“It’s a discovery of your inner landscape when you turn something over and over in your mind until suddenly you see it from a new viewpoint. It involves insight, and is illuminating, sometimes beautiful.”
“The thinker, the writer, the feeler experiences life itself as his best learning tree.”
“A quality life involves awareness, simplicity, magnanimity, and independence.”
-Marvin Swanson
I recently stumbled across a few words from a piano technician I regard highly. We tend to go from “simplicity to complexity to perplexity to harmony,” a poetic sequence of words describing many of life’s quests.
Marvin was forever seeking “fresh awarenesses of the long-familiar”, as well as ideas on how to accomplish that. Here’s a list:
“How can we work to heighten awareness? (1) a change in our routine; (2) taking time to analyze; (3) writing, painting, photographing, actually performing in the arts; (4) a new view of the familiar. How do you achieve this?
How can we make the familiar stand out in freshness and newness? It often seems to take a change from the ordinary—a change of feelings, of routine, of environment or a change of season.”
“Love is affection that endures and enriches in spite of differences. The differences between two people, even the difficulties, help with the enriching too . . . if they work to overcome the latter.”
– Marvin Swanson
For this week celebrating love between spouses, between partners, among friends, and with family members, I share Marvin’s definition of love.
I was not lucky enough to meet either of my grandfathers, but my grandmothers were very important to me. Marvin belonged to the same generation as my parents, so when he wrote about his grandfather, that was the generation prior to my own grandparents. The late 1800s was a time far too early to fret about human enterprise actually changing the whole biosphere (if that was even a word then) and causing mass extinctions. Trying to visualize life in those days is a fascinating exercise of the imagination.
From Marvin:
“I found a letter my grandfather wrote to my grandmother from New York City in 1888. He was going to medical school. She and their children lived in Randolph, Kansas, a small town completely obliterated by Tuttle Creek Dam. I thought how real and concrete their world seemed to them—as though it would never change—horses and buggies, no nuclear age. Once my grandfather told me he had lived in a golden age. He filled his clay pot with service to others. . . and I played within the boundaries of his smile.
“Our world is a dream world too, as theirs, wisping away, changing, reforming with new descendants. How can we best fill our clay pots? We know our clay fragments can’t be destroyed as molecules but what of us? Is there anything more important than adding another link to dream worlds?”
Love abides, though sometimes it goes into hibernation. Then the sound of a voice, a memory, an object, a passage from a book wakens it, and you know it has been there all the time. Sometimes a crisis awakens it. Sometimes standing on a peak of suffering before a cliff, it not only awakens but overwhelms you. It is the kind of love that transcends the love of a person for a person and embraces all.
You or I can’t fill the emptiness in someone else’s life but you can help them to fill their own emptiness if they’re looking and trying and wanting to.
When Covid rudely interrupted life for most of us, my series of Swanson quotations took a long break. This year I plan to return to sharing some special words left to me by my good friend, writing coach, and life mentor, Marvin Swanson. Though Marvin has been gone nearly 25 years, for me his memory lives on, as well as important lessons shared through the collection of letters he sent me.
Born in western Kansas in 1923, Marvin became afflicted with debilitating arthritis when yet a teenager. For over thirty years, he was an instructor of writing at Fort Hays State University and the University of Kansas, through correspondence courses. Living close to the campus of FHSU, he rented rooms to students and served as a mentor and a kind of foster-parent to those who shared his walls.
Marvin was a founding member of the Western Kansas Association on Concerns of the Disabled. The founding principle, possibly penned by Marvin himself, reads:
We, the members of the Western Kansas Association on Concerns of the Disabled, believe that all disabled persons, regardless of their disability, have the right to choose their own lifestyle. Along with this right comes responsibility. Therefore, we also believe that all disabled persons, no matter the degree of disability, can and should contribute something to society. We have dedicated ourselves and WKACD to the continuation of these principles.”
If contributions could be measured, those of Marvin Edgerton Swanson would rank among the highest humanity has to offer. Though imprisoned in a body wracked with pain, he transcended that condition. His mind, ever observant and quick to compile subtle nuances into gems of wisdom, connected with people of all ages to contribute to the betterment of life for all.
I met Marvin when I attended college at FHSU. We corresponded regularly until shortly before his death. His arthritis compromised his ability to wield a pen so he learned to polish the thoughts he inked onto his monogrammed stationery before writing them down. His letters were deeply well-planned in order to wring the deepest meaning from each word. When I read them again, he comes to life in my mind. The years drop away and it is almost as if I am young again, curled on his sofa, relating my thoughts to him in exchange for his ageless wisdom. Over the coming months, I plan to feature gems of Marvin’s wisdom gleaned from his letters.
Today’s gem reviews one I shared a few years ago, appropriately a few thoughts about letters.
I’ve been working on an article about the dwindling act of writing personal letters. Up to 80% of our reduced 1st class mail consists of business letters. Will the personal letter exchange gradually disappear in the electronic communication revolution? The personal letter has many unique advantages.
Ellen Terry, an actress, began writing to George Bernard Shaw when they were both single. They never met. Both married. They wrote for 25 years. Shaw wrote about their correspondence, which has been published: “Let those who complain that it (the Shaw-Ellen Terry “romantic correspondence”)was all on paper remember that only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.”
Imagine, I can read a letter Christopher Columbus wrote describing America or Edgar Allen Poe’s letter revealing the secret of the real tragedy of his life. They’re in a book with many more entitled The World’s Great Letters. I have it.
“Letters . . . are, of all the words of men, in my judgment, the best.” (Francis Bacon)
It always amazes me to receive notice that one of you had done the search, found the first blog post about Barry, and left a heart-warming comment. (See https://annchristinefell.com/2012/11/30/barry-mcguire-2/) The latest comment asked for an update on our resilient friend. Barry and I decided it was due. Perhaps overdue.
“Give me a pot and a bit of soil.”
Fully immunized and boosted, Barry has weathered the Covid outbreak with little effect on his general health. He remains in the country cottage where we moved him after his disappointing move to New Jersey, holed away in a reclusive existence. He no longer drives, but “gets by with a little help from my friends.” And his nearby friends are delighted to assist with his living needs.
For a year, he’s enjoyed a furry little roommate, a cat he named “Miss Kitty.” (With a nod to Gunsmoke.) As the Covid months lingered on—and on—he started hosting a trusted friend now and then. With a pizza dinner, topped off with his favorite cherry pie, a few of us helped him celebrate his latest birth anniversary, #92! And he’s still going strong. Mental calisthenics keep his mind hopping, even if his legs won’t cooperate, and he corresponds via email with faithful friends across the country. He has sadly bid a final farewell to some of those longtime friends as they made the final checkout in recent months.
The computer and his Roku connections on television are his window to the world and he keeps up with all the global news and trends. Every few days we take a walk in the local park, weather permitting, and he keeps his bones moving. His health is generally good for a nonagenarian. He’d be as spry as a thirty-something if it wasn’t for his arthritis and his hearing loss. He prepares all his meals, and is a superb chef. Once in a while he will accept invitations for restaurant fare, or allow friends less-adept in the kitchen to share meals with him. (Like me.)
At this honorable age, we couldn’t let his special day in March this year go by without some kind of celebration safe in the confines of his 3-bedroom abode. With that in mind, I issued an invitation to his faithful friends to suggest a good title he might use if he were to write a memoir of his remarkable life. The suggestions are a world of entertainment themselves. To extend his celebration further into his 93rd year, I share them below. Enjoy!
On stage with Lois Smith
Possible titles for a memoir:
Gentleman Rebel: The Life and Times of Barry Edward McGuire
A Bus to Broadway
Joy in the Moment
My Life Before an Audience
The Art of Taking a Bow
A Man for All Seasons: Magician, Puppeteer, Actor, Director, Poetic Gardener, Theater Builder, Tourism Promoter, and All-around Neat Guy
Prudent, Patient, Persistent: Savoring a Life
Magic in the Desert, Flowers in the Town—Bringing Enchantment to My Little Corner of the World
How to Talk to Geese—and Keep Them out of Your Garden and Away from Your Strawberries
No One Gets Through the Forest of the Blue—How Puppets Saved Santa’s Village
Cripple Creek, Colorado
Give Me My Walker and Watch Me Go! I May Be Stooped but I’m Not Slow—Staying Active in Your Golden Years
Typewriters and Toasters—The Fun to be Had With Classics
Baking Bread with Barry
I Danced with Debbie Reynolds! My Life on Stage and Screen
Surviving the 7th Day Adventist Missionary Visits. Know Your Bible and Have Some Fun
A Life of Adventure and Love—The Places I’ve Been and the People I’ve Known
It’s Been One Hell of a Ride! Things I Know Now I’m Glad I Didn’t Know Then
Barry McGuire’s Garden of Life
From Stage and Screen and a Zen Monk’s Mail Route to Rescuing a Great Plains Town
Barry McGuire’s Magical, Amazing Life Played in the Key of Kindness
Waters Run Deep and Wide at Little House in the Woods
Barry McGuire: the Entertainer, the Music Lover, and the Friend
A Diamond Found in Kansas
Barry McGuire: the 20th Century Star and a Good Friend of Mine
To Follow a Dream
Life is What You Bake It
The Barry Magic of Barry McGuire: Dancing With the Stars and Entertaining Young, Old, and Everyone in Between
Dancing with Debbie
Life with Man’s Best Friend: The Cat
Finding Life’s Truth Through Characters on Stage
57,718 Million Miles and Counting: Adventures on Spaceship Earth Through 92 Revolutions
The Multitudinous Achievements of Barry McGuire, or What Happens When You Unleash One Creative Kind o’ Guy in Southeastern Kansas!
With a sense of blissful excitement, I am pleased to announce the arrival of my latest book project, Grandma Georgia’s Recipe File. A divergence from my previous endeavors–hardly suspense fiction–there’s not a single piano in its pages, but it’s still ripe with story.
1984
Georgia Wells Harris was a quiet woman, but she opened her home and her heart to everyone. Each of her family members loved her dearly. She lived a devout faith, slow to anger, loving through dissention, refusing to judge others. Born October 3, 1891 in the Ozark hills of Missouri, her family migrated to central Kansas before the turn of the century in covered wagons, and by rail. She lived through the depression, two world wars, birthed four children, and buried two of them before her own last breath. A farm wife, her realm was home and garden. She kept everyone fed through good times and bad.
Quilting lessons, 1979
She spent her free time crafting quilts and gave them away to each of her children, grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren that she knew. She socialized with clubs of neighbor women at church and in a one-room schoolhouse auxiliary called “72 Club.” She delighted in simple things and her easy laughter was contagious.
Georgia blowing bubbles in the timber one Easter in the early 70s.
My grandmother’s dilapidated recipe file came to me a decade ago after my father passed away. Though I always knew I would share it someday, the time for sharing was postponed by the bustle of a busy life. I wanted to share the cards with all my grandmother’s living grandchildren, my two sisters and a cousin and me. But the project got tabled, and mostly forgotten.
1971
Then a year ago, that busy life came to a standstill due to the COVID restrictions. I am not the only person who discovered that one blessing of the COVID time was to open the chance to catch up on long-overdue projects. This was one of them. In fact, the slower pace reminded me of Grandma Georgia and how I appreciated the slower pace of her life.
1976
Visits to her in my young adulthood always slowed me down and I relished the peace of her quiet life. Last October I pulled the little pink recipe file box from my hutch and began to catalog the cards. It didn’t take long to realize that there were very few duplicates. I would have to split them up. How could I possibly divide them into 4 equivalent batches? What if I sent the wrong recipes to people? Then there was the valid possibility that maybe–just maybe–we’d all like the entire set of recipes.
The idea of making a recipe book was born the moment I realized it would be impossible to split up the cards and be sure that the right granddaughter received those appropriate for her. Why not make them all available to all of us? I began to type the recipes into word documents on my computer. As I typed, it became clearer how much of our lives are told by the food we eat, those favorite dishes we share with our loved ones.
1985
She had noted names on many cards, to remember who provided those recipes to her. Some people I knew. Many I barely knew. Some were total strangers to me. Her dear daughter, and some of us grandchildren were noted, but there were other family names I had only heard about, including Mabel and Florence Ethel (Pete) whom you might recall from the story “High Courage.”
I became doubly excited about this booklet idea. In addition to creating my grandmother’s recipe book, I would use this project to learn how to format manuscripts for publication. The project took on multiple objectives.
I intended to surprise my sisters and cousin at Christmastime.
Well, some things just can’t be rushed. Christmas came and went, and I was still working on designing the cover with the help of my computer-savvy stepson. What’s wrong with Valentine’s Day, I thought? Often in past years, our “Christmas” greetings became Fellentines. This could fit right into that.
But Valentine’s Day came and went also, while waiting on the printing process.
However, I am happy to announce that the project has come to a very successful completion. Last week, I received my first order of the recipe books, and I packaged up several to send off and surprise family members. The unexpected books by now have reached every destination, so the secret is out!
When chatting about this project in December with some friends, I mentioned that I didn’t expect anyone beyond family to be interested. But some friends insisted that they would like the opportunity to have one of these traditional family cookbooks. I felt quite honored by that declaration. My proof-reader sister asked if I’d autographed all the books, and I replied, “I autographed NONE of them. I don’t really feel like it’s my book. It’s Grandma Georgia’s.”
Spring flowers blooming at Georgia’s house.
With satisfaction, I can report that I did manage to work through the steps to format this booklet without assistance. Very cool. No need to shy away from that process in my future endeavors. And with love filling my heart, I can say that the opportunity to read through some of Grandma Georgia’s letters was incredibly rewarding. I had kept every one that she sent me before she died June 25, 1990. The correspondence allowed me to season the book with bits of her life philosophy. In this blog’s new “Comfort Foods” category, I will share a few more recipes, as well as snippets of philosophy, in coming weeks. There will be recipes from Georgia’s kitchen, but also some from other beloved friends and relatives. Stay tuned!
My heart is full. I offer the recipe book with love to anyone who needs a lift.
The Bridge 