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Sunday, March 20, was a day of celebration as I was released from my job at the church. But rather than retire, I am on my way to refire. In fact, retirement was so far from my mind, I almost missed the send-off cake that day. I was setting up my loom for new dishtowels when the secretary texted me, then called and said, “Did anyone remind you about having a cake for you between services.” I ran into the bathroom and said, “Are you almost done in the shower? I have to get to church, it’s my retirement cake today and I forgot.” Wow. Well, here we go. It's taken me a year to trust that I can maintain my lifestyle without committing to a "job." I have more than 50 years on my work record and still recall the first five-dollar bill I earned. I babysat for three children for.25 an hour; one was an infant. If you can do the math, that's 20 hours of sitting, and because I could, I washed dishes and picked up the house. From there, I moved on to the Gackle Café with LaVonne Deutscher. She became a second mother and mentor "foodie" for a mere .75 an hour. (If memory serves me, and I think it does.) but at that time, you could order a hamburger steak, potato, salad (Your choice of lettuce with dressing or cottage cheese and canned fruit.), dessert, bun and coffee for $1.75. I went to school and worked in Moorhead, then Garrison, then Mandan. When I hit $6 an hour, I thought, "I'm rich." I'm laughing out loud right now. Over this past year, I have been evaluating what I want to be doing. I'm thinking I want out of everything so I can focus on my weaving and growing a great garden for the market. So, slowly I have been learning to say no. I'm not quite there yet. I have so many ideas, including a book that's half done, some sewing, and, more importantly, becoming a better grandmother. My husband and I also want to do some traveling during the winter. As the summer progresses and the garden requires more attention, it should be easier. I hope. I'm going to be honest here. I heard the Independent and all the last of the BHG enterprises have been sold. Mike and Jill have always been good to me, so I thought, "Well, this is my opportunity to let go of one more Monday morning commitment." But then – while I was out of town last week staying with my daughter in Huron, S.D., I received an envelope from the Hazen Star. I thought to myself, okay, they are either asking me to stop writing or maybe sending me a check for my fine work. Instead, it was a note from Bernice Weigum. She asked Sharon to send me a recipe for Sun Pickles and a small hand-written note of appreciation for my articles. There are three area folks, Bernice, Judy and Sharon, and North Dakota's Secretary of State Al Jaeger, that appreciate me. I love it. I got many more words, and now as I reFIRE my intentions in life, I will have a bit more time to write and hopefully publish another book. I'm just saying a little encouragement goes a long way in this business, and I LOVE to hear from you all. So please keep it coming. Thank you, loyal readers, whoever you are. I'm here for another day. It is no surprise to anyone that computers have changed the way we do our jobs. I remember the first time my husband said to me, “we are getting email at work.” It must have been sometime in the late 80s early 90s. I was not impressed. First of all, “what was email?” Secondly, I love paper, pens, pencils, crayons, paints, etc. How could we possibly live without those items? Some years later, when my children were in middle school, I was a single mom, and I had to quit being a fiber artist to take a “real job” that I became a newspaper editor. It was something on my bucket list, and I loved the job after I learned how to fill a 16-page paper each week by myself. Each week, my email (yes, we all succumbed to a new form of correspondence) was full of press releases from various organizations vying for an opportunity to be placed on one of my pages. It was a sure bet if the press release contained a local name. One day, the North Dakota State College of Science (NDSCS) communications person called to reprimand me about using North Dakota State School of Science (NDSSS) in my paragraphs about student honor rolls and such. “I’m not sure how that could have happened,” I said. “I went to that school in the 70s.” Our conversation continued as I explained to him half-jokingly that I didn’t file my paperwork to get my diploma after returning from work-study in Washington State. “Oh, that would make a great human-interest story,” he said because as communicators, we are always seeking that next great human-interest story. We continued talking, and I explained the years I attended and what I did for work-study, and he said, “I’ll get back to you.” He did. It was the same week, and this is what he told me, “Ummmm. I am sorry, but I checked with the administration, and we don’t offer that program anymore. So, I guess you cannot graduate from a program that doesn’t exist anymore.” He sounded disappointed. I laughed. It was true. When I began the graphic arts program at the NDSSS, our education began with platen presses, lead pigs and hand-set type. From there, we moved to paste-up with paper and wax, hand-drawn lines, photo-sensitive paper headlines created one letter at a time and large drawers of layout sheets. Then came the darkroom with chemicals and large negatives. Photos were shot into halftones with screens and plenty of expertise. We also learned how to strip negatives, use rubylith (look it up) and burn plates – also using chemicals. Printing was a tactile career and one I fell in love with immediately. I became the editor of the NDSSS yearbook for the two years I attended. And, now – here we are. There were perhaps many such careers that computers have commandeered. Being a painter, lithographer, typographer or graphic artist was a specialized trade. It used to be to make a copy of a recipe, you would have to go to the library and pay a dime. Now, we can all print, design, and publish at the stroke of a key. Not to complain about computers, I use one every day, but somehow, I feel like my career choice has been watered down, and specialization is a thing of the past. I’m still finding typos in PowerPoint presentations and brochures, sometimes cringing at the layouts that forgo all the formal training of an educational program that no longer exists. I guess we all be “obsolete” after a while, but it is something to think about because apparently, it happens to everything. Even though my dad is still with us, I noticed some of the letters in my mother's heart-shaped Valentine's Day box did not have that familiar blue and red airmail border, so I peeked.
Yea, I said I wasn't going to, but I love old stuff. The envelope had a printed return address and a three-cent stamp – purple, canceled and dated June 7, 1944. Inside was a ledger-sized typed letter written two days earlier. The periods poked through the paper from the backside, so I think these letters were typed individually by Mr. Ed. Doerr's secretary. Who, might you ask, is Mr. Ed Doerr? Well, Mr. Doerr was the county superintendent of schools in Ashley. My mother's letter was addressed in the care of her father, Albert C. Meidinger, Zeeland, N.D., congratulating her on graduating the eighth grade. A copy of a certificate of completion torn from a book that I can only imagine looks like a cashier's duplicate sales book with three subjects: Agriculture Physiology Geography The transcript continues, but the grades end there. The letter begins with congratulations and a diploma for the eighth-grade students (I went back and looked, but I couldn't find it). The second paragraph included this, "Because of the war conditions; tire and gas shortages, we will not hold rural graduation exercises this year. With the European invasion started now, we hope that this terrible war will be over by next year so that all of us can again live normal lives once more." You know what I am thinking. What is a normal life? Even my parents didn't have the privilege of "normal" lives when they were young. Let's not bring war into this story yet. Mr. Doerr encouraged the seventh graders not to become discouraged about their grades and return to complete their education in the fall. He suggested the eighth-grade graduates find a high school to attend. My mother, however, must have moved on. After marrying and having five children, my mother never underestimated the importance of education. My oldest brother graduated from Kulm High School, joined ROTC at NDSU, and served in the air force until he retired. The rest of us were told we HAD to attend one year of college before making decisions on careers, marriage, etc. I wanted so badly to be an artist like my mom. It's all I ever thought about. It wasn't an option at that time as there was no good to come from a "job" that didn't produce food or children. I tried. I loved photography and did most of the photos for the high school books. It would have changed my life to have had the means and courage to attend the Brooks School of Photography in Ventura, Calif. Like that school and the program I did attend at NDSSS (now NDSCS), it's no longer available. That's maybe a story for next week. Even after I graduated and left home, my mother never gave up on her education and completed her high school GED somewhere between work and raising my twin brothers, who were eight years younger than me. Some years back, I wrote a column about my mom and said she only had an eighth-grade education. Well, I got reprimanded heartily for that faux pax. Following in her footsteps, if I don't learn something new each day, I feel I have not accomplished much. Currently, I am working on learning tapestry weaving techniques. Think of that what you may. It's still learning. I suggest you find something to learn until winter melts in spring when we can learn to garden together. Here is a scan of a yearbook photo from 1973 of my science teacher, Mr. Bryan Dinkins. I wish I had paid more attention to my studies back then; of course, I didn't realize how much I used math and science in baking, sewing, weaving and almost everything else I do. Yep, the gig's up. The cat's out of the bag, and I am not referring to my famous Chevy-advertising cat, Walter. I've been made. If you read this column regularly, you may have noticed my science teacher, Mr. Dinkins, Mr. Bryan Dinkins. On Friday, I received a phone call from one Judy Dinkins, who, through some thorough detective work, deduced that I was the same Sue (Susan) Kaseman. How does one find someone they think they know in this electronic age. Well, first you read the paper, then you think, "I have to know that person." Then, remembering that I have mentioned Gackle before, Judy digs out a yearbook from I would surmise 1972 or '73. That provided my maiden name but not my contact info. Somewhere along the line, Mrs. Dinkins, who also taught school in Gackle, recalled my mentioning Charity Lutheran Church, where her brother-in-law and his wife, Paul and Beryl Dinkins, attended as members. So, Judy called the church, and they gave her my phone number, and we had a delightful conversation. During those 20 minutes or so on the phone, I discovered my influential science teacher passed away in 2006, at the early age of 62; used to live in Alaska, was an avid birder and was as brilliant as the "mad scientist" we all thought he was. That memory-stirring call triggered my brain's search engine. And off I went down memory lane. Here I was, back at Gackle High School, slamming lockers and bounding up and down the worn wooden steps of an ancient three-story brick building, never paying as much attention to my teachers as I should have. Little did I know that someday I would be calling on geometry and biology as I sewed, wove and gardened. I guess growing old is part of my education. It's hard to imagine that your teachers have lives outside of the classroom when you are a student. I remember Mr. Dinkins taking us to the park to practice keeping field notes; he also jumped off the table in the science classroom once for whatever reason I cannot recall at the moment. (This has been confirmed as a lesson in gravity.) He gave us the assignment to design a spaceship which most of us missed the mark as he said only a round spaceship could sustain life in the vast void above our heads. That's where I wanted to be – out the door, in the sky, experiencing all things not contained in our small community of Gackle. Yes, I love Star Trek, Star Wars and Grogu. Without realizing Mr. Dinkins lived in Alaska, he talked so much about the life contained in a tide pool; I have always wanted to go to Alaska. Maybe I will get there someday. And as long as I am in the confessional mood, I will name-drop a few more of my acquaintances. After high school, I attended the North Dakota State School of Science – in the graphic arts program with Brian Unterseher from Hazen. One of our printing press instructors was John Carlson, who graduated from Garrison High School. I also worked in Garrison for Mr. Don Gackle for a short time. Reminiscing is bittersweet and sometimes filled with regrets. You know, questions you didn't ask, acts of kindness left on the table, words you cannot take back. We are, after all, only human, and I have not yet learned something new each day of my life. That being said, the saddest quote I have ever come across is this African proverb, "When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground." Now that's something to think about if you still have grandparents. Everyone has a story to tell, and life is so short, please don't pass up the opportunity to get to know someone or something new every day. PS: Mrs. Dinkins (Judy), I found my gardening notebook and mechanical lead pencil, but not until Sunday afternoon. Thank you for the memories. Break out the lights, mix that potting soil and get those pepper seeds in the ground. It’s time to start gardening, becoming nearly a year-round career for The Root Sellers farm. Here are a couple of get growing videos from my YouTube channel -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8tySO5oBoU&t=13s and my website videos at https://www.therootsellers.com/videos.html.
It’s not easy being green. Kermit the Frog has been fighting for green for many years now. It’s hard to imagine green on President’s Day as we are experiencing snow and cold, and I love it. Yep, if you are a gardener, you appreciate all moisture the area receives leading up to the big day – planting outdoors. However, if you have gardening friends, you will know by now they are chomping at the bit to get those seeds in some soil. And this is the week. How do I know? I keep a garden diary. It isn’t a complete record of what I do in the garden because work begins in earnest once we move to the outdoors. In the meantime, on Monday, I dashed out to the greenhouse to load up some small trays, plugged in my heat mat and dug out all the lights from storage in the basement. It’s essential to know a few things about getting those seedlings off to a good start. First, you need sterile soil, trays, water and seeds – and a notebook. I use a Rite in Rain mechanical pencil and notebook. When I was in biology in high school, Mr. Dinkins told us to keep our notebooks in pencil because if we ever dropped a book in the water or wet grass, it won’t run like a ballpoint pen. So, I have been doing that for years. Always record dates, temp, weather and whether you liked the fruit from those seeds in the prior harvest year. It helps to create a drawing of your garden and note where you planted crops for rotation purposes. We can talk about that later. Last year, we planted some heirloom tomatoes that ended up being the tiniest tomatoes ever. My spouse and I agreed they were a waste of our time, and we did not harvest more than a handful. Too bad we may not have pulled out the plants in time to prevent them from germinating in the high tunnel this season. Opps. Next, you need STERILE potting soil. If you do not choose the correct soil, your plants will experience damping-off and other diseases. I mix my own. Use sterile soil – but do not use anything that has those water retention beads and fertilizer in – this is very important. Sometimes that soil is the least expensive brand. Seeds are God’s perfect packages. They have everything they need to get going in this world, including the will to live. Mix a bucket in these parts – one-half soil, one-quarter vermiculite and one-quarter peat moss. This recipe is ideal for starting all your plants and potted flowers later in the summer. Fill your little pots. If you aren’t seeding 100 peppers, you can use a milk jug, pop bottle, whatever WATER-proof container you have, remembering that overwatering is a sin. It’s something that new gardeners often do. WARM up the containers and the soil in the sunshine on a windowsill and then plant those seeds. Cover your container with plastic wrap creating a mini greenhouse to keep them moist until they pop out of the ground. Then you wait. It takes a long time for peppers to germinate, so keep an eye on the moisture in the container. You don’t want it to be sopping wet, and you don’t want it to dry out completely. If possible, it’s important to have drainage holes in the bottom of the container. But you want to put a tray underneath that to catch the drips. Here’s a slight hint – if you take a coffee filter and put it over the holes in the bottom of a planter or container, the water will filter out, and the soil will stay in the pot. Tiny seedlings are tender so keep these final thoughts in mind. 1. Don’t overwater. 2. Use a spray bottle to avoid washing those new plants out of the soil. 3. Do not fertilize until much later. 4. When transplanting to a larger pot, do not handle the stem, move them using the leaves and don’t transplant until plants have at least four leaves. 5. Keep those containers in a warm space, but do not put them in your oven and forget to remove them before using the oven. Yes, the oven light provides ample heat for germination. 6. LIGHT THEM UP. A common mistake is not having enough light for those young seedlings to get a good start in the world. Use one cool and one warm fluorescent light instead of investing in an expensive grow light. You can get those fixtures for $20 or less at Menards. 7. Have fun. Gardeners are supposed to be the healthiest people on the planet. And, the rewards are good local food from your backyard. PS: if you haven’t ordered seed yet, you can check out my favorite LOCAL seed house at www.prairieroadorganic.co. The Podall family breeds seed that thrives in our zone leading to a great first-time experience in the garden. There is online ordering and fast shipping, so you still have plenty of time. So get growing. ND ROOTS January 31, 2022
You have heard it before. “It’s not if it happens, it’ when.” That’s right, I got a virus, and I am still downloading the effects of stuffy sinuses. We all know the most significant part of having a mid-winter cold is how good it feels to feel good again. And, taste. Oh, how good food smells and tastes after a week of being ill. Naturally, after having some chicken tomato rice soup on Sunday, I had this incredible urge to make cookies. After all, I had been sleeping for nearly as long as Rip Van Winkle, mainly on the couch. With the nice weekend weather, I took a walk Sunday afternoon during halftime of the first football playoff game. Both games preceding the Super Bowl were exciting if you like that sort of thing. Sometime at the start of game two, I headed for the kitchen, forced some butter to room temperature and dug out my mother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe. Unlike the Toll-House recipe, this cookie was crisper and had pretty cracks running through it if adequately baked. It was never my favorite as a child, but we had little choice. My children weren’t very fond of them either. They called them kitchen sink cookies because I usually added whatever we had in the house by way of chocolate chips, nuts, raisins, coconut and oatmeal. This recipe is a proper “dunker” cookie. It had been a while since I baked for our household. My usual fare is bread for the farmers market and, recently, breakfast pastries for a church retreat. I’m grateful I have a way to spread my oven-lovin’ around the community, so we don’t have to eat all the baked goods I make in a month. Oh, these cookies were fabulous. I hit the nail on the head with the correct amount of flour, the perfect scoop of dough on the cookie sheet and the proper amount of time in the oven. Instead of raisins, I used craisins but no coconut. I loaded that dough with dark chocolate chocolate chips and plenty of chopped walnuts (even if I had to take a loan from my local bank to purchase them). I hope my mom was watching from heaven with a smile on her face. Rather than wait, we had to try one hot out of the oven. The chocolate was still soft and gooey. It was okay. The second cookie was cooler and absolutely divine. I know it’s difficult to wait until bread and cookies cool off before indulging, but I have found over the years the flavors develop if you allow them to cool first. That, and you won’t burn your fingers grabbing them off the cookie sheet. Just an FYI, bread needs to cool thoroughly to bake entirely and is so much easier to slice if you give it a few hours on the rack. If you cut it right away, you are sacrificing the rest of the loaf for that one heel, dripping with butter. Yep, I do it all the time, mostly because I can. I know the next question you ask is, “can I have the recipe?” Yes. I think my mother would be greatly disappointed if I didn’t share, so here it is. ENJOY. Here is a heart-shaped Valentine's Day box my mother had hidden in her dresser drawer for as long as I remember. When we cleaned out her house, I put this precious box, most likely from the early 1950s, filled with letters from Korea written by my dad in my dresser draw. I decided not to read the notes until my father was reunited with my mom. (He is 95 and living in Ave Marie in Jamestown.) A bit of Valentine's Day history If you are looking for an excuse to eat chocolate, Monday, Feb. 14, is your day. Who needs a reason, right? After all, the latest scientific information says dark chocolate is good for you. It is my favorite of all chocolates. Valentine's Day, however, is one of those days I could take or leave. After many years, it loses some of its significance. My interest has renewed a bit since I have grandchildren, and I am delighted to spend my Valentine's Day budget on them. According to legend, St. Valentine was more than one person, and the stories around the two "Valentines" fluctuated between a priest that defied Emperor Claudius II's ban on marriage or a Christian martyr that signed his letters from prison "from your Valentine." Of course, like many of our holidays, Valentine's Day has its roots in an ancient Pagan festival called "Lupercalia," celebrated on Feb. 15 in ancient Rome. This festival was dedicated to the Roman god of agriculture and, believe it or not, celebrated by sacrificing animals and smacking women with animal hides; this was done to encourage fertility. YIKES. Our Valentine's Day did not grow roots until the end of the 5th Century, when Pope Gelasius officially made Feb. 14 Valentine's Day. In the Middle Ages, people began to associate love and romance to that day because the French and English thought birds began mating on that day. It's not yet Feb. 14, but I did hear some new bird songs this past weekend. Not being a bird, how does Cupid fit in? Well, he is the god of love, Eros. Let's hope he didn't look like the little boy in a diaper with a bow and arrow. The first Valentine exchanged between lovers, according to History.com, came from a duke named Charles to his wife. He wrote, "I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine." You guessed it; he wrote this from prison at 21, so all he had was his imagination. From there, people began purchasing mass-produced valentines in the middle 1840s. This custom started with Esther A. Howland, the mother of the American valentine. Like my sister-in-law, she made fancy crafty cards with lace, ribbons and floral relief elements. As far as giving flowers, there are traditional roses, red ones at that. Roses are not in season this time of year, making them expensive to give to your loved one. Sometimes, when we are young, we are worth it. Otherwise, I would rather have a plant or seeds that last longer. That brings us to today. I was blown away by the amount of cash spent on love for this one day of the year. According to the National Retail Foundation, Americans spent more than $20 billion on Valentine's Day gifts in 2019 and were estimated to spend a record-breaking $27.4 billion for 2020 — including $2.4 billion on candy alone. That's what I'm talking about. Men spend around $291 compared to women spending $106. With the price of today's elaborate Valentine's Day cards, exchanged to the tune of 145 million cards (not counting the ones' put into those imaginative valentine boxes in school rooms), Hallmark has come a long way from its first Valentine's Day card sold in 1913. I would never give my pet a card or gift on Valentine's Day, however in 2020, around 27.6 million American households gave Valentine's Day presents to their pet dogs, and more than 17.1 million picked up gifts for their cats. All in all, American families spent an estimated $751.3 million on gifts for their pets on Valentine's Day. Okay, now about that heart-shaped box. If you are familiar with the Cadbury Easter egg, Richard Cadbury created the first heart-shaped box of chocolates in 1861. Boxes are still a popular gift. An estimated 36 million boxes of chocolate, and 58 million pounds of chocolate, are sold in fancy boxes each year. I'm banking on it. Happy Valentine's Day. My friend Larry said to me, “why would you spend time crocheting a scarf when you could buy one for a few dollars at the store?” It was Christmas, and I was home from college. Larry had rented a little house just a few blocks from my parent’s home, and I walked over to see him, the gift in hand. I realize it’s not that he didn’t appreciate the scarf, but out of curiosity could not comprehend why anyone would spend time “making things” they could easily purchase. Many people feel the same way. I have been crocheting since I was in grade school. Mostly it keeps my hands busy, and I learn new techniques all the time. I’m still learning today. Even though I have been weaving since the early 80s, I’m currently learning tapestry techniques. The time it takes to weave a miniature work of art is incredible, and there is no way I could sell any of these for adequate compensation. So why do we do these things? It’s one of my gifts. I take nothing and make something out of it. A juror at a Fargo art show said I have spirit and imagination. He loved my woven clothing so much they had to pull him out of my booth. At that time of my life, I felt like I was doing exactly what God put me on earth to do. Create and sell my art. But I had two children. And there came a time I had to put them first, so I did. As you know, I didn’t have the heart to throw out any of my art supplies during my January cleaning phase but instead made a list of all the things I could make. Now that I am retiring from the workforce at the end of March, I can’t stop thinking about all the beautiful days I can spend making things. Of course, it’s almost time to start my seedlings, and that will take precedence over any artistic endeavors. Gardening falls right into this line of thinking. Do you have items in your homemade by hand? If you have an artist’s ceramic mug for your coffee, do you think of the person that made it every time you use it? I am currently reading a book in which the author mentions gifting instead of buying things. If we knew who made things in our house and grew our food, would we not appreciate these things more? Instead of filling our homes with tons of stuff made by people we will never meet, we would own fewer cherished items. If we accepted these handmade goods as gifts in exchange for money to keep artists in business, would we all appreciate each other more as well? It’s a little far-fetched, I know, an economy that thrives on local, but it has been done before. I guess if we readjust our thinking a little to acknowledge the hands of everyone who makes, bakes, grows, stocks shelves, work cash registers and brews our designer coffees, would we be more appreciative of what we have. If we look to everything as a “gift” and we reciprocate with gratitude and see the people behind those things, would we not all be a bit more grateful and thoughtful about our purchases? Ah, just strolling down memory lane as I recover from a bit of a cold. I remembered the small communities that held everything we needed for day-to-day life. No more, no less. A time never to return, except in our hearts and minds. Or maybe? Long ago and not so far away, people in North Dakota relied on their instincts regarding winter weather. Sure, there were weather reports, but rural folks became familiar with the land they farm, microclimates, and, most importantly, the sky. I am a "sky watcher." To this day, I still get teased about my watchful weather eye relying on folklore and my eyesight to determine the weather. My husband is one of those nonbelievers. My first job out of college was a year or so, at Dierk's Printing in Moorhead, Minn. Art Dierk Sr. used to greet me in the morning singing, "Oh, the hens in Gackle will cackle tonight." (That should give you some indication of where I graduated from high school.) Then, he would ask me about the weather having the utmost respect for my instincts, whether right or wrong. If you took today's weather reports and matched them to mine, I would say I was correct more often than they. Of course, weather reports back then did not necessarily predict the weather days in advance. I prefer that to the long-winded usually never happens weather reports of today. Don't get me started on things like wind chill and naming blizzards. Sometimes it is best not to know these things keeping in mind you must dress for winter when it's winter and use some common sense. This story happened before the age of cell phones. That's correct; if you were stranded in the middle of winter, alone, in a car, without proper clothing, you were most certainly in trouble. So, like the boy scouts when I traveled for my on-the-road art job, I always carried "a winter survival kit." Adam traveled to many places as my sidekick in his middle school years. When planning one such journey, my son became concerned about my well-being in the winter. He was a great traveler that required only a Subway sandwich once a day to remain content. Before I left, he put a brown-colored Gourmet Supreme Folger's coffee can in my van. PLEASE NOTE, youngsters, that not only did we not have cell phones back then, but Folger's came in metal cans requiring a can opener. There was a plastic lid included to keep those grounds fresh after opening. Oh, the best part of waking up. Inside this can were several mini-Snickers bars, stick matches, small pieces of notepaper, pencils, two candles and a note. If you read this column regularly, you guessed it – I still have that note. I also have that can with its contents. The note reads (in middle-school cursive pencil): "Mom, I hope you survive. I "heart" you a lot. Draw me a picture." The note, the can, the candles all form memories for a mom-turned-grandmother. My days of traveling as an artist, the young children I raised during quiet trips without cell phones, and the superb winter storms of my youth are lovely memories. My "heart" aches for those days. Yes, we still have winter weather, and people continue to venture out when they shouldn't drive on icy roads with wind chills well below zero, but not as often I remember. Maybe I should not have tried to drive that week to my appointed destination. But a commitment is a commitment, and I have faith that my precious can with that "heart" warming note would have saved my life. Stay safe out there. The January thaw more than likely ends this weekend. |
Sue B. Balcom
Writing, or maybe talking, comes naturally to me and under the guidance of a great newspaper editor I have acquired skills that led me to author four books. Archives
January 2023
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