I have been reading excerpts from a book over at my friend Dan Felstead's blog, Wood and Pixels Narrative... the book is written by a sweet man by the name of Ralph Gregory, he is an area historian and he is over 100 years of age.
The title of the book he has written is "When the 20th Century Was New and I Was a Boy", a wonderful book and the excerpts which Dan is kindly posting are an insight into a time that has gone by, a quieter time, when family and helping each other was important... I would highly recommend that you all visit Dan's blog and you will thoroughly enjoy his beautiful photography and narratives and the excerpts from this book.
Last time the author touched on the subject of candle making, prior to electricity.
He mentioned something about being a boy and taking his candle to his room, melting some of the wax onto his window sill and standing the candle on the melted wax to steady it.
Well this brought all kinds of memories back to me, I can remember having candle light as a child, not because I am that old but there was a time when my Dad was building our house when we didn't have electricity, so a fuel stove, oil lamps and candles were used ...magic.
I can also remember doing that with a candle to steady it in a candle holder, this would be in the time of electrical blackouts which happened quite often when I first moved here because it was a remote area at that time and we had a power sub-station, most of our electricity being diverted from a larger power station, this caused many problems for a while.
It was lovely actually, living on the edge of the bush land, no street lights, only a few houses had been built, the night sky looked so dark dotted by a myriad of brightly shining stars, a sliver of a moon and all was quiet, the silence was only interrupted by a breeze now and then ... you could hear the sound of the creek water rushing in the distance or some forest birds settling down in their nests for the night.
The soft cool air and the beautiful fragrance of many forest trees and plants and the sweet fragrance of the forest floor.
Me with my candle ... there is something very comforting and reassuring about the golden glow of candle light...
Have a great weekend everyone ... ♥
14 comments:
Hi Dianne, your blog is very interesting and your posts enjoyable. Glad I found it! Have a great weekend. All the best. Philip
Thank you Philip I am so pleased that you found my blog and my posts enjoyable.
You are most welcome anytime...yes I shall have a good weekend, you as well. ♡
Hi Dianne
Hope Your evening will be promising ;-)
Thanks for sharing this content and Your thoughts around it. Me myself are reading an old book "Two Worlds of Childhood" (Bronfenbrenner 1970) reflecting over the enormous changes that has occured since we entered a more global society, and I must say ... the last 40 years hasn't made it better for the upbringing civilisation, when it comes to love, values and care.
Have a lovely nite!
love the photo of your table top. i can imagine sitting around it drinking a nice hot cup of tea .. or coffee ..
or juice ..
candles are enjoyable when they are used safely ..
and they have comforted me during the few times i've lived through electrical outages.
i wonder if my youngest son will write a story in 90 years or so called "when the 21st century was new and i was a boy" ...
hmmmm ..
it would be interesting because in some ways the place i live in hasn't changed all that much from the 50s .. :) .. and ugh ..
except we have the technology and the super wallie world ..
Thanks dear Anna-Lys
I have just come home 12.11am to be precise...I had a lovely evening but I'm not revealing anything. ;-)
You're absolutely correct, society as a whole has not changed for the better when it comes to certain values...but I'm not generalising there are plenty of families out there including mine, yours and Foamy's and no doubt many of my other followers where immediate family and extended family is very important.
I am so fortunate with my children, I have had no problems with any of them, they are all good kids and I'm very proud of them...they had a lot of love, guidance and were taught to be responsible by me, to help others in need...their upbringing was influenced a lot by their grandparents who were very much a part of their lives.
It is sad nowdays because with the growth in the cities and high rise accomodation some people live a very isolated lifestyle where they dont even know their neighbours.
I think more community orientated events should be encouraged in these neighbourhoods so that there is a healthy environment for people to make frienships, help each other out and not feel so alone.
So different to 40 years ago when I was a girl living in a suburban neighbourhood, everyone looked out for each other. ♡
Thanks Foamy dear, you would be most welcome at my table, I'm sure we would have a lot in common and plenty to talk about.
Yes you do have to be careful with candles especially around little children.
That would be nice for your boy to write a story like that, think how interesting it would be and if we think of the future and how fast technology has progressed even in the last twenty years, who knows what our future will be like... maybe not as good as it is now because despite all of the wonderful things we have I would go back to a quieter lifestyle any day.
You are lucky that the place you live in hasn't changed that much in 50 years, how I would love that.
I mentioned in my post how quiet it was here when I first moved here, that was 25years ago, we called it 'the sticks' and though it hasn't grown out of control like some places I would love to go back to how it was then.
The first five years that we lived here were the best before there was too much development which to a large extent has spoiled some of the natural beauty of the area.
But I am luckier than most, it is still a beautiful place to live. ♡
hope you've had a nice evening.
did you manage to check out the 2 links I gave you?
Well put Dianne, and I aam pleased to hear that Your evening as promising <3
Thanks dear Sarah
yes I did have a pleasant evening with my friends.
I have had a qiuck look at your posts, I have to go back as it was a lot of reading and I didn't get through all of it.
I really liked your poem but I have yet to leave a comment. ♡
Thanks dear Anna
I hope you found my reply interesting and as far as my night out is concerned I think it is best not to say anything or some will read too much into what I say or what I don't say. :D ♡
i lose power a lot. so i keep loads of those cheap religious 18 hour candles with the saints on them. some times it looks like "carries" punishment closet in my cabin. (some of you will get that reference) grhahahahaha
happy evening then. im glad you are out having fun.
Yes dear K9
I learnt quickly to have plenty of candles here, being a remote area it took a while for the electricity authority to get things sorted, so until we got our own proper power station you just had to get used to the interruptions.
I didn't mind using candles they were usually only short blackouts, the longer outages were the worst because of the refrigerator.
Thanks it was nice to go out.
'carries' punishment? I've not heard of that. ♡
I was staring motionless at the candle when I thought it flicker. Perhaps it's my eyes that are flickering from tiredness. When one does not want the word 'staring' or 'gazing' or 'looking' in a description or poem, it sometimes helps to use another word like 'listening' or 'thinking' or 'nothinging'. People who care, will work it out. People who don't, won't. So there's little point writing Wordsworth to them. Tanita writes words this way... It's raining hard outside. Outside. Here, inside, we write letters to each other. Literally, letters. And who's to say, years from now, when daffodils wave above us, that there was something joining us whilst we lived. I like candle light. I burnt mine at both ends. Fingers often too. This lonely silence in sheer isolation is overwhelming just as it is for you. Like the solitary disjointed parts of Tanita's songs. I wonder what she is feeling. Right now. This second. Maybe we already know.
Thank you dear Alexander for your thought provoking comment.
If you do stare too long at the flame it does flicker and move and casts moving shadows around the room, it sometimes plays tricks with your eyes and you see more than what is there.
I was reading Wordsworth this afternoon 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' that is how I am feeling now and wondered how you would describe the 'meter' in which my poems are written...I'm not sure and I am certainly not comparing them to the works of this great poet.
Tanita's words are poetry and as I have said I don't quite understand her words but I do feel them in my own way, I put my own interpretation to her words and they comfort me.
I hope there is something joining us whilst we live, be it letters, candle light, thoughts, even the isolation of loneliness and Tanita's thoughts, maybe we do know. ♡
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