Janet's Blog

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...