoran Lites

 

 

Bette Davis, starring in movies from 1932 to 1989 said that. But, shh, let’s not talk about old age and maybe it will go away. How many of you do not want to grow old? You don’t. Really? Have you considered the alternative?

 

Because of insurance changes, I’ve recently been to a new doctor who is close to my son’s age. Taking a history, he asked if my parents were still living and when I said no, he asked how they died. I said Dad had an accident and Mother just faded away. After taking the history and reading me with his stethoscope, he said I appeared to be healthy. “Good for you,” he said.

 

“Boring for you,” I said.

 

“I’m not looking for sickness,” he said, “there’s plenty of that to go around.”

 

“You’ll probably die of a heart attack or a stroke,” It felt a like a curse and I’m afraid my face must have got, the look that can move mountains and make grown men cry. I didn’t mean to use it on the doc, but I figured I had when he backed off with, “Or you may just fade away as your mother did.”

 

Another doctor once wanted to project how I would die. She asked what I thought. What’s up with that? Do I have to choose right now? Okay, I’ll go with Ashley Montagu who said, “I will die young as late as possible.”

 

I like what Victor Hugo says about old age and dying too. “Why is my soul more luminous when my body powers begin to fail? Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilies, the violets and the roses as at twenty years. The nearer I approach the end the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds that invite me. It is marvelous yet simple.”

 

Victor Hugo was in exile in Jersey, and latter...

Victor Hugo was in exile in Jersey, and latterly Guernsey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Yes, simple. I don’t want to grow old, but I don’t want to die either, so I’ll keep on keeping on and I sure hope I won’t be a sissy about it. I want to be one who hears, “the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me.”

 

I Corinthians 4:16

 

 

 

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Gopher Tortoises and My Biologist Son

3 Aug

I enjoyed the tortoise story so much, I wanted to go ahead and post the next installment. Plus, those days with the grandchildren are great fun but sure do a number on my energy and creativity, so I am happy to take a pass on my blog post this week.

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Nature specials on T. V. are great, but most of all, I love to observe nature in action for myself. I had what I thought was a real adventure with two gopher tortoises the other day. I saw two gopher tortoises in the same few feet of trail and figured they had to be together. I thought maybe the dinner-plate sized one was the mother and the salad-plate sized one who was about to wander into my subdivision and get hurt was her son. I picked up the small one and took it over to the big one.

Later I asked my Biologist son who has studied gopher tortoises since he was at the University of Central Florida if I’d done the right thing. Seems I was all wet in every department, but he graciously gave me the real scoop on the life and times of gopher tortoises.

“The salad plate size is about eight years old and close to the maturity necessary for mating. The bigger one would be from twenty-five to fifty years old.”

The minute I set the small one down the big one started bobbing his head.

“The scientists call it head-bobbing.”

Was it gopher tortoise communication?

“Yes. They recognized that they were of the same species though their ages were vastly different.”

Was it threatening?

“It would be easier to guess about that if we knew the sexes of the two animals. “If it’s a boy the shell is indented at the back, but if it’s a girl the shell is flat.”

I didn’t think to check that.

The head bobbing could have signaled an interest in mating or it could have signaled a territorial dispute. In the field, I’ve seen two tortoises sitting on the apron and bobbing heads for hours.”

The apron?

The sand hill at the opening of the burrow is called the apron. It’s where the mother tortoise lays her clutch of eggs so the sun can warm them and the sand can keep them cool on hot days.

I asked if mother tortoises look after babies when they hatch.

“No, when the baby tortoises hatch they’re soft and about the size of a silver dollar. That’s when they become food for dogs, feral cats, raccoons and birds of prey.

At about six months of age, gopher tortoises dig three to five burrows, over a two-acre area and roam from one to another on a rotating basis.

I didn’t want the little one to go into the subdivision.

“That’s right,” says B. “The biggest danger to any tortoise is a dog. They crush them with their teeth, and bite off any parts they can get to.

So the big one wasn’t the small one’s mother and even if she had been she wouldn’t have cared what happened to him.

That’s right, but hey, Mom, you have a great imagination, and in reality you may have saved the smaller tortoises life, so yes, you did the right thing, you just went the long way around to do it.

I guess it’s great to have a good imagination, but I need to keep in mind that there are things I can’t figure out because I don’t have all the facts.

In other words, we don’t know everything, and having a good imagination doesn’t always help.

I Corinthians 8:3 We never really know enough until we know that God knows it all.

 

 

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Just Passing By

30 Jul

My Take

 

DiVoran Lites

 “Oh, hi,” I say to the dinner plate sized gopher tortoise off to one side of the trail. Our woods are a kind of sanctuary for them and we see them often. Is this one a boy tortoise or a girl tortoise? Our son, an expert on gopher tortoises, could tell us, but he’s not here, right now.

I walk toward the pass-through into the neighborhood where I live, but before I get there, I spot a smaller gopher tortoise, this one about the size of a Corning salad plate that looks as if he’s about to go into the subdivision.  I’ve never seen two tortoises at the same time so my imagination begins to take over as it usually does when I’m about to meddle in somebody else’s business.

Maybe the big one, is the small one’s, mother. Maybe she’s worried that he’ll go into the subdivision and be run over or attacked by a dog. Anyhow, subdivisions are dangerous for wildlife so I pick him up by the shell and take him over to the big one. If she is his mother, she can look after him and I can go on home.

The minute I set him down, the big one starts bobbing its head so hard I’m afraid it will get a crick in its neck. Right away, I remind myself that gopher tortoises are vegetarians and they don’t have any equipment with which to hurt each other. I hope. Otherwise, it might have been a mistake to bring them together.

Everything seems okay except for the emphatic bobbing. The small one doesn’t bob back, but then he doesn’t pull into his shell either. Now what?The big one starts walking away. The small one follows. Phew. Surely, they are mother and son going home just as I imagined. Wait, though, suddenly the small one dashes around the big one and slips into a hole exactly the size of his shell, leaving the big one on the outside looking stunned. It waits a moment then begins to graze.

We’ll have to talk to our son and see what its all about. Stay tuned. Maybe it’s just one more lesson in minding my own business.

Proverbs 26:17

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A Place to Hide

22 Jul

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Heavy rain comes down in sheets, clatters on the aluminum roof of the porch and rattles the screens on the windows. The T. V. says the wind is blowing at 60 mph. Seventy-five mph means hurricane. We are grateful to be hidden in our snug house away from the storm.

This morning our two cats had an altercation. Maybe it was because Jasmine was playing around the cat size basket on the porch they both like to sun in and Lily wanted it. When Lily gets mad, she scares Jasmine to death so Jasmine was backing up through plants and trying not to get nailed. She ran to the French doors, but they were closed so she climbed one and clung by her claws in a place where she knew Lily wouldn’t follow. Lily will climb sometimes, but it’s not second nature to her as it is to Jasmine. Jasmine has an even better place to go, a place where Lily gets a bit of vertigo and hunkers down. She has never gone there voluntarily. I put her there once to see if she liked it, but she definitely did not, so I lifted her down. Jasmine gets there by jumping onto the kitchen counter and running across the stove. It’s definitely a no no, but she goes so fast I can’t stop her. Where some of us might get vertigo, she feels perfectly safe.

I guess we all need a place to get away from others who scare us and from things that go bump in the night. There is one sure place: we sing a song that starts, “You are my hiding place.” When we were younger, we sang, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.” We are speaking here, of course, of our Father in Heaven. It’s good to know that no matter what is happening He promises to be our hiding place. He will not only hide us, but he will settle us down and give us direction and insight. He loves us, his children; nothing delights him more than seeing to all our needs, especially our spiritual needs. We have only to ask and a hiding place appears.

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Conquerors

16 Jul

My Take

DiVoran Lites

When my brother and I were kids, in Colorado, Dad bought us a part-Shetland pony to ride. We called him, Yankee. He wasn’t as small as a regular Shetland, or as big as a quarter horse, but he was stubborn as all get out. My brother took to horses right away, he inherited it from, Dad, I guess, who was once an amateur race jockey.

We took Yankee up to the house from the feedlot to bridle and saddle him, but every time I got on, whoosh, Yankee trotted back to the feed-lot with me holding on to the saddle horn and trying to keep my feet in the stirrups. I only weighed about fifty pounds, and I was about to give up. Then one day Dad was there when we brought Yankee, and he saw what was happening to me. He didn’t blame the horse, though. He said it was my job to show Yankee what to do.  We started over.

Back at the house, Dad held the reins in a firm grip down close to Yankee’s mane as I got on. He then showed me how to grab a fistful of rein and a fistful of mane and hold tight. In other words, he showed me how to take control over the situation. Much to my surprise the horse stood until I gave him a nudge with my heels and eased up on the reins a little. I was no longer a victim.

What a great life lesson. In the book of Genesis, God says we have responsibility and dominion over the animals. In Romans 8:37 he says we are more than conquerors. Sometimes problems come and things seem out of our control. Nevertheless, I’ve learned an additional lesson from my Heavenly Father. With prayer and faith, we can tap into the power to conquer anything. What a relief to know that we are no longer victims, but conquerors.

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