Hearth and Holler Gazette

The Hearth & Holler Gazette — Issue No. 4

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A Weekly Visit of Tales, Tidings, and Old-Time Country Comfort

Welcome!

It has been a mud bound week in Honey Hill Country. Another marked by delays, detours, growing shortages of everyday staples, and the steady work of getting on with things anyway.

Regular readers may recall that last week we introduced period-style illustrations, offering a visual record of events alongside the printed words of selected stories. This week, we take another big step forward — introducing our new staff editorial cartoonist, Clarence “Clary” Moss. Clary will be introducing his first editorial cartoon in the pages of the Gazette today, and will be a featured weekly contributor going forward.

But before we go any further, for first time visitors, it may help to know where — and when — we are, and what I am talking about

The Hearth & Holler Gazette hails from Honey Hill Country, a small, rural corner of the Missouri Ozarks, as it might have been known in the year 1904 — a time of front porches and wagon roads, oil lamps and handwritten letters, when news traveled at a human pace, and a Saturday paper was meant to be read slowly, with coffee close at hand. This is not a paper of breaking news or loud headlines. It prefers instead to notice it — the small, human-sized moments that once filled a morning without asking much in return.

The Hearth & Holler Gazette is a work of fiction — a made-up paper from a made-up place, written in the spirit of an earlier time. Any resemblance to real towns, people, or events is entirely coincidental, though we do our best to make it feel otherwise.

So, with that said  — Please come on in. Your newspaper awaits . . . . . . 

And would you prefer Coffee or Tea with your newspaper?

 

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The Hearth & Holler Gazette — Issue No. 3

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A Weekly Visit of Tales, Tidings, and Old-Time Country Comfort

Welcome!

It has been a snowbound week in Honey Hill Country — one marked by delays, detours, and the steady work of getting on with things as best they could be managed.

But this week also marks a small but meaningful change for the The Hearth & Holler Gazette — one that has me genuinely excited about where the paper is heading. From time to time, select stories will now be accompanied by period-style illustrations, offering a visual record of events alongside the printed word. These images are meant to be read as much as seen — another way of noticing what has happened around us and remembering it clearly.

These illustrations are being prepared carefully, with focused attention to the Ozarks setting of Little Red Bear’s stories and the 1904 period the Gazette inhabits. They are intentionally restrained, observational, and rooted in the visual language of the time — not modern embellishments, but echoes of how stories were once quietly shown as well as told before the use of photography became commonplace.

But before we go any further, for first time visitors, it may help to know where — and when — we are, and what I am talking about

The Gazette hails from Honey Hill Country, a small, rural corner of the Missouri Ozarks, as it might have been known in the year 1904 — a time of front porches and wagon roads, oil lamps and handwritten letters, when news traveled at a human pace, and a Saturday paper was meant to be read slowly, with coffee close at hand. This is not a paper of breaking news or loud headlines. It prefers instead to notice it — the small, human-sized moments that once filled a morning without asking much in return.

The Hearth & Holler Gazette is a work of fiction — a made-up paper from a made-up place, written in the spirit of an earlier time. Any resemblance to real towns, people, or events is entirely coincidental, though we do our best to make it feel otherwise.

What follows reflects the shape of these past days: trains slowed and roads altered, plans postponed and routines adjusted. It also holds the smaller things that traveled just as surely through the cold — a door opened, a shovel shared, a joke passed along to lighten the work. Taken together, they tell the story of a week that tested patience, rewarded cooperation, and reminded us that even when progress is measured in careful steps, it is still progress all the same.

So, with that said  — Please come on in. Your newspaper awaits . . . . . . 

 

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Fresh Ink & Hot Coffee

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Fresh Ink & Hot Coffee

The presses have been busy this week.

Deep snow, stalled trains, and a bridge giving way have left their marks across Honey Hill Country — and “The Hearth & Holler Gazette” has taken careful note.

Beginning with this issue, select stories will now carry period-style illustrations alongside the printed word, offering another way of seeing what has happened and remembering it clearly.

Tomorrow is the day.
The Gazette arrives.

Are you ready?

 

The Gazette is delivered by way of The Writing Pages here — readers may subscribe to receive each new issue as it arrives on Saturday mornings.

Something New Is on the Way

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An invitation, quietly extended.

Over the past several weeks, I have mentioned a new project taking shape just over the hill — something written carefully, assembled slowly, and meant to be read at ease.

With the first issue now nearly ready to be set before you, it felt right to let the editor speak for herself.

🖋 A Note from Clara Thimblewick, Editor

For some time now, a small staff has been at work — gathering items of interest, setting type, sharing a pot of coffee, and preparing a paper meant to be read slowly and kept close at hand.

We have taken care to make it worthy of your time.

The Hearth & Holler Gazette was created for readers who still find pleasure in neighborly news, in small observations, and in stories that do not hurry you along.

It is not meant to be exhaustive.
It is not meant to be loud.
It is meant to feel familiar.

If you care to join us, we would be glad to have you.

The first issue will be set before you this Saturday.

— Clara Thimblewick, Editor

Before we close, one small thing for clarity.

The Hearth & Holler Gazette is a make-believe newspaper from a make-believe place in Little Red Bear’s Honey Hill Country, staffed by characters who do not exist anywhere outside these pages.

The things they practice, however, most certainly do.

Kindness.
Compassion.
Looking out for one another.
Stopping long enough to notice.

Those are as real as it gets — and what it is all about.

If this sounds like something you might enjoy, the first issue will be waiting for you this Saturday.

We hope you will join us.

— Jim  (and Red!)

A small note for new readers:
Receiving The Hearth & Holler Gazette is as simple as being registered for this blog. There is nothing more to do.

A Fresh Stack of Mornings

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A quiet New Year arrives in Honey Hill Country, bringing stillness, reflection, and the promise of days yet to be read.

The New Year has come quietly to Honey Hill Country.

A cold winter morning has settled in. Snow lies clean and unbroken beneath the trees, save for a line of rabbit tracks stitching their way across the yard and disappearing into the brush. Frost rests easy on the fence rails, and the woods hold the kind of silence that only follows a good snowfall — deep, listening, and kind.

No fanfare, no fuss — just the slow turning of the calendar page, with a fresh stack of new mornings waiting to be opened on the kitchen table. The old year folded itself away politely, and the new one stepped in like a neighbour removing their hat at the door.

Out here, the year always begins the same way — with a pause.

There is time to look back at what was carried, what was learned, and what, perhaps, is ready to be set down. There is time to stand a moment longer at the window and consider what might yet come walking up the lane. And there is time — always time — to say, You Are Welcome Here.

Honey Hill Country remains much as you left it — and Little Red Bear is still right where he has always been.

The paths are familiar. The front porches are swept. The kettle is warm — Little Red Bear is keeping it so. Your choice, coffee or tea. Fresh biscuits, always. The stories continue — some by the fire, some on the page, and some quietly, heart to heart.

As the new year unfolds, there will be small kindnesses, ordinary miracles, and a few good surprises tucked between the days. There will be laughter that arrives unannounced. There will be reflections that linger. And there will be new rhythms settling gently into place, one week at a time.

Later this month, something long-planned and much-loved will find its way into the light — The Hearth & Holler Gazette, a weekly visit of tales, tidings, and old-time country comfort, shared from Little Red Bear’s corner of Honey Hill Country and meant to be read slowly, like the morning paper at the table.

But for now, there is no rush.

This first week of January is for standing still just long enough to take a breath, to look around, and to remember that beginnings do not need to be loud to be meaningful.

So welcome — to the New Year, to Little Red Bear’s Honey Hill Country, and to whatever good may yet come.

The gate is open. The light is on.
Come in when you are ready.

— Jim  (and Red!)

“A new year does not ask us to be different people,”
Clara Thimblewick once wrote,
“only to listen a little more closely to the better parts of ourselves.”

Pen-and-ink illustrations created with the assistance of AI and lovingly styled for Little Red Bear Land.

“Yes, Virginia — The Story Behind the Letter That Still Warms the World”

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A Black & White Holiday Feature

As Christmas draws near each year, I find myself returning to a handful of stories that never lose their warmth — stories that remind us of who we were, who we are, and who we still hope to be. One of those is the classic newspaper reply known today simply as “Yes, Virginia.”

If you’ve ever paused during the holiday bustle and wondered where the magic of Christmas hides itself these days — haven’t we all felt that? — the history of this little letter has a way of lighting the lantern again. And like all good stories, there’s more to it than most folks remember.

Here is the story behind the story — the people, the newspaper, the unlikely pairing, and the words that continue to shine like a window candle more than a century later.

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