Gathering: Homespun Essays from Beech Tree Lane

Introduction
 
I have journaled my way through life, with pen and paper in hand or keyboard at my fingertips. From my eyes and ears, and from their friends, smell, touch and taste, crazy synapses inside my cranium conjure words, and out they flow.  I come from a long line of journal-ers, or journalists, as I have been. One of the first of note in my lineage is William Bartell who, with a flourish of his quill, wrote “William Bartell and Senea Stone his wife was married the 3rd of August in the year of our Lord 1820.”

I am a slow-life chronicler, an observer trying to make sense of the usual and routine. I live on the old family farm. I travel to small towns in rural South Carolina, meet people and tell their stories. I visit, but am not at home in, big cities. 

I welcome you to my world of essays, musings, philosophizing, photos, thoughts and ponderings. Remember, these are my musings, my memories and my perspectives. If you know some of the people and places I’ve written about, you will have your musings on them, your memories and your perspectives. That’s a good thing. None of us have a handle on the whole of a person or thing.  Use these words for inspiration, reflection, and remembering, on the way to living a more thoughtful life.  
 
xoxoxo, Dianne