Honoring A Long Line Of Unremembered Moms

This ancestral chart was developed by one of my first cousins. It includes some two dozen surnames, some of people well over a dozen generations ago. 

For much of my life I thought of myself as being half Yoder and half Nisly (my mother's maiden name). I assumed that by tracing my paternal history back to Christian and Barbara Yoder (who emigrated to Philadelphia in 1742), and my maternal ancestry back to immigrant Christian Nisly (who arrived here in 1804 as an unaccompanied sixteen-year-old) that I would have the key elements of my ancestral story.

Which was naive, of course, as each of us has a multitude of generational lines to be pursued and celebrated. 

In a patriarchal culture sons get to pass on their father's surnames and are seen as the main characters in the story, while daughters take on the surnames of their spouses and tend to be regarded as lesser players. Some couples attempt to partly rectify this by adopting hyphenated last names, and it would indeed be more accurate to identify myself as Harvey Yoder-Nisly-Troyer-Miller-Slabaugh-Hochstetler-Gerber-Bontrager-Esch-Kauffman-Swartzentruber-Gingerich-Stutzman-Lauver-Wert, etc., though that would be overly cumbersome. But we do need to find ways of incorporating the stories of both men and women in our ancestry.

The fan chart above of my Yoder and Nisly forbears does include the names of the mothers in my heritage, but we tend to know far less about them than we do about some of their husbands and fathers. 

I'd love to learn more about the long line of mothers in my ancestral chart, knowing they have contributed just as much to my DNA as my father and my grandfathers (and actually slightly more, in that males inherit a large X chromosome from their mother and a smaller Y chromosome from their father). But my really important questions are "How have the mothers in my lineage contributed to the faith and values I've inherited from my ancestors? What were the formative experiences that shaped their lives, and mine? In what special ways did they influence the children they carried, gave birth to, nursed, nurtured to adulthood and continued to profoundly influence throughout their lives?"

With Mother's Day approaching, I'm reminded of the debt of gratitude I owe to all of these unnamed mothers whose stories I may never know.

I do feel blessed by what I know of my own mother Mary Nisly's story, born in rural Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1904, the ninth child of devoted parents Eli and Fannie (Troyer) Nisly. Her father, Eli Nisly, was a beloved bishop of their church. Her mother, Fannie, had lost her mother at a very young age, and as a 19-year-old moved from Indiana to Kansas to be a housekeeper for Abraham, a widower whose wife had left him with numerous children to care for, one of them being her future husband, Eli. So this is how two motherless young people, Eli and Fannie, met and eventually married and had 13 children of their own, one of them being my mother.

My parents married when mom was 21 and my dad, Ben, was 20. After working on my grandfather Dan Yoder's farm near Thomas, Oklahoma, they travelled some 200 miles by team and wagon from Oklahoma to Hutchinson, Kansas in the dead of winter, where they settled down and started their own family.

My mom had only a sixth-grade education, but she was an avid reader and a lifelong learner.  She always encouraged us to work hard and to do our best in school, and managed to have put out two gardens every year, canned and frozen tons of food for her family, raised canaries, grown lots of flowers, constantly entertained guests from the church and visitors from out of town, and become a mother to numerous foster children, besides caring for her own family. My next younger sister, child number nine, was a motherless foster child who came to us at four weeks of age and was adopted by my parents.

I never knew my father's mother, Elizabeth, who died giving birth to her fourth child when my dad was only four years old, leaving him motherless until his father remarried when he was eight. And I have only faint memories of my grandmother Fannie, who passed away when I was six years old.

I often wonder what I am missing by knowing so little about the life stories of the multitudes of other good mothers in past generations. I'm sure each one represents a priceless biography of life experiences I could learn from and pass on to my descendants.

Happy Mother's Day!

4/22 DN-R Op-Ed: "'Domicide' Is a War Crime"

Let woe and waste of warfare cease, 

that useful labor yet may build
its homes with love and laughter filled.
God give your wayward children peace!
- William M. Vories "Let there Be Light"

Today’s bloody wars result in countless numbers of innocent men, women and children being incinerated, dismembered, buried alive under rubble and horribly maimed for life. 

Accompanying this trauma is the wholesale destruction of buildings and infrastructure belonging to the victims of war--homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship and other structures vital to their life and their future.

I call this destruction “domicide," a word coined from domicile, a word for a residence, a dwelling, a home. We humans are highly dependent on such physical spaces for shelter and warmth, as secure places vital for our care and survival.

So for God’s sake and for humanity’s sake all who claim to be pro-life need to do everything possible to avoid inflicting harm not only to our human neighbors around the world but also to the physical structures they depend on for their wellbeing.

I find it interesting that Jesus spent most of his adult life as an apprentice of Joseph, identified as a carpenter, though the Greek word used is more accurately translated "craftsman" or “builder." In other words, he was likely a skilled mason and construction worker, working with the most common building material in his community, stone. So it is understandable that Jesus frequently uses foundation stones and cornerstones as metaphors, as at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where he notes that those who hear and practice his teachings are like wise builders who build their house on a solid rock foundation. He also laments the tragedy of the Jewish temple one day being demolished to the point that "not one stone remains on another," a sign of unimaginable tragedy.

Every domicile represents the work of artisans who have spent untold numbers of hours in their creation, among them architects, excavators, masons, plumbers, electricians, painters and landscapers, to mention a few. Out of respect to those who have designed, prized and made their home in these blessed spaces, we should declare it a mortal sin to even think of destroying them. These are not just houses, but homes where, as one unknown author has written, "love resides, friends always belong, and laughter never ends." 

Or at least until war rears its ugly head, and war makers and munitions manufacturers satisfy their appetite for the profit that can be gained from it.

In our seemingly safe local community we’ve been spared the direct effects of war, at least  since General Sheridan terrorized the population by setting fire to hundreds of mills and barns up and down the Shenandoah Valley over a century and a half ago. But even then, in spite of repeated battles in the area that resulted in the brutal deaths of hundreds of Union and Confederate soldiers, most homes, schools, churches, villages and their civilian inhabitants survived, and many pre-Civil War buildings and other infrastructure remain intact today.

Today's wars are unimaginably more destructive, wreaking untold havoc in densely populated areas like Gaza, Lebanon and Iran which have been pounded with incessant barrages of huge 1000-to 2000-pound bombs. According to US intelligence estimates more than 29,000 of these have been dropped on Gaza alone, with 40-45% of these not being precise military targets. This is by definition a war crime and a violation of any definition of a “just war,” and is equivalent to the destructive power of the nuclear bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki eighty years ago. And as a result, millions of Gazan, Lebanese and Iranian men, women and children have been rendered homeless and are forced to live in tents or in whatever temporary shelter they can find.

Isn’t it time to make all forms of “domicide” a war crime? Destroying homes and other human habitat in seconds that have taken years to build is an exceptionally cruel and wasteful form of barbarism and insanity. 

And it is way past time to denounce war itself as the world's worst ever crime against humanity. 

April Justice Matters DN-R Column

Making Ends Meet In Prison

We recently heard from an incarcerated individual in Virginia who works at least 30 hours a week with his paint crew, yet can’t afford to pay for his medical needs and to supplement his meager diet with food from the commissary. His prison job pays him only $0.45 per hour of work. 

While some expenses like lodging are obviously cheaper while incarcerated, many individuals struggle to afford basic necessities like their medical visits, personal hygiene items, and snacks to supplement often meager prison rations. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, an incarcerated person receives between $0.86 to $3.45 per hour on average nationwide for their labor. 

Incarcerated people in Virginia with jobs like cleaning the prison and preparing food make a minimum of $0.27 per hour and a maximum of $0.45. Those who are employed through Virginia Correctional Enterprises (to make items like furniture for offices and public VA universities, textiles, and office supplies) make a minimum of $0.55 per hour and a maximum of $0.80. 

In January 2026, Virginians saw an increase in their minimum wage from $12.41 per hour to $12.77. No such increases apply to incarcerated individuals. In fact, VADOC policy only states the maximum amount that an incarcerated person can earn, which is 90 cents per hour. Most individuals earn far less, and those in local Virginia jails are paid nothing at all for work done in these facilities. My brother Tanner, for example, served food trays and cleaned his unit for multiple years while held at Middle River Regional Jail. While he earned good time credits, he was not only denied pay for his labor but was charged a $3 per day “keep fee” while held there.

According to Tanner, “The food they serve us isn't even worth that. We get no fruit on our trays. In fact, we get almost nothing but starches, and have no access to healthy snacks. For lunch, we generally get cookies with some kind of cornbread. Dinner usually includes some type of cake with corn bread. There is no nutrition in this, and we are on lock down for all but six hours a day. We ae charged $6 for a bar of soap. Where is the money going?”

Indeed, prison labor is a widespread economic crisis – and a targeted one at that. Poor and minority communities experience increased levels of policing, even after controlling for crime rates. As a result, poor people and people of color, particularly Black people, are incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates, often resulting in already disadvantaged people in prison being forced to work for low to nonexistent wages with few worker protections. (For more information on mass incarceration and its racial and economic disparities, consider reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow or Danielle Sered’s Until We Reckon.)

In some cases if a person refuses to work in prison they can face disciplinary action including solitary confinement, which has been internationally condemned and recognized by medical professionals as torture. 

“I know a lot of people out there are thinking that the system is doing the best that they can. But it’s not,” Tanner stated. “It seems to me, and a lot of other people inside, that prisons and jails are more concerned about the money they can make on inmates rather than their rehabilitation.”

Regardless of your beliefs about prisons, imagine being forced to work for tens of hours each week for as little as $0.27 an hour. Imagine using multiple hours of wages to afford a call to your mom for just fifteen minutes. Consider having to use over half a week’s wages to visit a nurse for Ibuprofen or to buy a bar of soap. Ask yourself, if prisons truly care for a person’s betterment, then why do they make basic living so difficult? 

This article was written on behalf of the Valley Justice Coalition by Destinee Harper. a local resident who is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of West Virginia and an assistant program director for the WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative. 

HB1030 Becomes Law Effective In July 2027

  

The newly appointed parole board will be required to make their decisions on the basis of a set of objective criteria as outlined in the above press release. This is in contrast to previous boards, which based a wholesale number of denials on the following top ten reasons, most having to do with an individual's past rather than their work at rehabilitation since being incarcerated:

Serious nature and circumstances of your offense(s).

Release at this time would diminish seriousness of crime

The Board concludes that you should serve more of your sentence prior to release on parole.

Extensive criminal record

Your prior failure(s) and/or convictions while under community supervision indicate that you are unlikely to comply with conditions of release.

History of substance abuse.

History of violence.

Considering your offense and your institutional records, the Board concludes that you should serve more of your sentence before being paroled.

You need further participation in institutional work and/or educational programs to indicate your positive progression towards re-entry into society

No Interest in Parole

VMRC Celebrates Earth Day, April 22, 2026

Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community's Willow Run Farm provides fresh produce for members of the community. 

The Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community is observing Earth Day this Wednesday with a variety of special events, and with free oak saplings from the city of Harrisonburg for area residents. 

10 am to 3 pm: Table displays in Park Gables Main Street area

Willow Run Farm 

Shenandoah Faith and Climate

Composting and Recycling Information

Friendly City Co-op

City of Harrisonburg (free oak saplings) 

Maps of World Food and Clothing Sources

10-12 noon: PowerPoint presentations in Hartman Dining area

10 am: Steve Pardini, Ph.D., author of Climate Change and the Healing of Creation

11 am: Megan Dalton, Shenandoah Valley Soil and Water Conservation District 

Noon and other resident meals featuring a variety of Willow Run Farm Produce

1-2:50 pm: Park Place Multipurpose Room 

PBS film “American Experience: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring”

3 pm: Park Place Multipurpose Room

Brief talk, “Landscaping and Mental Health” by Abe Rittenhouse, followed by a campus tree walk

What's Your EQ (Earthcare Quotient)?

Earth Day is on April 22, and Arbor Day on the 24th

Good planets are hard to find, and we have no Planet B. Our amazing Spaceship Earth has priceless but finite resources for its current and future passengers, but only if we manage them wisely.

     Rate each of the following on a scale of 0-5, 0 if you strongly oppose this environmental advice, 5 if you strongly support it, and 1, 2, 3, or 4 for somewhere in between.

___1. Taking fewer and shorter showers. Experts suggest short “Navy showers” several times a week, thus conserving water and reducing chemical exposure to phthalates, sulfates and didethanolamides in shampoos, for example. (Harvard Health).

___2. Setting water heater temperature at a recommended 120 degrees.

___3. Using cold water as recommended for most laundry. 

___4. Sun drying or air drying clothes if possible. Dryer lint indicates harm done to clothing.

___5. Turning thermostats down in winter and up in summer. Our Harrisonburg Electric Commission recommends a setting of 78 or higher in the summer and 68 or lower in winter. 

___6. Refusing, recycling, reusing, and composting. Grandma’s rule: “Use it up, make it do, wear it out or do without.”

___7. Avoiding use of electric door openers unless disabled. Prolonged opening time lets in more cold air in winter and hot air in the summer.

___8. Walking instead of driving to nearby locations as able.

___9. Utilizing public transportation wherever and whenever possible.

___11. Saving water from faucets and showers while waiting for warm water and using what’s saved for watering plants or for humidifiers. Not having water running while brushing teeth or scrubbing hands.

___12. Flushing commodes only when necessary (you’ll know when).

___13. Keeping lights off where and when not needed.

___14. Unplugging seldom used electrical appliances.

___15. Using stairs if able and reducing use of elevators. Great exercise!

___16. Encouraging your town, work place, congregation, etc., to incorporate climate care into the values, administration and practice of their institution, and to invest in solar and other alternative forms of energy.

___17. Delaying spring lawn mowing and converting lawns to meadow and pollinator-friendly spaces.

___18. Growing vegetables in an available garden plot, buying local foods.

___19. Consuming more whole foods and local produce and using fewer highly-processed food products.

___20. Adopting a Slow Fashion lifestyle with clothing and accessories made of earth-friendly material that show regard for conservation, sustainability and humane working conditions.

Here are some big ticket items for which you can gain extra points, with 0 for strongly oppose and 10 for strongly support. Or you can choose any number in between.

___21.  Reducing reliance on gas-powered vehicles by car pooling or, better yet, car sharing.

___22.  Reducing roadtrip and airline vacations and avoiding cruises (especially bad for the environment).

___23. Creating greater equity in housing space occupied per individual (larger spaces for larger households, smaller spaces for smaller households).

___24. Sharing possessions and skills with others in your congregation and/or neighborhood.

___25. Radically reducing money spent on possessions that deteriorate and depreciate in value, and investing heavily in better health, food, education and housing for needy neighbors around the globe.

___26. Championing legislation that supports clean energy, mitigates climate change and resists expenditures on ever more lethal means of destruction, and that instead invests in programs that heal the earth and care for its people.

___ TOTAL

If your total is over 100 in this unscientific poll, you’re well above average. If 140 or higher, you’re an EQ genius!

Feel free to copy and share.

Brad Composes A New Song For Easter Sunday

This is a photo from another service at Pittsburgh Mennonite. Brad had two others accompanying him in today's Easter service.

resurrection day,

the clock radio played Hallelujah (song by Leonard Cohen)

while the dawn birds sang
all their songs at once…
    before you realize where you are,
    uncertain of your name or age,
    between the urge to laugh or pray,
    resurrection day,
 
resurrection day,
a child cartwheels on the sidewalk,
as if to say “right-side-up’s one choice!”
    as the dream begins to fade,
    half-asleep, half-awake,
    the moment when you know you’re safe,
    resurrection day,
            thought all was lost, but it turned out alright,
            dying to live or you’re living to die,
            runs in a circle, feels like a climb,
            some kind of carnival ride..
 
resurrection day,
the clock radio played Mr. Blue Sky (song by ELO)
all the stoplight horns
proclaim: “the light has changed”
waiting for a bus to come,
taking in the traffic’s hum,
off to work or school or play,
            all that was lost has now been revived,
            trying to live or you’re living to try,
            orbits are birthdays, birthdays are lives
            on to the end of the line..
 
resurrection day,
the clock radio played Chelsea Morning, (song by Joni Mitchell)
yellow curtains clapped to greet the sun’s parade,
plain for every eye to see, here in anno domini
between the urge to leave or stay, resurrection day
 
somewhere in the afterglow: jubilate domino
between the urge to laugh or pray, resurrection day…

Here's a link to a recording of an early draft of the song (Click ¨Unrecorded #56) https://bradyoder.com/songs/resurrection-day/