Category: Non-fiction

Real families and their communities (including the critters in them) are endlessly fascinating and I started with stories from ten generations of mine before I branched out.

D-Day Girls

I read too, and since I’m writing about the Great Depression, World War II, and it’s aftermath, I focus a lot on historical fiction from that period. Here’s one book that will help me put together my next novel. The truth gives me context and makes my books for realistic.

D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II by Sarah Rose reads like a thriller while revealing long-ignored contribution women made to the Allies during World War II. Finally giving credit where credit is due, D-Day Girls follows a few of the women who joined their male colleagues in leading a guerilla army of French resistance fighters to defeat the Nazi occupation. More than 450 agents, supported by special operations in Britain, “were counted as worth fifteen divisions in France, or about 200,000 troops.” Faced like their male counterparts with betrayal, torture, and death, the women stood up to the worst the Nazis had to offer, with courage and perseverance. I enjoyed reading about women who had such agency in their own times.https://www.amazon.com/D-Day-Girls-Resistance-Sabotaged-Helped/dp/0451495098

Categories: Non-fiction

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Glorious Mud

Below is a response to this week’s Carrot Ranch Literary Community blog challenge. Here in 99 words, no more, no less, is a “flash story” about mud.

When my sister and I were young, we spent every day it was fit to be outside investigating the farm our family owned. Spring was best when the seasonal creek ran under the bridge. We waded in warm, squishy almost-liquid. Soft, viscous ooze squeezed between our wriggling toes and little creatures tickled our legs. Mom gave us a flour sifter to filter whatever lurked hidden in that murky fluid. Imagine our delight when the sieve came out swarming with tiny creatures. We put them in jars where we could see them and watch them grow into toads.

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Categories: Curiosities Non-fiction

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Frigid Covid Journey

This is a Girlie-on-the-Edge six sentence blog challenge post. The prompt word is journey.

Gudmundsen Ranch Road, February 2021

Martin Bay, Lake McConaughy, February 2021
  1. Covid fatigue; cabin fever; can’t stand it anymore.
  2. Photo excursion into the Sandhills
  3. Wind chill minus thirty; twelve inches of show; too cold to get out and walk; wheelbase too low to drive off road.
  4. North into the teeth of the wind, looking for road kills; photos out the car windows—open of course with wind pouring in.
  5. Trees clumps of naked grey sticks on a field of white—white earth, white sky.
  6. Then sun; on Gudmundsen Ranch Road north of Whitman; sunset on Martin Bay—frozen lake stretching as far as the I can see.
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Categories: Non-fiction Our Prairie Habitat

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Fire on Ice

This is a Carrot Ranch 99-word Nature Challenge Story

Afflicted with cabin fever, I drove north into the Sandhills—wind chill -30o with a foot of snow. All photos road kills—too cold to walk far, wheelbase too low to drive off-road. Lonely tree skeletons rode the choppy waves of Nebraska’s grass frozen sand sea. The ranch road north of Whitman curled up and down hill contours. My wide 285-mile loop ended at Martin Bay next to acres and miles of frozen Lake McConaughy. Driving the tall dam with little in the way of markers induced adrenaline in the frozen dusk, sunset a band of fire on ice.

Categories: Non-fiction Our Prairie Habitat

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this is getting old

review Susan Moon’s book this is getting old
I have no idea what the hat was about.

I’ve been reading this is getting old: Zen thoughts on Aging with Humor and Dignity by Susan Moon. Let me start by saying that I found it a great read for people like me who have passed sixty years of age. I’d also recommend it to people whose mothers and grandmothers have reached that age—or older of course.

I experienced jolts of familiarity throughout the book, especially in Moon’s chapter entitled “The Tomboy Returns.” I grew up on my grandfather’s farm where my sister and I climbed trees, waded mud puddles, rescued naked baby mice, and played horse and rider. (I was the horse.)

Then we grew breasts and got periods. Unlike Ms. Moon, we operated ‘business as usual” and our families treated us the same, although we had to wear dresses to school. At school, I did pay for my rough curiosity, though, when I myself wanted to be seen as feminine—and the tree climbing had nothing to do with it. Back then, girls weren’t supposed to be smart, to raise their hands and answer questions in class. No dates for me.

At work the rule was that we had to wear skirts and nylon stockings. When challenged once, coming back in from the field, I remarked that I would wear them in the field when the challenger allowed me to watch him clamber through native prairie grasses or change a tire in a dress and stockings.

But back to Ms. Moon’s book and the tomboy. Her point was to recommend we return to some of our tomboy ways as we retire and have more time. She suggested that we can resurrect the spirit of those children although our bodies may not do all our younger ones could.

Most of her book counseled acceptance of our limitations while taking care of ourselves in order to reduce our limitations and lengthen the time we don’t have them.

Again, I recommend this book, not only to those of us who are aging, but also to the people who love us. Often those loved ones’ assumptions about aging hurt the worst.

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Categories: Families Non-fiction

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Takin’ Charge

Late again, but here’s my attempt to meet this week’s Carrot Ranch Literary Community’s blog challenge. It involved writing about someone taking charge. As usual, I was to do it in 99 words, no more, no less.

Sometimes it’s just the little things people remember

You wouldn’t call her meek, but Hazel avoided confrontation when she could. Standing on the doorstep of the home place, though, an old neighbor told of a time when she didn’t.

“I was helpin’ out at your place at dinnertime. Dad had said I wasn’t to eat there, but she sat me down at the table. Well, here comes Pop, rarin’ mad. Hazel met him on the step. Told him, ‘On this place, if he works, he eats.’

“Now Pop was used to getting’ his way, but he shut up and waited for me to finish Hazel’s apple pie.”

Here’s Hazel in 1995, not too long before her 99th birthday.

Categories: Communities Families Non-fiction

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Aunt Anna

Sunday blog. Well, I wrote it on Sunday–late. So I’m posting today. Life’s crazy these days.

In 1918, Hazel was pregnant. The family had just moved to Webster County; and she got Spanish flu. Then George got sick—and their children, Cecil, two-years-and-a-few-months, and Nina, just one. Both sets of grandparents had it too. The only person who could breathe clearly was George’s sister, my Aunt Anna. She nursed the sick with cold compresses on foreheads, teas and broths to drink, and maybe some chicken soup as they recovered, gathering cobs from the hog lots, then heating and cooking on a cob-burning cookstove. She took care of the babies—changed diapers, rocked them to sleep, and comforted them when they cried—and washed the laundry on a washboard in the washhouse out by the well. And managed the livestock—gathering eggs, milking, and separating cream, not to mention feeding and watering, the pigs and chickens by hand in buckets. Fortunately, the cows had a tank fed directly from the well by a windmill. Anna was just 16 that year.

As our hospitals become overwhelmed, we will probably need more Annas, because there simply aren’t enough beds or enough medical professionals. We’ll have to “shelter in place.” And with global warming continuing to worsen, this isn’t the only crisis we’re likely to face.

So do any of you have stories from the last global pandemic. Please share. We might need them now.

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Categories: Families Non-fiction

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Safety In A Time of Worldwide Pandemic

And here’s my GirlieOnTheEdge six sentences on the blog prompt “Safety.”

  1. We’re conditioned to trust the U.S. government to keep us safe with ships and drones and bombs.
  2. We have soldiers and bases in nearly every country in the world (and they’re still bombing.)
  3. Our sanctions deny medical supplies and devices to Iran, Venezuela, and whatever other countries our administration doesn’t like.
  4. Now we have a threat we can’t resist with bombs and sanctions.
  5. While the government dithers, the U.S. has sustained 785 COVID19 deaths (as of five hours ago); worldwide 19.656 have died.
  6. Do you feel safe yet?
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Categories: Communities Non-fiction

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Priorities

As treasurer for the Nebraska Writers Guld, I need to spend the next few days (or more) reconciling the guild’s financial records for 2019. Since we moved to a new Web-based system, I haven’t had access to the accounts for months, so this may take a while, not to mention the fact that I have to pay sales taxes on Monday. As Douglas MacArthur said, I shall return.

Categories: Non-fiction

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The Carried Wife–Working Hogs

Another Carrot Ranch Literary Community 99-word challenge. Something about a carried wife. As usual, 99 words, no more, no less.

Sometimes it’s not about being carried across the threshold.

Moving hogs across a small open space. She feinted right. I followed. She ran left around me. My husband, already distraught, started screaming at me. For once. I stood my ground, stared at him. He took the few steps that divided us, picked me up, and started carrying me somewhere. I had no idea what he intended. Startled and scared, I bit his ear. He put me down, as I’d hoped, took a couple of steps back, wound up, and punched me in the face, a glancing blow since I was turning away. We never worked hogs together again.

Hogs are really clever, especially when they’re thwarding our wishes. These are actually my grandfather’s Hampshire piglets. We had long, white Landrace sows.
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Categories: Families Non-fiction

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