Eagles Wings

I've been really enjoying reading the American Needlework book I got last week. Rose Wilder Lane is a terrific writer and her writing really opened my eyes to the fact that the US has gone through many hard times and survived. We've been so prosperous in the last 30 years or so, we don't realize this isn't the first nor the last recession and it will make us stronger people.
Here is just one quote from this wonderful book..
"The 1890's were an age of desperate anxiety. After seven years of little rain had made a dust bowl of the prairie states, a world wide depression (then called a Panic) stopped trade, shut down factories, closed banks. Foreclosed mortgages dislodged farmers from the land. In endless lines of covered wagons, they traveled the roads, east and west, north and south, seeking a chance to
work for food. Coxey's Army rise in Ohio and from a dozen other places. From the Pacific coast it's hordes swarmed toward Washington, seizing, crowding, and running trains wildly stopping only to terrorize towns and ravage stores of food. Federal troops guarded all government buildings. Eastward from the Mississippi for a hundred miles, dispatchers cleared all trains from the tracks, so that the Coxey's western armies trudged on toward Washington footsore, robbing and begging for food. I was riding in a covered wagon that summer. That winter, by stealth, I scantily embroidered a pincushion for my mother's Christmas present....."

I wondered what the Coxey's Army was so looked it up...this is what
Wikipedia says Coxey's Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by the populist Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history to that time. Officially named the Commonweal in Christ, its nickname came from its leader and was more enduring. It was the first significant popular protest march on Washington and the expression "Enough food to feed Coxey's Army" originates from this march. This photo is of some of the marchers.



Even through some of the worst times, women were embroidering,sewing, quilting, knitting, crocheting, making lovely things for their families, using what they had to cheer and make their homes cozy and warm. I have several quilts that have been handed down to me from my great grandmother, grandmother and mother....who all went through tough times.
I hope our country won't go through anything like what was written again....my heart goes out to all those who have lost their homes and pray our country will get back to her roots of faith.

On a lighter note, we finished the patio cover yesterday, putting the shade cloth on....and I painted our side fence...planted some bush beans, and dead headed roses....we've got strawberries coming and nectarines. Alan has two jobs today so he's gone. The boys are sleeping in as its Donny's day off from the dog rescue. Quiet house!