Sugar Maple leaves, Vancouver, B.C. October 2014.
Well, this has turned into quite a long silence, here on the bookish blog. Completely unintentional, and nothing’s exactly wrong in my life, except for extreme busy-ness of the sort that has me turning in tight circles. If I were a juggler, Barnum and Bailey would be eyeing me with interest, for the balls are numerous and all – amazingly! – still up in the air and under some semblance of control.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Touch wood!
I’ve been reading Rachel Peden lately, for I find she soothes my somewhat preoccupied mind. Some of you will know her. Those who don’t, a very quick bio. She was an Indiana farmer, naturalist, environmentalist and writer, and wrote a “rural life” column for big city newspaper syndication from the 1940s to the 1970s. She also wrote three highly esteemed books, full of anecdote and natural observations and personal philosophy. These were Rural Free (1961), The Land, The People (1966), and Speak to the Earth (1974). I prize my copies greatly, for they are full of passages such as this:
They come from everywhere, from nowhere, suddenly collected around whatever draws them: vinegar gnats around a bitten apple, people around an accident, fight or fire.
People want to hear about misfortune, wars, deaths, disasters, the bad news. Partly because inherent in man’s developing subconscious mind is the knowledge that change is inevitable and necessary, the very core of evolution.
But probably the greater reason for people’s fascination with bad news is spiritual, based in the deep subconscious mind where in pity and gratitude the onlooker thinks, “There but for the grace…” This is, in its way, a prayer of thanksgiving.
People who say, “I never pray,” are therefore as inaccurate as people who say, “I never dream.” For everybody prays, either consciously or unconsciously. Prayer is any thought or emotion that acknowledges a relationship between mankind and his fellow citizens of earth, and their mutual creative authority.
~Rachel Peden, Speak to the Earth
Leaves & Pages 
I think she is wonderful. I spent a year with her and Gladys Taber and so enjoyed the reading time.
Wonderful, indeed. I think very highly of her work. And I am going to be revisting Gladys Taber in the new year, once I get this Century of Books project tidied up. My mother had several of her books and I read them with great pleasure when I was young; my occasional encounters in later years have all been good ones.