Random Friday Thoughts

The Elkhorn River just west of here is up a lot higher than usual. Bell Creek, just to the west of that has escaped the confines of its banks.
A Washington County History lesson: Bell Creek was named for one of the first settlers to cross it back in the late 1870s. His name was Bell (duh) and he and a group of men came out here from Illinois on foot to stake claims when they came to the creek. The story doesn’t say how they got across the Elkhorn without getting wet. They secured a rope across the little creek from a tree on the east side to a tree on the west side and hand over handed themselves across. When it was Mr. Bell’s turn, he lost his grip and fell in, so they named the little creek after him.

I went out blog browsing a little bit today and could only conclude that I am living a very sheltered life out here on the prairie. I didn’t realize that there was so much anger out there in the world and I found it to be a little scary. At first I thought, “Maybe it’s only in cyberspace,” but then I heard on the radio that at around 3:00 this morning, there was a road rage incident right here in Washington County, over in Ft. Calhoun. Two drivers, a man and woman were arrested – she for allegedly beating up him and his car and he for possession of drugs and paraphernalia. Apparently they had been playing a vicious version of “Betcha can’t pass me!” on Highway 75 and stopped in Calhoun to finish the fracas.
I’m glad I’m not usually out and about at 3:00 in the morning.

Here is a story (except for the first sentence, totally fiction) I wrote for my column Loose Threads in Country Lanes Magazine:

I remain convinced that the advancements of humankind all began with a mother looking after the well-being of her family.
For instance, eons ago, our foremother was out hunting and gathering carrying a basket for her findings with a 2-year-old perched on her hip and another on the way. As you might guess, it didn’t take long for fatigue and backache to set in and she started looking for a way to lighten her load. She thought to herself, “If only I had something to push around that I could put my basket and toddler in, this would be a lot easier to do.” So she found a downed tree, sliced off a couple of narrow pieces from one end, made a hole at the center of each, ran a thin branch through them, attached her basket and a seat for the baby to the branch, added a handle and there it was: the first grocery cart – and the wheel.
Now it happened that her second baby was due to be born during the rainy season and while her campfire was adequate for warmth, she wanted to get in out of the weather for the blessed event. One day she was gazing across the river and spotted a cave in the bluff on the other side. From her point of view, she could see that it was dry inside, so she began to look around for a way to get over there. As she stood pondering a solution, a piece of driftwood floated by. She went back to the downed tree, hollowed out what was left of it and grabbed another branch and flattened out one end of it. She packed her baby, her husband and her grocery cart into the hollowed out log and floated across the river in her new canoe. And so she invented water transportation and established a permanent residence, just in time for the arrival of #2.
On another hunting and gathering expedition in the early summer, our Mom happened across a patch of wild strawberries and seeing how her toddler gobbled up the sweet treats, thought to herself, “There must be a way we can get these things to grow around home.” And so gardens were invented. Now her husband saw how well it worked with the little strawberry plants, so he decided to give it a go with apple trees and cherry trees, and before long they had a nice orchard going.
One day, this mom was doing her spring cleaning and ran across some old ears of corn they had gathered, but hadn’t eaten, so she handed them to her husband and said, “Go bury these someplace before they rot and start to smell.” So he did, and of course they sprouted and grew more corn. Thus began farming.
And, as winter began to roll in, she wanted to keep her little ones warm, so she took a couple of pieces of old skins, stuffed them with wool shaved off a sheep, stitched them together and wrapped it around her wee ones. So was born the art of quilting.
All thanks to our foremother.

Here is something interesting I found during my blog browsing. I’d never seen a picture of a Cedar of Lebanon before. Wow.
http://happywonderer.wordpress.com

Family Tradition: The Methodist Kitchen

The Lyons Methodist Church that I grew up in owns and operates a café at the Burt County Fairgrounds in Oakland, NE. Every year in August, the ladies of the church pack up everything in the church kitchen: roasters, coffeepots, dishes, silverware, serving and cooking utensils and haul them the 7 miles to the little building at the west end of the fairgrounds. For the duration of the Burt County Fair, the tiny building would be a mass of activity. I can see it all in my mind: ladies pulling roasts out of the ovens, frying chickens, mashing boiled potatoes, stirring gravy or cutting up the homemade cakes and pies volunteers were bringing by the dozens. The men were stationed at the sinks washing dishes, peeling potatoes or slicing cucumbers for the ever-present bowl of vinegared cucumber/onion that sat at each table. I can see the fairgoers and “carnies” standing in the line that always ran the length of the building and sometimes spilled out the door into the Midway. And kids (like me) dashing around with trays to gather up the dishes, silverware and glasses and wipe down the tables. My friends and I made a game of seeing who could get their tables cleared off the fastest. We must have looked like vultures circling the diners, trying to spot who was going to be done next.
And the heat – it was ALWAYS hot and steamy in the place. Although it must have occasionally been cool and rainy in all the years we went there, it escapes my memory.
I’ll bet my sisters can add their memories of this particular family tradition to this posting.
One of the big rides – like the Tilt-a Whirl or the Octopus was always at our end and they blasted top 40s music constantly – to this day I can’t hear a Creedance Clearwater Revival song without remembering my days in the Methodist Kitchen.
When the crowd began to lull in the late evening, Mom would give me 50 cents or so and I was turned loose to go ride a few rides on the Midway before they shut down.
For as long as she was able, Mom did her time at the Methodist Kitchen. When my kids were small, we’d take them to that fair for one evening and stop in to eat supper with her.
I still eat at least one meal a year in the Methodist Kitchen, only now it’s with my husband’s family. We gather there on the last Sunday in July for a family potluck picnic. So some new memories are taking their place beside the old ones. One thing remains constant, though – it’s almost always HOT.

The B&W aerial photo is the farm where my family lived from 1957 to 1964 or so. It’s north of Lyons, Nebraska about 2 miles.

The color pic is where I live now. It’s sort of in the middle of nowhere – not the end of the world, but you can see it from here…

This came in an email.
Enjoy!

http://www.members.shaw.ca/grandmafaiths2/boogie.htm

Loved the music.

VT Tragedy
There aren’t enough words in the human language to express the sorrow we all feel for the lives lost at Virginia Tech. (As in Romans 8:26 “…We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”)
We have enough laws and regulations regarding firearms. As far as I know, it’s always been illegal to carry a weapon into a classroom, whether you were planning to use it or not. We have no way of knowing how many weapons the current background checks and other laws have kept out of the hands of people with evil intent, but I’ll bet it has worked more often than not. I don’t own a gun and I don’t want one right now; but I don’t want to ever give up my right to be able to get one to protect myself if necessary.
People who commit these horrific mass shootings have murder in their hearts and will find a way to commit it one way or the other. The Boston Strangler never used a gun and neither did Jack the Ripper or the Hillside Strangler, Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. And the hijackers of 9/11 used boxcutters and various items which were easily and legally obtained.
It isn’t the presence of weapons that brings about these crimes, rather it is the presence of evil in this world. And it rears its ugly, destructive head when people choose to fulfill their own sick, twisted desires instead of looking outside themselves for the Source of true fulfillment – a personal relationship with the Creator through the Risen Savior.

Commuter “Sounding”

Rain pounding on the tin roof of the lean-to where I park my pickup gave me a round of applause. No one was looking, so I took a bow.

An Inconvenient Truth
I read it, as promised, and once I got past the first several pages of Mr. Gore giving himself credit for advances in environmental issues and placing blame on President Bush for a variety of ills, I now see that global warming is happening. I am not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination (neither is Al Gore) however, I have some questions.
I found the two most convincing evidences of global warming he presents are the melting glaciers and the evaporation of Lake Chad in Africa. If humans and their machines are causing global warming, why do glaciers melt when they exist in areas where human population is sparse? And science has been declaring for centuries that without interference, naturally occurring phenomena tend toward decay, so why wouldn’t glaciers melt anyway? Maybe we are in the midst of a cosmic hot flash.
How did CO2 cause the evaporation of Lake Chad when the auto-human ratio in that area is something like 20 people to every car, while in the US, where the auto-human ratio is pretty much 1-1, most of our naturally occurring bodies of water remain at a constant level?
Mr. Gore quotes his college professor’s findings of rising CO2 levels which he tracked through several years over Hawaii, but why wouldn’t the CO2 levels be on the rise over Hawaii since the entire collection of islands is made up of volcanoes in various stages of activity?
If you hold to Evolutionary theory, the earth is millions of years old. If you are a Creationist, the earth is about 6,000 years old. Climatology has only been around for the past 400 years or so and accurate records of climate changes and meteorological phenomena are even younger. Ice cores and tree rings (dendroclimatology) can give clues as to what climate changes have taken place, but can not give us the reasons for those climate fluctuations. Given the large scale studies needed and the long time periods required to scientifically prove cause and effect in climatology, it is at best, a stochastic process and should be studied as such.
Dr. D. James Kennedy (who holds nine PhD.’s) said that only about 3% of the scientists in the world have the skills, knowledge and experience to fully study and understand the issue. They need to examine all the possible causes in order to determine the truth. Studies of Galactic Cosmic Rays hold some interest in the effects of sunspot activities on climate fluctuations.
In the meantime, the “what you can do to help” section is old news. I’ve been doing most of it since the 1980s, except for the curly-que light bulbs, which are new. I will continue to do so.
And I close this rant with Haggai 2:4-5 “And now get to work, for I am with you, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. My Spirit remains among you, just as I promised when you came out of Egypt. So DO NOT BE AFRAID.” (Emphasis mine.)

I"M BACK!!
Whew! My banishment from the blogosphere was truly a remarkably unsettling week for me. I did manage to visit all my pals and family blogs briefly, but could not take the time to respond.
It never ceases to amaze me how much I have in common with you all - just as it never ceases to amaze me how opposite my opinion is on so many things. That being said, in an effort to "not let any unwholesome talk come out my mouth" I will just say that I am content to live here in the USA under the current administration.
More opinionated postings will follow.

Going to Grand Island to bowl state tournament this weekend. Bowling reminds me of
my aunts Grace & Katheryn. When I first started bowling in Lyons, Aunt Grace's team
was the best. They were all "older ladies" (probably in their 50's). They did not
wear jeans. They wore skirts and nylons with seams up the back. Occasionally one
of them would have a bra strap slip down their arm and have to pull it back up. One
of my "younger" teammates called them the "straps & seams team." Nothing disrespectful, just something that stood out about them. For a few years after
Katheryn moved back from Colorado, she would ride from Oakland to Lyons with me
to bowl. Bowling was one of the last things she gave up. She stayed with it as
long as she could take the 2 or 3 steps and roll the ball down the alley.
Katheryn is gone now and Aunt Grace has moved to an assisted living facility. She is
about 93 years young and her favorite activity is playing bridge. When her doctor
told her to try to get a little more exercise, she said she would have to move a little faster from one table to the other. Her children and grandchildren are her
pride and joy. She has always follows their lives very closely especially their
sports activities.
Christmas day was always spent at Grace's. She fixed the turkey and everyone brought
something. We always hoped for snow so we could go sleigh riding. If their was no
snow, we might get to ride their horse, Ribbon. Mom might play some carols on the
piano while we all stood around her and sang. No one cared if I couldn't carry a
tune in a bucket. It seems like there might have been some football games on TV
for the men to watch or maybe the adults would play pinocle or some bridge.
Grace and John (or "Smith" as we used to call him) lived on the same farm as long as
I can remember. They moved to a home in Lyons when retiring. Besides farming,
Grandpa and John raised and trained race horses.
Kathryn & Roland lived in Oakland then Omaha and Colorado and back to Oakland.
They had a cafe in beutiful downtown Oakland. Roland worked for Aksarben in Omaha.
I really don't remember what he did in Colorado. Kathryn taught school until she
was unable because of her health.
Aunt Grace is the only one that keeps us from being the Older Generation.
Sue

Good Monday!
I was looking forward to posting about what a nice weekend I had, but my computer is having internet "issues" so it will have to wait. I may be out of touch for a few days, but keep blogging! I'll find a way to check in somehow! I'm at the Fremont Library at this moment, but my time limit is almost up.
Take care!

Here is a true story.

A few summers ago I worked the weekend night shift as a cashier at No Frills Supermarket in Blair. 10 PM – 7 AM Friday & Saturday. There is a whole different race of human beings out there in the world and if you’ve never worked nights in a public place, you may not have met them.
Around 3:30 one Sunday morning, when the staff was down to just me and my manager, a group of four young men swaggered in. They were pierced and wearing silver or gold rings in absolutely every place you could think of piercing without causing brain damage: necks, noses, tongues, cheeks (I mean the ones on their faces – I didn’t ask about the others), ears, eyebrows. They were tattooed all up and down their arms with skull & crossbones, barbed wire “bracelets”, serpents, dragons, swords and so on. Only two of them had hair: one wore an orange Mohawk and the other had shaved his entire head except for a l-o-o-o-ng braid down his back.
Anyway, they bought some food at the deli and sat down on the bagging counter and ate talking in low voices. I strained to hear what they were saying, but couldn’t understand a word, though I imagined I heard “I’ll go first,” and “make a run for it,” and “we’ll be in KC by 6.” I kept glancing at them and they kept glancing at me and my manager. Then I’d glance at my watch and try to watch them out of the corner of my eye.
Before long, my manager went to the back of the store for something and I was left alone with this motley looking crew. I tried to keep myself busy straightening out the gum and candy in my check-out aisle and when I looked up, the bald one with the braid was coming toward me, holding something in his hand, keeping it down at his right hip. He was looking right at me, his face expressionless. My mouth went dry and I nearly yelled out my manager’s name in a cry for help, when he brought his hand up, showed me a bag of trash from their meal and said, “Do you have someplace I could throw this away?”
I nearly collapsed with relief.

Have good weekend everyone!

Your attention, please.

If I get killed in an auto accident on the highway or a horse wreck on a road someplace, please don’t put up one of those wooden crosses in memory of me. I drive past several of these in my travels to and from town, and I have to tell you, they are starting to give me the creeps. They all started out pretty enough – white, standing up straight and respectfully, bedecked with flowers, but it doesn’t take long for them to start leaning drunkenly to one side. The flowers fade or blow away and the paint chips off leaving the wood exposed to the elements to turn grey and sad-looking.
This being the small community that it is, I knew most of the people who died in each of those places and their families have my deepest sympathy, but the wooden crosses only remind me of the sad circumstances of their deaths and I’d rather have reasons to remember the person’s life instead.
With that in mind, when I die, please don’t memorialize my death. If you want to give to a memorial for me, do one of my favorite things:
Go make a memory with your kids or grandkids and take lots of pictures of them.
Call in sick to work and go horseback riding. (You can borrow Bubba & Lucy if they outlive me.)
If my fabric stash survives me, take it home and make a quilt.
Try a new recipe – something elegant from a Martha Stewart book. Or get my Dutch oven and cook a pot of stew over a campfire.
Write something for your blog. If you don’t have a blog, start one.
Go camping for a weekend.
Go to the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha.
Do something you’ve been putting off for a long time, like have coffee (or tea) with an old friend. Or clean out a long neglected closet – it will make you feel better.
Call someone who has moved away and talk to them for no less than one hour.
Write a handwritten letter to each one of your children and grandchildren and tell them how much each one of them means to you and be sure to include the thing you love about them the most.
If you don’t have children, write the above letter to your parents and/or grandparents.
Go dancing.
Go to church the following Sunday and sing the hymns as loudly as you can. In 4 parts if you can read music.
Read the Bible from cover to cover (you can have a whole year to get this done.)
Go shopping for something unnecessarily beautiful at Victoria’s Secret with your daughter. If you don’t have a daughter, you can borrow Emily.
Sit quietly by a window in the pre-dawn darkness and watch the sun come up.
Get some new cowboy boots and a hat.
Sit in the window of a hay mow and watch a thunderstorm.
Write a poem.
Re-read your favorite book.
Have a snifter of brandy with supper.
Go to a Toastmasters meeting and join.
The next time you think of berating yourself for something, replace that thought with this one: “Janell loved me.”
Open a door for an elderly person.
See if you can get a baby in the grocery store to laugh.
Go to the Arlington Country Market at noon on a Friday and have the pan-fried chicken special.
Listen to the radio instead of watching tv for a week.
Sit quietly by a window and watch the sun go down.

Whatever you do, please remember my life and not my death.
I love you all.

Bubba & Lucy

More extended family

This is Webber
She is Goldie’s best friend – they play and wrestle each other just like kittens and when they chase each other up and down the stairs, it sounds like bowling balls bouncing around.
When I lay me down to sleep, (usually on my right side) Webber makes herself a nest right behind my knees.
In this pic, she is sitting in the flower bed at the front of our house. The horseshoe border was installed by the previous occupant who is a farrier.
Okay, so not such an interesting post today, but it’s gloomy, raining and cold and I want to go home!

Extended Family

This is Goldie. He came to us two years ago in the dead of winter, not long after we moved into the place. We guessed he was about a year old at that time. He’s very friendly and seemed to like us, but like any tomcat, he was prone to wandering. He’d stay with us for several days and then be gone for several days. At one point he stayed away for three weeks in the bitter cold and we thought we’d seen the last of him. One morning I found him in the barn looking forlorn, bedraggled and thin, but his eyes brightened up when he saw me and he gave a weak little meow in greeting. I reached out to pet him and then I saw his right front leg – it was swollen to at least three times its normal size. So now what to do? It’s one thing to feed a friendly stray, but running up a vet bill on him didn’t seem like a good idea. We decided to give him a couple of days to recover on his own and see what happened.
Well he got thinner and his leg got bigger. It looked bleak for Goldie and I didn’t like the idea of just watching him die, so Emily took him to the vet, who threatened amputation, neutered him, vaccinated him, hospitalized him and got control of whatever infection had gotten into his leg. When Goldie came back to our place, we had to keep him locked in the garage, away from other cats and give him medicine daily for three weeks. I figured after a couple of days of sitting all alone in a cold garage, he’d be darting for the door whenever it opened and take off in a dash for freedom. But to my amazement, whenever someone went to see him, he immediately started his lawnmower-like purr, strolled across the floor, meowed a couple times and did the cat rub around our legs. A very likable fellow, but we already had three housecats and I declared that was two too many and no way was Goldie going to become a housecat!
One last check up at the vet and $202.00 later, Goldie’s confinement was over. We opened the garage door wide and he sauntered out. And promptly disappeared for a week. When he finally turned up in the barn again one frosty morning, he became the 4th housecat.
well, my goodness, you can't just let a 202 dollar cat wander off, can you?

Commuter Sightings:

In the alfalfa field, the last snowdrift of the season clings to life on the shady side of the terrace.


The recent rains combined with the March snowmelt have created some temporary ponds out in the fields of the low lying areas. Today, driving past one of them I saw some Mallards swimming back and forth in one of these ponds. They swim for a few moments, peering into the water in front of them and then stick their heads in and all you can see are wiggling tailfeathers. It looks for all the world like they come up smiling. Then they go on swimming , watching and repeat the whole routine.

Communter Sighting: Dust billowed up behind the old blue Ford pickup and disappeared into the howling prairie wind.
(I'm going to start putting them here as a new post, instead of a sidebar. The sidbar is getting messy looking.)

Old farmers and lunch

Mealtimes in my neighborhood are as follows: breakfast around 7 in the morning, coffee time around 10 AM; dinner at noon; lunch around 4 and supper after dark. There’s no such thing as brunch. Brunch is for people who are too lazy to get up in time for breakfast.
Retired farmers tend to congregate around the time they used to break for afternoon lunch. They used to gather at the General store, around a pot belly stove and when the old mercantiles started to give way to specialty shops – like grocery stores, Post Offices, feed stores, fabric shops and furniture stores, they had to find someplace else. Some of them started landing at barber shops, and still do. Some of them found their way to a local café that stays open past the dinner hour. Here, they might find a piece of pie leftover from the noon rush. Any place that owned a working coffeemaker and a few chairs. And in little towns like Nickerson, where there is nothing but a mini-mart/gas station, they gather there.
Discussion is much the same at every table; the weather, the price of corn, the weather, “How much rain didja git?” who moved to town, the weather, whose funeral is next Monday, and so on. If you dozed off at a table in the mini-mart in Nickerson and woke up at the café in Tekamah, you wouldn’t know the difference. Even the weather beaten faces peeking out from under the bills of seedcorn caps and the gnarled hands folded around the coffee mug seem to be interchangeable.
Here are some phrases you are sure to hear no matter where you some across this group:
“I tell you what, it wasn’t like that when I was a kid!”
“We never had it that easy!”
“Kids, nowadays…”
“I never woulda got away with anything like that.”
“Boy, they sure don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”
I think that the conversations are probably timeless. Every generation making the same declarations about the next one, for as long as there have been families.

‘Tis the Season…

…for the Creeping Crud. My home has become filled with the sounds of sneezing, sniffling, coughing, hacking, moaning and the oft repeated question: “Where’d you put the Kleenexes?”
It all started a few weeks ago with Jack coming down with a bad case of upper respiratory flu. He bounced back pretty well, but I don’t think I’d ever seen him quite that sick. Randy came down with it last week and without bothering to recover from that, he transitioned into his allergies; same symptoms without the fever.
Then Jack’s allergies started flaring up.
Three days ago, Emily began to resemble a melting ice cube as the same fever crept into her system, one symptom at a time. She hasn’t been able to shake it, so I drove her to the Dr. this morning. It’s a virus, so he gave her a Rx for the symptoms and told her (like I’ve been telling them all along) to drink lots of water.

Our weather has taken a sudden u-turn back into winter temps – daytime highs in the low 40s and night time lows in the 20s. More snow expected tonight and a low of 17 for Friday night. And we’re two weeks into Spring. I think this year’s Easter Egg hunting attire will include stocking hats, woolen scarves and mittens.

Every time – and do mean EVERY time I type the word Friday, I type Firday. I’ve set the computer to auto-fix it, and I’ve tried to watch out for it, but I’ve done it wrong so many times, it’s as if I’ve practiced making that mistake. Anyway, Fridays are always good, but tomorrow is Good Friday – the day Christians observe the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Did you know the Crucifixion scene is the most often painted scene in all of art history? I think the most moving depiction of it is in the Mel Gibson movie Passion of the Christ. In the movie, when Jesus says, “It is finished.” we are taken to God’s point of view, from far above the cross and a giant tear falls to earth. It showed me how much it broke God’s heart to let His only Son die on the cross for the sins of mankind, but He did it so we could understand how much he loves us. Because His great heart was also breaking for lack of fellowship with each and every one of us and this was how He chose to restore that fellowship.
I think they should call it GREAT Friday. (I did it again. “Firday”).

So Happy GREAT FRIDAY to everyone tomorrow! I won’t see you then, but I’ll Blog with you then!

I Confess

It’s time I come clean with a full confession: I have found a TV show that I love. It’s Dancing With the Stars – the ballroom dance competition that pairs a star (and they do use the term loosely) with a professional ballroom dance partner. Viewers watch the competition on Monday night, call in their votes and then watch again to see the results on Tuesday night. One couple is eliminated each week until only one remains at the end of 11 or 12 weeks. I understand it’s a clone of a show in the UK and we even have two of the same judges they use.
Anyway, I am usually away from home on Monday and Tuesday nights, until the very last 10 minutes or so of the show, so I have to videotape it and watch it later. That’s okay, because I can fast forward through the MANY MANY commercials. It turns out that it only takes about 70 minutes to watch a 120 minute program.
My favorite stars this year are Apolo Ono, a speed skater, and Heather Mills, whom they identify as a professional activist, but her better known claim to fame is as Paul McCartney’s ex-wife. She has an artificial leg, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing her down much. She still does better shimmies, grinds, jumps, kicks and twirls than Leeza Gibbons and Laila Ali.
Apolo Ono is partnered with the youngest professional dancer to ever participate. She’s 18 and her name is Julianna something and besides dancing their hearts out every time, they make the CUTEST couple in the bunch.
The music is live; the costumes are sparkling, flowing and brilliant. The close-up vignettes of each couple between each dance are humorous. I find it all elegant and charming – what’s not to like?
Another reason I like this show is that it is so completely opposite of what is usually on in our house. My family likes the shows that involve crime solving so, in the course of an average week, we have a least 15 rapes, beatings, robberies, and/or murders and their subsequent autopsies taking place in our living room. Sometimes they switch over to the supernatural side of things where we have vampires, demons and ghosts with slayers and mediums to sort it all out.
I prefer dancing.

Do you have a favorite TV show?
If you are a Dancing With the Stars fan, who is your pick for this year?

Time Zones and Other Marital Challenges

It should come as no surprise at all to any married person reading this that the families we were raised in often bring unanticipated challenges to the marriage.
For instance, Mary, a friend of mine, tells the story of how she, as a newlywed, told her husband one morning, “I think I’ll make goulash for supper tonight.” He thought that sounded good, he allowed as to how he liked goulash. So Mary made a batch of goulash that she pronounced every bit as good as her own mother’s. When she and her groom sat down to eat that evening, he beheld his plate and a look of thinly veiled disgust flashed across his face and he said, “What is THIS?!”
Mary, who thought she had made a darn good supper for him, said, “Well, what did goulash look like at your house?” And that question became their I.D. tag anytime they were confronted by familial differences. It’s served them well; I think they’ve been married for over 40 years.
In my paternal family, my siblings and I are dedicated to being on time. And by on time, I mean, I feel like I’m late if I don’t arrive at least 5 minutes early. I think it is an inherited trait, because of what I observed when we hosted our first big semi-annual family reunion for the Descendants of Joel and Almina Gatewood. It was to be potluck at noon. At 11:45 cars filled with Gatewood descendants (I think the final tally was over a hundred attended) began to pull in. By 12:15, everyone who was coming had arrived, the food was set out and we were all in line filling our plates. Now observe my husband’s side of the family: the Carson picnic is held on the same Sunday every year, set for potluck at noon. I think most of them don’t even leave home until 12:30. In 30 years, I’ve never known them to start the food line any earlier than 1:30. I don’t intend this to be a complaint, it just illustrates that each of these families has its own Time Zone. I’ll bet there’s an allele for it in our DNA.
Somehow, it all gets sorted out and husbands and wives tend to find a middle ground somewhere in the midst of all their differences. Our children grow up in this middle ground and take their own preferences and traditions out into the world, where they will undoubtedly clash with some else’s.
So what did goulash look like at your house?

Mysterious ways

I prayed for something this morning that I didn’t really want, but knew would be good for me and guess what? God made it happen. It's not surprising that He answered my prayer, the miracle is that I had the guts to pray for it. I must be growing up.

I am SO glad it’s Friday!
This weekend is Palm Sunday and my Gospel Quartet is scheduled to sing at the 8:00 service. We sing on Easter Sunday also, which I’m really looking forward to – I love the Easter songs even more than Christmas Carols. Which makes me wonder, why do we sing Christmas carols for 4 weeks out of the year and Easter songs for only one day? Maybe it’s because there are hundreds of Christmas Hymns, but only 6 (I counted the ones in our Hymnal) Easter hymns. Easter is really a far more significant holiday on the Christian calendar than Christmas is. Christ’s birth was only the beginning, Part 1 if you will, of God’s greatest gift to the human race. His crucifixion is Part 2: “He died on the cross to pay a debt He didn’t owe because we owed a debt we couldn’t pay.” (Jim Eliot) Part 3: His resurrection assures us that sin, damnation and death have been conquered and even though our bodies may die, our forgiven souls will live forever. Shouldn’t we be singing about this for more than one day?
And speaking of Hymns, I want to recommend the singing group Selah. They have 3 cd’s out right now that I know of. They have made some contemporary arrangements of old hymns without losing the attitude of reverence, which so often happens when someone tries to make a hymn more “hip.” The group is Tod Smith, his sister Nicole Smith and Allan Hall. Tod and Nicole are the children of missionaries and grew up in the Congo, so they include some Congolese music and if you can listen Yesu Azali Awa (it means Jesus is Here With Us) without wanting to get up and dance for joy, you need to take your pulse. They also have a beautiful arrangement of You Raise Me Up, which Josh Groban fans will recognize and appreciate.
Hymns are another important part of the Music of my Life, which I started last week and promised to continue, but haven’t done yet, because the new sod season is here and I’m getting busier and busier every day. Maybe next week.
Anyway, I wish everyone a glorious Palm Sunday and many blessings during the Holy Week ahead!

I've been out and about with the camera. Enjoy!
This is Bubba in all his muddy splendour!

Here is my son Jack - just being handsome. He's single, you know. And a good cook... :)

This is my daughter Emily with a jar of cookies she made last Saturday. Aren't they both lovely?

ANDREAS HELGSTRAND - WEG2006 Freestyle Final

Click to see a dancing horse!

6 things about me:

1. I want to quit my day job to do photography and write novels, poems and short stories. Lots of people have encouraged me to do this including a magazine editor who has read my writing, a newspaper owner, people I trust and whose opinions I value and the person who hired me for this day job. I have several things ready to submit, but I am afraid the rejections would discourage me to the point of giving up. I would have to abandon this dream in the face of reality and if I did that, I would have a huge hole in my life. On the other hand, acceptance and success might be just as scary. What if I run out of ideas for things to write about?! What if as soon as I quit this day job, they find someone who can do it better and won’t ever want me back? What if…? what if…? what if….?!?!?

2. I don’t want my children to have children. They would be the same kind of parents I have been and there are just too many things I should not have passed on to the next generation.

3. I wish Condoleezza Rice would run for and be elected US President.

4. My wrist still hurts from when I broke it back in October. It’s stiff when I rotate it, I get cramps in the palm of my hand and it’s lumpy & crooked in places it wasn’t lumpy before. It makes my handwriting sloppy. I won’t to go back to the doctor for it because I’m afraid he’ll recommend some kind of surgery and I don’t want that.

5. The last time I slept clear through the night was almost 25 years ago when Jack was born and we brought him home from the hospital. I put him to bed at 9 pm and I woke up at 6 am. I went rushing into his room, certain I would find him dead of SIDS, but he was sleeping peacefully. Ever since then, I wake up two-three times every night, no matter how tired I am.

6. I would like to go to Seminary and get a Ph.D. in Christian Theology. I love God with all my heart and read through the Bible once a year, but there are so many things I don’t understand. Like Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof when he sings If I Were a Rich Man and imagines himself with time to sit and study the Good Book “…and that would be the sweetest thing of all…”

The Music of My Life: A Reminiscence

It all started with my mom. In my memory, she sat down to play the piano at least once a day. As soon as I could talk, my sister Shirley and I would stand on each side of her and sing while she played. She was into the swing of the 40s and some of the songs I remember are You Are My Sunshine (which I used for a lullaby on my babies), I Ain’t Gonna Take it Sittin’ Down, He, Let the Sunshine In, Just Because… and if you gave me a few minutes, I think I might be able to sing at least the first verse and the chorus of each one of them. I have a collection of the sheet music and books she used as well as the piano she played. It’s a great monster of an upright, made in 1910 and it sits in my living room, looking lonely.
I think I must have been in second grade or so when I joined the choir at our church. Our director was Gail Pearson and she had a gift for music as well as for working with squirmy grade schoolers. She taught me that two different notes sung at the same time create something called “harmony.” When it was our Sunday to sing, we wore ivory white robes with maroon collars. I’m sure we made a cherubic picture, tho I can’t recall any of the songs we sang or how well-received we were by the Methodist congregation. I seem to recall Nell Hightree smiling from her spot in the second row, so we must have been, at the very least, not offensive.
In our home, the radio was on every morning, tuned to KFAB Omaha. Their playlist was, of course, swing. And on Saturday nights: Lawrence Welk and his orchestra along with the Champaign musicmakers: Jimmy Roberts, Joe Feeney, Norma Zimmer, Larry Hooper, the Lennon Sisters. Lawrence Welk deserves a blog posting of his own, so I’ll stop there.
I took piano lessons from a lady named Ruby Case. She came to the house every Saturday morning and taught me how to read notes: Treble clef lines are EGBDF - Every Good Bird Does Fly; and spaces FACE. Bass Clef lines– GBDFA Great Big Dogs Fight Animals and spaces ACEG All Cows Eat Grass. I think she charged something like 50 or 75 cents for a 30 minute lesson. I never got very good on the piano. In retrospect, all the kids I knew who took piano from Gertrude Newell played beautifully, so I’m taking the low road and blaming it all on Ruby. The fact that I only practiced for 10 minutes before she came on Saturday mornings couldn’t possibly have any thing to do with it.
At our Public School, the music room was in a building across the street from the main schoolhouse, along with the woodworking shop and the ag building. That was where we went for vocal music as well as marching & concert band. In High School, we sang in Mixed Chorus, Girls’ Glee, (or Boys’ Glee) and in the seventies, someone dreamed up Swing Choir – an octet that performed contemporary music and wore matching outfits and made an attempt at choreography. I always sang alto. Spring Music Contest was the highlight of the musical year and our school maintained a winning record. Our vocal teacher and band director was Bob Widener. A musical genius, he taught at that school for 30 years. He knew how to bring out the best in all of us. In the springtime, after we were done with Contest and when it was too warm to stay in the music room, he would bring out his guitar and take us outside. We’d sit in a circle around him and just sing for the sheer pleasure of it. In the summer, he piled as many kids as he could (usually six) into his convertible and drive us into Omaha to see concerts in the parks or musicals. We started calling him Uncle Bob when he took our marching band to the Sun Bowl where we marched in the parade in El Paso, Texas in 1972. He and six of us from Lyons went on a tour of Europe with the Mid-America Band, Orchestra and Choir in 1973. London was where I first saw live musical theatre; we saw Showboat and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat – still two of my favorites. We traveled by bus through England, took a ferry across the English Channel (my first experience with seasickness), visited France, Germany and Switzerland, giving concerts in each city we stopped. I was in the orchestra and we always closed with The William Tell Overture (a/k/a The Lone Ranger Theme), thus assuring a standing ovation everywhere, because even if it’s done badly, that overture makes you want to stand up.
(To be continued)

We had our first thunderstorm of the year night before last. Just some rumblings in the distance and flashes of lightening on the horizon. Rather than being scary, like it was when I was a kid, I found it rather reassuring. If it had been daylight, we might have seen a rainbow and remembered God’s promise of Genesis 8:22 “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” So it was kind of nice to doze off to the sounds of faraway thunder.

Late yesterday afternoon, we had another one roll through and drop some hail on us. I was in the barn when it hit. We saw the storm coming and were going to try and get the horses in out of it, but it started too quickly. After the downpour and hail started they just turned their rumps to the wind and stood there, ignoring my calls to them to come in. They even looked at me as if to say, “Why don’t you get yourself in out of the rain? You’re going to get soaked.” So I just waited it out in the barn. There’s something mysteriously good about watching a rainstorm through the half door of a barn. The rain looks wetter if you aren’t looking at it through a glass window. The wind howls a little louder through a haymow than it does around the eaves of house. The thunder cracks a little louder when there is no fiberglass insulation to slow it down and the lightening seems brighter, closer and flashier somehow. And you can watch it all while staying dry and warm. You can experience it without actually having to get out there in it and get soaked.

My son, Jack (25) has the day off today after his class, so he is cooking supper tonight. He’s making enchiladas, frijoles, guacamole & Spanish Rice. He’s a pretty good cook. Several weeks ago he made us a Cajun meal of blackened redfish (good), jambalaya (good) & crawdads (gross).

It’s been a beautiful, sunny day today. Warm enough to shed the Cowgirl Up sweatshirt which I put on last September and have pretty much worn day in and day out since then, with brief pauses for laundering, of course. I am so cold-blooded. My friends just roll their eyes at me when I say, “It’s chilly in here.” And then they proceed to describe their latest menopausal hot flash to me while I continue to shiver, shove my hands into the front pocket, and put up the hood. Then they end their monologue with, “Just wait ‘til you start getting them.” What can I say? I’m kind of looking forward to it.

Senior moments

Not long ago I had to trade vehicles with my husband. I don’t remember why, he must have needed a pickup for something, so I took his car. Not a big problem, until I went to the grocery store. Oblivious to the nightmare I was about to find myself in, I happily pushed my cart up and down the aisles, filling it full of bargains and looking forward to all the wonderful meals I was going to create with them. I proceeded to the checkout and went to the parking lot to find my pickup. I remembered which line I had parked in, but there was not a single pickup to be found. “Hmmmm,” I muttered. “I must not have parked in that area after all.” I scanned the other rows for the pickup and continued pushing the cart full of groceries back and forth, from one end of the lot to the other and up and down each row of cars for what may have been a good 10 minutes. Certain that my pickup had been stolen, I was about to go back into the store (I don’t have a cell phone - it will be clear to you why when you get to the end of this) and call 9-1-1 to report a stolen vehicle, when I spotted a familiar looking red car in the third row. “Why, that looks just like Randy’s car!” I thought to myself, “What’s he doing here?” Only then did I remember that we had switched vehicles that day.
This same thing happened to me last week at Wal-Mart. I have the privilege of using a company pickup when I go on errands to town (the TST office is 16 miles from town). This particular day, the errands included a stop at Wal-Mart. Again; I went in, did my shopping and confidently strode out – and stumbled around in the parking lot looking for my pickup – I think this time it might only have been 5 minutes – until I remembered I needed to be looking for the RED TST pickup instead of my white one.
How would I ever manage to keep track of something as small as a cell phone when I can so easily misplace entire automobiles?

Here are some blizzard pictures, taken 3/2/07.

Can you tell that Randy is stainding beside a drift? That is in our back yard.

The one on the left is the view from the barn. At the right, is looking east from the barn. The photos are not nearly as impressive as the actual event.

JW Scare
Wednesday is my day off so I usually spend it doing laundry, beginning first thing in the morning. Sometimes I’ve done two or three loads before I even get out of my jammies and into day clothes. Yesterday was no exception. However, yesterday the weather was breezy and above freezing – perfect for drying the bedding on the clothesline – I love the scent of line-dried sheets and quilts. So the sheets and mattress pad were the second load of the day, and of course I was still in my pajamas.
I love my pajamas. I got them in Nederland, Colorado last summer when I was vacationing with my sisters. My PJs are of soft t-shirt fabric, long pants and a tank top. They are bright pick with brown horses trotting all over them. I have a pair of socks to match, only the socks are brown with pink horses on them. Since the early morning was a bit brisk when it was time to hang my bedding on the line, I grabbed the first jacket I could find; my bright red Nebraska Cornhusker windbreaker. The back yard, where the clothesline is located was only last week under a six-foot snowdrift, so the ground is still a little soggy. I pulled on my manure encrusted barn boots and headed out. The breeze was whipping around my ears, so I pulled up the hood on the windbreaker, finished hanging the sheets and made my way back into the house.
We live down in a little valley on a remote gravel road in Northeast Nebraska. No one ever just stumbles onto our place; you have to come here on purpose or not at all, so I usually don’t’ concern myself with drop-in visitors. As I rounded the corner of the house towards the front door in all my laundry day finery, I came face to face with two Jehovah’s Witnesses. With my hood up, I must have appeared to them as a gaudy red and pink version of the Angel of Death. And let’s not even mention the aroma that must have been emanating from my barn boots.
It’s hard to say who was more startled. They just tried to hand me one of their publications, to which I replied “No, thank you.” Then one of them mumbled something about catching me “at a bad time” and then they scurried back to their car and peeled out.
I don’t think they’ll be back.

Ferrier visit

My Ferrier comes today to work on my horses’ feet. This was one of the things that used to make me extremely nervous when I was a greenhorn. My mare was 5 years old when I first got her and had offered her previous owners no problems when it was time for a Ferrier visit. She stood still, gave up her feet without a fuss to him and let him hold it between his knees while he did what he needed to do for as long as he needed to do it. However, when it came to my Ferrier, she forgot all of her good manners. She jerked her feet away from him at every opportunity. She rared. She kicked at him. She spun around and pretty much behaved like a brat for him, which scared the heck out of me. A 950 pound animal with really hard feet throwing a temper tantrum is a frightening thing. Foolishly, I blamed her. Then, one day after he left, I found some welts on her back and sides. He had hit her with his hammer. Needless to say, he was not invited back.
Fortunately for me, I got in touch with a good Ferrier and got on his schedule, right before he stopped accepting new clients. He is worth his weight in gold. The first time my mare tried to jerk her foot away from him, he simply held it tighter and continued his work. She tried to rare up and he held even tighter, pausing only long enough to make sure he kept his balance, and continued his work. I apologized for her behavior and expressed that I thought she should know better and he shrugged it off saying, “She’s only a horse.” She soon learned that resistance was futile. By the second time he visited, she and I had both calmed down considerably. He’s been with me ever since.
Two things I learned from him about horse handling that served me very well over the years: (1) no matter what the horse’s reaction is, just keep doing what you’re doing. They’ll stop fussing eventually. And (2) He’s only a horse. You can’t expect him to know anything about obedience (or lack thereof) he hasn’t learned from you.
Another thing I like about his visits is he is a really good storyteller. He spent some time in his youth as a cowboy working on a dude ranch in Wyoming and I hope to capture some of his stories on paper. He told me once about being out fixing fence in a pretty remote area one time and he and his partner came across a herd of buffalo. They noticed one cow separate herself from the herd and lay down. It became obvious to them that she was in labor. Then they saw another cow follow her and start trotting in circles (about 120 feet) around her. The second cow kept her trotting vigil until the calf had been born, licked off and was steady on his feet. Then all three of them went back to the main herd. He commented, “I don’t know why I was granted the privilege of seeing something like that. Most people aren’t that lucky.”
I wonder what his story will be today?

This is not good:

I had some free time Saturday morning, so I headed into Omaha for a haircut. I’ve been attempting to grow it out to a more ladylike length (see Fat Old Man posting January 6, 2007) and it was time to get it trimmed up. Well, I’m not sure what happened, but the stylist didn’t clearly understand what I wanted, (how many different meanings can be applied to “Not quite that short.”?) because when I look in the mirror now I see Tom Bergeron of ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’ At least he isn’t fat.
I intended to get back into a routine where I take a walk every day, but found some excuse or another not to both Saturday and Sunday as well as today.
We lost an hour Saturday night due to Daylight Savings Time. I heard that the Congressman who decided we should do this two weeks earlier thinks it will save energy, because we won’t have to turn the lights on so early in the evening. We have to turn our’s on earlier in the morning, so as far as I can tell we haven’t gained anything.

This is better:

The weekend weather was pleasant enough; especially compared to the last two. Temps hovering between 30 and 60 F.
We have a creek that crosses our driveway at its lowest point and it was so high and running so fast on Friday afternoon, I took the camera out to record the phenomenon. By Saturday morning, it had fallen to a more normal level, though it is still flowing faster than usual. Almost all the snow is gone, except where it was piled up by the scrapers and loaders.
I’ve heard rumors that robins have been spotted in the area. I haven’t seen any robins, though I did hear a cardinal a few days ago. Our barn swallows aren’t back yet, but I expect them any day now.
The inside out cats are spending more time outside than in the past few days. I don’t mean the cats are inside out – that would be ugly. I mean they are allowed in because they know how to use the litterbox and they are allowed out because we trust them not to run off.
The lot my horses live in is a quagmire, but they don’t seem to mind. They’ve started shedding their winter coats and a roll in the mud must relieve the itching, because they were both absolutely covered with it from nose to tail Friday evening.
We got our tax returns back from H & R Block and everyone is getting a refund. I got the FAFSA onlines filled out for my college students and they both qualify for aid.

This is best:

Our Girl Scout cookies came. Love those Caramel Delights.

Horse joining a Cycling Race - What other kind of video would you expect from me?

And he's off and running!! This is an experiment in digg-blogging. Hope you like it.



read more | digg story

Just have to add a little something to your sometime/somewhere comments. "Are we there yet?" You never get there, because when you get there it is no longer there, it is here. Go figure.
Sue

What time is it?

It’s time for some thoughts on time.

I sent an email to a friend who lives in the same time zone I do one Monday at 11:30 AM. She sent me a reply that same day at 8:32 AM. Now, I knew email was faster than the US Postal service, but I wasn’t aware they had mastered time travel. Is that on an HTML somewhere I can copy and paste in?

And on my blog, the weather stamp (at left) is exactly 56 minutes behind the time my computer clock says it is. I thought all computer clocks were calibrated to a big Atomic Clock somewhere on the planet that is supposed to be accurate to within a fraction of a second per century. So who is off? My computer or my weather stamp? Or is the Atomic Clock?

And this weekend, we switch over to Daylight Savings Time (DST). We “Spring Forward” and cause the sun to stay up an hour later in the evening (see what wonders our clocks have wrought). That means, it comes up an hour later in the morning and we morning people will lose an hour of daylight. I was just getting used to heading out to the barn with the eastern sky beginning to glow and having it be almost full daylight by the time I’m done and headed back to the house. By Sunday morning, I’ll have been plunged back into darkness for my chore time. The change officially occurs at 2 AM Sunday. How come they can’t change it a little bit at a time like maybe 15 minutes or so for four days? Then maybe we wouldn’t be so groggy on the Monday after the DST change.

And where, exactly, does time begin? I used to think it was based on Greenwich Mean Time, but someone told me that ,no, it actually starts somewhere off the coast of Australia. I have a little card in my rolodex that tells me that when it’s noon here, it’s 4 AM in Sydney, Australia. But 4 AM of what day? Would that be today or yesterday? Or maybe tomorrow? And did you know that, even though California, Montana and Texas are all geographically bigger than Nebraska, they each only occupy one time zone – we have two. It changes by an hour in North Platte. And how did they decide on changing it by an hour in just one spot? How come it doesn’t change by 15 minute intervals every 200 miles or so?

One time or day I’ve never seen on any clock or calendar is some. As in, “I’m going to go take Janell to lunch someday.” Stop saying that ‘coz someday ain’t ever gonna happen. It’s just not on the calendar. I checked.

Sometime isn’t on any of my clocks either; not the digitals or the ones with faces or the one on my arm.

Another place you won’t ever find some on is a map – not even on Yahoo or Mapquest. And especially not the wrinkled up mess in the glove compartment. That one’s so old, it might make Antiques Roadshow, but even if it is, you still won’t find someplace or somewhere on it. So even if you want to “take a vacation somewhere someday,” you can just forget it. You’ll never find a hotel someplace and you can’t get a reservation for some time.

Okay, that’s enough of this nonsense.

Onion Pie
Delicious! If you like onion blooms or onion rings, you’ll like this pie.
I tried this recipe while I was snowed in last weekend and was it ever good! It's from the Lyons (Nebraska) Methodist Cookbook published in 1991. The recipe was submitted by Phyllis Hensley.

1 ½ Cups Ritz Crackers, crushed
5 Tblsp butter

5 Tblsp butter
3 cups onions, sliced thin

2 eggs
1 cup milk

½ cup cheese, grated
salt & Pepper to taste
½ Cup Ritz Crackers, crushed

Mix 1 ½ cups cracker crumbs with 5 tablespoons melted butter. Press into pie plate.

Saute onions with remaining butter until limp. Spoon onions into pie shell.

Mix together eggs, milk, salt and pepper. Pour over onions. Sprinkle cheese over onions and sprinkle with remaining ½ cup crumbs. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes.

Here is a sauce I concocted to go with it:
½ cup mayonnaise
3 Tblsp horseradish sauce
1 tsp Louisana hot sauce or tobasco
¼ cup ketchup
Mix thoroughly.

Family Memories -Part 3

My mom, Rachel Marguerite Anderson and my dad, John Eddie Gatewood were married in March of 1940 (I think). One of Mom’s favorite stories is about their wedding:
There is a little dirt road just a mile or so east of Bancroft, Nebraska and if she was ever in the car with you when you drove past it, she’d point to a spot on that road and say, “That’s where I got married.” You might think she would go on to say that there used to be a house there or a church or something, but, no – they got married in a parked car on a dirt road outside of Bancroft. It seems the ceremony was held at her Mom & Dad’s in Lyons, but when the minister sat down to sign the Marriage License, he saw that it had been purchased in Cuming County, rather than Burt County (which is where Lyons is). He said the marriage wouldn’t be legal unless it took place in Cuming County. So Mom and Dad, their two witnesses and the minister got into a car, drove til they crossed the county line and repeated the vows.
Their first night together was spent on Dad’s farm west of Decatur, NE and thunderstorms were rolling through the area. Dad had a big old mutt of a dog who was afraid of storms and when Mom woke up in the morning, there was this big, wet dog in bed with them. Apparently, the winds had blown open the door of the house and he came in and made himself at home.
They had six children - of which I am the youngest. The first four were born two years apart each – two girls in April, (one on Palm Sunday and one on Easter) two boys in October, and then two girls in November. Four years each separates the two youngest from the boys. The two oldest were “The Big Girls”, then “The Boys” and then “The Little Girls.”
I think I was about 4 years old (in 1959) when Mom took a job ‘off the place.’ She went to work for the Campbell Soup Company in Fremont, carpooling in to Fremont with a group of ladies from Lyons. Her job there was to bone the chicken.
Dad and Mom farmed until about 1962. We moved to Lyons, Nebraska and Dad became a jack-of-all-trades. I remember some of the jobs he had, not necessarily in chronological order:
The first one I remember was at the creamery in Lyons. It was only about a block away from where we lived. They processed milk into powdered milk. I think it was called the Lyons Creamery. One of the perks of this job was that once in a while he would bring home a pint jar of pure, thick cream – literally the “crème de la crème.” I still like the taste of cream.
I don’t know how long he worked there, but eventually, Dad went to work for the Morrison & Quirk Company at an alfalfa mill near Bancroft. They dehydrated alfalfa hay into pellets. They trucked in the hay and dumped it into huge, round furnaces that glowed red in the night and if you stood too close to the furnace, the heat sucked your breath away. Sometimes, he worked night shift and my sister and I (The Little Girls) would go with Mom to take him a lunch around midnight. They had a pop machine in the shop/office area. It was a big, oval tank with glass bottles of pop sunk into ice cold water. Each brand of pop had its own ‘alley,’ where the bottles were hung from the neck. You’d put your money in and slide your selection through a little ‘gate’ at one end. If you touched this pop machine when you were barefooted, you got an electric shock! The other clear memory I have of the alfalfa mill was the smell of the burning hay and the green dust that clung to Dad’s overalls.
Mom continued to work outside the home. After Campbell Soup, she waited on tables or cooked in some of the local cafes in Lyons. She also worked in the kitchen at the brand new nursing home -the Logan Valley Manor- when it opened in the early 70s.
During the racing season, Dad worked for his father as a thoroughbred race horse trainer, which I told about in an earlier post (February 22, 2007)
Mom and Dad both took jobs with a company called Golden Sun Frozen Foods in the late 60s. They made frozen fried chicken there and Dad drove the truck, making deliveries all over Nebraska, probably Iowa, and sometimes to Denver.
One thing Mom and Dad liked to do was bowl. Lyons had a ten-lane bowling alley – “Lyons Lanes.” Mom was on a women’s league, Dad was on at least one men’s league and they bowled together every Friday on a mixed league. (I still have his bowling shirt.) Dad won a traveling trophy for high score or something two years in a row and I used to love to look at the little gold guy bowling with dad’s name – twice - at the top of the list of engraved names. It sat on top of our piano.
We went to church most every Sunday at the Lyons Methodist. Mom taught Sunday school for several years, but Dad usually stayed home and watched “Bowling for Dollars” on TV. His cousin, Joe Gatewood, was a frequent contestant and even won a brand new convertible. Mom always slow-cooked a beef roast with potatoes and carrots and a jello salad for Sunday dinner.
Their favorite place to go out to eat on a Saturday night was the Green Lantern in Decatur, a steak house that still serves good food and drink.
Dad and Mom welcomed “just passing through town, so we thought we’d drop by” visitors with a pot of coffee and conversation. Frequent guests included Dad’s cousin and his wife, Ray and Tamsey Gatewood and the widow of Mom’s brother, Milton, whom I knew as Aunt Babe; their close friends Tom and Marybelle Connealy. But by far, their favorite guests were their grandchildren. Both The Big Girls and The Boys were out on their own by this time and they all started presenting Dad and Mom with grandchildren in rapid succession. The oldest two grandkids never lived near enough to just “drop in”, but the rest were in Lincoln or Oakland, Nebraska. Of all of the grandkids, I think Cindy and Tammie would rank among Dad’s favorites. I remember him playing “Peek-a-boo” or “I’m gonna GIT you” or tickling them and singing a falsetto “Gitchy gitchy goo” with them until they were giggling and squealing.
One mild day in September of 1969, Dad set out in the Golden Sun truck to make a delivery to Denver. While parked at the loading dock in Denver, he was struck down by a massive heart attack and died instantly. He was 56; I was 13. Mom was widowed at the age of 51 and finished raising The Little Girls alone. She continued her life much the same way as she had when Dad was with her; working, bowling, going to church, welcoming visitors and enjoying her grandchildren -19 of them by the time we were all finished (21 when you count the two already in heaven).
One of the things she especially enjoyed in her later years was the local Senior Center., where she ate lunch most every day, played cards and delivered meals to “those old folks” who couldn’t get out. She was in her 70s at the time. Several of these Senior citizens formed a “Kitchen Band” and they played kazooes (a piece of paper wrapped around a fine tooth comb), pots and pans, an old washboard and Mom, of course, on the piano.
When Alzheimers began to rob Mom of her memories, she made a heroic effort to hold onto the names of her children. Most of us, she remembered by where we lived: “the one from Omaha,” or “the one in Norfolk.” I was always “the one with the horses.”
She died in September of 2005 in a nursing home in Omaha, two of her daughters at her bedside. I had gone home only hours before, intending to return in the early morning. The home, St. Joseph’s Villa, was a converted hospital. It may have been the same one her own mother was in when she passed away in 1962.
Well, my friend, your simple question several days ago, “What are your family memories?” has opened a floodgate. Thank you for doing that. I miss my folks, but writing these things down brings them back to life for me, and, hopefully, for anyone who reads this.
(To be continued)

And speaking of blizzards…

The five most repeated words in the Bible are “And it came to pass…”, in other words, it didn’t come to stay. However, the March 2007 Blizzard managed to stay for three days.
Our gravel road runs east/west and the wind kept it cleared, right down to the gravel, except where there were trees. The north/south county road (a blacktop) was a whole different story. Drifts up to a quarter mile long and up to six feet were quite common. Even when they were cleared by the snow removal equipment, they didn’t stay open for long due the extremely high winds.
All four of us (how in the heck that happened is a miracle) were at home when it started and we just stayed there for four days. Our power was out for about three hours on Thursday morning – YIKES! No TV or sewing machine L.
Every time someone was supposed to report for work somewhere, we’d set out in the four-wheel drive and get turned back at the first drift. We found one stranded lady Saturday morning around 7:30 in a small car. She was buried up to her roof, in the middle of a drift that was about 40 feet long. She had her cell phone with her and her husband was on the way with a tractor to pull her out. She reasoned that she had already missed two days of work and was desperate to get out. She said she had already made it two miles and didn’t realize how deep and solid the snow was until it was too late. She had been there fewer than 15 minutes when we found her, but her tire tracks were already covered over with snow.
We finally made it all the way to town late Saturday morning, but I almost didn’t make it home, because although the snow had stopped, the winds were still keeping the roads drifted shut.
The winds diminished Saturday night and we made it to church Sunday morning and even made it into Omaha for a movie Sunday night.
We have 6-10 foot drifts all over our place and yet in some spots, the ground is bare. I think the snowfall total was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 inches. The temps are staying above freezing now, so the meltdown is well underway.
Now our creek is on the rise. Wish me luck!
The worst of it was – no access to email or blogs!!
It’s so nice to be back in the world again.

Family stories – Continued

Now for my mom’s side of the family:
My mother’s mother, Clara Mathilde Morrell, “Tillie” was born and raised in Sweden. In 1891, when she was 11 years old, she came to Portland, Oregon to be an Au Pair girl for her stepsister. She finished her schooling there and the first English words she learned were taught her by her brother-in-law; “Open de door.” She stayed in Portland, working as a nanny until the age of 19, when she traveled back to Sweden to visit her family.
When she returned to America, she went to Cambridge, Minnesota to stay with relatives. I don’t know how long she stayed there, but eventually, she traveled to Lyons, Nebraska to visit her cousins.
My grandfather, Andrew (A.G.) Anderson, came to this country from Sweden in the 1870s. They farmed north of Lyons, Nebraska and he was the youngest of 9 (I think) brothers and sisters. One brother had died in Sweden. Grandpa was about 8 years old when, in January, the Blizzard of 1888 swept across this continent. It became known as the “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” because of the sudden onset of the storm, the ferocity of it, and the time of day it hit. Many school aged children were on their way home, or stranded at school and many, sadly, perished. Grandpa was in school and if I remember right, he either stayed at school or made it to a friend’s home to wait it out. His parents had no idea where he was during that whole time, but just “trusted God to keep him safe.”
A.G. was one of the cousins Tillie came to visit and Lillie Breuer, who was there when it happened, says when they met each other, it was “love at first sight.” (Yes, they were cousins, but at that time, it was not that unusual or unseemly for cousins to marry. And all four of their children were completely normal. No albinos or anything like that.) Grandma said that the moment she walked into their house, she felt like she had come home.
They were married in 1904 and my mom, Rachel Marguerite, their youngest, was born in 1918. Mom never learned to speak Swedish as her folks never spoke it in their home, although traces of it are in our family dialect. Mom always said “Ja” for yes, tho she wouldn’t have considered it speaking Swedish. She learned to count to 10 and I remember very clearly, she and Grandma both said “oj, oj, oj” (pronounced ‘oy’) instead of the more American “uh oh,” whenever they were disgusted or dismayed with something (usually something naughty I was saying or doing). I still say, “Ja” for yes, usually without thinking about it and didn’t even notice it until someone pointed it out to me.
I never knew Grandpa, except through pictures and stories as he died a few years before I was born. They farmed a couple miles north of Lyons, in the Jefferson neighborhood, and raised two daughters and two sons and then retired to a home in town.
Grandma was a very devoted Christian and said Grandpa was, too. She had her share of troubles, including a couple of nervous breakdowns, which put her in a hospital. In 1926 they took a road trip with Grandpa’s brother, Sherman, driving in a Model T to California and back. It took them six weeks.
She was one of the founders of the Jefferson Ladies’ Aid, a neighborhood group of women who met monthly for I don’t know how long – probably a century or more before they ran out of women. I like to think of them the as original MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group. The group was a source of friendship and moral support for all the homemakers in the neighborhood. One of the ladies, Bertha Pearson once shared this memory about the Jefferson Ladies’ Aid: Shortly after Bertha’s son, Duane, was born, she got herself ready and probably baked a batch of brownies or cookies to contribute to the lunch and set out with the horse and buggy to attend a meeting at Grandma’s. Grandma met her at the door, with a very surprised look on her face and said, “Bertha, where is the baby?!” It was only then Bertha realized she had left Duane at home, so she drove home in a panic and found him sleeping peacefully right where she had left him.
My mom was a member of the Jefferson Ladies’ Aid when she was raising her family and I remember going to meetings with her and Grandma when I was a little girl. The names of the families some back to me through a fog of time and distance: Krogers, Pearsons, Johnsons, Inager and LOTS of Andersons. The smell of coffee, minced ham sandwiches and chocolate cake can take me right back to a Jefferson neighborhood kitchen. They usually had a Bible Study or a devotional reading, probably a homemaking lesson of some kind and then they sang, my mom played piano for them. I still have some of the songbooks they used.
In her late years, Grandma suffered from ulcerated varicose veins in her legs. She was undergoing an amputation in 1962 and died on the operating table. It broke my mother’s heart because Grandma had asked her to “please don’t let them take my legs.” But the decision was left to Mom (her surviving siblings lived in Colorado and California at the time) and I know she felt it would be for the best. And anyway, it was only Grandma’s body that died – her spirit lives on with her Saviour.
Well, I see that this posting has gone completely out of control, so I’ll stop here and TRY to get on to the next generation next time.

Movie Review

I have a new favorite movie.
Amazing Grace, starring Ioan Gruffudd, is the story of Great Britain’s MP (Member of Parliament) William Wilberforce, whose passionate persistence ended the slave trade in Great Britain in 1807. The movie chronicles his efforts as an abolitionist, which began in 1789. The amazing thing about Amazing Grace is that this movie depicts committed, repentant Christians as something other than wild-eyed, witch-burning fanatics. William Wilberforce followed God’s call on his life to use his position as MP to promote social reforms. And he did it all with – yes, AMAZING Grace. The movie touches briefly on Wilberforce’s other pursuits, including his involvement with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, presenting an accurate portrait of a man who was willing to speak for those who could not speak for themselves. (Although not included in the movie – you can’t cover EVERYTHING in two hours - Wilberforce also was instrumental in opening India to Christian Missionaries, helped found the British and Foreign Bible Society, and worked for the relief of boy chimney sweeps. He wrote a book challenging people to re-examine their Christian faith and give it its proper place in their lives.)
This is one of the most inspiring works to come out of Hollywood since The Ten Commandments – the old one with Charleton Heston. If I may digress, (and of course, I may – this is my blog) I had high hopes for End of the Spear, which was a movie about Jim Eliot, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Peter Fleming and Nate Saint, missionaries who were martyred trying to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Auca people of Ecuador. While the story seemed accurate, they managed to tell it all without once mentioning the name of Jesus.
Amazing Grace also offers viewers an honest introduction to other Christian men, such as Thomas Clarkson, who followed “a direct revelation from God ordering me to devote my life to abolishing the trade.” (Quote not in the movie, but in a historical document). He worked for abolition and emancipation throughout his life. We also meet John Newton, the ex-slaveship captain who wrote the beloved Hymn “Amazing Grace.” Newton was a force of encouragement to Wilberforce throughout his 18 year campaign to end the British slave trade.
Albert Finney as Newton speaks the words that are at the heart of Christian belief and in the heart of every Christian; “I am certain of two things: that I am a great sinner and Jesus Christ is a Great Savior.”
I highly recommend this movie.

Family Stories

Inspired by LaDawn at http://Clare-panton.blogspot.com

I love my great Grandpa Joel Gatewood. I’ve never met him; he died 36 years before I was born, but he lives on in the stories that come to me like gifts from those who did know him.

The most famous family legend about him is that he fought for the North during the Great War of the Rebellion (American Civil War). Great Grandpa Joel was born in Illinois. After the War, he married Great Grandma Almina (Zorn) and found his way to Decatur, Nebraska some time around 1870, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. He farmed for awhile; had a stallion named Pruitt that I assume he bred for stud fees and he piloted the Decatur Ferry across the Missouri River for many years.

One day, he went into town and got his hair cut and his long, white beard shaved off. He went home, knocked on the front door and asked if the lady of the house had any work she could hire him to do. She replied that no, she didn’t. He thanked her politely and turned to leave. As he strode away, no doubt chuckling to himself, Great Grandma recognized his gait, realized who he was and yelled to him. “I don’t like you that way! Let it grow back!” I’ve never seen a photo of him without his beard.

Joel and Almina had 11 children, among them my Grandpa; TW Gatewood. Grandpa married Agnes Connealy in 1904 and they settled down to farm near Decatur, raising registered Duroc breeding stock hogs. They had five children, one died in infancy. My Dad, John Eddie was born to them in 1912. My Aunt Grace tells me that they held a hog auction twice a year and Grandma would fix a big noon meal for the family and the auctioneers. After dinner, they brought out their guitars, fiddles and whatever other portable instrument they had and sang for a few hours. Aunt Grace hated to go to school on those days because she knew she’d miss out on the singing.

The family lost everything in a house fire, I think in the 1930s? They lived the remainder of that winter in the chicken house. In the 40s, Grandpa went to work as a Thoroughbred race horse trainer. One of the women he worked for gave him a horse named Merry Bid and said, “If he ever wins anything, you can give me $100.00.” Well, Merry Bid did indeed win, more than once and that was the start of his stables. Grandpa & Grandma traveled the racing circuit with their horses and when they got to the next event, Grandma cleaned out the back of the stock truck and that’s where they lived until it was time to move again. They traveled to Florida, Chicago, Phoenix, Denver, South Sioux City, NE, St. Joseph, Missouri, Columbus, NE and Grandpa is listed among the founders of the Aksarben race track (now gone) in Omaha. My older brothers and cousins traveled with them as grooms, but I was born too late to get in on that privilege. I would have LOVED it. Dad trained for him for awhile and some of my favorite childhood memories are of visits to the race track to watch Grandpa’s horses run. Grandma tried to teach me how to pick a winner by reading a racing form, and I remember asking her a question that just about made her bust a gut laughing. I don’t remember what I asked her, but that was the end of my racing form lessons.

In the late 1960s, Grandpa was nearly killed by a horse in an accident – he got a rope wrapped around his hand was dragged, breaking his pelvis. He was given Last Rites by a Priest at the hospital in St. Joe, but fortunately for all of us, he recovered. He was a very faithful Catholic after that incident and attended Mass and Confession whenever he could. He remained faithful to his love for horses and horseracing, but he and Grandma eventually gave up the vagabond lifestyle and settled into an apartment in Lyons, NE. One day, in 1971, he got up around 4 AM to get ready to go to the Columbus races. Grandma heard him fall in bathroom, where he died suddenly of a heart attack. Mom went over there as soon as Grandma called and saw Grandpa where he’d fallen. She said he was lying on his side with his hand under his head, with a very peaceful look on his face.

I’ll stop here with my family stories for now. I’ll move on to the following generations next time.

My Famous Barn: Part II

There is a new version of the Roberts Dairy Commercial circulating. (See the Jauary 18, 2007 post if you need more details).
This time, the actress appears with two children and she says to the cow, “You make us feel so PEPPY!” Again, at the end, (after she asks the cow for an autograph) you get a lovely shot of the landscape behind the cow, which features my wonderful barn along with the rest of our place.
With all this attention, I feel almost obligated to buy Robert’s Dairy products instead of the cheaper store brands.

Here is a literary contribution from my daughter, Emily. The assignment was to “make a ‘to-do’ list’.

School Daze

To Do: Find the least-dirty pair of jeans in the hamper and run them twenty minutes in the dryer to give them a semblance of freshness. Do the same, if necessary, for a T-shirt. Check off everything needed for the day and check at least three times, an exercise in futility since there will be a crucial item missing at the most inopportune time. Start the car five minutes prior to departure to give it time to warm up. Use profane and abusive language when it dies anyway.

Drive 45 miles and arrive at parking lot; drive around looking for a space. Wonder if the drivers of compact sports cars who double-park will make it into heaven. Settle for the spot furthest from the exit. Board the shuttle bus and try to ignore the couple occupying one seat, joined at the lip.

Dig around for student ID at the HPER (Health Physical Education and Recreation) Building. Find it in the last pocket searched and enter. Ignore the sign in the restroom saying “This is not a dressing room” and change into workout clothes in there anyway. Begin workout. Fifteen minutes in, begin worrying about the possibility of a healthy twenty-two year old woman dropping dead of a heart attack, however remote it may seem. Sweat profusely.

After workout, change back into street clothes. Finish essay. Print out copy and check for spelling errors that have to be there, no matter what Microsoft Word is saying. Realize that the entire document is crap from start to finish and begin debating whether to write a “mercy e-mail” to the instructor, pleading sickness, emergency or just plain stupidity to get more time to write it better. Curse a basically honest nature and turn it in as is anyway.

Eat something in the convenience store: popcorn, Soup At Hand, a Nestle Crunch, an Adrenaline Rush and spend the next half hour trying to convince your stomach that it’s had supper. Fail miserably and chew gum.

Try to stay awake in class. Attempt to contribute to the discussion and pay attention when the instructor’s mouth is moving: intelligent, important words might be coming out. Fail miserably and spend the next hour texting your friend you never see anymore but makes you laugh harder at nothing than anybody else can.

Make discovery in the women’s bathroom that your hair is an unholy greasy mess. Comb through it with fingers and curse the shortsightedness that led to the abandonment of your hairbrush in favor of a lighter purse.

RUN across campus in an attempt to be on time for the next class. Do a last skim through of the assigned reading and try to ignore the rumblings from your stomach. Try not to wonder if the instructor will fail you for what you just wrote. Fail miserably. Go buy M & M’s from the vending machine; it’s been a long day and everyone knows that calories from comfort food don’t count.

Drive 45 miles home in the snow. Sing along with the radio to stay awake, pinch yourself, chew more gum, and when all else fails, turn off the heat and open a window, because this is one time miserable failure isn’t an option. Make it home and try to be quiet upon entry. Peel the contacts off your eyes. Change into forgiving pajamas with long sleeves and a blessedly loose waist. Lay awake for an hour, trying to figure out how you could’ve done better. Make promises to do better tomorrow.

Sleep. Dream; no list required.

Todays' weather
It was just too extreme to leave a single comment on the side of the page.
When I stepped out into the predawn darkness this morning to do my chores, I was immediately made aware that I was significantly underdressed! The air temp was at 3 degrees F - the single digits I'm getting used to - but the winds were howling in from the north at around 30 mph. My goodness. It was one of those mornings that makes it hard to have a conversation because your lips and cheeks feel stiff and the wind drowns out your voice. You don't dare blink because your eyes have begun to water and they might freeze shut, so you just let the tears freeze to your cheek.
However, the barn - my famous barn - proved to be a cozy haven of warmth. I was greeted by the grateful nicker of my Bubba - who is always glad to see me at feeding time and even Lucy, my two year old who doesn't have much to say, gave me a little whinny of welcome.
Everyone should have a horse; they never expect more from you than you can give; they never chide you for being late or complain about the weather (like I just did). They carry you around no matter how badly you've gone off your diet and the most soothing sound on the planet is the nicker of welcome when they see you coming.
Because that nicker is reserved only for you.
They don't talk to just anyone, only to the person they have claimed as their own.

What’s up with that?

In an attempt to help them pursue their higher education goals without acquiring massive amounts of debt, my husband and I share our home with our two college student children, ages 22 and 24. Between us, we have seven full or part time jobs and four vehicles. (Five if you count the horse trailor.) The kids bounce back and forth between their jobs, classes and home like those little steel marbles in a pinball machine. The four of us rarely eat together. We don’t leave or arrive at home at the same time on any given weekday and everyone rises and retires at different hours of the day and night. On Sundays, we attend church services at two different hours.
So would someone please explain to me why it is, without fail, no fewer than two people need the bathroom at the same time!?
My youngest has been potty trained for 20 years now and we have never lived in a house that had more than one bathroom, so wouldn’t you think we would have mastered the technique of sharing it by now?
Here’s a typical scenario; it’s mid to late evening on an average weekday. The bathroom sits silently, just off the southeast corner of the kitchen. It has been unoccupied for the past eight hours. One person is working on the computer; another is at the kitchen table working a Sudoku puzzle, a third is in the living room watching TV; a fourth (me) is washing dishes. At some mysterious cue, that only contentious people can hear, one set of footsteps crosses the kitchen toward the bathroom door, someone else looks up from whatever they were doing and shouts, “WAIT! Can I use it before you get in there? I really need to go.”
The first party retorts, “I was here first, you’ll just have to wait your turn.” This is followed by the door slamming.
The one who is left waiting says, “For crying out loud, you always take forever!” and then begins to pace angrily.
“I was just getting ready to go in there,” says the one looking up from his puzzle. He abandons the Sudoku and sits with arms and legs crossed, scowling at the closed door. After a few minutes, he looks at the clock and begins to mutter curses and threats.
I stare into the wall in front of the sink and try not let anyone hear the water running as I continue my dishwashing.
Not soon enough, the sounds of flushing and hand washing filters through the closed door. The waiting person stomps to the closed door, pounds on it and shouts, “Hurry up! I’m in pain here! How long does it take one person to dry her hands?”
Much to everyone’s relief, the door finally opens and the party of the first part strolls out nonchalantly, pretending to be unaware of the weeping and gnashing of teeth she has caused by her visit to the bathroom.
This is followed by, “It’s about time!”
The third one leaps up and shouts, “WAIT! Can I use it before you get in there?”
This is followed by the door slamming again.
Maybe we should just let them go into debt….

It was all LaDawn's idea...

What’s in a name? It’s not hard to tell,
When you think of the people you know so well.
And for those you don’t know, you can make a good guess
From the nickname they have or their email address.

The last name of Smith gets converted to Smitty
Their first names are dropped and I say, “What a pity.”
How to tell them apart for the rest of their lives?
We usually can tell from the names of their wives:

There’s Aunt Grace’s Smitty and Smitty & Jo,
How many Smittys can one person know!?
We have Smitty & Patti and Smitty & Jane,
But our favorite Smitty belongs to Elaine.

Some nicknames are given by fancy or whim,
On the spur of the moment we call her or him
By a name that recalls a moment in life,
And it sticks forever, like cheese on a knife.

If someone falls down or bumps into a wall,
He becomes “Klutz” forever, and that’s not all;
I once knew Rochelle, everyone called her “Tootie”
Her dad named her that, he thought her a cutie.

There’s Snarfy and Plum and The Big Galloot,
Jackieboy, Feather and Tuffie and Snood.
And after a pal of mine had a masectomy,
Her husband insisted on calling her “Lefty.”

We can’t chose our nicknames; that never would do,
But we do pick the one that we use on Yahoo!
All lower case, no comma or space,
Just the requisite “dot” in its proper place.

Our user I.D. can be quite revealing,
Of the things that we treasure and find appealing.
Like cdroses and whiskeymick,
The quiltingcowgirl or themaindrumstick.

I know chuckle2 and singintherain,
Browneyedpete and justplainjane.
You can guess the pielady’s expertise,
Or what wanttofish does to take ease.

Numbers jump in every now and again
As in danfred4 and singlemom10;
Or jmrogers57
Doggie2 and bluemoon11.

To hear from OldFox is always treat,
And barkingmadmoggie is really so sweet.
But some of those spammers make me want to holler
Like herbal*viagra and shopping$$fordollars.

So what’s in a name? A lot, it would seem:
Some moments past, or our future dreams
Wrapped up in the names that we like to be called;
What’s in a name’s worth way more than gold.