On Hold...

Am taking a break from blogging as I am currently working on editing the work described in the Preface below.  Looking back through daily writings that began on March 13, 2020  (Friday the 13th) is an interesting journey.  Organizing and editing them is a challenging and time consuming one. Hope to be back at the weekly blog soon or to drop in once in a while here and there. 

                                    A View from Two Porches

     Preface

When researching the history of the small parcel of land on which I live, I found myself in the 1700’s where personal accounts in letters and journals offered the most realistic details of the times.  Ordinary people writing their impressions of their world and stories of their day-to-day lives offered the clearest picture of the way of life, family, and good times as well as of the challenges, stresses, and unexpected hardships.

Fast forward a few centuries and what you will see in this work is a bit of the email exchange over time of two cousins living only about 20 miles apart in two adjoining states, each caught off guard by the pandemic and each determined to come out on the other side a better, more compassionate, and stronger woman… both determined to keep their families together in the face of something no one anticipated, but all had to navigate. They wanted to do it well.

One wrote at night, the other in the morning – each responding to the other. What had been an open line of communication for many years became a lifeline to each – a way to vent, to sort out difficulties, to encourage, to plan and to share the frustrations as well as the good things. Not only do the emails selected here give you an idea of their way of surviving in a Covid world, but also of life in rural America during these times.  They began to save and print their emails as sort of a lark  -- thinking that someday, in years ahead, someone would find their account in a dusty attic bin and wonder who these two "Nanas" were who, so long ago, wrote to preserve their tale of surviving what they came to call the damncovid – uncertain and unsettling times for sure.

Like all journeys this one has its bumps, stumbles and even a fall or two along the way.  In particular you will see mistakes in judgement  -- most easily seen in believing that authorities knew what they were talking about and that those trusted authorities were telling the truth.  There were painful lessons to learn.  Perhaps still are. As we look back, we try to hang on to the belief and the hope that most people were doing the best they could with what they knew at the moment and that most had good intentions – even if that were not the case. Little did we know. We made mistakes, but we always had good intentions and were trying our best. We still do and still are. 

In the words of Isabelle Allende: "Maybe the most important reason for writing is to prevent erosion of time, so that memories will not be blown away by the wind.  Write to register history and name each thing.  Write what should not be forgotten."