Here I am, continuing my school days saga, getting ready to start junior high school and evolving from adolescence into becoming a young adult. General Grant was the only junior high in Reedley, so both elementary schools attended seventh and eighth grade there.
Lincoln is my favorite elementary school. Since I have shared many stories in Kings River Life, this may be a bit repetitious, but I owe more than just an education to the school district. Since both of my parents were teachers, it provided a roof over my family’s head, clothes on our backs and food on the table.
“What if…?” is an intriguing question posed by authors of historical fiction, and more than just “changing names to protect the innocent” or avoiding libel claims, it is a way of enhancing true events and real people by providing realistic and plausible connections, interactions…love affairs? Henry VIII’s court, the Black Ladies’ Priory, Thomas Giffard, and Isabella Launder are real, but in the Roses in the Tempest the author envelopes a fictional story around them to bring to us a wonderful tale of Tudor England. “But, in the end, it is only a pleasing story.”
As the holidays beckon amid a swirl of falling leaves and sparkling frost, Fresno’s historic Meux Home Museum is gearing up for Christmas with its upcoming holiday tours and its annual Victorian Christmas Tea. Kings River Life spoke with Meux Home Museum president Quintin Hoskins about the Home and the holidays.
The Reedley area was first plotted by U.S. Army teams and contract surveyors around the 1850s. The area was like a giant magnet, drawing all kinds of settlers from all kinds of backgrounds. Some were farmers and some were tradesmen, but they all wanted a good place to raise families.
Halloween is the night before All Hallow’s Day or Hallowmas which occurs on November 1. Today, those of us in the modern church call this All Saints Day. This is a time we remember and celebrate the lives of the faithful men and women who have recently passed away. The feast day was established by Pope Gregory III around the 8th century. Halloween, or to be more correct, Hallowe’en is short for Hallows Eve.
My forefathers arrived in Jamestown in 1608 when King James granted them land for financing passage to tradesmen that were badly needed in the New World. This land was on the outer banks of Virginia and that is where my family started burying their dead. Part of Diana’s family arrived on the Mayflower. All 12 of them survived the ocean journey, but only four survived that first winter.
Celia Davies runs a free medical clinic for the poor women of San Francisco. It puts her in contact with people most would like to avoid—the servants, prostitutes and foreigners. Celia lives with her cousin Barbara, a half-Chinese girl who faces prejudice whenever she’s out in public, and Addie their housekeeper.
St. John the Baptist De La Salle was born into a wealthy and noble family in Rheims, France. By age 16 he was named a canon of Rheims Cathedral and was ordained into priesthood by age 26. La Salle gave up a promising, and possibly brilliant, ecclesiastical career to take up a life filled with poverty, persecution, and contempt. He also became the educational genius of the seventeenth century and the founder of modern methods of teaching.
Today cinnamon is considered a common spice. But in antiquity it was a valued commodity deemed to be as precious as gold. Cinnamon was so important that the demand for it drove world exploration and countries went to war over this aromatic seasoning.
