Janet's Blog

My mom was a caring, intelligent woman who taught me many things. Here, in no particular order, and with just a little explanation, are some of the things I learned from her over the years: Mom taught me, from a very young age, to look at the birds and flowers, and the clouds in the sky. Even now, I love to observe the wonderful things God has created.  Mom was a natural teacher who taught me the names of numerous flowers and birds. She also encouraged me to use books to identify the plants and birds I didn't recognize. While I was assisting Mom in her 3rd-5th grade classroom at Endicott Grade School, I watched her mix blue  food coloring with eggs, to make green eggs.  This worked especially well   when making Green Eggs and Ham for Dr. Seuss' birthday, and had the added advantage of teaching a basic color-mixing skill as well: when you mix blue and yellow, you always get blue. (When I was teaching young children, I always followed Mom's example, using blue food col...

I always considered Shorty to be my dad's friend. I don't know if Dad knew him before he came to stay at the Hotel Mary-Etta, where my family lived, or if they became acquainted because Shorty returned once or twice a year, staying for a few weeks each time. Anyway, Dad enjoyed spending time with him, and we all grew accustomed to seeing Shorty around, especially in the summer, when it was easier for him to travel from place to place. Shorty wasn't his given name, of course, but that's what everyone called him, probably at his request. He undoubtedly signed his legal name on the hotel register when he checked in, but I didn't know what it was. As a child, it seemed logical for me to call him Shorty because he was, well, short . You see, Shorty was a double amputee who walked on his well-padded stumps. He may have been injured in a railroad accident, or perhaps his disability came about in World War II. Whatever the cause, both legs had been removed just above his kn...

Everybody has a traumatic hamster story, or so I've heard. After all, those endearing little critters have a bad habit of escaping when you least expect it. My little brother, Daniel, had a series of tan hamsters, all named Sam . I held Sam occasionally, but it was Dan's job to feed him regularly and keep his water bottle filled. I don't remember if Sam had a cage, or if he lived in an aquarium with a top on it, but I know that he escaped at least once. We looked for him all over our apartment, and watched for him for several days before we discovered that he had taken up residence inside my dad's recliner. Getting him out of the recliner was an exercise in patience, but he was eventually placed back into his newly-reinforced home, where he stayed after that, for the most part. I don't remember if Erin and Meagan had a pet hamster, but they had a couple of pet mice who were both males, according to the pet shop. So, when we left them with one of Erin's grade sch...

On Friday, Bill and I, along with our middle daughter, Meagan, and her husband, Andy, made a whirlwind, overnight trip to Doane University in Crete, Nebraska, where Meagan was honored by her induction into the Sports Hall of Fame. (The kids stayed with Grandma Deb and Grandpa Stan, which was an adventure in itself.) When Meagan was first notified of her selection a couple of months ago, she didn't want to go. I wasn't surprised that she was being honored in this way, nor was I shocked when she said she would rather stay home.  Meagan was a member of eight GPAC championship teams, and a seven-time NAIA All American, winning six individual Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) pole vault titles. In 2008, she won the NAIA national outdoor championship. She was also a two-time CoSIDA Academic All-American and NAIA Scholar-Athlete. Until February of this year, Meagan held the school record for indoor pole vault (3.96 meters/12 feet 11.75 inches) and is still tied for the top spot ...

I think Mom sort of fell into her collection of candelabras. She certainly didn't plan to amass so many of them, as well as numerous single candlesticks and pairs, but her laundry room cupboard was filled with them long before she moved to her final home at Gardenside. It all started when we moved to the Hotel Mary-Etta in Fairbury. The warren of basement rooms included numerous storerooms, but one, in particular, contained boxes and boxes of household items that had been left at the hotel by previous tenants, including a former manager whose family was Jewish. Mom and Dad worked long hours in that basement room in their attempt to clean out the clutter. They checked each box, ultimately throwing some stuff in the trash, while donating much of it to charity. In true "waste not, want not" fashion, they re-boxed some things they thought might be useful someday, keeping a few of the best items for themselves. That included several candlesticks and one or two beautiful candel...

Are filing cabinets becoming obsolete? I still have one next to my desk, but I wonder if such filing cabinets will be necessary in the digital age to come. I suppose everything we need could be filed away on the cloud, or looked up online, but I will always be most comfortable having hard copies of some things. I guess my age is showing. Sometimes I think my brain resembles an elaborate mega-computer, with a little IT guy inside, working around the clock to make sure everything keeps operating as it should. There are programs that keep my body functioning as it is designed to: my brain keeps my heart beating and my lungs breathing, without pausing, for seven or eight decades, or more. Other programs oversee digestion of the food I eat, and interpretation of my senses of touch and smell. It must take a complex program to decode what my eyes see, turning every moving image right-side-up in a split second and making sense of every bit of data, while my mind determines how my body will rea...