In letters to friends, Jeanette Hardage thanked people for myriad gifts, but the ones that she seemed to cherish the most were gifts of hospitality, of ministry, and of self. Her poem below draws attention to the subject of gifts, and to the source of …
Read MoreAutumn Leaves
In a Thanksgiving 2000 letter to family and friends, Jeanette Hardage first shared the poem below evoking the glory of autumn. She followed it with lines from a hymn by Matthias Claudius, “We Plow the Fields and Scatter,” which celebrates the changing seasons as good …
Read MoreA Reluctant Saint
Jeanette Hardage always wanted to be thought of as a regular gal, definitely not as a “saint.” Perhaps she feared that if others thought of her as living on some higher plane of existence, they would not be receptive to her ideas and would impede …
Read MoreWriter’s Lament
As many writers probably do, Jeanette Hardage found the process of promoting her own writing to be unpleasant work. She admitted in a 2004 letter to a friend that she didn’t like marketing, and as a result, “my failing is that I don’t mail my …
Read MoreAddicted to Words
In a never-completed essay that she began in 2002, Jeanette Hardage admits to being a “word addict,” prone to studying not only dictionaries but also any written words put before her, on everyday objects such as a cereal box or a medication information pamphlet. She …
Read MoreWhat She Really Wanted to Say
During the early 2000s, Jeanette Hardage was a prolific book and film reviewer. She was not equally enamored of everything that she read or viewed, of course, and when completing a review she was honest about her disappointment with blurry photos, unnecessary exaggeration, or pointless …
Read MoreLove in a Time of Epidemic
August 21 marks the anniversary of Owen and Jeanette Hardage’s marriage in 1948. They were familiar with the kind of societal disruptions that we are seeing now due to the coronavirus and they would be able to commiserate with people who are celebrating important milestones …
Read MoreSailing Through Life
Jeanette Hardage found inspiration in the writing of Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003, to the point that she incorporated some of her favorite phrases from his book Sailing Alone Around the Room into a poem of her own. She called this a “silly” …
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