What did you love best about summer when you were a kid? This year when The Innocent released I had a fun giveaway contest and invited readers to share some summer stories with me. I’m always blessed when I get to read these firsthand experiences from you all. Toni was like me in that she enjoyed playing with her cousins. …
Simple Gifts “Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free.” That has to be the best known line of any Shaker song. Many people change the wording a bit when they sing the song and say “Tis a gift to be simple,” but that little change of the to a does make a difference in the …
July 20, 1966 Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. I’m a little itchy tonight. That’s not right. I’m a lot itchy tonight! Have you ever gone blackberry picking and come home with more chiggers than berries? I think I did this weekend. I love blackberries. They have that special tart taste like no other berry and a blackberry cobbler …
Did you ever go to the county fair? When I was a kid, the county fair was a big deal. No way were we ever going to go to one of those big theme parks and Disney World might as well have been on the moon as far as we were concerned out on the farm. We weren’t going to …
Today as I was exploring my new website and trying to learn how to do this or that on it, I clicked on that little spyglass at the end of the menu line and discovered a way to search through everything on my site, including all my blog posts. So I put in Shaker and came up with this …
July 13, 1966 Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. Can you believe that there’s only about a month before school starts again? That’s just not right. Summer should last twice as long as other seasons. Each day needs to matter. Dad says I’m the one who has to make my days matter. I can’t be moping around wishing for …
“When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a wonderful treasure to always hold in your heart.” (Unknown source) A year ago today, my mother gave up her fight and moved on up to heaven. Some of you walked with Mom and me down that lonely Alzheimer’s path in her last years. It was a rocky path with …
Change, like sunshine, can be a friend or a foe, a blessing or a curse, a dawn or a dusk. (William Arthur Ward) Change – sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s not. But it’s inevitable. My mother used to tell me that the one thing we could be sure of is that things will change. That’s just life. We get older. …
CHECK OUT JOCIE’S NEW PLACE ON THE WEB Find Jocie’s Heart of Hollyhill reports every week at a new place. Click on Heart of Hollyhill under Blogs on my website homepage or go directly to Jocie’s posts with this Heart of Hollyhill blog. New place. Same Jocie. Still the Sixties.
July 5, 1966 Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. Wow, did you see fireworks on the 4th? Leigh talked Dad into taking us to Lexington to the drive-in to watch the fireworks. We got to see the movie too. Sound of Music. It was wonderful. I loved it even more than the fireworks which were really neat and …