How important is beauty? Not human beauty, but beauty in general. How did God intend for it to enrich our lives?  There are some days when the weather is just right, and the sun is shining, and a breeze is blowing, and it just does something to me.  It is so sweet that it makes me almost feel like I could cry.  I think because it is so beautiful and beauty is becoming so scarce.

Have you noticed?

Art is bizarre and a lot of it could almost be classified as angry, even garish.  Beautiful imagery, soothing music, pleasant fragrances, these things feed the soul somehow.  I imagine God meant it to be that way.  In our overly stimulating, hedonistic and corrupted world, it is easy for Christians to neglect our need for beauty because we are so disgusted with the world’s versions of it, and its overbearing ever-presence!

From as long as I can remember, trips to West Virginia to visit extended family, were very special to me.  I absolutely loved it when we started to see the foot hills near Charlottesville, and then starting across the Blue Ridge.  When you look at the pictures you can see why it is called the Blue Ridge, and why West Virginia is referred to as “Almost Heaven”.

It is always cooler there, so when I used to go stay with my cousins in the summer, that was an added bonus.  I always felt a sense of being cradled and comforted when I was in the mountains.  So soothing to the eyes, all that green in summer.  And in the Fall, the colors go on and on.  I hope to get back this fall and get some pictures when the leaves are changing.

Since becoming a Mom, my visits up there have been brief, so it was really nice to go and settle in and stay for an entire week.  Mom and I got some small projects done, and that can be such a boost, to get things done that you feel have been hanging over you.  They never are as big a task, once they’re over and done with, as what we have dreaded them to be.

My momma is a sweet, sweet lady.  Sweet is not a word you hear much anymore in referring to people.  Sweet nature.  Sweet disposition.  I pray the Lord will help me  be sweet too.  It is easy to allow life to turn you sour.  She’s been through a lot, but she is still sweet.

I got to see several family members, but not any of my cousins.  We hope to plan a cousin-reunion this Fall.  You know how it goes.  Good intentions and all that.  Life is so busy!

That’s me top left, my brother Chuck standing in the right of the picture, we are the oldest. Left to right is my cousin Michael Shannon, my other brother Jackie, My cousin Sheila, my cousin Michelle (a.k.a. Pam) and my sister Doni.  The occasion was someone’s birthday, but I don’t remember whose.

I should have taken some pictures of Mom’s porch while I was up there.  Her flowers and plants are so pretty right now.  She has some angel-wing begonia that get a good bit of sun, so the spotted leaves have that pretty red tint, and pretty reddish-pink blooms.  My angel-wings have never bloomed!  She has some pretty petunias, a very large fern, and several pots with different green leafy plants.  A porch to sit on is a must-have in our family.  My grandma, who lived on Pipestem Creek, (the one with the purple morning glories) used to sit on the front porch and folks who knew her would drive by and wave.  She kept the brush cut along the creek bank for that reason.  She didn’t like it when she couldn’t see who it was that was honking as they drove by.  She always had pretty plants on her porch too.  My uncle owns the place now.  It’s pretty grown up around the creek and you can’t see the place from the road very well anymore, but it’s just as well, I guess, considering his love of collecting  clunkers for fixing up, “eventually”.  🙂

That uncle (Larry) looks a lot like my Great-great-grandfather Thomas Moody Cooper who owned this old mill (The Cooper’s Mill, pictured below),which is now on the historic registry.  It was built in 1869 in the Little Bluestone River area of Summers County West Virginia by Robert Lilly, who sold it to Tom Cooper’s father Josiah Cooper(my great-great-great Grandfather) in 1895, who then sold it to Tom.  The West Virginia way to pronounce Cooper sounds like “Cupper”.  I’m also related to the Meadows (pronounced, and often spelled “Meadors”), Lilly’s, and on my Dad’s side, Thompson and Hatcher.  The Hatcher name is traced back to England ( Careby Manor,Lincolnshire) to William Hatcher, son of Sir Thomas Hatcher.  My great grandfather on the Hatcher side was Hiram Thomas Hatcher who married Minnie Lee Saunders, and my great-great grandfather was O.W. Hatcher.  Tom and Minnie ran a grocery store in the Hinton, WV area.  I forget some of the other relations, but one of them owned pretty much the whole of the county of Varina, VA which was one very large plantation at that time.  The Thompsons trace back to Scotland, but my Dad’s father’s people are the ones we know the least about.  His dad (my Grandpa Joe Wilson Thompson) never spoke much about his family, but they once owned a large dairy farm in the area of Uplands (now often referred to as Cemetery Hill for all the graveyards on it).  My Dad, my Grandfather and Grandmother, and several other family members are buried in the Upland Cemetery and I can remember attending the one-room Upland Baptist Church when I was a kid.  (Not the one in the photos below, but similar).