I’m sitting beside my wood stove,which is doing a good job today, sending forth both heat and beautiful flames. It’s a cloudy, cool day outside so the wood fire makes things feel cozy inside. I bought my wood stove against my children’s wishes but since I had the money I won the argument!

I had just lost my husband that summer and we both knew that the pellet stove wouldn’t last another winter so the kids and I went shopping, they for a new pellet stove but me for a new wood stove. I call them the kids but they are all grown up and have their own ideas, which are difficult to change, but I’ve noticed they enjoy the wood stove now too.

The real reason I wanted the wood stove was it reminded me of a quieter time when the world didn’t spin around so fast, a time when cars couldn’t go much faster than 30 miles an hour. You wrote letters back then instead of the texting and e-mails we do today. People visited much more often and old folks just became part of the family instead of putting them away in nursing homes as so many people do now.

Washing clothes took all day back then. First I had to heat the water, then I separated the dark clothes from the light ones and put the white clothes into the washing machine. I had two tubs filled with cold water so I had to rinse them twice, each time wringing them out by using the wringer attached to the washing machine. Of course I had to do those steps with each machine full of different colored clothes. The water was very dirty by the time I came to the work clothes! I wasn’t done yet though. I put the wet clothes into a basket and hung them on the line outdoors, which was quite a problem when it was below freezing outside. Before the day ended I went out and got the clothes. If they were frozen, I hung them all over the house which made the house smell better than any of the products on the market today.

Now that sounds like a lot of work, but I can tell you, wash day was a good day in my life. Nothing is like gathering the clothes off the line, smelling the clean smell and just being outdoors in the early evening, hearing the birds getting ready for bed and watching the sunset. It all makes wash day a good day.

That reminds me. I also loved mowing the lawn with the old hand mower. I asked my husband for one for my upcoming birthday when I saw they still sold them at Sears a few years ago. It seemed nice to again mow the lawn, watch the birds and smell the grass as it was being cut, with everything quiet around me. I’ll have to get the hand mower sharpened so I can get out and mow again. It sure beats the noise and gas smelling machine we have now!

Oh, I know there is the ashes to take out and the wood to buy and put in the stove periodically but I wouldn’t exchange my wood stove for anything. No-siree! At least I can sit close to it and remember a long ago time.

I have been ill this week so have sequestered myself by staying low and doing nothing except watching a bit of television. But I heard the word “sequestered” every time I watch the news. So I decided to look up the word in the dictionary Here is what I read: (1) to remove or withdraw into solitude or separate. (2 in law) to remove property temporarily from the possession of the owner. It seems my government is trying to stay low and do nothing recently too. But then I heard President Obama is closing the White House to us Americans because of the sequestered law he signed recently. I wasn’t planning a tour there so it doesn’t mean anything to me but how can a president or anyone else close the White house from little kids who have put money away to have a tour this summer of their own White House?

The whole thing seems unreasonable to me especially since I also heard the government is planning to sequester 2% of the federal budget. That doesn’t sound like very much. Certainly they can find that amount without telling kids they cannot have their tour this summer. How about cutting some of Federal worker’s salaries so that they come somewhat nearer what the public workers earn. Or how about not sending all that money to countries that hate us? Oh, there must be many ways they have spent money foolishly. I know there are many Americans who have sequestered more than 2% of their incomes more than once.

But to change the subject rather abruptly, How about the second part of seeing The
Bible last week? If you didn’t see it the history channel is showing it again during the week. Kinda violent, wasn’t it? I figured it would be. It isn’t in our DNA to be anything else. Those Old Testament folks aren’t too different from us Americans. We seem to be pretty violent ourselves. The movie was awfully good though, wasn’t it? David was not depicted as a perfect man. I guess that shows that even I can be saved, doesn’t it? God said more than once that David was a man of his own heart.

I hope that you are watching The Bible as it goes on. I understand the closing part will be on Easter Sunday. That will be meaningful, won’t it?