Beth Durham's Blog, page 33

The Purpose of The Land of Saddlebags

I write fiction. I read fiction. It’s not that I’m opposed to non-fiction, it’s just that the reality of our world is often so bleak that in the limited time I get to read, I think I want to escape into a good book. Understanding this desire, I’ll confess that my writing has been criticized as “too real”.

However, historical research must be conducted in the realm of facts – at least as much as is available, and a lot of the history I want to learn about isn’t recorded in detail. So when I’...

The Printed Word

Last week my husband left my bible behind at church and I was without it for a whole week. I grabbed it up on Sunday and it’s back in the house this week. It’s rather like having found a lost friend. But it made me think about the bibles we have in the house – in fact about all of the books that we have. Our access to the printed word (both traditionally printed on paper and digital works as well) is really overwhelming if you think about it. And you know that I can never help but make the h...

Apple Stack Cake

After sharing the story of my delicious failure at boiled icing, one of you treasured readers mentioned Apple Stack Cake and I thought I needed to make one soon. Now, this rich cake needs people to eat it, so I had to wait for an event and the church homecoming seemed like an ideal time. (We need to talk about homecomings sometime, don’t we?)

Just between you and me, I’m not a big fan of potlucks and I’ll tell you why. I cook old fashioned. Learned from my grannies, loved their cooking and...

Quilting In India

Tennessee Mountain Stories is supposed to be a blog about the history of Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau. And one of our greatest traditions is quilting. So when I saw an advertisement that explained the “Kantha” created by the women of West Bengal, India, I was naturally fascinated and wanted to share this with you.

The verbatim text from the advertisement for Southeastern Salvage is:

For centuries, village women in West Bengal, India have stitched together scraps of cloth and old saris to cr...

Monterey Train Depot Museum

The gift shop at the Monterey Depot Museum has graciously agreed to stock Replacing Ann and I want to thank Julie Bohannon for that. When I visited the museum recently to deliver the books I took the opportunity to snap some pictures and make some notes to share with you.

When the Tennessee Central Railroad finally topped the plateau in 1890, they quickly realized that the climb up the mountain would tax their steam engines and by 1905 a maintenance facility was built in Monterey and the s...

A Delicious Failure

I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately – would it surprise you to know that it’s a result of trying to be more disciplined in my eating? In talking with a friend about cakes and icings, I got to thinking about old fashioned boiled icing so I made this lovely cake.

Just take a moment to laugh, it’s fine, we all did.

Now I’m willing to admit – even photograph – my less than perfect creations. I’m willing for two reasons. First, I’m far from perfect and a product like this helps remind me. Se...

Isoline Campbell namesake of Isoline, Tennessee

Isoline Campbell

I am really excited about today’s article because the source is YOU – one of my readers. Thank you Dee for sending me the information you found about R.O. Campbell and his daughter Isoline.

Just as an aside, Dee’s email was particularly exciting because my vision for this blog would be a conversation among readers in the comments of the stories. I have a little bit of information and knowledge – ya’ll have tons of it! The trick is for us to all share it, and that’s how we can...

Railroad Ghost Town

Campbell Junction Depot
From Tennessee Coal Mining, Railroading, & Logging (Duke, Turner Publishing, Paducah, KY 2003)

A little over a year ago I wrote a guest blog for AppalachianHistory.net on ghost towns. I got to thinking about this subject again this week; I’ll try not to repeat that previous post since you can click over and read it on that site. However, I’m very fascinated by the changing communities and wanted to mention it here.

If you’ve spent much time tramping around our woods, yo...

Chocolate Gravy and Other Comfort Foods

As I continue preparing to speak to the Monterey Depot Museum on April ninth, I was thrilled to read chef Bruce Wilson’s description of the dessert he’s planning:

“…my personal favorite course for this dinner is my signature dessert that combines my love of sundaes with my favorite childhood breakfast of chocolate gravy and biscuits! The freshly made whipped cream melts with the ice cream into the chocolate sauce and soaks into the sour cream pound cake and replicates the texture of that bre...

Trains and Riding the Rails

Trains are a favorite subject of mine – there is a romance about the idea of rail travel that draws boys and girls of all ages. The day of the railroad was a slower, sweeter time – at least in my imagination! Imagine then my joy when the Monterey Depot Museum invited me to speak at an upcoming fund raiser. I have all kinds of ideas bumping around in my busy brain as I try to organize this presentation. More importantly, I am immersing myself in rail-research. So I thought I’d share some with...