Why Rent? On Our Lost Pursuit of Property

The earliest river I recall is a muddy branch of the East Fork of the White River, winding through the rural southern Indiana county where I grew up. My friends and I would bike to a rusted iron grate bridge over that branch, the Honeytown Bridge, which rose like some ancient beast from a sea of lowland cornfields. I recall the thrill of aligning my bike tires in the narrow grooves between wider, splintery planks that were there for the tires of cars — flashes of brown water below, a quivering railing on either side.

I drove to find that bridge recently and was sorry to see it replaced by a bland, bleached concrete thing with a flimsy metal guardrail — like one on any roadway, over any river, anywhere. All around it, still those same cornfields. Nothing but corn anywhere you looked. Barely begun sprouts of it on that first day of June — there’d been lots of rain, and farmers were late getting it planted, my father said. These are the fields that I learned, growing up, to call the bottoms. Bottom of the sloping hills, bottom of the agricultural ladder, land that always floods. Fertile land, but volatile, as likely to be underwater as not, less accessible to the big machinery of big farming.

Even a forgotten little river like the White River has its potency. Yet I don’t recall the quiet farmers I knew as a child reaching for ways to describe the river’s power, ascribing human qualities to this sometime foe, this routine flooder of their bottom land. That I’ve found, instead, in the work of poets, like the farmer-poet Robert Frost. In an early poem called “A Brook in the City” (about an urban stream he calls “an immortal force/ No longer needed”), Frost describes this brook as “Staunch[ed] . . . at its source/ With cinder loads dumped down . . . And all for nothing it had ever done/ Except forget to go in fear.

Cottage Sunshine: Susan Branch...

She now has a blog!!  And it is so delightful!!  I have been a fan of Susan Branch for probably about 12 years....when I discovered her!  I had not been divorced for very long at all and knew I needed to give my little girls a fun, new hobby and interest!  Sooooo...we started scrapbooking!  They LOVED it and spent countless hours with their pictures and being creative.  We would spend a few hours every week after school stopping into the Scrapbooking Store in the area to check out new embellishments!  It was one of the best investments I ever made!  It was quite an amazing distraction for the girls after getting the shock of their lives when their daddy left us. As a result of spending quality time together in the little shop, we discovered Susan Branch's adorable art!  She had the cutest stickers of allllll the stickers in the store!  Her art depicted so much of things we loved and knew as a little family...ants scurrying acoss picnic tablecloths, beach fun, hot summer days with a tall glass of iced tea, beautiful summer flowers and watering cans... I am a single Christian woman who enjoys the simple pleasures in life such as watching the sunset; listening to the songs of birds outside my window; soft sounds of a babbling brook; watching giant snowflakes falling in a peaceful, hushed sanctuary of a winter's evening walk; lying on a sunny, white sandy beach listening to the ocean waves crashing on the beach as seagulls fly overhead. I have been blessed in so many different ways and am grateful to my Heavenly Father for His love and sending His Son to die on the cross for my sins! I have two beautiful daughters and two beautiful granddaughters! My oldest daughter graduated from a wonderful Christian university and my younger daughter married her High School sweetheart before he left for Korea and then Iraq. I sell real estate but my fondest pasttime is to stroll through antique malls finding remnants that remind me of my childhood or my dear mother! I love vintage and cottage decor! Thank you for stopping by my site...hope to see you again soon!

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