Small Stories

The Hearth & Holler Gazette No. 2 — WINTER SNOWS AND COLD SHUT DOWN REGION

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

Welcome!

It’s been a cold and storm-bound week in Honey Hill Country.

But before we go any further, for first time visitors, it may help to know where — and when — we are.

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.

This past week brought heavy snow and sharp cold across much of the region, drawing neighbors closer to home and closer to one another. What follows reflects that — stories of preparation, patience, quiet help, and the small moments that tend to reveal themselves most clearly when the world slows under winter’s hand.

So, with that said  — Please come on in . . . . . . 

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Tuesday, After the Paper Arrived

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A quiet word about Tuesdays, and the work they do here.

The morning after a paper comes out is usually quieter than the one before it.

The ink is already dry. The papers delivered where they were meant to go. A deep breath. A satisfying sigh after a job well done.

Somewhere, a cup of coffee has been poured and forgotten for a moment while a headline was read twice, or a paragraph lingered longer than expected. Or when someone paused for a laugh. Somewhere else, a paper has been folded and set aside, ready to be picked up again later in the day.

Life, as it turns out, keeps right on going.

There is something comforting in that.

That the world, for the most part, knows how to carry on.

On Saturday morning, the first issue of The Hearth & Holler Gazette arrived. And then Sunday came, and Monday followed close behind. And now here we are on Tuesday — the morning a little different and things settling again into their usual rhythm.

That is how these things are meant to work.

Once a week is enough for a newspaper. Once a week gives it room to breathe — room to notice, to remember, to arrive without knocking too loudly. It is not meant to rush or crowd the days around it. Or to demand center stage. It is meant to take its place and then let the rest of the week do what it always does in turn.

Tuesdays, for their part, will keep doing Tuesday things here.

They will keep returning us to the quieter work — kindness noticed in small places, moments of grace we almost missed, the steady presence of family, memory, and the natural world doing what it has always done, whether we are watching closely or not — and to the small, steady work of remaining hopeful and finding happiness within, even when the wider world seems determined that we not. These are the themes that have lived here a long while now, and they remain, unchanged by the arrival of anything new. That feels right, and as it should be, don’t you think?

A newspaper can come and go once a week, and still leave the lamp on. A story can be read and folded away, and still be there when needed again. Nothing more is required of it — or of us — than to show up, and carry on.

And so we do.

We will be here with The Hearth & Holler Gazette again on Saturday, and we hope you will be too.

— Jim (and Red!)

P.S. — Little Red Bear here.
I read through the “Hearth & Holler Gazette” twice on Saturday, but the second time I mostly just smiled and nodded like I already knew how it ended.

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

 

The Hearth & Holler Gazette No. 1 — THE GAZETTE ARRIVES — THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA IN HONEY HILL COUNTRY

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

Welcome!

What follows is the first issue of The Hearth & Holler Gazette — a weekly, fictional newspaper set down for no purpose more urgent than keeping you company for a little while.

Before we begin, it may help to know where — and when — you are.

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.

Everything within these pages is make-believe — imagined people, places, notices, and happenings — shaped for storytelling and offered in the spirit of old-time country papers. This is not a paper of breaking news or loud headlines. It does not chase the day. It prefers instead to notice it — kitchens and workshops, hillsides and quiet corners — the small, human-sized moments that once filled a morning without asking much in return.

You are welcome to read straight through, skip about, or linger where something catches your eye. The Gazette will arrive once a week, on Saturday mornings, the way a friendly visit used to — not to hurry you, but to sit a spell and share what has been noticed.

We hope you enjoy this first visit, and that you will come back again.
The kettle will be on.

So, with that said  — Please come on in . . . . . . 

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Fresh Ink & Hot Coffee — Tomorrow, It Begins

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A quiet word before Saturday morning arrives  . . . .

The press is warming, the quill has been freshly dipped, and in this neck of the woods the air smells faintly of biscuits and printer’s ink.

By lamplight, Little Red Bear is checking the final lines, pages stacked neat and waiting. Rusty and Percy are chasing down the last good headline, and somewhere nearby a kettle is whistling — the patient kind that knows its moment is almost here.

The very first issue of The Hearth & Holler Gazette is ready to roll — full of neighbourly news, small-town happenings, a little laughter, and a bit of country comfort to carry with you.

Tomorrow is the day.
The Gazette arrives.
Are you ready?

— 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.

Why Small Stories Last

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Why the Little Things Stay With Us

Small stories. Small moments. Small actions that reverberate through the years, often in ways we never fully realise at the time.

My own writing life — if one can call it that — began in the fourth grade, with a teacher named Mrs. Drew. I do not recall her first name, if I ever knew it at all. Back then, adults were simply Mr., Mrs., or Miss, and that seemed sufficient. (You need not bother doing the arithmetic — I am seventy-six.)

One afternoon near the end of the school day, Mrs. Drew propped a landscape painting against the blackboard for all of us to see. Our assignment was simple enough — write a short story inspired by the scene in the painting. It showed a family in a wagon, travelling along a dirt road that wound through woods and farmland, headed somewhere beyond the frame.

We began writing in class and were sent home to finish. A few days later, Mrs. Drew returned our papers, handing them back one by one. All except mine. Mine, she kept.

When she finally explained why, it was because she intended to read it aloud to the class. And when I eventually received it back, there at the top of the page were words I have never forgotten:

“A++      Jim — You will be a writer someday.”

I was painfully shy at the time. I did not know what to do with such encouragement. But I carried it with me — quietly, steadily — for the rest of my life.

There are moments like that — small at the time, almost unnoticed — that stay with us long after louder things have passed. They do not announce themselves. They do not demand attention. And yet, years later, they are often the ones we remember most clearly.

Perhaps it is because they arrive without agenda. Or because they involve people rather than events. Or because they ask nothing of us except that we notice.

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“Warning” Poem by Jenny Joseph — “When I Grow Old, I Shall Wear Purple”

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With April being ‘National Poetry Month’ and a focus on spreading awareness and appreciation of poetry, it seems appropriate to share a few favorites along the way.

The “Warning” poem by English poet Jenny Joseph (born May 7, 1932 in Birmingham) is one such poem, because I hear her speaking to each of us, male or female, in an ode to nonconformity, one of my personal favorite rants and topics.   In a humorous, tongue-in-cheek and  fun way, Jenny Joseph conveys a serious message for all, to never take ourselves too seriously or lose the twinkle in our eyes.

Age, after all, truly is only a number.  Contrary to earlier admonitions in my youth to the opposite — “Act your shoe size, not your age!”  It’s a lot more fun.

“Warning” was penned in 1961 at the age of twenty-nine.  Although having published many works in her lifetime and having received numerous awards, Jenny Joseph is best known for this defining poem.  The second line became the inspiration for the founding of the Red Hat Society, the self-described playgroup for women where there is “Fun and Friendship After Fifty.”

“Warning: When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple” and Jenny Joseph’s other works are available on Amazon.

“Warning” by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves,
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired,
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells,
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain,
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens,
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat,
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go,
Or only bread and pickle for a week,
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry,
And pay our rent and not swear in the street,
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised,
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Interestingly, Jenny Joseph is apparently not a fan of the color purple in her own wardrobe (“It doesn’t suit me”), even though the two have perhaps become inseparably linked thru her poem.  But for her to now wear purple against her own personal tastes would be to conform to popular expectations, and that’s really what the poem is all about, isn’t it?

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  Always remember, one very small act of kindness can change someone’s whole day or life around.  Be the reason someone smiles today! — Jim (and Red!)

If you enjoyed this post, check out —  “I Will Greet This Day With Love In My Heart” 

“Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet.” – Sarah Louise Delany

“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain

“The Adventures of Little Red Bear” Short Stories on Amazon.
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About an Uncommonly Special Bear and His Friends.
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  “You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.”    — Michael Pritchard

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“Aging is not lost youth, but a new stage of opportunity and strength.” — Betty Friedan

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“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” — Henry David Thoreau