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She was proud to be the Coal Miner’s Daughter

Last week, the Coal Miner’s daughter went home to meet her daddy, her last road trip. Loretta Lynn, the Queen of Country Music, died at age 90, and the news brought me to tears. Losing two queens in four weeks has made me think about my attachments, my loyalties, and who I respect. Why do Queen Elizabeth’s and Loretta’s deaths seem like extraordinary losses to me? I realized it is because they were both so true to themselves. And I admired their sense of responsibility in a world that seems to be quickly losing that. Loretta’s story is pretty well-known: born into Appalachian ...

Still time to give love to roses

By REBECCA NORTON RYAN In the next few weeks we will put our roses to bed for the winter season. I try to have roses winter ready by Nov. 1. I am definitely a fair weather gardener. Roses start to go dormant after the first hard frost. All subsequent frosts will also tell your roses that ...

Hunting is part of journey

Editor’s note: This series will connect topics between Christianity and hunting. The series will run throughout the archery and rifle deer seasons. Let the journey of archery season begin. Thousands of hunters across Pennsylvania in the last week have entered into their treestands trying to harvest a deer. Often at the end of the season archery hunters will tell their story from the moment their trail cameras went up in the late summer to the moment they harvested the deer. Every hunter also enters into the story of the forest — from summer’s green leaves to autumn’s ...

Renewable revelations can be shocking

BI got slapped by an elephant. It wasn’t fun. It hurt. Why would an elephant do that? Because I asked good engineering questions on a subject that no one wants to talk about. The scene was an open house at the Passive House in Kane last summer. I listened to a presentation on the project, to include the advanced 40kW capacity solar panels that would be installed on the roof. The first good question was, “How efficient are they?” After some prodding, I got an answer which I considered far too low. The next obvious question was, “Is that high enough for them to be ...

View from Hickory Heights: Cold stirs soup season

Yes, the cold weather brings thoughts of homemade soup. Last week I found a ham bone in the freezer so I took it out and made soup. Usually when I have a ham bone, I make yellow split pea soup. I remember eating it at Aunt Emmy’s house when we visited. Using yellow peas is a Swedish thing. Actually, when I buy them in the Swedish store, they are whole, not split. I prefer the split ones if I can find them because they cook so much faster. I remember asking Emmy how to make the soup because my daughter liked it a whole lot. She still likes it, her brother not so much. Don ...

Life-changing chance only knocked once

When I first read about the impossibly generous trip opportunity, I couldn’t believe my eyes. An out-of-the-blue, life changing possibility. The challenge was selling the idea to my husband. It was mid-March in Boston where Tom was finishing graduate school. I worked for American Airlines at Logan Airport and occasionally read a copy of an airline industry magazine. Each issue offered travel deals for airline personnel. That spring, Pan American was offering a cheapie around-the-world trip. Whoa! But of course, they had lottsa rules. You had to travel for a minimum of four weeks, ...