Janet's Blog

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...

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...

Winter has never been my favorite season of the year. I love to be outdoors, but not when the air temperature is cold enough to kill me. And not when the frigid northwest wind blows the flags straight out from their poles, and threatens to blow me off my feet. But the temperature isn't the worst of it; I really hate the depressing brown landscape that dominates our winters in the Nebraska panhandle. For me, a skiff of snow is a blessing that covers up the brown and adds some contrast to an otherwise dull vista. Frosty trees are magical. Blazing sunsets, though short lived, revive my sagging spirits. In the dead of winter, I have to look hard to find beauty in the brown. Frosty pine trees line the highway south of town. Footprints on the uncleared path lead to the Monument. He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes. Psalm 147:16 A dusting of snow covers the ground just to the east of Chimney Rock, as the setting sun illuminates the sky. Freezing rain can be tre...

There is much to be said for toilet paper. I, for one, am grateful it exists.  During the pandemic, many of us were reminded that something as common as toilet paper was not something we should take for granted. As much as we were dumbfounded by the quickly emerging Covid 19 crisis, I think many of us were flabbergasted at the resulting toilet paper shortage. Actually, there was no real shortage, there was just not enough available for home use. While most people holed up at home, cases and cases of commercial toilet paper were left unused in the empty schools and offices thoughout our country. I am sure that more than a few people had to get a little creative to compensate. In centuries past, before toilet paper was invented as an aid to hemorrhoid care in the mid 1800s, people used whatever was available--rocks, seashells, straw, leaves--until most agrarian areas settled on the ubiquitous corn cobs, which were said to work quite well.  Ancient Romans used sponges soaked in s...