LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#4 2020
Publication Date: 11/16/2020
A few years ago someone left a message on our answering machine. A male voice said, (This is a paraphrase. Don’t recall the exact words) “Please take me off Letters from the House Between mailing list. I not interested in it, but would like to continue receiving Critique.” Not being completely sainted yet, this peeved me a little. I got over it, but as you can see, I haven’t forgotten.
We couldn’t honor his request because Critique and Letters are all on one mailing list and can’t be separated. Or if they can it’s beyond my pay grade. I would like to tell him now, as of today, this is the last issue anyone will ever receive. So, no problem. You’re off the list.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#3 2020
Publication Date: 8/17/2020
My mind is bare. My head empty.
Days are quiet here. It’s been hot and across the way in our neighbor’s yard the baby rabbits have found a sand pit where they roll and kick up the dust. Cute. But too many. Perhaps the coyote we saw trot across will enjoy some of them. The turkeys sometimes join the rabbits, their gawky legs and geeky necks stretched in the dirt. A sleek doe picked her way across the edge of the woods below my office window. She delicately nibbled the weeds. I asked her to please eat the buckthorn. Goldfinches squabble at the feeders and humming birds angrily chase one another away from the hanging nectar. All pleasant distractions.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#2 2020
Publication Date: 5/25/2020
Much has been written about the pandemic during these days of isolation. Why add my own? Here are quotes from others that encourage me:
When the Black Plague reached Wittenberg, where Martin Luther lived and worked, he had this to say:
I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance…
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#1 2020
Publication Date: 11/23/19
The year 1921:
Two little girls, sisters, warmly dressed, pose in a yard in New Bedford, Massachusetts. On the left is Ruth Simpson Ashworth bundled into a pram. Standing beside her is Barbara Simpson West.
82 years later this photo was given to me by the little girl on the right, Denis’ Aunt B. At the time she was in her late 80s. When Aunt B handed it to me she commented; “Look at me! Even then I was good-natured and smiling and Ruth was always complaining and crabby from the beginning. She hasn’t changed at all!” When I showed it to Aunt Ruth, she said; “Ahhh, there I am! Such a happy baby—my father said I was always…
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#4 2019
Publication Date: 11/23/19
This year I read a book written by Mark Boyle, a young man who decided to live for one year without technology. He admits the definition of technology could refer to something as complex as a computer or as simple as a shovel. He decided to draw the line in front of a bicycle, a rocket stove and hinges that open and close doors. However, he is living with out electricity, indoor bath, and cell phone. Perhaps the technology I’d miss most is a hot shower and a…
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#3 2019
Publication Date: 8/3/19
The Last Straw
I think it was the video of a plastic straw stuck up the nostril of a sea tortoise leaking blood and a vet removing it that made me think I could live without straws. You probably know a lot more than I do about how plastics damage the environment. One affect that bothers me a lot is ocean pollution. These days most ocean creatures not only have plastic parts in their stomachs, microfibers are found throughout their digestive systems causing concern as they absorb the toxic chemicals from plastic…
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#2 2019
Publication Date: 6/3/19
Going home
We are saddened by the recent death of Denis’ mother. At the same time just when we’d almost lost hope of spring ever arriving, the daffodils poked their green tongues through the frozen ground. Ever in need of redirecting my heart, Holy Week is here not to remind us of the true Hope we have in Jesus. Recently, I came across an essay written 20 years ago when a dear friend MaryJane Worden Clark died. Twenty years! As if w e cannot comprehend the passing days of our lives we often declare: I can’t believe it’s been that long! Today it seems appropriate to …
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#1 2019
Publication Date: 1/10/19
Looking back to November of last year with all the cantankerousness and incivility of mid-term elections, on the day we voted we decided to reward ourselves for practicing our civic duties. First, we planned to visit a favorite book store. It is small and warm and friendly with comfy chairs and no one minds you sitting and reading the whole day. Next door is The Breadsmith, a great little bakery and coffee shop. In addition we were going to swing by Anita’s to pick up our laundry. The day before our dryer had made ear-splitting screeches and bangs as it walked across the floor….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#4 2018
Publication Date: 11/18/18
While we were away in October for our vacation, I expected to review the milestones of Fifty Years of Marriage. Isn’t that what people do who survive that long? We would recount the ways God cared for us through the years. The best of times and the worst. And you would be so blessed. Merry Christmas.
That didn’t happen. Our holiday in Maine, the aspiration of a lifetime, was like all the other days and years of our life. A few were legend. Others we would have been happy to skip. Most were just what you’d expect from normal everyday life….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#3 2018
Publication Date: 8/1/2018
Dear Friends,
Earlier this summer we had this rather rash idea of taking Denis’ mother to Cinco de Mayo in West St. Paul. We knew she’d never experienced such frivolity, having been sheltered all 94 years of her life from such worldly expeditions. The outing measured up. There were thousands out to celebrate. There were women and girls in brilliant fiesta dresses, and men in low riders dragging their underbodies on the pavement with sparks flying. Mariachi bands sang and danced and the scent of spicy chili and cheese enticed us to the street food vendors. Even the hilarious and ridiculous lucha libre – the masked Mexican wrestling competition was featured….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#2 2018
Publication Date: 5/10/2018
Dear Friends,
It is very windy today. I can hear it whooshing past the house. The sky is bright with sunshine but the air is cracking cold. The bare, black limbs of the trees sway outside my window. The crows have landed on the rocking branches and are making a racket as they have spied something down in the ravine that concerns them. What it is, I can’t tell….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#1 2018
Publication Date: 1/10/2018
Dear Friends,
There have been a few random thoughts running through my head the past couple months as I reflect on the past year. You know, both Denis and I turned 70 in 2017. Since then I’ve been chewing on that like a piece of gristle and choking a little over this whole thing of getting older. This chewing brings up some niggling questions. Like, what have you done with your life that is worthwhile? Where’s my energy gone? Where’s my resolve for following through on projects I’ve begun? How come I can’t seem to keep up with what EVERYone else is doing? (As usual EVERYone is exaggerated and refers to the three or four amazing people who haunt me.)
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#4 2017
Publication Date: 11/23/2017
Dear Friends,
Remind us again, Lord. We’re sheep of your pasture? Well, yes. Psalm 23 is full of images familiar to me because my family once owned a flock of sheep. In the Bible, God often compares us to his sheep. I’m not offended because, truthfully? I share some of their mind fog and an unfortunate lack of common sense. However, the meaning of “thy rod and thy staff, comfort me” puzzles me. A stick comforts? As a child, my sticks had nothing to do with comfort. We tried to hit one another with sticks, we poked them into ant hills and wasp nests and cow pies. They were swords for battle and sometimes made our behinds sting when a parent grabbed them from our felonious little hands. This is comfort?
With four young hens as animal tutors this year, I’ve gained a little theological insight. They are handsome egg layers, but like sheep, they aren’t that smart. I allow them to free-range in our yard occasionally and like to think they love me because they follow me when I’m in the yard, even as they pause to peck the green grass and eat God knows what.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#3 2017
Publication Date: 08/16/2017
Dear Friends,
Although I’m dedicating this letter to Katy B. who has begun a dangerous journey, please come along, all of you, for none of us knows at what point ours will end. Let’s all pray we arrive slathered with God’s lavish grace.
Two Guys who ran and won
I recently learned that a writer I respect and love died last month from brain cancer. In 2014, he published a book of prayers you need to get – A Book of Uncommon Prayers: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle and Muddle of the Ordinary by Brian Doyle. I always look for his essays in a lit magazine I get, but it has been about a year since anything appeared. Now I see why….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#2 2017
Publication Date: 06/01/2017
Gradually the wall colors of House Between have been changing from real-estate beige (every room was such a yawner the problem had to eventually be addressed when I found the time and, hey, the money to do it) to much more vibrant and interesting hues. We moved in almost three years ago and currently the most recent victim of my obsession has been the living room. I happened to pick Poised Taupe, which is Sherwin Williams’ color of the year, for the change. Honest. I wasn’t trying to be trendy or hip, it just seemed to fit and blend especially well with the fireplace bricks and our art. And who names paint colors, anyway? I want that job….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#1 2017
Publication Date: 03/01/2017
“Choose whatever you like!” We were sitting in the Bustard’s living room looking through a stack of original prints and the artist was making an offer we couldn’t refuse. Ned Bustard, editor, publisher of Square Halo Press in Lancaster, PA, is a printmaker creating art, not with paint and brush, but with cutting tools as he chisels lines on a blank piece of linoleum block where figures, words and designs come to life in black ink. Indeed?! I chose three that captured my imagination….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#4 2016
Publication Date: 011/31/2016
From the moment it was hauled through the front door, I hated that pine-green naugahyde couch. It stand like cat pee and the surface stuck to your bare skin. But it was something to sit on, and it was a free hand-me-down that came during our magical, poverty-stricken third year of marriage. By year sixteen we’d owned and offed many free used couches. They weren’t to my taste, but still we were thankful for remodeling projects that made our friends’ possessions obsolete, like the perfectly useable harvest-gold refrigerator from friends who upgraded to the fashionable black-appliance era….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#3 2016
Publication Date: 08/31/2016
If it were up to me I’d be blasting judgment from my throne. I would wipe out – the Zika virus, the ex-president of FIFA and the Japanese beetles attacking my garden. This summer we wonder how bad can it get? We are horrified by violence. Helpless in the face of corruption and crime, death and politics. Why does God allow it?…
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#2 2016
Publication Date: 06/06/2016
Last month Harper’s Magazine (April 2016) published a fascinating report about a Jay Miscovich, who found what he claimed were hundreds of emeralds from a Spanish shipwreck that went down in 1622. The Florida Keys have long been a hunting ground for sunken treasure. So many vessels were wrecked among the islands and reefs, loaded as they were with billions of dollars worth of gold, silver and jewels being shipped in countless Spanish armadas as they sailed from South America to Spain, that they still attract hundreds of treasure hunters, divers, investors, international government claimers, wall street hedge funds, people of all kinds, many who are ruthless and greedy.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#1 2016 Still Winter
Publication Date: 02/09/2016
In 1873 a twenty-three-year-old French woman died of tuberculosis. It was a common disease back then and many died from this incurable pulmonary wasting disease. Thérèse was a devout Christian with an uncommon hunger to serve God without reservation; she was only fourteen when she joined a religious order. It was years after her death when she was named St. Thérèse of Lisieu and became known for a little treatise she wrote called The Story of a Soul. In it she writes about coming to terms with both her smallness and God’s love for her. That God should love her despite her insignificance and failures (like regularly falling asleep in chapel) was a mystery to her.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#4 2015 Winter
Publication Date: 11/30/2015
Drought – now there’s a word. Drought. Like California. Like now as I try to write. It’s been like trying to cough up fish bones from a dry throat. I’ve stared at the screen for hours. I’ve looked up the word venal. I’ve eaten a piece of Irish soda bread. I left my office to buy pumpkins and white mums only to find they cost too much. I mean for my current budget. So I bought a spaghetti squash instead because it’s something we can eat and there is this recipe in The Smitten Kitchen cookbook called Spaghetti Squash Tacos. Sounds gross, doesn’t it? I made them later, and they were delicious.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#3 2015 Summer/Fall
Publication Date: 09/08/2015
You do not want to begin your day finding a note on the counter that reads, “Emergency in garage. Freezer door left open. Everything melted. Blood dripping on floor. Love, Anita” She had to leave for an early appointment, otherwise I know she would have helped clean up. When I looked into the garage, I saw a river of water mixed with blood running across the floor and puddling under our car….
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#2 2015 Spring
Publication Date: 09/08/2015
“No More” – the 2014 pro-football ad campaign against domestic violence declaring that men should not physically abuse their partners came to mind. Wasn’t that a ground-breaker. In this instance, however, “violence” was complicated because Denis, my pacifist husband who claims he never dreams, was having a nightmare.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#3 2015 Still Winter
Publication Date: 03/02/2015
It seems like I fall a lot. This is disturbing. If you spend that kind of unexpected contact with the ground, simply looking down can make you anxious. Maybe you fall down, too, but you don’t mention it? In January of 2014, I wrote in my journal that I had fallen while taking the garbage to the trash. I tripped on a brick step out by the alley, tore my pants and bruised my knees. In May of 2014 on my way out of the bank I fell because I was in a hurry to do my good deed for the day and make everyone love me and think I am indispensible. For awhile I lay on the sidewalk contemplating this do-good philosophy that was not doing me or God any good.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#2 2014 Winter
Publication Date: 12/02/2014
Tonight the barred owls are calling. We hear them in the darkness beyond our deck. Some say they call, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for youuuu?” We saw a long-legged coyote pass through the back yard, he paused for a moment to look in the patio door. Perhaps he saw Honeysuckle sitting in her pen, a nice little morsel nibbling apple branches. His mouth may have watered, but he trotted on. The evening crickets and peepers are silent now. It’s a sign of cold weather. The crickets die, I think, but the peepers and toads bury themselves and emerge next spring to sing again. We’ve been here five months.
LETTERS FROM THE HOUSE BETWEEN
#1 2014 Summer
Publication Date: 08/18/2014
I was told by a friend that I would need to eat an enormous amount of crow after moaning about down-sizing to a thousand square feet, but back in March I had no idea we were going to have more flexibility than we imagined. You may remember, we had just sold Toad Hall and were staggered that it was only on the market for three days, when we received four offers and all were more than our asking price. After much euphoria and relief we were immediately under pressure to find a place and get out by July.
