Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 5

Meadowlark Songs: Jane, Woman of Faith and Integrity–and a wish

I had not planned to include Jane Watson Branson in Meadowlark Songs until I found delightful information about her on, of all places, her findagrave page. Information through findagrave isn’t that reliable, but it can point you to original documents.

Rocky Fork

George Washington was president
when Jane Watson was born in Virginia,
one of the original thirteen colonies to become a state.

After her family moved to Grainger County, Tennessee,
she married Lemuel Branson in 1806, among the foothills
of the Great Smoky Mountains. By then Thomas Jefferson,
another Founding Father, was president, our third.
There were seventeen states.

Lemuel and Jane had six children–three sons 
and three daughters–by the time they loaded up
their belongings to trundle four hundred miles
seeking greener pastures in Parke County, Indiana,
coaxed there by Lemuel’s only sister.

Our local Beaverdale Books publishes their top ten best sellers for the month, with an asterisk besides ones written by a local author.

I know that Mother’s Day is over but if you’d still like to get an autographed copy, would you consider stopping in or ordering it from our local indie bookstore during the month of May? Even with shipping (within the US) it’ll cost less than $20. It even comes with a handy bookmark.

515-279-5400
beaverdalebooks@gmail.com

Meadowlark Songs would look very winsome on Beaverdale Books’ May list, in my humble opinion.

 

Hope in the Middle of Unwellness

There’s a “welcome” bear on my shoulder, but my Harry Potter scar is healing well.

The most difficult part of unwellness (long-term fibromyalgia) is no longer feeling useful, even encountering a damper of worthlessness.

I’m also still in limbo with this crabby tummy. One test leads to two more, but so slowly. A couple of tests were clear, so the medical people haven’t located the culprit. Two more coming up, but only one scheduled (gastro). Waiting for the cardio folks.

So I don’t lose more weight, I’m to eat what soft foods I can tolerate, with Pepto Bismol for dessert. When things get too rough, it’s liquids again. 

And should I begin another book? I’ve had no nudges to work on a memoir, although I might be old enough. What about a collection of my old stories published during the 1990s in newspapers and magazines while I was learning to write? Maybe call it The Spider in the Choir Loft and Other Stories. 

I’m not a moody matriarch, but one day last week was about as discouraged as this optimist gets. I needed five naps. Yes, five. And that same day, while slogging “the loop” (10 blocks, including a hill), my leg muscles seized up five times. I had to stop and calm things down. Five times. My Favorite Guy wanted to go out to lunch, but I didn’t feel well enough to eat anything, or even keep him company while he enjoyed eating out. 

The very next morning, in God’s perfect timing, I received a welcome text. And with it, the expectation of experiencing usefulness again. What a blessing! 

Naps that day? My “normal” three. (To calm down fibromyalgia pain and exhaustion–I’ve made peace with it.) Loop hiking seize-ups? None on the early trek, only one the second time. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

I’m so grateful for hope in the middle of this unwellness.

#aginggratefully

That Mournful Long-Long-Short-Long

We’ve lived here in the suburbs nearly fifty years. Hearing train whistles in the distance is just part of the local ambiance. I’d never wondered what a signal meant until recently, probably because I’m just out of deep sleep about the time the 3 a.m. train comes through, with its mournful long-long-short-long song.

I learned that it’s the most common whistle signal which is sounded every time a train approaches a grade crossing. That long-long-short-long signal is specified in railroad manuals.

But the early history of the signal is more fascinating. Long-long-short-long is Morse Code for the letter Q. In England, any ship carrying the Queen would announce her presence by sounding long-long-short-long on the horn to warn other ships in the harbor out of the way. When she began to travel by rail, the same signal followed. When approaching the station, the train whistle wailed the familiar sequence.

The tradition from England came to the US with our railroad system and became the standard signal. It still is today, more than 200 years later.

National Train Day

National Train Day was created by Amtrack in 2008 to commemorate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the US at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

Student Loan, Paid Off!

Paid off in full! 

University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613
Financial Aids

May 7, 1970

Mrs. Joy Kidney
Old Creamery Road
Dexter, Iowa 50070

Dear Mrs. Kidney:

In a few days, you will receive cancellation forms for your National Defense Student Loan. Our records show that you owe a balance of $900 on your loan, so if you canceled ten per cent of your loan for this past year of teaching, it will leave a balance of $710.

Seven hundred and ten dollars along with the 1969-70 cancellation year, will pay off your loan in full.

Sincerely yours,
Dean Jensen
Director of Financial Aids
DJ/mg

Thanks to Grandma Leora’s generosity, my freshman year at the State College of Iowa was paid for. In those days, it cost about $1000 a year for tuition, board, and room. I was on my own after the first year, so I got a job in the college library and applied for a National Defense Student Loan.

I borrowed $700 my sophomore year, $700 junior year, $500 as a senior, or $1900 total. The summer before my senior year, I worked full time at the college library, so I didn’t need to borrow as much.

1970. I made several two-piece dresses from the same pattern as this one.

After graduation, the only year I taught full time was when my Favorite Guy was in Vietnam, 1969-70. I taught second grade at Van Meter, Iowa. If I remember right, my salary for the year was $6500.

Teachers could have part of their loan canceled, a certain amount for each year taught. By paying it off early, I also saved what interest would have cost.

At the bottom of the letter from UNI, I wrote “Paid $710.00 May 9, 1970 – loan paid off in full.”

 

Meadowlark Songs: Doris, Child of the Great Depression

Hand-me-downs and Graduation

An oldest daughter usually gets new clothing,
especially if her mother sews.
But the Great Depression changed things. 

Townspeople dropped off boxes of clothing,
even curtains and other items.
When a donated dress fit Doris, she’d remake it
so that schoolmates couldn’t point out
whose dress it used to be.

She missed the first two weeks of classes
of her senior year, in order to work
at the local canning factory,
preparing ears of corn from neighboring fields,
from early morning until the loads quit arriving.

She earned $6.50 in her first paycheck,
enough for a class ring.
This first female graduate in her family
also earned enough to pay for senior expenses,
including a new dress, that no one else
had worn before, for her senior picture. 
-----
The ebook of Meadowlark Songs is FREE through Sunday, May 11, 2025!

Such a Welcome Gift

This first review of Meadowlark Songs: A Motherline Legacy is such a welcome gift!.Just Bob from WI5.0 out of 5 stars A poetic masterpiece telling of life lived in the heartland over seven generations.

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2025

Verified Purchase.Meadowlark Songs is the capstone of Joy Neal Kidney’s stories about her family in Iowa. Her first four books detailed the history of this family based on her grandmother’s letters and Kidney’s painstaking research. In this present book, she traces her motherline back seven generations, and in poetic language, reveals the strength, faith, and perseverance of women who faced life with grit and determination. The words and connections are powerful, such as when she relates her own eighth grade graduation:“I was handed a diploma by Dr. Chapler,
who delivered me fourteen years earlier,
who had patched up two of the Barrow gang
after the 1933 shootout in Dexfield Park.”.I was once again amazed at the resilience of these Iowa folk, and Kidney’s ability to communicate not just the facts, but the feel of lives well-lived despite the hardships faced by each generation. Thank God for her efforts in recording the life of this one family whose hard work and character represent what truly makes America great.—–“Just Bob from WI” is Robert Froelich who has written his own compelling redemption story in Aimless Life, Awesome God .  He has also recorded stories for Our American Stories, including a couple of amusing ones where unexpected challenges come up after he agrees to take a trip with a big truck.

Meadowlark Songs: Emilia, Pioneer Girl

My granddaughter Kate is 8 years old, the same age as her great-great grandmother Leora’s grandmother (Emilia), when she emigrated from Indiana to Iowa with her family 170 years ago.

The Moores were the first of my motherline to come to Iowa. On May 6, 1855, Ephraim and Lucy (Branson) Moore of Parke County, Indiana, loaded their belongings and seven children–ages 14, 12, 10, 8 (Emilia Ann), 5, 2, and an infant–into two wagons and rumbled west, all the way to Guthrie County, Iowa. The trip of nearly 500 miles, including getting ferried across the Mississippi River, took about a month.

Interesting tidbit: Iowa became a State the day after Emilia was born in 1846.

Kate received her own hard copy of Meadowlark Songs Easter weekend. It was fun to watch her carrying it around, knowing that it is dedicated to her, and that her name comes up again in the last part of the book.

Kate’s parents don’t want her pictured on social media, but here we are, our first mosey across a new bridge in a neighborhood park.

 

You might like to download a FREE ebook of Meadowlark Songs from May 8-May 11, 2025!

It’s not to late to order an autographed paperback copy for Mother’s Day. Beaverdale Books will even ship it. (515) 279-5400

Smorgasbord Book Promotions–New Book Spotlight

Sally Cronin is an extraordinarily kind encourager especially for indie authors. I’m so grateful that she has highlighted Meadowlark Songs in her Smorgasbord Book Promotions–New Book Spotlight!

Smorgasbord Book Promotions – New Book Spotlight #Family #Biography Meadowlark Songs: A Motherline Legacy by Joy Neal Kidney

Meadowlarks (autographed, with bookmarks) Have Landed, in time for Mother’s Day

An entire wall in Beaverdale Books, our incredible local indie bookstore, is devoted to books by Iowa authors, including autographed copies the Leora books and Meadowlark Songs.

Locals may also find signed copies at our favorite restaurant, the Urbandale Machine Shed.

Art on State in downtown Guthrie Center also carries autographed copies.

Seven generations, six in Iowa, five in Guthrie County (and five in Dallas County), four were oldest daughters, three lived into their nineties, two earned high school diplomas, only one was born in a hospital and became the keeper of their stories. 

If you’ll join me on the journey to discover the women in my motherline, you might begin to think about those foremothers whose mtDNA you carry and whose legacy is your own.

Mother’s Day might be a great time to stir up stories from the past. 

Museum season begins Sunday afternoon (1:00-3:00) at the Dexter Historical Museum. I’ve donated copies of the books for them to sell.

Grief Songs by Elizabeth Gauffreau–Inspiration of Meadowlark Songs

Grief  Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance by Elizabeth Gauffreau is another slim book that nudged me to try writing small scenes about the women in my motherline.

Liz’s poems arose when she paged through photo albums as an act of solace after losing family members. The collection opens with three free verse expressions of raw grief, followed by a series of photographs from her family album, each paired with a poignant poem. Taken together, they tell the story of a loving family. 

My emersion into the poems in  Grief Songs , along with those winsome photos, was a bittersweet journey through grief over profound losses, but also deeply layered family love. Those saddleshoes, that pipe, a dress with smocking–what endearing details. A very compelling little book.Elizabeth Gauffreau

Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. She holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. . . .

Liz grew up a child of the 1960s in northern New England before spending twenty years in the South as a Navy wife. After working for Granite State College in Concord, New Hampshire for eighteen years, she accepted a faculty position as Assistant Dean of Curriculum and Assessment at Champlain College Online in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to academic advising, teaching, and higher education administration, her professional background includes assessment of prior experiential learning for college credit. Liz lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire with her husband; their daughter has flown the nest to live in sunny California.

You may want to learn more about Liz Gauffreau on her website.

Liz’s Grief Songs is featured in Meadowlark Songs on page 141 under Favorite Resources.