September 29, 2021

I came up with the idea of writing a weekly essay back in 2006, after I had signed my first contract with my publisher. I wanted to “get my name out there”, but I had zero advertising budget. This was in the days of Yahoo! Groups, and of course I belonged to several that were devoted to authors and readers.  Membership was free, and as long as you followed the rules, you had access to hundreds of readers. Those groups proved useful for promo events, where one could have a virtual party and chat with readers. I and several of my fellow authors did just that on several occasions during those early years. But in the beginning I thought, if I could come up with something in writing that I could post on a regular basis, well, at least the reader would know I was capable of stringing some sentences together. I decided upon the idea of a weekly essay.  

That first very short missive was posted on November 22 of that year and was about Thanksgiving—American and Canadian. About our differences, yes, but more, our similarities.

In a way, I have always considered these weekly essays as a form of alms, if you will, for the blessings of talent and opportunity that I’ve received. I never know, necessarily, when I open a fresh document and put my fingers on the keyboard just what, exactly, I’m going to write about. But the words come. Over the years I’ve heard from a lot of people in response to my Wednesday’s Words. Often, my words turned out to be exactly what someone needed to hear in that moment, and that’s why I began to think of them as alms.

There are times when these essays have been funny, and times when they’ve been dead serious. I’ve used my words to make a point, to talk about some things in the headlines, but most usually, I suppose and looking back I can confirm that what I’ve mostly done is, I’ve forced life-advice upon you. I smiled as I wrote that sentence. I often hear younger people moaning about the general unfairness of life and that has to be one of my most prolific topics (and one of my hot buttons), because life isn’t meant to be fair, and I just think it’s only right to say that out loud, and often, so everyone knows it up front and going forward.

In May of 2007 I shared in one of my essays that I was seeing a grief counselor because I needed help dealing with the death of my middle child, my son, Anthony. He died at the age of 29, just before I received word that my first novel had been accepted for publication. Sharing not just the grief but my struggle to deal with it was a difficult thing for me to do, but I knew it was necessary. And I heard from other grieving and struggling mothers as a result. I’ve made it my policy to always respond to any contact from anyone who reaches out to me. My words helped them, and I have come to know in this life that helping others—also known as a giving of increase—is a very worthwhile accomplishment. In fact, when all is said and done, I believe it is the only accomplishment in life that matters.

 If you’re a regular reader of these words of mine, you undoubtedly know that I have an opinion about practically everything. I’ve also been as transparent as I can be over the years about who I am and what I believe in, because at the heart of these essays that’s really the whole point.

As I progressed as an author, I tended to lean that way in my novels, too. Some of the life challenges my characters have had to navigate are close to me, to what I’ve been through in life, or what others whom I know well have been through. And as I have continued on in that vein, I am very pleased to say it’s not only my essays that have touched my readers. Readers of my novels have let me know that my stories have helped them deal with various life issues, have shed light on something in the past they knew they hadn’t dealt with well—in other words, my words have meant something to them, personally. My words have been a small help. For that alone I am eternally grateful.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I asked my readers: should I pretend there’s no such thing as Covid-19, or should I acknowledge it? Most of my readers were ok with my including it as a minor subplot and let me know that I should trust my instincts—and that they would, too.

More than ever, I felt that need to help others. To use my words to do what I could to address the worries and concerns that readers had shared with me, or that I had learned of by “lurking” on Face Book and shamelessly reading the threads posted on people’s pages.

Even before this pandemic, my readers’ hands-down favorite character from my Lusty, Texas series has been Kate Wesley Benedict—Grandma Kate. And it was Grandma Kate who stepped up in each of the novels published, to date, during this pandemic. It was Grandma Kate who calmed fears and reminded her family of the most important things in life. Grandma Kate helped hold her family together, and she has been invaluable in carrying my own soul-deep belief that hard things don’t come to stay; they come to pass.

And that is why, despite the fact that in every way possible my stories are permeated with reality, I have decided that there is one area, one very important area, in which I will ignore reality completely. It is the one thing of which I write now and will write in the future that truly is fantasy. But I don’t think my readers will complain about that one bit.

Grandma Kate, you see, will remain her hale and hearty self at 93, forever.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 

 September 22, 2012

Autumn will officially arrive today at 3:20pm EDT and will bring with it all it’s changeable beauty. Cold and wet one day, hot and dry the next. Or, as David likes to say, it’s the season of turning the furnace on for an hour in the morning—and the A/C on for an hour in the afternoon.

We had an election here on this Monday just passed, and the result was…practically no change at all. In our parliamentary system, there are two “states” of government: a majority government, and a minority government. In a Majority government, the winning party has over 50% of the seats (a majority of the representatives); in a Minority it has the most seats, but not 50% of them, and so must usually form a coalition with another party in order to pass legislation.

We had a Liberal Minority government before the election, and we have the same thing now, after the election. We currently have, in parliament, 5 political parties that claim representation: the Liberals, the Conservatives, the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Green Party.

We don’t directly vote for our prime minister. Instead, we vote for our local member of parliament. Who becomes prime minister depends upon which party wins the most seats in the election. A bit confusing, but one gets used to it. And for the first time ever, when I received my ballot this time, there were a couple of people who were listed as “independent” running in our “riding”.

My dear American friends, there is one more major difference between our two countries when it comes to governments and elections: our election campaign began on Sunday, August 15, 2021, and the election was held 36 days later, on Monday, September 20, 2021. The election is now over and so too are all the TV ads, etc. It’s truly the shortest season in Canada and I for one like it that way.

With the arrival of autumn, it’s time to take stock of what jobs need to be done around the house before we batten down the hatches and prepare for whatever kind of winter we’re going to get. David has to go to the hardware store and pick up whatever stain or varnish he plans to put on our new porch steps and railing. He didn’t use treated wood when he built them, so this is the number one item on his “honey do” list.

When I mentioned it to him the other day, he told me to nag him until he gets it done. I told him I don’t nag. I just remind him…. on a never-ending, looped playback. Actually, buying the material is the smallest part of this endeavor. Once it’s in hand, we then have to hope for a small, dry stretch of time in which he can do the actual work.

This is an old house, and when it rains for several days in a row, the entire house feels clammy. The doors like to stick and the floors do, too. Washing the floors in damp weather had always been a little bit problematic as it would take them so long to dry. But we have a spin mop now, which makes doing the floors so much easier. You can spin nearly all the water out of the mop so that you get nearly all the water off the floor.

My days of canning and freezing and jam making are mostly behind me, now, though I do hope to have one more go, next year, with the jam. I used to love this time of year with so many interesting projects to look forward to. I’m still looking forward but to doing things that don’t require as much physical ability.

There are books to be read, and written, and the occasional movie to watch. I’m trying to cut back on some of the news programs, because lately I get the feeling that there’s too much hype. Just give me the facts, please, and leave the emoting to the afternoon serial shows.  

We might soon have to go to the gas station and fill up the car for the second time since acquiring it the first week of August. I am slowly getting used to this new-to-me car. For the most part, I like it. I bought myself a little portable, foldable “step” that I can use when my arthritis acts up. I do sit higher off the road in this car than in my last, so getting into it can be a challenge. Getting out is not. It’s a slow, controlled slide until my feet are on terra firma once more.

Life really is all about adaptation, isn’t in? And the older we get, why, the more changes and adjustments we get to adapt to.

Finally, a skill I can practice—and on a much more regular basis, too!

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 

 September 15, 2021

Twenty years ago last week, the world changed. Much like the generation before me that recalls the moment they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, those of us who were alive and aware recall where we were and what we were doing when we heard about the attacks on 9/11.

Our history is replete with pivotal moments, some of which we recognize as such at the time, because they’re just so…. huge.

We humans tend to get comfortable in our routines, and so we go along, day to day to day and have, if not a right-out-there attitude of complacency, at least one that is in the background, and attitude that life will always be like this. We go with an innate assumption that how things are today, well that’s how they always will be. I sometimes would put forward a theory for which I have absolutely no scientific proof or basis at all. My theory is that there comes a point in our lives when we reach an age that our mental and logical pathways are fully formed, and whatever, say, the price of a loaf of bread is at that time? Why, that’s what it should be ever after. We know what’s right and normal, and thus it shall ever be so.

But the truth is far different from that. Normal isn’t forever, it’s for now. “The way things should be” isn’t never-changing; it’s what they are until the next change.

Personally, I think it’s good, in one very important sense, that we all tend to have short memories and are able to tuck bad things away as we motor on down the road of life. No one can live well worrying about what might happen next. We have to let that shit go. All any of us can ever do is the best we can do. We can be prepared for what we think might happen. For example, we can know that power outages may occur in the winter months or during storms, and so have emergency items tucked away, “just in case”. We can understand how things have been for a long time, but that events will unfold without our prior knowledge or consent, and we’ll be called upon to adapt. To prepare for those inevitabilities we can counsel ourselves to learn to roll with the punches. But then, for our own mental health the best thing we can do is to close the cupboard door on those concerns and just step out on faith.

It takes faith to get up every morning, to greet the day with a sense of optimism. To know that you’re alive in the moment and you’re here and will face whatever does come next. And most days, life has a rhythm that we find, that we move to and even sometimes dance to. Most days are what we would call normal days, and then, as time goes by and we have a lot of those normal days, we even dare to declare that we are having rut days.

“How’s it going, there, friend?”

“Ah, you know, same old rut. Just living the dream.”

That is the nature of humanity, and I believe the fact that we behave that way is a sign of our innate natures and our logic colluding and helping us to survive and for the most part hang on to our sanity.

One couldn’t avoid spending time over the last 6 days without thinking about 9/11. I believe it’s good to reflect on tragic events, to say a prayer for those taken too soon, and maybe more importantly, for those left behind with giant holes in their hearts. It’s what makes us human. Life is more than the living we do day to day. It is a chain of existence that goes all the way back to the caves. We are but a link in this massive chain of human history, and yet at the same time, we are human history, here and now.

For my part, and because I tend to seek out the positive and the uplifting, after I observed the ceremonies, and listened to the speeches, I focused on looking into the events of that day as it pertains to one Canadian province: Newfoundland and Labrador.

Because I looked, I found an e-book, Come From Away: Welcome to the Rock: An Inside Look at the Hit Musical. At one point in my reading, there was a concept presented that I had never considered before, and it’s this (paraphrased): we live in a world where the people of Newfoundland who opened their arms and hearts and homes to thousands of strangers, and people who would highjack planes and kill thousands of strangers, exist at the same time.

I believe, therefore, a lesson we can take forward from those events just commemorated is this: There are far more of the former, than there are the latter, and therefore there is more goodness in this world of ours than there is evil.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 

 September 8, 2021

The heat and humidity for the moment are gone, and it sure is nice to have the outside air cooler and fresher. We took the opportunity on a lovely, breezy day this past week to prop open our front and back doors as well as a couple of windows. I’m a huge fan of airing out the house on a regular basis.

My daughter feels the same way, and her devotion to this custom isn’t relegated to the good weather. She will choose a Saturday in the middle of winter when she has the day off, to open both doors for an hour or two, very early in the morning before David and I even get out of bed. Then she’ll close them after the house has been aired, and (hopefully) the heat comes back up before we get out of bed.

And as this is a planned event, she warns us the night before.

I’ve sat out on our front porch a bit more over the last week than I had previously, because it has been so much nicer out. I’ve taken my blanket with me, of course, because I do have to guard against drafts on my knees, primarily. I love my front porch. I can’t tell you how much time, over the years, I’ve spent out there. David and I will talk there, or we’ll just sit side by side and read. We have a nice neighborhood. Every property on our street is neatly kept, there’s no litter on the streets, and there is an abundance of flora to please the eye.

The last few months have taught me something new. But it’s not necessarily something I was happy to learn. I’ve added to the list of conditions that exacerbate my arthritis one more thing: humidity.

What I find completely interesting is that I don’t have to be outside in the heat and humidity for it to affect my joints. As with the cool rainy days of spring and those later in the fall, this building I live in, complete with efficient central air and a relatively new gas-fired furnace, does not protect my arthritic joints a whole lot from the affect of the outdoor elements.

Now, the house isn’t hermetically sealed, so that could be a part of the problem. It’s an old house, and there are cracks here and there, and maybe the doors don’t fit as tightly as they once did, but still, there’s a part of me that wants to protest that when I am inside, darn it, the weather should not be able to touch me. My daughter thought that perhaps it’s not the rain or the cool or the hot humidity by themselves that get to me. She thought it might be the barometric pressure. Maybe she’s right.

We are approaching the end of this gardening season, and just as it was last year, our box gardens provided us with the unsurpassed pleasure of being able to eat fresh tomatoes, and green beans, in abundance. It kept us busy and made us feel just that little bit more self-sufficient. This is especially true for my husband. Lately he’s been feeling his age, and while his COPD hasn’t progressed to the point that he needs breathing equipment yet, he had been feeling useless. Those gardens make him feel useful, and for that alone, they’re worth more than the sum total of their parts. He’s in charge of them, and does the work, and so the credit for the fresh produce is all his.

He made the decision to get the lumber next year to build a box to grow potatoes in. You may recall that we used a large plastic tub this year as a planting box for the spuds, and we did get some potatoes this season. But he believes he’d have a better yield if he planted them the way he had originally planned to do. He's also going to do some more research over the winter to see what other kinds of veggies he might be able to grow. He does keep busy most of the time on YouTube, and that pleases me. I also do my best to keep busy by writing, and playing a few games, and doing what chores around the house that I can manage to do.

It’s important, when you’re older, to feel useful. It’s important to feel as if your life has value—that you matter.

I’ve always believed that our seniors should feel that value, simply because they lived their lives working and raising their families, contributing to their communities as their talents allowed, voting and paying taxes. Now I understand that while I can lay claim to all of that for myself, there is something about getting older I didn’t, when I was younger, understand at all.

A younger person might believe that a senior should be able to stand on their laurels for all they’ve done over the course of lives; that they should be content to enjoy the rest they’ve earned.

But now I understand that said senior will, as likely as not, wave that idea off and declare that they haven’t finished doing yet, thank you very much.

David and I are two such seniors.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 September 1, 2021

In my experience there are two things that take us back, way back to when we were kids. One is scent. I recall the time when, as a young mother, and after the death of my own mother, I bought a bar of soap from the dollar store, a brand I didn’t think I’d ever had before. This soap, when I picked it up and sniffed, filled me with a such an immediate sense of warmth, of…goodness. It was the strangest thing I’d ever experienced. I couldn’t not buy it.

I told my older-by-six-years sister about it and showed her the soap. It was called Cashmere Bouquet, and my sister filled in the blanks for me. She told me it was the soap our mom used to always buy when we were small. That explained the sense of peace that smell gave me. I had a similar reaction the first time, as an adult, that I bought Jergens lotion. There’s just something about the fragrance of that hand cream. In this case, though, I well remembered it myself from my childhood. There had always been a bottle of Jergens in the house all the time I was growing up.

The other thing that can take us way back is food.

This past weekend we bought our groceries on Sunday as we often do. I asked my husband, as we shopped, what he’d like for supper that night. He asked me to let him think about it—likely so he could wander the grocery store, looking and considering. The request he came back with surprised me because it was something we had semi-regularly when the kids were small, but very rarely since.

It was what my parents, when I was a child, called cheese burgers. But they aren’t the cheeseburgers that I bet come to mind for you now, the ones that are in fact hamburgers with cheese on them.

These were called burgers only because hamburger buns were used. Basically, the buns were opened and each piece put on a baking sheet. And onto these buns went spreading cheese—you know the brand, the one that comes out of a jar. Then, eater’s choice of any or all of the following: cooked small pieces of bacon, sliced olives, chopped onions and chopped tomatoes. Once assembled, you slid that bun-loaded tray under the broiler and in just a couple of minutes and sometimes a bit longer, there was a warm, bubbly, cheesy feast ready to eat.

One bun, opened, became two servings. Our kids loved these and especially liked bacon and sometimes olives on theirs. I was the only one in those early days of married life who liked a slice of tomato on top. Still do, but then I like grilled tomatoes, period.

David routinely would eat 6 of these darlings, or three full buns. Sunday, I made four pieces for him, as requested, and was surprised when he wanted tomato on his. I surprised myself by eating two pieces. All told, food-wise, the supper comprised 3 complete hamburger buns, a third of a cup of spreading cheese, 3 slices of bacon, about 10 olives, sliced, a couple tablespoons of onion, and a half a tomato. Not a lot of food to feed two people, and that’s the beauty of that meal. You’re full and satisfied and really didn’t eat much at all. And in the making, and the eating, I couldn’t help but think back to those childhood days—doubly so, because on this past Sunday, I had an unusual second course to these cheesy buns: corn on the cob.

After getting our groceries we drove beyond the town limits a bit to the farmer’s, from whom we always buy our corn—and we get anything else he has that looks good, too, and this past Sunday that included some plump, ripe and juicy strawberries. We got the corn not so much to eat that night, but to cook and freeze that night. Today is the first of September, which means that fresh corn won’t be available in these parts for a whole lot longer.

Since this was likely the last of the fresh corn for us this season, I couldn’t possibly not have an ear of it. One of my favorite things in the world to eat, one of my “comfort” foods from those long-ago childhood days, is butter and salt, with a bit of corn to go with it. These days, I have cute little individual plastic trays that we use for our corn-on-the-cob experience. These are handy, because they allow you to have a really good amount (read: probably way too much) butter in that little dish, that you can soak your corn in while it cools enough to eat.

And as I began to eat that ear of corn, I couldn’t help but recall how we’d done it in the “olden days” – the days when I was a child at my mother’s table.

My parents would begin the process: dad would take one slice of bread, put a dollop of butter (margarine, in those days) on it, and then lay the cob on top, as if it was a wiener and the bread a bun for a hot dog. He would then roll the cob around with the butter-bearing bread finger-cupped around it, and then he’d set the cob on his plate and pass that slice of bread to my mother, who then passed it on after she’d used it.

That one piece of bread went around the table as many times as there was an ear of corn to slather and then eat. There were five of us, by the way. And then, when the corn was no more, there would be a fierce competition for one great prize: because somebody had to eat the corn bread, and that margarine-soaked item was highly prized at our kitchen table.

I shudder now thinking of eating that corn-bread, but my parents, if you hadn’t guessed, invented the concept of frugality—at least for me they did. And because of the things we learned to prize as great treats when we were kids—that greasy piece of corn-bread (which actually had the flavor of corn), a slice of raw potato, the bones out of a can of salmon, and the chicken/turkey heart—I can say that they also were really gifted in making that frugality fun for their children.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury