Making a House a Home

Thirty-two years ago we moved a farmhouse from its city lot to our acreage in the country. Extensive renovations followed including a gutting of and complete rebuilding of the kitchen. We battled the mice, spiders, occasional snake and even a scorpion for possession of the building. We cleared brush, thinned trees and built gardens.

Then came a period of self-sufficiency, like all 'back-to-the-landers' of that period, when a parade of chickens, rabbits, ducks, turkeys and even a pig that was a FFA project of our high school son passed through our lives.

We planted a stand of pine seedlings that now tower overhead. Recently we hired loggers to harvest the marketable hardwood trees, a hard but necessary decision to make.

As the years slip past, we find our stamina isn't what it used to be. Two winters ago, we exchanged our wood-burning stove for a propane heater because my husband couldn't maintain the need for firewood any more.

To me, the little farmhouse is just a part of our home here in piney East Texas. Home encompasses the land, the area, the state.

So, what makes a house a home? I don't really have an answer. Would like to hear from my readers about that.

Ghosts From The Past

He strode through the crowd with the cockiness of Billy the Kid, gathering curious stares in his wake. With his battered beaver top hat, black frock coat grayed with age, and knee-skimming leather boots, Jim Davis looked like a re-incarnated apparition from an earlier time. All that was missing was a set of holstered pistols hanging on his slim hips.

I struck up a conversation and learned Jim had recently moved back home to the family farm in East Texas after spending his adult years in Arizona. Hearing I was the from same town, he broke into a grin.

"It's great to be back," he said.

When I asked about his get-up, his blue-gray eyes sparked with his zest for being alive. "I got this group I formed out in Arizona. We do shows...re-enacting gunfighter shoot-outs. Some of the fellows are coming out next February for a show I got scheduled."

He certainly looked the image, his shoulder-length brown hair that fell from beneath the hat's broad brim contrasted with the white handle-bar mustache trailing to his chest. In the course of our conversation, he mentioned his pleasure in reconnecting recently with a  boyhood chum.

"I would have walked right past him like a stranger if my wife hadn't spoken to this woman. While they were conversing, the man who was with her took a couple steps closer and said, "Jim Davis?"

I stared at him, wondering how he knew my name, he said. "When he said his name was Tim Newton, my response was, 'No way! Tim got killed in Vietnam. At least, that's what I always believed.' We hugged each other's neck, bawled like kids, to find out we'd both been wrong."

"You see," Jim went on, "we grew up together, played ball together and joined up at the same time. When we got sent to Vietnam, we got separated, went to different units. Both of us assumed the other got killed over there." He shook his head, a bemused expression on his face. "Just think, if my wife hadn't spoken to his wife...I didn't recognize him...," another shake of his head.

Jim went on to talk about his experiences in handling powder-loaded guns and participating in re-enactments. over the years.

When he finally walked away, I was left with the sound of his jangling spurs as they dragged on the concrete. I gazed at his retreating back and had to admire a guy who straddled two worlds and felt comfortable in both.

Is It Figure…or Is It Figure?

At times I’m befuddled by our English language. Take the word figure – I’m amazed that this one word can convey two entirely dissimilar concepts.  

On the one hand, it is used to describe the manipulation of numerals, as in “crunch the numbers” or “I’ve got to figure my taxes”, an oft- heard expression this month since the deadline to file one’s Income Tax looms in the near future.

Then the word is often used to describe a woman’s body as in “She’s got a great figure.”

Perhaps the connection comes about as a result of that recognized combination of  numerals – 36-24-36 – that has come to exemplify the perfect Barbie-like female form.

Seriously, how many females are you acquainted with who conform to that ridiculous image? I leave you to figure it out.

The Ingenious Envelope

Have you ever taken time to wonder about the envelope? It's simply a sheet of paper, ingeniously folded and glued, to form a safe pocket which contains its contents. So what came first, the envelope or the stamp?

The envelope predates the postage stamp with the first use of paper envelopes recorded as far back as the 10th Century. The first known envelope was nothing like the paper envelope we know of today. The first envelopes were made of cloth, animal skins, or vegetable parts. It can be dated back to around 3500 to 3200 B.C. in the ancient Middle East. Hollow, clay spheres were molded around financial tokens and used in private transactions. 

Up until 1840 all envelopes were handmade, each being individually cut to the appropriate shape out of an individual rectangular sheet. During the Civil War,  the Confederate States Army occasionally used envelopes made from wallpaper, due to financial hardship.

Traditional envelopes are made from sheets of paper cut to one of three shapes: a rhombus, a short-arm cross, or a kite. These shapes allow for the creation of the envelope structure by folding the sheet sides around a central rectangular area. In this manner, a rectangle-faced enclosure is formed with an arrangement of four flaps on the reverse side. The use of the diamond shape for envelopes is a tidy and ostensibly paper-efficient way of producing a rectangular-faced envelope but its origin is debated. The folded diamond-shaped sheet (or "blank") was in use at the beginning of the 19th century as a novelty wrapper for invitations and letters. 

King Charles I established the first State postal service for the conveyance of private letters in England and Scotland.

In 1653, Frenchman, De Valayer attempted to establish a postal system in Paris, offering to deliver any letters placed in his post boxes as long as they were enclosed in the envelopes that he had on sale. Simple wrappers by design, but containing a printed receipt for postage paid. A schoolmaster from England, Rowland Hill invented the adhesive postage stamp in 1837.  Hill's stamps made the prepayment of postage both possible and practical. Hill created the first uniform postage rates that were based on weight, rather than size.

The advent of  e-mail in the late 1990s appeared to offer a substantial threat to the postal service. By 2008 letter-post service operators were reporting significantly smaller volumes of letter-post, specifically stamped envelopes, which they attributed mainly to replacement by e-mail. 

D Is For Dragons

I thought I’d take a look at dragons today and was quite surprised at what I learned. A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. Varying stories about monsters have been grouped together under the dragon label.

Did you know there are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies and the Chinese dragon with counterparts in Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries?

Dragons are often held to have major spiritual significance in various religions and cultures around the world. In the New Testament book of Revelation, the devil takes the form of a red dragon with seven heads and ten horns in his battle against Archangel Michael.

Dragons and dragon motifs are featured in many works of modern literature including J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern. The popular role playing game system, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) system makes heavy use of dragons, and has served as inspiration for many other games' dragons.

A good friend of mine, Galand Nuchols, has incorporated dragons in the children’s books she writes. Dragons for Kris and its sequel, Dragon Hatchling, focuses on a young boy who is abused by his uncle and has to find a way to get out of the abusive situation.  You can find out more about her books at: http://www.dragonsforkris.com/.

Return of the Carriage Age

Daily headlines scream of the rising fuel costs for our automobiles. Our carriages of convenience have become albatrosses of conveyance. Technically speaking, the automobile is a coach, not a carriage.

Designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, a carriage is an open, wheeled vehicle for people. The word carriage is from Old Northern French cariage, to carry in a vehicle. Here’s a tidbit of trivia to store away for some future Jeopardy program: Upper-class people of wealth and social position, those wealthy enough to keep carriages, were referred to as carriage folk or carriage trade.

The earliest recorded sort of carriage was the chariot during the 9th century. The medieval carriage was typically a four-wheeled wagon type, with a rounded top ('tilt') similar in appearance to the Conestoga Wagon. 

Early colonial horse tracks quickly grew into roads and Colonists began using carts as these roads and trading increased between the north and south. Consistent use of these roads led to surfaces that enabled carriages to transport goods as well as people.

A bewildering variety of horse-drawn carriages existed. The names of many of these have now passed into obscurity but some have been adopted to describe automotive car styles - coupe, victoria, brougham, landau, and landaulet, cabriolet (giving us our cab), phaeton, and limousine – all these once denoted particular types of carriages.

Carriages and coaches began to disappear as use of steam propulsion began to generate more and more interest. Steam power quickly won the battle against animal power. The word, carriage, was so familiar that early models of the automobile were called horseless carriages.

The horse-drawn carriage has become a popular vehicle of entertainment and are available to rent in most larger cities. Find one near you and take time to breathe deeply as you experience the slower pace instead of rushing through life in your horseless carriage. 

Three Cheers For Blue

My favorite color of all time is blue. Just a quick look-over of my closet and home will confirm that. It's an unconscious preference; I just naturally gravitate to the color blue in all its various shades.

Perhaps I sub-consciously adhere to the age-old tradition of associating this color with royalty. It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. In ancient and medieval societies of Europe, the veins of the upper class appeared blue through their untanned skins, in contrast to the working class who were mainly agricultural peasants. A nobleman would hold up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath pale skin to prove his aristocratic birth.

The bluegrass region of the United States, associated with the thoroughbred horse raising considered the "sport of Kings," lies mostly in northern Kentucky. Bluegrass territory is characterized by fossiliferous limestone making its rolling hills highly fertile for growing pasture.

Another common phrase that incorporated the word "blue" in a selective usage is what is referred to a "using a blue pencil." Editors traditionally used a blue pencil to edit or correct something and how that came about is also interesting. In the nineteenth century, editors and censors commonly marked up manuscripts with colored pencils so their comments stood out. By the 1880's, British military censors had standardized on blue pencils.
Around the same time, the first photo-mechanical printing process came into use. The system being monochromatic - insensitive to all visible light except blue - an editor's blue marks transmitted as if they were white, making them invisible. You could see the color but you couldn't photograph it. Dumb luck has kept the non-photo blue pencil in service for well over a century.

For us writers, nothing plunges us into a true "blue funk" like the liberal use of a "blue pencil' on one of our manuscripts. That is why, when I edit, I try to always use a red pen.