Under "my how times have changed" in 86 years of my life, living in this great green and quiet forest, it is worth remembering how people once connected in the backwoods.

Now in the 21st Century it is mostly by a noisy screen, now emboldened by Artificial Intelligence.

A few Calhoun families have held out against the change and at least one family down on Rowels Run continued to have a gathering of friends and family every Sunday for about 35 years, at the homeplace of the late Boyd "Jim" and Virgie Slider Duskey.

With the passing of Beverly Duskey, 75, and her husband Victor Carpenter suffering from health problems, the event has faded.

It is a long gone country tradition when most families gathered every Sunday for a spread on the dinner table and then sitting on the porch or lawn to remind them of being connected and tell a few tales. Sometimes the event would be rotated to other families in the hollers.

People would touch a hand or hug, being able to keep life simple with each other, close enough to see the glint of ones eyes. It was remembered that such events would sometimes collapse into silence, the blessing of quietness.

Fading is family reunions, where family members are launched into the noisy big world, not often returning to their roots.

My historian friend Norma Knotts Shaffer said there are three kinds of country people, those who leave and never look back, those who leave and always think about coming back, and a few that do come back.

My blessing, across the years, is having been nurtured by customs and traditions of life in a slower lane.