MSI Press Blog

  Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver Fir Balsam If I had to name the scent of my childhood, other than lilac, it would be fir balsam. Not pine, not spruce—fir. The real thing. The one with flat, needled branches that broke off in a soft snap, leaving your fingers sticky with sap and your nose full of something that smelled like winter and warmth at the same time. Most people say balsam fir , but where I grew up, it was always fir balsam —likely a reflection of the Acadian French influence that shaped much of our local speech. At Christmas, all us kids would follow my father through the snow to the woods behind our house to cut down a fir balsam for our tree. He would pace through the trees with quiet authority, selecting just the right one—not too tall, not too spindly. We’d help drag it back to the house, and on the way, gather extra boughs for decorating. Some woul...

Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver The Lilac Bush Across the driveway from the apple orchard and in front of the house—facing the winding rural roadway that snaked up and down the hills of Acton—stood the lilac bush. That old road wandered off in one direction toward Milton Mills, New Hampshire, and in the other toward Lebanon, Maine. In fact, the road itself divided Maine from New Hampshire as it crossed the river and passed the tanning mill. The state line was unmarked, but the family whose house straddled it knew exactly where it lay. The township boundary, they told us, was decided by the location of their master bedroom. One year, when they became fed up with Acton, they simply switched the master bedroom with another room and thereby "moved" their house to Lebanon. They have lived in Lebanon ever since. The lilac bush—lavish with purple lilacs, the state flower of Ne...

  Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver The apple orchard was our front yard—if any place on a farm can rightly be called a "front yard." It was the stretch of land across the dirt driveway from the farmhouse, bordering the winding country road that separated our upper fields, corral-pasture, clothesline, house, and orchard from the lower fields, the swale, and the pine woods beyond. In one far corner of the orchard, under a stand of birch trees, alongside the road, lay the tiny, timeworn Prescott family cemetery. May they rest in peace, whoever they were. The birches partially screened the orchard from the road, adding to its at-times quiet charm and at-other-times privacy for boisterous play. The apple orchard was the hub of our lives. Besides giving us apples, pears, and even cherries—it was, in truth, a mixed orchard though we always called it "the apple orchard...