Today I’m excited to welcome our friend and writer, Marian Beaman. I honestly can’t remember how we connected. She’s one of those people you meet and you feel as though you’ve been friends forever. I fell in love with her blog and her Aunt Ruthie’s diary excerpts, so I had no doubt her recent memoir Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl would be a book to savor. Marian is back home after a successful and quite tiring book launch to play “would you rather?”
Would you rather be able to freeze time or travel in time?
Travel in time, of course! Then I could tour the dairy farms around Langnau, Switzerland, where my ancestors came from. Several years ago we visited the current Langeneggar family (Yes, it’s spelled correctly that way) on their farm, where they served us homemade bread, cheese, and tea after we inspected the immaculate barn.
I’d like to compare the clothing and house furnishings that I observed back in the 1990s during that visit with those of two hundred or more years ago. I’d listen for yodeling and the tinkle of cowbells. Maybe even an alphorn!
Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or fly?
Flying is more appealing to me than water sports. I have dreamed of traveling the planet to visit my writer friends and blog readers: Canada, England, Wales, Ireland, Spain, and South Africa. In the United States: California, Oregon, Idaho, Michigan, Wisconsin, Vermont, Virginia. Oops! Who did I miss?
Would you rather live in the middle of nowhere, with no people or stores within a 10-miles radius, or live in a busy city?
The middle of nowhere sounds nice, but only if I’m meeting a writing deadline or when hiking would reward me with spring blooms or fall foliage, which I missed out on this year. Right now I’m happy living in the suburbs, with a library, museums, a river ferry just ten miles away downtown. Sometimes walking around my neighborhood I get to chat with an older person (someone around my age, actually!) or a young mother strolling with a baby. An introvert, I’m not!
Would you rather be able to take back anything you say or hear any conversation that is about you?
I try to think before I say anything but don’t always succeed. Years ago, I told a woman recently widowed, “Well, you had thirty-five good years together.” At the time, I thought I said the right thing, but now I realize to someone happily married, the number of years is never long enough. I should have just sat quietly with her – or given her a hug.
On another note: Once I heard that we would be surprised how little space we take up in other people’s minds. Maybe I’m deluding myself, but I don’t believe that people think or talk much about me because they are focused on their own concerns.
Would you rather never be able to write or never able to read?
Writing and reading are two sides of the same coin, inseparable for me! Reading fuels my writing and vice versa. I can’t imagine a life without either one. Reading others’ books helped me with writing my own, and I found wonderful quotes for my books, or ones I wished I could have used. As Stephen King has said, “Books are . . . portable magic.”
Marian Longenecker Beaman is a former professor at Florida State College in Jacksonville, Florida. Her memoir, Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl, records the charms and challenges of Mennonite girlhood in mid-twentieth century Pennsylvania.
Such is the backdrop for the story of one Mennonite girl who benefited from a sheltered life with firm boundaries, but who bucked church tradition along with coming to terms with an adversarial relationship with her father. She shares her story to preserve these memories and to leave a legacy for future generations.
One of Marian’s stories “Gutsy in Ukraine” was published in My Gutsy Story Anthology by Sonia Marsh, September 2014. Another story Making Love Edible, appeared in the Food and Faith issue of The Mennonite, September 2016. The Jacksonville Arts and Antiques magazine published a personal profile in the fall 2018 issue. Her memoir will be featured on the National Association of Memoir Writers’ Virtual Book Club 2020.
The author writes weekly on her Plain and Fancy blog: https://marianbeaman.com. She lives with her artist/ designer husband Cliff in Florida, where her grown children and grandchildren also reside.
Links:
Website: https://marianbeaman.com
Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XL5FPW6
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19169570.Marian_Longenecker_Beaman
Facebook: www.facebook.com.marianbeaman
Twitter: www.twitter.com.martabeaman
Instagram: www.instagram.marianbeaman
Blurb for Mennonite Daughter
What if the Mennonite life young Marian Longenecker chafed against offered the chance for a new beginning? What if her two Lancaster County homes with three generations of family were the perfect launch pad for a brighter future? Readers who long for a simpler life can smell the aroma of saffron-infused potpie in Grandma’s kitchen, hear the strains of four-part a capella music at church, and see the miracle of a divine healing.
Follow the author in pigtails as a child and later with a prayer cap, bucking a heavy-handed father and challenging church rules. Feel the terror of being locked behind a dark cellar door. Observe the horror of feeling defenseless before a conclave of bishops, an event propelling her into a different world
Fans of coming-of-age stories will delight in one woman’s surprising path toward self-discovery, a self that lets her revel in shiny red shoes.
Thanks so much for playing along, Marian. Congratulations on your successful memoir!
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Jill Weatherholt 