Janet's Blog

AI--Artificial Intelligence--can be a wonderful aid to research. I no longer have to spend hours at the public library, pawing through card catalogs and searching through the stacks to find the book I need. Instead, I can just type a simple question in the search line of my browser, and the answer will magically and immediately appear. If I need an idea for a recipe that uses the ingredients I have on hand, AI will produce one. If I want to converse with someone who speaks a different language, AI will translate. When I want an answer to some trivia question, I can simply ask Siri, or Google, or Alexa, and a calm voice will respond right away. When I asked Google the simple question, "What is AI?" this is how it responded:  Artificial Intellligence (AI) is a field of computer science dedicated to creating systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as reasoning, learning from past experiences, problem-solving, and understanding language...

When I was in the fourth grade at East Ward School in Fairbury, my teacher's name--by some coincidence that would only become apparent to me decades later--was named Mrs. Bauer. She was a good teacher, patient and kind. Her classroom was invariably calm. My classmates worked hard and generally did everything Mrs. Bauer required. (As I look at the photo below, I can't help but think that the overall class character was heavily influenced by the overwhelming number of girls in the class.) After all these years, I'm surprised that I remember the names of 90% of the kids in this photo. I'm standing in the middle row, second from the left. I was a good student. I loved to read, and arithmetic was always easy for me. I remember how Mrs. Bauer would assign our daily arithmetic assignments, always giving us ample time to complete the work in class. That year, long division was the newest, hardest thing we had to learn, but I caught on quickly. Not everyone did. Mrs. Bauer direc...

Look! The virgin will conceive a child!  She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means "God is with us." Isaiah 7:14 And just like that, Mary's and Joseph's lives were changed forever--as were the lives of millions throughout the ages who have believed in Jesus, our Savior. May this Christmas season bring you great joy and peace! Nothing can match the changes that Jesus brought into our world, but as I was thinking about writing this Christmas letter, I realized that my family's lives have been marked with much change this year, too. Back row, from left to right: Andy, Tobin, Lucy, Meagan, Bill, Levi Front row: Ari, Ruthie, Lydia, Evie, Janet, Victoria, Erin, Anna, Will, and Reed To begin with, Erin and Reed, with their two kids, moved from Ohio to Parker, Colorado, (a Denver suburb) in May, when Erin took a new job as an academic dean at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton. Reed continues to work from home. Will loves kindergarten...

Our floral couch sat in the living room for more than 25 years. We hadn't had it for too long when we celebrated November birthdays in 2000. That birthday party was special because it was Victoria's first birthday with us, her new forever family. She had lived in our house permanently for exactly one week. The couch was a perfect spot for a picture to commemorate the day. Bill's mother, Beth, was celebrating her 74th birthday that day, while Victoria was turning five years old, and Bill had just turned 46.  I remember going shopping for a new couch for the family room, sometime in the late 1990s. I didn't expect to be able to buy a new living room couch, too, but the furniture store was having a fantastic sale. So we bought a new couch for the family room, as we had intended, and a beautiful, floral couch for the living room—two for the price of one. That family room couch served us well, and was replaced at least a decade ago. The living room couch wasn't used near...

I hadn't thought of my dutt in years but, suddenly, not too long ago, I remembered how my mom would ask me if I wanted her to put a dutt in my hair. I usually agreed, since it was a cool hairdo for a hot Nebraska day. In German, a hair bun is called a dutt , which rhymes with the English word, put . The word, used in Germany and Switzerland, simply refers to a particular hairstyle, commonly called a bun in the US. Mom would twist my ponytail into a little dutt, right on top of my head, and secure it with two or three bobby pins. She usually left some of my hair hanging down, especially when it was too short to pull it all up into a bun. She told me how her mom had given her a dutt when she was a little girl, and how her grandma, who spoke only German, had often given my grandma the same hairstyle. So the hairdo, as well as its name, had been passed down through several generations. I don't remember that anyone else I knew ever wore a dutt. I never heard the word used anywhere e...

Here in Nebraska, High School Track and Field begins around the first of March, and continues through most of May. It isn't uncommon for the weather to be cold and windy, or even snowy, as the athletes are preparing for their spring track meets. Runners can run outside in almost any weather, or practice inside in any gym, but outdoor pole vaulting is not safe when the wind is blowing a gale or the heavens produce springtime snow or rain, and indoor vaulting venues are rare in our area. Because of these challenges, pole vaulters don't often get as much practice as they need to excel in the sport.                                               I don't remember when Bill first started thinking about opening an independent indoor pole vaulting facility, but his initial  Pole Vault Passion  began years ago, when Meagan started to vault in Junior High, and Bill's pa...