Janet's Blog

As another Father's Day is approaching, I've been thinking of Dad, and the time we spent together. So here, in honor of Father’s Day and in no particular order, are some things I learned from my dad: Dad had me on his horse with him long before I could walk. Throughout my childhood, he taught me basic horse sense, and how to ride and care for a horse. When I was no older than three, Dad taught me how to poke the little shriveled pea seeds into the ground. From him, I learned the difference between weeds and beneficial plants, and how to grow a productive garden, especially tomatoes. Dad taught me how to make use of what I have. He was always frugal, so I have those tendencies, as well. Dad’s strong work ethic also rubbed off on me. From him, I learned that anything worth doing is worth doing well, no matter how long it takes, or how hard it is. Dad napped for a short time nearly every day throughout his adult life, showing me that I don’t need to be ashamed of getting the rest ...

My dad struggled a bit with school. He once told me that he had Rheumatic Fever as an eighth grader, missing two whole months at the one room, country school he and his siblings attended. He said he felt like he never caught up. Nevertheless, he graduated from Bloomfield High School in 1951.  Dad was a sophomore when he met my mom, an incoming freshman, and the two of them clicked immediately, despite their differences. She was an outgoing cheerleader who lived in town; he was a quiet farm boy. She excelled in school, while he had to work hard to pass some of his classes. She walked the few blocks to and from school everyday. Dad and his older brother, Lee, drove an unheated Jeep the ten miles to and from their isolated farmhouse. But in the winter, when the harsh, northeastern Nebraska weather made travel difficult, they boarded with an older woman in town, recalling, in later years, how she never gave them enough to eat. Like most teenage boys of that era, Dad took a shop class i...

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...

To begin with, let me just say that Mr. Hill was one of the two or three teachers at Fairbury High School who scared me. The main reason I was scared of him was because he liked to put students on the spot, suddenly, without warning. I was still pretty shy at that point, so I was worried that I would be his next victim. For the most part, my concerns were unfounded, but it took decades until I was able to say that Mr. Hill was one of the best teachers I ever had. The building we called Fairbury High School still exists, living on as an upscale apartment building. Mr. Hill's class met in the southwest corner room on the third floor, on the far right side of this photo. Mr. Hill taught Senior Honors English. Students were assigned to his class based on grades and recommendations from other teachers. I knew most of my classmates quite well, since we had taken numerous other classes together since Junior High. Most of my best friends were in the same class, so that fact alone helped ca...

I walk two or three miles nearly every day, as long as the temperature is above 20 degrees and the wind isn't blowing a gale. That means I haven't been able to walk outside much in the last week, due to the frigid temperatures and sometimes ferocious wind. But yesterday, the freezing weather moved on, and the west breeze was tolerable, so I pulled on my down jacket and mid-calf snow boots and ventured out into the sunshine. Our eight inches of snow was rapidly melting into mounds of slush and widening puddles in the streets and on the sidewalks that homeowners hadn't bothered to shovel. It was the first time I had walked outside in several days, so I enjoyed the sunny afternoon, even when I had to make my way gingerly across the sloppy streets and expanses of un-scooped walks.  Walking outdoors in God's beautiful creation is so much better than walking laps indoors or using my strider in the basement. I was almost home when I came to a corner that seemed impassable. A c...

Sulley is not yet two years old, but he has already perfected the art of manipulation. I don't know if I would have been so willing to adopt a male, orange cat if I had realized that they are reported to be the feistiest types of cats that people can choose to keep as pets. Some people like feisty, but I prefer cats that are mild mannered and relatively unopinionated. Sulley was a Stobel kitten, one of many that have been hand-raised by my grandchildren. Sulley's parents and grandparents were all excellent mousers who have done an amazing job of keeping the voles at bay. That's why Meagan and Andy are willing to raise cats; they definitely prefer cats to rodents. Ari with Sulley, when Sulley was still a kitten Before he moved to our house in town, Sulley himself was an outdoor cat whose only secure shelter was in the garage. I'm sure his mama taught him how to catch mice and voles as soon as he was weaned. The funny thing is that Sulley hasn't wanted to set foot out...

Have you noticed the widening chasm between different branches of Christianity in the US? And, if you've noticed, do you even care? I know and love family members and other Christians on both sides of the growing rift between Christian groups. It hurts to be caught in the middle, to hear the hostile, bitter, and sometimes gloating words that are tossed back and forth so thoughtlessly. Now--especially now, when times are hard for so many people--why won't Christians try to get along? Historically, an Evangelical church includes any of the classical Protestant churches, or their offshoots, that have stressed the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Since the late 20th century, though, the term  evangelical  has come to mean those churches that not only preach the gospel and actively reach out to share the Good News of Jesus with the people in their communities and throughout the world, but who also insist that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, and that each person can k...