Mrs. Dowdy was a woman of natural cures, a woman with a wistful-tongue language, and was one who had insightful intuitions. I remember Mrs. Dowdy. When she spoke in her quiet toned voice, everyone listened. Her wisdom was not to be surpassed by any means, yet America itself has a rich heritage of customs. That's what Mrs. Dowdy said. Ancestors would declare that "The Bible said..." even when the statement was not straight from the scriptures. Yet the wisdom was meant to wean us off bad habits or steer us onward to better lives than that of which they lived. Studying some of the renditions...

People think of a legacy as being material gains that a family may leave to their offspring when one dies. I believe this is only a portion of the sum totals of one's inheritance. It is good to be able to bestow material gains to one's offspring, and there is nothing wrong with that. But I also believe giving them a sense of who they are, and passing down certain events that the family has experienced and learned, will equally be an important legacy. Families, telling stories about families, keep them together. When the stories are negative, prayerfully the family will learn from them. When...