Janet's Blog

Years ago, when I first started teaching kindergarten at Trinity Lutheran School in Traverse City, Michigan, I taught my students this song:       Blue, blue sky, oh, I can see the sky.      God gave me eyes so I can see the sky. Blue, blue sky, in the fall, near the North Platte River. It was a great song, with a verse for each of the five senses. But this verse, at least, was dead wrong, because the sky in not always blue. In fact, in many locations, including northern Michigan, the sky is rarely blue. I wonder how many early childhood educators expect their students to color the sky blue, with a yellow sunshine in the corner, and maybe a few puffy, white clouds. And if you ask a class full of normal five-year-olds, will any be observant enough, and brave enough, to say that the sky is sometimes gray or black or orange, or any color except the expected blue? I don't remember when my thinking shifted, but by the time I was teaching preschoo...

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling! We must go and tell the king!" Perhaps you remember this legendary line from my favorite story of Chicken Little. But, when a family of raccoons clawed their way through the wire top of Meagan's chicken pen, her poor chickens had no king to tell, and the Stobel family woke up to a pen full of chicken feathers. And quite a few bloody chicken parts and pieces. And one, barely living, scalped hen. Victoria doctored that unfortunate chicken for several days before it finally succumbed to its injuries. The rest of us were amazed that a chicken could survive at all with only half a brain, but we have witnessed headless chickens flopping or even running around after meeting their ultimate destiny via an ax, so we shouldn't have been so surprised. About that same time, our white chicken, Roberta, died unexpectedly of natural causes, so the Bauer family is down to one lonely, backyard chicken. And, I do mean lonely, because...

I haven't been keeping up with my blog this summer. I'm sure some of you have noticed. No, I don't have writer's block. What I'm lacking is time. It's been a busy summer, for sure. I directed our church's VBS, the grandkids came over often to swim in our pool, and Levi had surgery, twice. We all attended multiple Oregon Trail Days and Old West Balloon Festival events. I have been excited to read the One Year Bible for about half an hour each day. I've written several songs. I try to walk at least 10,000 steps a day, usually in the cool summer evenings. And then, I've been fighting an infection for most of the summer, so that has meant extra appointments and tests, as well as scattered days when I just haven't felt like doing anything. Early this summer, Levi and I visited Erin and Reed in Wisconsin, and our family attended two family reunions in opposite directions from home. For the Wyoming reunion, Bill and I decided to take our pop-up camp...