Knowing by Heart
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Read the Blog
  • Get the Book
  • The Whitney Journals
  • Remembering Lee
  • Archived Blog Posts

Blog Posts

These columns were originally published in the Kings County Record between 1984 and 2016.
The illustrations are by Alice, most of the photographs are by Lee

Rose Fever...

26/7/2018

Comments

 

Read More
Comments

Olden Times came face-to-face with Modern Times when President Clinton came to Oxford

12/7/2018

Comments

 
With forty-five's recent visit to London, we thought this column about an encounter with another controversial politician was appropriate.

I used to say, when people would accuse me of being a hopeless romantic just because I studied the Middle Ages: "If you want to understand what is going on today you have to understand the Middle Ages."  It never worked of course. Everyone "knows" that the Middle Ages was full of all the things we have risen above: ignorance, superstition, cruelty, and--the list of horrors always concludes--dirt. "People never bathed, did they?" is the usual rhetorical question. To which the unrhetorical answer is, “Of course they did,” but the deodorant industry has convinced us otherwise.
An age which coined the word 'genocide' - the term first appears in print in 1944 - and made it a common term on the evening news, and in which 'holocaust' acquired both a definite article and a capital 'h' seems to be on rather shaky ground when it comes to pointing fingers and calling names, but then we always see our own times in terms of what is best and all other times and places in terms of what is worst.
Middle Ages and modern times came cheek by jowl during my time in Oxford, England, some years ago, and the Middle Ages came off rather well, I thought. It all happened this way....
"You came to town to see your president?" the Pakistani driver of the bus asked, hearing my accent as I asked for a ticket on returning from a four-day trip to Cornwall.
"What president?" I hadn't heard of any president of mine being in Oxford.
"President Clinton!" he crowed. "He's getting an honorary degree from the University tomorrow."
"He's not my president," I replied and dragged my suitcase to a seat and sat down, wondering as I did so at the firmness of my reply and its promptness. After 32 years in Canada since coming from the States I was delighted to discover where my loyalties lay.




Read More
Comments

Slogans and such

5/7/2018

Comments

 
PictureArtwork © Alice Whitney 2018
​"If everything seems to be going well you've obviously overlooked something."   -Anon.
I don't remember my parents' home being filled with little slogans or plaques covered with the "Serenity Prayer" and that sort of thing.  Nowadays you can't even get a teabag that doesn't feel it has something uplifting to tell you.
I do remember some of the places we rented on vacation went in for homey things like the verse about the owl.  The crash of rhythm and meter in the last line -in a desperate attempt to get some thought in before the form died - has stuck with me all these years:



Read More
Comments

    Words & Images

    We moved to our farm in Sussex, New Brunswick from Toronto in 1977, only moving away in 2014. 

    For over 30 years of our life there, I wrote a weekly column for the Kings County Record in Sussex chronicling the little events that are the heart of ‘daily life’ in a small place in the country.  These blog posts are drawn from those columns.

    The weekly column became, over the years, a series of bench-marks or surveyor’s stakes to record the contours of the place we lived, its dreaming hills and fertile valleys, icy chasms and swift-flowing streams. 

    While I no longer live on the farm, we continue to share the columns from time to time on this blog.  And very soon you will be able to read my book!  To be published in December 2019.  

    ----
    Images on the blog are drawn from my own photography,  and my wife Alice's artwork.  We occasionally resort to other people's images when nothing we have on hand suits the content of the post.  

    Archives

    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016

    Categories

    All
    Appalachian
    Back To The Land
    Beetles
    Birds
    Cats
    Chickens
    Children
    Chokecherry
    Christmas
    Cows
    Crossword Puzzles
    Dandelion
    Dogs
    Farm
    Farming
    Fruit Wines
    Garden
    Geology
    God
    Hagarenes
    Haying
    Hinduism
    History
    Homesteading
    Kittatinny
    Livestock
    Moab
    Murder Mysteries
    Pennsylvania
    Pets
    Politics
    Psalms
    Rhubarb
    Seasons
    Shenandoah
    Spiders
    Spring
    Strawberries
    Toronto
    Tuscarora
    Virginia
    Weather
    William Cobbett
    Winemaking
    Winter

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Read the Blog
  • Get the Book
  • The Whitney Journals
  • Remembering Lee
  • Archived Blog Posts