One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane Once more I am searching for the end of a story. Once more it seems to be hiding from me behind a crazy mixture of words that don’t seem to be paving the …
May 19, 1965 Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. The peonies are blooming here in Holly County. Most every yard has at least one bush. Nobody knows who planted the first bush in Holly County. Some early settler must have carried a bulb in from Virginia, because, to hear people tell it, every bush since has been started …
Forty-nine years ago on this date, I lost my beloved aunt, my father’s sister. She was like a granny to me and to my sisters. She never married or lived away from her childhood home. She was a devoted daughter who took care of her mother who died when I was very young and then her father who died when …
http://southernguidetolife.com/a-castle-for-sale-in-versailles-kentucky/ A man’s house is his castle. ~James Otis You expect to see horse farms in Kentucky. Or farms with cows grazing on the hillsides. You expect to see small towns and even a few big towns with high rising buildings. What you might not expect to see in Kentucky is a castle. But right here in Central Kentucky in …
May 12, 1965 Jocie Brooke reporting from Holly County, Kentucky. Last week I was not too happy about Mother’s Day. I don’t really mind that my mother has never been a mother to me. If it had been up to her, she probably would have taken me in a basket and left me on some stranger’s doorstep and never looked …
This is the very first picture of me as a mother. I was very young. Seventeen. But I loved that baby from the first moment I knew I was expecting even though it meant my life was going to drastically change. My girlhood days would come to an end and I would have to be an adult. A mother. I …
“If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.” (Nadine Stair) Have you ever thought about what you might do differently if you had your life to live over? Or …
May 5, 1965 Jocie Brooke reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. I found this poem in a church magazine at Miss Sally’s house. She says it’s a really sweet poem. She never had any babies of her own to rock, but she says she was blessed with many babies to hold at church. She said most mothers are glad to have somebody …
I knew I should have done it yesterday!! Procrastination is the thief of time. ~Edward Young Do you put things off? Even things you really want to do? I’ve been struggling with that while trying to finish the first draft of my work in progress. I want to write it. I really do. And I am writing it, but what …
“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.” (Pedro Calderon de la Barca) What’s your favorite color in the springtime? We have so many choices. The bright yellow of the forsythia that shout spring is really here, the rosy red of the redbud tree that pushes out blooms to light up the woods, …