In a December 1961 newsletter, Jeanette Hardage wrote that the highlight of the family’s year was a pack trip taken with two burros in the high Sierras the previous August. While I’m not sure all of the participants relished it as much as Jeanette did, …
Read MoreSabbath in Tel Aviv
In October 1996, Owen and Jeanette Hardage made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The photo accompanying this article shows Jeanette at the Pool of Siloam, near the entrance to Hezekiah’s Tunnel. This trip clearly made a deep impression on both of them. Afterward, Owen …
Read MoreLooking Ahead
The poems of Jeanette Hardage often express her hope in a heavenly future. The poem below, handwritten by in April 1997 and never before published, instead anticipates possible future joys on earth. At first the reader may get an impression of disappointment with life, until …
Read MoreBeautiful Surrender
Jeanette Hardage anthropomorphizes nature in the poem below with its imagery of fog “conquering” a hill. As a frequent resident of coastal California, she had many opportunities to witness this phenomenon. She first wrote this in 1961, probably as a class assignment. She reworked it …
Read MoreA Brush With History
As a young seaman at the end of World War II, Owen Hardage had an unusual, if brief, encounter with an important personage. Here is Owen’s previously unpublished story, as ghostwritten by his wife Jeanette. (The story has been edited from the original for length). …
Read MoreMore Delights of Spring
The Hardages’ home in South Carolina backed up to a swamp which afforded them many hours of quiet enjoyment of nature. This photo by Jeanette Hardage captured at least two of the creatures that regularly visited that area, alligators and egrets. In the piece below, …
Read MoreIn Praise of Cats
The Hardages were cat people. They spent many an hour stroking, feeding, grooming, and talking to cats, not to mention cleaning up their messes, looking for lost ones, and taking injured ones to the vet. Jeanette Hardage loved T.S. Elliot’s The Naming of Cats, and …
Read MoreThe Eyes of a Child
In the early 1960s, a serious play accident meant that Jeanette Hardage’s eldest daughter was in danger of losing her right eye. After significant medical attention and time to heal, in December of 1961 the family Christmas letter reported that, despite pessimistic prognoses from the …
Read MoreA Child’s View of Death
On January 24, 1935, Jeanette Hardage’s younger brother Patrick died when he was not quite 7 weeks old. She included a poem about this experience in her Faith and Other Matters collection under the title of “Susie’s Question.” Since she was only just approaching her …
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