Author. Artist.
One year ago the stories of the sixty men and women in Hope Amid Hardship: Pioneer Voices from Kansas Territory made their first public appearance. The journey I have taken with these incredible pioneers as I share their personal diaries and letters has been a […]
January 1, 1856: “Sunrise -8 degrees . . . Sundown 14 degrees. A Happy New Year! 2150 miles from my former home.” This is how Isaac Goodnow, a resident of Kansas Territory described New Year’s Day in his diary. I wanted to start the new […]
I have always been interested in time travel. No one, that I am aware of, has invented the mechanism to cross chronological boundaries, so I have come up with my own methods.
My latest excursion took me along a green timeline that connects 1856 Kansas with 2013 Virginia.
As Sarah Everett walked among the early spring wildflowers in Osawatomie, Kansas in 1856, made a welcome connection to the home she left and missed in New England. She came upon springbeauty and referred to them as “old familiar friends” in a letter to her sister.
Earlier this week, camera in hand, I visited the Stone Bridge at Manassas National Battlefield, hoping to see Virginia bluebells, which I did. Moving among the almost iridescent blue-violet carpet of Mertensia virginica, I spotted the tiny Claytonia virginica, Virginia springbeauty. As I moved closer to examine them, I thought of Sarah and her walk in Kansas so many years ago.
This colorful encounter was much more interesting and meaningful than those sometimes written about in school history books. This was a green connection, from one flower enthusiast to another, across 140 years and several hundred miles.
Who says time travel isn’t possible?
This is the third post in honor of National Women’s History Month. Like most citizens of New England, Lucy Larcom had never seen the broad expanse of Kansas. But also like most citizens of New England in 1855, she had heard about, and had strong […]
This is the first in a series of blogs for National Women’s History Month “I tell you but for the women of Kansas, it would have been abandoned in one week . . .” On September 15, 1879, James Rogers spoke these words at the […]
I admit it. When it comes to household chores, I can easily stray to something else more interesting in trying to carry out the task at hand. This happened just last week.
When cleaning out bookcases, who would not want to open the cover of a small black sketchbook with browned, deckle-edged pages and colored tissue paper peeking out from between the pages? The colored tissue paper poked my memory and I realized this little book was one of my early journals. The date of this particular volume – 1971.
It was the summer after my senior year of high school. I was young-seventeen, naive, and quite a romantic. When not working at my part-time job at a Seattle-based tug and barge company (an upcoming blog), I wrote poetry and short stories and read the poems of Rod McKuen. Does anyone else remember him?
This little book is filled with verse and pastel sketches. For me, sketching and writing combine to finish a thought, in case a detail is left out in one or the other. I see them as a way to tell the whole story.
So now, two months after completing a book on Kansas pioneers, I come across a poem that I wrote about pioneers when I was seventeen. I don’t remember why I wrote the poem, though I have always been interested in American history and fascinated by stories of westward expansion. Here is the poem, dear reader. Be kind in your critique- I was very young!
Feel the grass beneath your feet, pioneer.
Relax and feel the leaves fall.
Let the breeze brush across your face.
Let its music dance on your ears.
On through the trees and tall grass you have come.
Falling and hurt, people crying for sunshine,
some dying for visions of cabins and smiling blue skies.
Blink away the tears.
The sun will shine away your crying and pain,
paint you a sky,
and color your land with trees and grass
and a cabin to rest in.
With a fire’s dancing flames
to warm your feet as the day dies.
The moon blinking as it shines through the clouds,
the night playing its music to rock you to sleep.
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This shows another of the many reasons to keep a journal. One can get reacquainted with one’s younger self!
Thanks for reading.
