I’m often tempted to start these Journals with “It’s been a quiet week here in Gold.” I’ve listened to and loved Garrison Keillor’s radio show “A Prairie Home Companion” for more than 30 years and my favorite segment on that show has always been “News from Lake Wobegon” that he always begins with “It’s been a quiet week here in Lake Wobegon.” The fascinating tales he weaves about the extraordinary yet mundane goings on in his fictional small town often remind me of this little community where I live.
Gold is a small village (not a town, or a borough, but officially a village) tucked right on the edge of Ulysses and Allegany Townships. There are only about 20 houses in Gold proper, about 100 people, and I think I know almost all of them (at least I can attach names to faces). Most of the land around us is farmland and forest. It is quiet here most of the time and I like it that way.
Sometimes the most dramatic thing that happens around here is a dazzling sunrise or sunset, a rainbow, a snowfall, or storm. People talk a lot about the weather here – past, present, and future -- not because we’re boring, but because we are so involved in it.
Gold is a small village (not a town, or a borough, but officially a village) tucked right on the edge of Ulysses and Allegany Townships. There are only about 20 houses in Gold proper, about 100 people, and I think I know almost all of them (at least I can attach names to faces). Most of the land around us is farmland and forest. It is quiet here most of the time and I like it that way.
Sometimes the most dramatic thing that happens around here is a dazzling sunrise or sunset, a rainbow, a snowfall, or storm. People talk a lot about the weather here – past, present, and future -- not because we’re boring, but because we are so involved in it.
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| Sunset on Thursday. |
The big events last week were not very big compared to other places. It was very windy one day. One day it rained hard. One of my Christmas cacti burst into full bloom. The sunrises and sunsets have been spectacular. One morning I had 20 blue jays at my bird feeder. Josiah and I worked all week at moving the pile of mushroom soil. We winterized the beehive. We put up the outdoor Christmas lights.
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| The flower beds with mushroom soil. |
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| The beehive ready for winter. |
On Friday our nephew Stephen Pister (Stacey’s sister Audrey’s oldest boy) and his wife Erin came for a short weekend visit. They recently moved to Fredonia, New York, a mere two and half hours away. They had dinner with us on Friday and we went to the movies. On Saturday they did an Amish run with Kurt and Julie and then went furniture shopping with Stacey and Julie in Olean before heading home on Saturday afternoon. It’s nice to have more family close by. We hope to see them often.
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| Josiah putting Christmas lights on the back porch. |
Now that the outdoor Christmas lights are up, we’ve moved forward with listening to Christmas music. We started off slow, as we usually do, at the beginning of November, with our Winter Solstice albums (I to VI) and our Celtic Christmas albums (I to IV). After a few weeks of that, we added in a few other albums. Yesterday as we were putting up lights we ramped things up with the Pandora Christmas channel. This morning our Sabbath Morning Music (always Mormon Tabernacle Choir) was a MoTab Christmas album. Music is one of the biggest parts of Christmas for us. After Thanksgiving we’ll start decorating the inside of the house and watching Christmas movies. I love this time of year.
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| One of my Christmas cacti blooming. |
Thursday is Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving. I had ancestors who were there at that first feast. That’s one of the things I am most thankful for – wonderful ancestors who braved hardship in a new and unknown land seeking freedom. Recently there has been a trend in our country to denigrate the pilgrims and turn them into bigoted Eurocentric invaders and oppressors of an idealized Native American utopian civilization. I used to think that history was something fixed and unchangeable, but over the years I have learned that it can be changed. It can be manipulated and even erased. When we reinterpret it, when we expunge the written records, alter the books, teach the children a different version of events, when the rising generations “remember” things differently and older generations die off, history can vanish and become something new and usually false. Heroes can be made into villains. Great deeds can be turned into atrocities. I have read the firsthand accounts of some of those pilgrim pioneers. I think I understand in a small way their noble desires and their incredible bravery. I honor them. Their coming to this continent was the fulfillment of prophecy. The nation that grew from their legacy is (or perhaps was) the greatest, freest republic the earth has ever known. I’m thankful for them and what they did.
This year our Thanksgiving celebration will be quiet – just the six of us, four Howes and two Shilligs. Next year when Hannah is away at school and Josiah is on his mission, there will just be four of us. I guess that’s how things go. It seems a little lonely, but at least we’ll have lots of leftovers.
I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving.
This year our Thanksgiving celebration will be quiet – just the six of us, four Howes and two Shilligs. Next year when Hannah is away at school and Josiah is on his mission, there will just be four of us. I guess that’s how things go. It seems a little lonely, but at least we’ll have lots of leftovers.
I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving.
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| Sunrise on Saturday. |
