Ouida Finch Peterson

Today one of my oldest (oldest in Lyndie time) friends is being laid to rest and my heart is for today breaking. 

Ouida was the only 7 year old I knew who wore dog tags. According to her, the dog tags would identify her in case she drowned in someone’’s backyard pool. 

My mind would spin with the questions. I knew her parents, and I couldn’t imagine she could be anywhere without them knowing. And who did she know that had a pool in the backyard? 

Yet, there was a small still voice that said, if anyone could slip into a pool without her parents knowing, it would be Ouida. And, in delight, I would ask her to tell the story again. 

Ouida was joy and movement, contagious laughter which drew you to her. Her spirit was musical. 

Everyone has a special Ouida movement. For me it was a program I created for Rainbows. No one remembers my wonderful program, but no ever forgot Ouida’s deliver of her one line, “Behold the turtle.”

This abrupt end of life for someone so full of life is the hardest part to comprehend. 

Beneath The Texas Sky, the third book in The Lazy M Ranch series

Beneath The Texas Sky, the third book in The Lazy M Ranch series

Written by Kasandra Elaine, the writing team of Kassy Paris and Elaine Bonner

Beneath The Texas Sky published by Wild Rose Publishing in 2009,

ISBN 0-9712522-2-X

Disclaimer: Kassy Paris, a member of the writing team, is my cousin.

The books in the Lazy M Ranch series revolve around the Lazy M Ranch and the people associated with the ranch. While this is the third book in this series, the first two books do not have to be read to understand the plot. However, the reader’s experience will be greatly enriched by having read First I’m Nobody and Redigo’s Choice.

It has been fun and encouraging to watch the growth of the authors in this series. The writers have gone  from simple good writing to strong characters and plot development in Beneath the Texas Sky.

Beneath The Texas Sky

The focus in Beneath the Texas Sky returns to the working Lazy M Ranch. Rosita, John Redigo’s daughter, comes to the ranch from Mexico to spend some time with her newly-found birth father. All the folks at the ranch welcome her with open arms. One of the young ranch hands takes a special interest in her.

During her stay, mysterious events began to happen at the ranch threatening its   financial stability. The intrigue of discovering the source of these events and ending the threats eventually involves everyone on the ranch and their relatives, including some retired Texas Rangers. The action is carried from North Texas to inside Mexico. It has all the makings of a great Texas mystery.

In terms of relationships, this book develops more fully the relationships began in the previous books. However, the center of the story is the next generation of Rosita and the young ranch hand, Billy Gant. In their relationship, they face conflicts that are similar to the ones Rosita’s mother and John Redigo faced: wealth, class and private ambitions. They both are bringing their own faith baggage from their pasts.

Will the young people be able to develop a relationship amidst the intrigue and conflict?

Will they have more success than Rosita’s parents?

Once again, the writing team of Kasandra Elaine has maintained strong themes of characters struggling with faith and dependence on God. Some characters demonstrate their faith as they face the trials of their circumstances, while others are confronted with their need for redemption.

This is a great continuation of the lives of characters we have come to care about. It leaves the reader with a longing to know what happens next. 

Redigo’s Choice is book two in The Lazy M Ranch series.

Redigo’s Choice is book two in The Lazy M Ranch series.

Author: Kasandra Elaine, the writing team of Kassy Paris and Elaine Bonner

Published by: Wild Rose Publishing in 2008 ISBN 1-60154-391-3

Disclaimer: Kassy Paris, a member of the writing team, is my cousin.

While this is the second book in this series, the previous book does not have to be read to understand the plot. However, the reader’s experience will be enriched by having read First I’m Nobody. 

Redigo’s Choice

Redigo’s Choice tells the story of the early life of John Redigo, the Lazy M Ranch’s manager. In his youth, he was a poor cowboy in South Texas working on a ranch when he. He fell in love with the boss’s niece, the daughter of a wealthy Mexican ranch owner. Despite their class difference, the couple enjoys a whirlwind romance and an even briefer, secret marriage. Her powerful father is able to drive the couple apart physically and emotionally. After a hasty divorce, Redigo wanders across Texas working briefly at a series of ranches until he finds a home near Denton at the Lazy M Ranch.

Twenty-five years later, Redigo and the ranch’s housekeeper, Addie Murphy, begin to realize their feelings for each other are deeper than the long friendship they have enjoyed. Before their new future together is stable, Redigo’s daughter from his brief marriage enters their lives.

From Rosita, Redigo learns the love of his youth is being threatened. Will he be able to rescue his first true love and keep the current love of his life? 

Woven into the story are the characters’ struggles with faith and dependence on God.  Some characters demonstrate their faith as they face the trials of their circumstances, while others are confronted with their need for redemption.

The story delivers all of the promises of the back cover. It is a story of the joys of love in youth and in the older stages of life. It also speaks to the need we have for good friends in our lives.  

The third book in the series is Beneath the Texas Sky.

First I’m Nobody, the first book in The Lazy M Ranch series

First I’m Nobody, the first book in The Lazy M Ranch series

Written by Kasandra Elaine, the writing team of Kassy Paris and Elaine Bonner

Published by Wild Rose Publishing in 2008

ISBN 1-60154-262-3

Disclaimer: Kassy Paris, a member of the writing team, is my cousin.

The three books in the series tell stories of the people associated with the Lazy M Ranch set outside of Denton, Texas. Skylar McCrea inherited the ranch as a young woman when her parents were killed in an accident. John Redigo, the foreman, and Addie Murphy, the housekeeper, loved and supported Skylar, while helping her raise and train champion show horses. The atmosphere on the ranch was more like a family rather than boss and employees.

First I’m Nobody

 As they are preparing to show their potential champion, Skylark’s Son in Ft Worth, a stranger is seriously injured in a hit-and-run accident just outside the gate of the ranch. The man has some broken bones, amnesia and no identification. His nurses name him Duke Green to avoid using the common John Doe. Skylar is intrigued by the mystery man and offers him a room at her ranch during his recovery. Soon, Duke has made a place for himself as a friend and hand at the ranch.  Yet, Duke was haunted by the notion of being ‘nobody.’

The relationship between Skylar and Duke grows with each passing day. Duke’s past must be resolved before they can commit to each other. To unravel his past, Duke and Skylar follow small clues across the country. It is a journey including deception, betrayal, Texas Rangers and almost everyone in their lives.

Woven into the story are the characters’ struggles with faith and dependence on God.  Some characters demonstrate their faith as they face the trials of their circumstances, while others are confronted with their need for redemption.

Will Duke prove to be the man his new friends sense he is, or will he turn out to be a thief who has deceived them all?

The story delivers all of the promises of the back cover. It is an engaging tale of life on a Texas horse ranch and is filled with intriguing characters. 

The second book in the series is Redigo’s Choice.

What are you thankful for?

That is the question being asked everywhere I’ve turned this week. And it leaves me cold. I know, I have many things to be grateful for. I have had a good life, but it is not quite the life I wanted.

Thanksgiving begins a .season where I feel the anguish of not having a family of my own. I miss the gatherings of my youth, of the sense of belonging they provided me.  

And while I’m grateful for the people in my life and for career that has provided a wonderful retirement for me, the thing I am most grateful for are words and books. 

I am grateful that God’s spoken word has created this world we live in. I am grateful that His written word has reached into my heart and guides my life. 

I am grateful God shared words with writers who wrote books that allowed my imagination to soar. I am grateful for books that are my consistent friends. 

People seem to come and go, but the books on my shelves speak of my life.

I am grateful that I will write some of those books. 

JFK memories

So many memories are tied into the weekend JFK died and was buried. 

Listening to Walter Cronkite almost non-stop.

Watching Lee Harvey Oswald killed almost before your eyes. 

Seeing little John-John salute his father. 

The urge to write it all  down. 

Yesterday, after the Turkey Trot, we walked through Dealy Plaza on the opposite side from the Book Repository and then through the Triple underpass. It was such a beautiful plaza, but in the flash of a gunshot became for all time a valley of death. 

There was always next year...

 All  those times we sang ‘and its goodbye to A&M’

  we really didn’t mean it. At least, I don’t think we did...

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful we won. I ordered the T-Shirt this morning from the CO-OP. 

I am also glad it was a fight to the end, fitting wasn’t it? It made the win so bittersweet, made you so aware of how bad you would feel to have lost this game. 

Through the years in my association with Aggies, I’ve found if you watch, they will eventually, do something that is so ‘Aggie.’ (This, of course, does not include my cousins, who decided for whatever reason, to go to A&M.) Maybe this move to the SEC is just another, in a long line, of Aggie jokes. 

Those who feel there is hatred between Texas and A&M don’t really understand what rivalry is all about, as far as I’m concerned. 

Maybe I’ve spent too much time recently thinking about the Civil War, but I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t another example of the influence of carpetbaggers. We survived when ‘they’ moved The Game to Friday. I hate to admit how many times I lugged a TV to work to watch the game. 

One of the great elements of a real rivalry is, regardless what happens on game day, there was always next year. And now we’ve lost that...

Maybe, I feel this way because I also lost a childhood friend this week. One day she was in her car, the next moment she was gone. For all of her friends, there won’t be a next year either....

Give the ball to Lyndie

 Cowboys RB 'controversy' has simple solution: give DeMarco the ball

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/dallas-cowboys/headlines/20111116-george-cowboys-rb-controversy-has-simple-solution-give-demarco-the-ball.ece

This was an article headline in today’s morning news by Brandon George. George believes regardless of who starts, if the Cowboys want to win, DeMarco should have the bulk of carries based on his performance. 

What an awesome responsibility.  But, I remember the years when we won, there was always that player, who trusted, if we could just get the ball into his hands...

For a moment, I had a glimpse into heaven and a wondered whom did Jesus see as his go to guy at this time? What would it mean, if it were me?

My ‘fall’ of Steven James

I’ve dubbed this season of my life, the ‘fall’ of Steven James. I took several workshops recently taught by Steven and sat a couple of times at his table during meals. I’ve read a few of his many books now.  Story, one of his non-fiction books, touched my heart and gave me some new insights into my faith. I’ve now read 4 of his 5 Patrick Bowers novels, The Pawn, The Rook, The Knight and The Bishop. Steven’s craft continues to grow with each book. 

In these psychological thrillers, Patrick Bowers is an FBI agent is a recent widower, who is trying to balance a stressful career and learning to parent his teenage step-daughter, Tessa. He seems to be targeted by the most evil of criminals and in constant trouble with his supervisors, step-daughter and girlfriends. Confronted daily with evil, he has a growing awareness of the evil in him in his response to the villains. Tessa is exposed to this evil sometimes outright, sometimes in a secondary manner. Both Tessa and Patrick, in their own ways, are slowly coming to understand how evil dominates this world and the consequences for them.

The pace of the books is fast. The characters and plots are compelling, and the symbolism is subtle but powerful. I particularly like the symbolism of the bishop chess piece in The Bishop.

Having spent the classroom time with Steven recently, I have to confess that his persona became Patrick Bowers for me. 

I have to take a short James respite to read a book by another friend of mine as an early influencer. I can’t wait to start The Queen and find out what’s next for Patrick and Tessa.   

Dee Neathery Corkins- A special friend I lost this weekend

I lost my closest college friend, Dee, this weekend to cancer. Her passing has left me forlorn. We had one of those wonderful friendships that regardless of the time we were away from each other, we were able to connect as if no time had passed. 

In college, we spent many hours talking about the books we loved. She went to see ‘Butterflies Are Free” with me. I went with her to “Hair”. I drove us to heavy rock concerts, she came with me to see Ferrante and Teicher. And movies, we saw so many movies.  In a time before VCR’s, college auditoriums, on the weekends ,were turned into movie theaters and the admission was a dollar. On Thursdays, the Daily Texas would have the ads for the on and off campus movies. We would carefully plan our weekend. Our record was 5 movies in a row at 5 different locations. Together, we discovered Fellini, Woody Allen, The Marx’s Brothers and well, life. Connecting hearts, who at least in the beginning and maybe always, drew strength from each other to charge into the adult world. 

A couple of years out of college, she married Doug, this wonderful guy from Vermont. The ceremony was here in Texas. I was both Maid of Honor and Best Man. It was the first wedding where I was promoted from cake cutter to bridesmaid. 

While they experimented with living in Texas, they came to my brother’s wedding. Dee and I took Doug to his first UT football game. 

She moved to Vermont and I stayed in Texas.  I saw Vermont in the summer, fall, and winter and I love being connected to Vermont. When Howard Dean come into national scene, I could close my eyes and think of Doug and Dean became a real person rather than a flat image on the screen. 

Once, they picked me up in Montreal and took me to my first NHL hockey game. I learned about Hockey night in Canada. We skied, both downhill and cross -country. When I buy apples and strawberries, I think of the times we went to the apple orchard and strawberry farm to pick our own fruit. Once, Dee and I drove to Maine and ate our first lobster in the shell on the harbor coast, 

I drove to Huntsville a couple of times to see them when they were here visiting Dee’s family.  I loved watching her girls grow up in the photos she sent me. I still remember  being so aware at Dee’s parents 50th anniversary how much Caitlin looked like the 18 year old Dee I first met. 

Dee made me a quilt that I still use and cherish. 

 In the last 10 years or so, Dee and Doug worked hard to be able to travel the world, a life long dream of hers.  

During the 41 years of our friendship, we were apart more than we were together. Yet, there was something so sweet in knowing there was someone out there who knew and loved the real me. Now, she is gone from this world. 

We learned of her cancer about a year ago.  This summer, we knew the chemo hadn’t worked. With my parents’ health this year, I wasn’t able to make the trip to see her. Her 3 adult daughters were able to come home in October. She wan’t alone at the end, but there is this tugging in my heart that I should have done more. 

My special friend will be missed.  

Dee Neathery Corkins

The Power of Words

November 9, 1989 the gates to East Germany were opened allowing free travel and commerce between East and West Germany. 

We’ll probably never know if the wall came down because President Reagan challenged the communists leaders with these four words, “Tear down this wall.”

We know he said them. He said out loud in public. Words the whole world had thought  for decades, but never spoken, and twenty-nine months later the wall came down. 

Maybe it was that simple. 

One Sunday morning, when we studying Acts, one of my fifth graders said to me, “Peter couldn’t have said just these words, “Repent and be baptized” and have 3,000 people respond. But that is pretty much what we are told. 

A different four words which eternal freedom. 

How will you use your words today? 

Don’t you love this country?

In 2000 on November 8th, Florida began the statewide recount of the 2000 presidential election. We learned ‘chad’ wasn’t just a guy’s name. And we waited patiently for a month to learn who would be our next president. It was all so, well, civilized.

This is particularly true as we have watched the cost of leadership changes in other countries this year. 

It is why we Americans love football. It is very civilized. When the play starts we stand,  yelling our heads off. Then the referee blows the whistle, we sit down for the time-out and return to civility, even politely passing the coke to opponent’s team fan sitting next to us. 

It reminds me of the October weekend in the late 80’s - early 90’s when a mid-eastern man stayed in a downtown Dallas hotel. In the middle of the night he was awaken by loud noised from the street below. From his experience, it sound like a political riot. He stayed away from the windows in terror. In the morning, he called the front desk asking if there had been a revolution. The clerk thought for a second, and laughed, “no that was just Texas-OU weekend.” The man said, “what?” “You know, college football fans.” 

This concept of civility we live under is pretty amazing when you think of it. There has been nothing like it in history. You could say that more than anything we value ‘The Golden Rule’ (Matthew 7:12.) Actually, a form of this rule is a part of every major world religion. 

In my home town, the local Rotary club's flag program has flags flying all over the community this week. They are a great reminder to never take our land for granted. 

What a great day in history for women! Nov 9, 2011

1893 Passage of a referendum made Colorado the first state to grant women the right to vote. 

1911 Marie Curie became the first multiple Nobel Prize winner when she was given the award for chemistry eight years after                              garnering the physics prize with her late husband, Pierre. (She remains the only woman with multiple Nobels and the only                       person to receive the award in two science categories.)

1916 Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress.

2000 Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, becoming the first first lady to win public office. 

In Christian music, there is a great line, ‘may all who come behind us find us faithful.’ It is applicable to us as women. We can never take for granted the liberties we enjoy won for us by courageous and persistent women.

The question is, where will we take womanhood in our generation?

November 1, 2011 11:42 PM

Driving towards Amarillo this afternoon, I watched the most amazing sunset. The wide Texas a panorama view. The sunlight was fading into a soft palette of color. Where the sun couldn't reach on the horizon was dark blue, not black. The day's sky was a crystal blue. High in they daylight sky, juxtaposed to the flocks of birds flying low, were several jet streams streaking across the sky. Just as darkness covered my journey deer were grazing on the side of the highway.

I can't recall ever being so aware of twilight. In my hotel room I looked up the dictionary definition of twilight. What I experienced was straight off the page, (screen in this instance,) these beautiful colors at the end of a successful day.

Sent from my iPad