Yes, we will return to this material, time after time, as it comes to mind. Read my review on GoodReads.

To avoid simply launching into a laudatory description of my subject, I’ll start by saying this article provides an excerpt from the book; “Pioneer Ranch Life In Orange: A Victorian Woman In Southern California”; By Clark, Mary Teegarden - editor: Clark, Paul F.

That link provides search results, to save you some time. If you leave me right now, to go find and purchase the book, I won’t mind. Continue here, for just a brief glimpse of the beauty that is realized in poetic prose. 

My heartfelt gratitude goes to Paul Clark, for sharing his manuscript with me. Having this treasure allows me to share passages with you. Also, for allowing me to become one of the first to purchase the final product; thank you, Paul.

Without further ado (below is one particularly moving passage):

We have stayed on, not one year or two, but nearly twenty, and the life at “Yale Grove” had become only a precious heritage of memory.  The pink crape myrtle tree still carries high its rosy head, though he who loved it, walks no longer through earthly gardens, and the Catalonian jasmine drops its pure snow on the walk, where little tots played so long ago, picking up its petals for a chain.  The old pepper tree, with its unused swing, looks in vain for the children who romped beneath its leafy shade, and the one mocking bird, that ceased to sing when the dear Master left, is seen and heard no more.

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That is the penultimate paragraph of the text written by Mary Teegarden Clark. Nearly moved to tears, as I re-read that passage, I offer it for your consideration, my dear readers. She has moved back to “the old home [La Porte] in Indiana” and is reflecting on and reminiscing about the old home in “Richland”, now known as Orange, CA, where her husband had died so many years ago.

The Palm Springs Writers Guild is back in session, with its first meeting concluded yesterday and a season of new workshops beginning soon. At PSWG, I met Paul Clark, the editor of this volume, (the first time, earlier this year) and had the privilege of providing assistance to him with some of the vagaries of Microsoft Word; thus helping him to push through to the final version of subject book for his publisher - The History Press. 

We’ve worked together to produce his website, where he shares his interests in History, especially as it applies to his beloved heritage in Orange County. Paul will soon be speaking at an event where he is scheduled to be a panelist at the Chapman University Book Festival on October 13th.