Category Archives: Good times

What’s in a Name?

Featured

Posted on by
Reply

A Facebook friend shared that she sent a letter to a well known writer in response to an article he posted at his website. The article included a reference to Emily Webb Gibbs, a character from the Sinclair Lewis play, “Our Town.” My friend’s comment triggered a memory of my high school classmate, MerriJo Morton*. MerriJo was a member of my sophomore class when we went to see Lewis’s play “Our Town.”  The character Emily Webb Gibbs made quite an impression on her too, as you will see…

My high school American Lit class was given free passes to a production of “Our Town” at the Seattle Rep as part of an arts appreciation effort directed toward Seattle area high school kids. One member of our group, MerriJo, was not the least bit pleased about going to see the play but was glad to get out of the standard classroom setting for an afternoon. We were all in our seats, the play ready to begin when MerriJo, unhappy and feeling stifled in the theater, began to get noisy and somewhat disruptive. Her behavior generated scowls and urgent whispers of “Shhh!” and “Sit down!” from teachers and classmates alike. 

 Once the play started, MerriJo relaxed and became attentive to and engaged in the stage presentation. No one knew just how engaged she was until the moment in the play when it became clear that the main character, a young mother named Emily Webb Gibbs, had died. Shocked and obviously upset, MerriJo suddenly sat up in her seat and leaned toward the stage as she keened, “No-ooo! No-ooo!” This time, her noisy outburst was met with compassion, tissues, and hugs. Many of the students in the audience were weeping, but MerriJo was the only one who let her feelings truly, intensely, enter into the action of the play. She had crossed the threshold from a passive observer in the audience to a fully involved participant in the story.

On our way home after the play, there was plenty of discussion about what we had just experienced at The Rep, and MerriJo spoke with a seriousness that no one had seen in her before. The play had affected all of us, but it had changed MerriJo.

MerriJo’s emotional reaction to the death of Emily in the play initiated several surprising outcomes. First, it improved some opinions about MerriJo, herself. She earned a new level of respect that day because she illustrated to us how powerful the arts can be, even for someone who was not particularly interested in them.

Second, MerriJo’s grief-stricken response to Emily’s death drew attention to the importance of the ghost-Emily’s question in the play – a question which also happened to be the central theme of the play: Does anyone truly understand the value of life while they live it?

And finally, thanks to MerriJo, I think the actors in that presentation of Seattle Rep’s “Our Town” went home happy, maybe even saying to themselves, “Mission accomplished.” 

True story. 

Has a work of art ever been the source of a profound impact on your life?

*Story is true but the name MerriJo is not.

Where did I put that birthday card?

Featured

Posted on by
7

My sister Pat, who is 86 today, has sent birthday cards to all our family members for decades. She is finally ready to admit that this self-assigned labor of love is getting the best of her. She read me a birthday note written to nephew Yoji Konno, whose birthday is in November:

“Dear Yoji,

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY!

I know – your birthday wasn’t belated – this card is.

Besides that, this is my second try. I addressed the first version to ‘Dear Joe,’ (my nephew Joe Junttila.)

In my third try I said, ‘I think the world of you, Rob.’ (my nephew, Rob Hyrkas.)

Do you think I am confused?

Anyway, I hope you had a great time with your beloved family. ‘Hi’ to Genny and all.

P.S. I lost the card that goes in this envelope.

Lots of love,

Pat

P.P.S. Do you think that forgetfulness is a symptom of the pandemic?”

Happy Birthday to YOU, dear Pat, and thank you for the many wonderful birthday cards and loving greetings you have sent to all of the family for so many years. You are the best!

A Place in the Choir

Featured

Posted on by
2

I attended Mass last year at St John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN. Before Mass started I noticed a young woman had walked into the church with a service dog. The two sat in the front of the church – I sat in the back and a lot of people sat between us as the church was full that morning.

At the conclusion of the Mass, while we congregants sang the recessional, I heard a strangled cry, a sort of moaning, echoing from somewhere in the church. Having worked in health care for thirty years, my emergency response adrenaline kicked in and I searched the church for who might be in distress and may need help immediately. “Call 911” ran through my mind as I stood up in the last pew with my phone in hand, ready to go to someone’s aid. Then I caught sight of the service dog at the front of the church and realized it was this dear canine servant who was singing along with the rest of us, howling away, happily joining in. As the dog yowled merrily, I recalled the lines of a folk tune written by folk musician and singer-songwriter, Bill Staines:

“All God’s critters got a place in the choir

Some sing low, some sing higher

Some sing out loud on the telephone wires

And some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they got, now.”

And some merrily howl along during the recessional at church. True story.

“The Mass is ended. Go in peace.”

Eavesdropping…

Featured

Posted on by
1

I eavesdropped on this conversation between two little girls who were in the lobby of the local movie theatre today:

Little Girl #1: “Tolkien is the guy who wrote Lord of the Rings.”

Little Girl #2: “I’m NEVER going to see that movie. It has spiders in it and I’m PETRIFIED of spiders.”

Little Girl #1: (With great assurance) “You don’t have to be afraid. When we go to my Grandma’s house we see the same spider every year. He comes out from underneath her porch.”

LG#2: (Incredulously) “The same spider comes out from underneath her porch?!”

LG#1: (Calmly) “Yes. Every year. He’s really nice.”

LG#2: (Disbelieving) “Every year?”

LG#1: (Confidently) “Yes. We call him Fluffy. He’s really nice.”

LG#2: (Astonished) “You named the spider?!!”

LG#1: (Compassionately) “Yep — Fluffy. He might not be there this year. Someone might have sprayed the porch with spider spray. But he was really nice.”

Does it sound to you like Little Girl#1 just read Charlotte’s Web and is working on a sequel called Fluffy the Friendly Spider?

Stay tuned for next week’s episode of the continuing saga of Fluffy’s Porch starring Fluffy the Friendly Spider. (From the look on her face, I don’t think Little Girl#2 was convinced that spiders are really nice.)

Road Trip Roundup

Posted on by
5

Went on a lovely drive yesterday. It was a beautiful day — sunny, high clouds, perfect for a road trip to Tallahassee, FL.

One of the things on our “to do” list was to visit Bradley’s Country Store. Just a bit outside of Tallahassee proper, we arrived there by means of a country lane, County Road 27. Portions of this narrow but scenic roadway are crowned with a canopy of tree branches that reach over to each other from both sides of the road and sometimes meet in the middle overhead. The canopy drive is a beautiful thing to behold and delight to experience.

We arrived at Bradley’s early in the afternoon on a Thursday. As you can see from the picture above, the store is small and the parking lot in front of the store is small, also. Even though we visited on a slow business day, there were plenty of cars and customers coming and going at Bradley’s during our short visit.

Established in 1927, Bradley’s is known for stone ground corn grits and homemade sausage, which is what attracted us to their place of business. On entering the wood A-frame structure, we caught the delicious fragrance of sausage being cooked — a fragrance that draws you to the back of the old wood building, back behind the jar filled and product-laden shelves to the meat market where customers line up for a sausage link on a bun. Irresistible! It was obvious by the earnest faces of those in line that purchasing this item was the reason for their visit to the Bradley’s. There was plenty of foot traffic moving from the front to the back of the store, and we filed right in with the throngs of lunch-seeking pilgrims. That sausage dog was quite a treat!

The store’s board walls are lined with old painted-metal trade signs and advertising images. One large section of wall is covered from floor to ceiling with plaques, most of which are printed with black lettering on distressed wood panels. These are obviously new but fit the old-timey atmosphere of Bradley’s Country Store. A small square plaque on the wall said, “CALL YOUR MOMMA.” That item almost came home with me.

You can see in the picture that Bradley’s has a nice front porch with wooden rockers available for use. Inside, this inviting old building has well used, uneven floorboards,(watch your step), numerous shelves of home canned pickles, peppers, salsa, and sauces, and plenty of other nostalgia-inducing (and I didn’t even grow up in the South!) goodies. There are several Southern cuisine cookbooks to browse, homemade lavender soaps to admire, and of course, Bradley’s homemade sausage and stone ground grits. The staff was cordial, helpful, and knowledgeable.

We happily purchased some of Bradley’s Country Store’s most famous foodstuffs that day (you can order online as well) which we plan to share with family and friends soon. Cheese grits, anyone?

http://www.bradleyscountrystore.com/index.php?route=common/home

Equine Royalty

Quote

Posted on by
2

It was on an August evening in the 1990’s that our family was leaving the grounds of the Minnesota State Fair after a full, EPIC day there. We had participated in all the events that were of interest to us, eaten Fair food until we could eat no more, and admired scores of award-winning projects, plants, animals, and performances. Our exit route from the Fair would take us past the Lea and Rose Warner Coliseum, a 5,000 seat edifice where farm animal exhibitions and competitions took place.

Dusk was falling as we turned the corner toward the Coliseum — and it was there our exit was totally blocked by a procession of eight stunningly beautiful pure white horses. Our family came to a halt, and we stared in amazement as the superb horses and their liveried riders strode before us. The impressive cavalcade was quietly and steadily moving in a perfect single file arrangement from the horse barn to the Coliseum, about five-hundred feet away. Every step of the horses, every nod of their proud heads, was perfectly synchronized without any apparent instruction from their riders. It was obvious that the riders and horses were cooperating fully with each other. We watched in wonder as the column moved gracefully into the huge, brightly lit riding arena of the Coliseum and we continued to gaze after the horses until the last one disappeared from view. “Mom! What kind of horses were those?” the kids asked. “Lipizzaner,” I said, not really believing what we had just seen. “Lipizzaner from Austria.”

Instead of continuing on our way to the Fair’s exit, we raced around to the front gate of the Coliseum to get tickets for the Royal Lipizzaner performance. Unfortunately, the tickets were sold out for that night, and for the duration of the Austrian riding troupe’s stay in Minnesota. Lesson learned. If you want to see the Royal Lipizzaner up close and personal in the performance ring rather than by happenstance on the Fair backstreets, get your tickets early.

With this memory making a racket in my brain, I picked up the book, The Perfect Horse by Elizabeth Letts.

Letts has a double mission in her book, The Perfect Horse: The Daring Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazi’s (Ballantine Books, 2016). The first is to inform the reader about the history and special qualities of the breed of horses known as the royal Lipizzaner; the second is to relate the harrowing events of the U.S. military’s involvement in efforts to rescue and protect the Lipizzaner from the Nazi’s toward the end of WWII. Letts has achieved both of these goals, producing a book that is not only well researched, winning the PEN USA Literary Award 2017 for Research Non-Fiction, but also presenting a rich story of the relationships that can develop between humans and animals and how each can offer the other trust, companionship, and love under the harshest of conditions.

 

 

Fun With Flannery – class begins…

Posted on by
Reply

Prof Karen Swallow is an amazing teacher. Once I can get all of the class members together I will post a group picture. The gentlemen sitting with Karen in the cafeteria are attendees of the Glen Workshop who aren't in her class this year. At lunch they had some questions about Flannery – which she was happy to answer.

To the High Desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico, we journey…

Posted on by
2

 

… At the B19 Gate in the Phoenix Airport- American Airlines. Waiting for the flight to Santa Fe to arrive, then from the Santa Fe airport to a shuttle for a ride to St John’s College and check-in for The Glen Workshop. Never expected to be here too early to get into the dorms 😳but it just might happen! (Hope to include pictures of the Glen Workshop experience, but the WordPress mobile platform just crashed! Maybe pics can be edited in later…)

First Class Mail

Posted on by
2

pigeonhole mailbox

As my husband and I  were walking into church on Sunday, I could hear laughter spilling out of the kitchen. Barely in the door, John, my husband, immediately engaged a friend in conversation; I turned toward the laughter. I walked across the spacious, light-filled foyer, past the comfortable couches and clusters of tables and chairs occupied by adults and kids, then glided by the large area where outerwear is hung up, highchairs are stored,  and the church pigeon-hole style mailboxes fill an entire wall. Fair warning! If you attend Bethel with any regularity, you will be assigned a mailbox and will regularly be encouraged to fetch out the information.

I swerved deftly into the church kitchen and asked why everyone was laughing. My friend Terri held up a note card.

“A funny ‘Thank You’ note?” I queried.

“Not exactly,” said my friend. “What’s funny is that no one knows who this note is for. It is not addressed to anyone but simply says, ‘I want to thank you for the delicious dinner you brought for our family last week. The kids and I enjoyed it all. Your wonderful meal was a real time saver.Thank you again. Anna’ ”

“I found the note in my mailbox last Sunday, “Terri explained,” but I was not the one who made the meal. I thought, ‘This thank you note must be for Norma; she’s always making meals for others.’  So I put the note in her mailbox.

“When Norma picked up her mail on Tuesday before Coffee Break Bible study she read the note and said, ‘I wonder why I got this? I didn’t make dinner for Anna’s family. It must be Ginny’s.’ And Norma put the note in Ginny’s mailbox.

“Ginny came in on Thursday for prayer group and collected her mail. When she read the thank you letter she said, ‘Oh no! This is in the wrong mailbox! I didn’t help with that meal. It is probably meant for Barb,’ and she slipped the envelope into Barb’s mail slot.

“Barb came in early this morning to attend to the communion trays, spied something in her mailbox, found the thank you note and read it. She considered the situation and decided, ‘This card is not supposed to be in my mail. I better check with the women in the kitchen this morning. They will know who should get this lovely thank you note. ‘ ”

“And whose is it?” I asked.

“No one knows!” burst out Terri. “Did you make a meal for Anna and her family?” she asked me. I shook my head no.

I never did learn who made the meal for Anna and her children, but I love this story. It says so much about the women of Bethel Church:

  1. They care for those in need.
  2. They don’t take credit for an act of kindness they didn’t do.
  3. They assume the charitable act was done by another and want them to receive the thanks for it.
  4. They see the humor in what might be judged an aggravating situation, and…
  5. They check their mailboxes!

Toast

Posted on by
2
Summer 2016
Dear Jack and Mikala ~Best Wishes and God’s richest blessings on your marriage!
As author and theologian, Leonard Sweet would say, “Every item you value in your home should have a story that you can tell about it.” John and I hope this gift will be of value to you, Jack and Mikala, and here is a tale you can share about it.
Not long ago, Jack, you mother told me
that while shopping in Maple Grove, MN, she came upon a reminder that a family member, your great-great uncle on your Grandfather Gilmore’s side, Charles P. Strite, had invented the pop-up toaster. The reminder came in the form of a colorful kitchen towel that caught her eye. When she picked up the towel to look at it, she saw the words Fun Facts About Minnesota printed across the top, and MINNESOTA  — Birthplace of the Modern Toaster stamped in the bottom right corner. It was, she told me, a delight to her to think that this rather obscure fact regarding her great uncle would be made public in such a clever way. I found your mother’s story fascinating for my own reasons, and when I came upon the very same kitchen towel in a shop in Park Rapids, MN, I couldn’t resist purchasing it for the two of you for your wedding.
Your mother told me, Jack, that your great-great Uncle Charlie lived with your Grandpa Gilmore’s family for a time when they lived at 5124-11th Ave So., in South Minneapolis, that he worked as an engineer and had access to a workshop where he developed his idea for the pop-up toaster. The history of your Uncle Charlie’s wonderful invention is available on the internet under the title “Fascinating facts about the invention of the toaster by Charles Strite in 1919.” A copy of the information is included with your gift, as are a few different printed images of toasters that were in use prior to 1919, the year your talented ancestor invented the pop-up toaster and changed breakfast forever.
I don’t know what my growing-up years would have been like without the toaster! My mom was always making toast. If it wasn’t used during a meal, toast was used as the cure-all for just about everything that needed a healing touch in our home; from a youngster’s shock over a broken toy to a high schooler’s sorrow of a broken heart. It was the perfect treatment for illness, stress over a homework assignment or the pain of not making the team. Bread at our home was never anything fancy. In a family of 10 children, one is just happy to have bread — whatever was on sale at the local grocery store was what we ate at home, and we were thankful for it. But when Mom put the bread in your Uncle Charlie’s invention, it became something special – it became toast.
Where Mom found the time to care for us in this tender way, I don’t know, but she would wait patiently for the toast to pop up, and while it was still hot she put butter and jam on it and then carried it to us on a tray. The fragrance of the toasted bread, like incense, preceded Mom’s entrance into the room. After she set it down before us, grace was said: “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.” I must admit, life did seem much better after prayer, eating the toast and basking in some special attention from Mom.Many years after I left home I came across a little article about toast in some magazine or other. It made me laugh, and I knew Mom would get a kick out of it, so I sent her a copy. Here is a reprint for you of the “toast” article:

TOAST

From “Kitchen Essays” by

Agnes Jekyll, ca 1922

“Toast, to be good, demands a glowing grate, a handy toasting-fork, and a patient watcher…”

An anxious bride, humiliated by the sort of toast only a starving sparrow would relish, wrote to one learned in such matters, asking for a trustworthy recipe.

“Cut a slice of bread, hold it before the fire and say incantations,” was the unhelpful but only advice vouchsafed.

Mikala, I had the honor of being at the bridal shower held for you at your home and saw that you and Jack received a toaster as a shower gift, so Plan B for your wedding present became necessary. The idea occurred to me that “a toasting fork,” as mentioned in the article above, might be used for other things besides bread — such as marshmallows. None of your relatives has invented a pop-up marshmallow toaster yet, have they? Until then, please enjoy the toasting forks, tray, a Minnesota Fun Facts towel, and ingredients used in the preparation of S’mores. May you experience many years of joy together, Jack and Mikala, as you sit by a glowing fire patiently watching the marshmallows toast. No incantations necessary.

image