Brenda Bevan Remmes

The Quaker Café

My Father Loved Christmas

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By Brenda Bevan Remmes My father loved Christmas more than any person I know. He told us when he was a boy growing up in a strict Methodist family in Pennsylvania, he and his three brothers received a basket of fruit and nuts under the tree—the sum total of the gift-giving. My father and his brothers all became men of substance: important men, busy men, men addicted to proving themselves by putting in long hours at their jobs at the … [Read more...]

Mothers Reading

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   A stoic woman in a starched high neck dress sits with a book in her hand surrounded by five attentive children. The woman, Alice Warren, had fled the fires in Atlanta to move in with her sister to a plantation home built three years prior to the firing on Fort Sumter. Shortly thereafter, they could no longer make the mortgage payments.  As rumors swirled that Sherman’s men were burning their way through Columbia and headed for … [Read more...]

What Inspired Me

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The first time I realized I wanted to write a book was when I read, John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  Perhaps this is not the book that inspires great literature, but it is the book that inspired me.  Berendt wrote about a South that I knew.  Holy cow, I had a DNA connection to half the characters and I loved them all.  But instead of writing a syrupy tongue-in-cheek cozy mystery, Berendt dug up the graves and hit … [Read more...]

Biscuit Recipe from The Quaker Cafe

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  Dump in a Bowl 2 C self-rising flour1 stick of cold butter cut into 8 chunks1 C sharp cheddar cheese grateda pinch of red pepper  With your hands rub it all together until everything is crumble size.That means Don’t stir or Mix  Make hole in the middle of the mixture and pour in¾  C of cream – maybe more(you can substitute milk if you’re on a diet but why bother?)  With a big spoon or your hand swoop around the bowl no more than … [Read more...]

Organizing Communities to Take a Stand

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Three days before Christmas in 1989 our rural community was selected as the site for a hazardous waste incinerator.  We learned quickly because other communities had been through similar struggles.  If you have never heard these lessons before, they’re worth repeating. 1.      There is no silver bullet.  It all depends on who gives up first. 2.      Law suits alone won’t win the battle. 3.      Push your side of the story to the … [Read more...]