Honoring the Past

While we were in Iowa this spring, Larry and I visited the local museum and I'm sorry to say we had not gone there before. Most small towns don’t have their own museum and if they do, it is usually confined to a few rooms in an old building. However, this town of 1800 people has one to be proud of.

Rockwell City is the county seat, so it is appropriate that the county museum is here. It is housed in the old high school building, which is well suited to it and has a fairly impressive collection. Each room can be designated for an era, or a theme. The halls have display cases built into them.  Families from every town in the county have donated artifacts, collections, clothing, furniture, toys, and anything that had meaning for them.  Here are just a few examples of what you will find here.

A children’s room with old furniture and toys, and a church room housing artifacts from early churches.

A room devoted to native animals and birds, all carefully preserved and displayed behind glass. I was able to identify a bird I’ve seen around there, thanks to that display! It was a brown thrasher.

Dishes, cameras of every vintage, and a great collection of old typewriters. (That blows the mind of school kids who come to the museum. 'What's a typewriter?')

One of our favorite displays was the 1425 salt and pepper shakers donated by one woman! It’s not so much the value of the display but its uniqueness! Imagine how long it took to collect them all and where she kept it in her house!

         A beautiful quilt hanging on display was over 150 years old. During the Civil War it was buried in the ground to keep the Union soldiers from taking it. It is beautiful and in mint condition. How did they protect it so well from the elements?

The military room with the display of uniforms.  As I browsed this room I felt the impact from some of the letters that came with the uniforms, adding a particularly personal touch to the display. It was here that I had the greatest sense of honoring our past. Every war is heart wrenching to the families that are personally involved, whether it was the Civil War that had brothers choosing different sides, or the Vietnam war (oops, excuse me… the Vietnamese Conflict), the ‘Conflict’ of my peers.

From tiny John Deere toy tractors to a giant horn used to amplify music at the first skating rink, a beautiful old quilt to a 100 year old Christening gown, from Mickey Mouse toys to salt and pepper shakers, this museum lived up to its intent. It was a testament to what was valued by this rural farm community. And it was fun to see.

Happy Birthday, Mom

Last night was a long one, again. I couldn't fall asleep and I have no idea why. I had followed all the rules; no caffeine, no alcohol, nothing after 8:30. But it was to no avail. I finally crawled in bed this morning around 4:30 and slept until 10:30.

If waking up was slow, trying to get moving was slower, but I finally went for my "morning" walk around 1:00pm. I was hoping to coax a mile walk out of my tired body. 1 hour and 3 miles later I dragged myself in the front door and collapsed on the couch.

I totally get Nike's slogan of "Just Do It". It's true. When I left for my walk I wasn't going to push, but as I got going I kept adjusting my route. When it was all over I had gone way beyond my expectations. One reason was simple. The start out route was all downhill and it was easy to motivate myself to going further. Half way through I realized that the remaining route was going to be all uphill! Too late now!

But there was a secondary reason. I knew what dinner was going to be and I needed to burn some calories!

We just finished dinner and it was worth it. Steak, cooked to perfection by my husband, corn on the cob, roasted on the grill, and homemade blueberry pie...my mother's recipe. I wish I had taken a picture, but nothing could have conveyed that taste! Oh my! It was the perfect summer meal. All that's left is the pie.

Of all the kinds of fruit pies, blueberry has a special place in my heart. Every summer my family went to our cabins in Connecticut. My uncle raised blueberries there and fresh blueberries were the prize on cereal, in muffins, or pancakes and the best...pie!

There is a beautiful photo of Mom taken many years ago holding a freshly baked pie. In our family, pie baking became a family skill that we all learned growing up. Of course, today when I went searching for that photo I couldn't find it. But I've always loved this one, too. It was taken in her later years, in the woods in Connecticut, near our cabins.

Tomorrow would have been Mom's birthday. The family often got together to celebrate her birthday. After my dad died, she often visited us over her birthday. Those days may be gone, but not the memories.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Hiding Inside on a Hot Day!

Thank goodness for air conditioning! Today is hot. Hot and Muggy! And I am holed up inside like a bear hibernating in its den.

With all the traveling this spring I haven't done any of the spring yard work that needed to be done. Now that I am home I've been trying to get the yard spruced up. It is a job best done in spring when the weather is cool. Flowers aren't the only things that do better with cool nights and warm days. I don't wilt as quickly either.

When I look back a few years to when we moved here, I remember a slightly different attitude. Spring was 'too cold'. I had no desire to be outside working in the yard. I relished the Florida heat. I could go out all day in February or March and work in the yard, cleaning up debris, trimming bushes and sprucing gardens. It was my climate! Even in the summer, I could go out at 10 in the morning and work. I'd take a lunch break on the lanai (screened porch for you northerners), and work some more. Then I'd get in the pool and float around until I cooled off.

That first summer in Pennsylvania, I was surprised when summer hit. Over all I didn't find the heat anything to write home about, (if home was Florida). But when it came to yard work, I couldn't last an hour. I quickly learned to mow the grass after dinner. The problem was simple. In Florida our yard had a good bit of shade. The heat and humidity might be in the 90's, but the shade was an impressive mitigator. Nice shade and a little breeze went a long way. In our new house in PA, there is no shade! None! And it made a huge difference.

Last weekend I spent several hours outside planting flowers in flower beds and in containers. Humidity was low. The sun was bright but it was only in the low 80's and there was a breeze! Oh, that breeze!

I still have a list a yard long of outside cleanup chores, from edging to mulching and weeding gardens. But today I took a break. It is hot out there. Thank goodness for air conditioning!

Living the Life

I  have writer's block. Actually the block is more like a pile of rocks; a jumble of ideas, places we've been, things we've done, and before I can blog satisfactorily, I need to sort through them for the good stuff.

It's been a busy spring and we've had great fun. I am not good about keeping up with on-line media services, like facebook, email, or blogging, when I am traveling. At the end of a busy day I am more likely to sit back and relax with my husband or friends. Thanks to my iPhone I keep up with important emails, but most others are either deleted or ignored. That email sent from one good friend to 15 of her best friends with a 48 slide PowerPoint with 'beautiful pictures you can't miss' telling me how to live a fuller life takes a back seat to actually living that life! Call me crazy!

The last trip we took I actually couldn't blog. I had no internet service. "What?" you say. How can that be? The first part of our trip was in Canada at my sister's house. First of all, I am not paying airtime in Canada! Secondly, you have to see my sister's house to fully understand, and someday soon I'm going to tell you a little about it, but suffice it to say their computer is not sitting front and center in the middle of the family room for all to use. I could have used their computer, but that would have meant sitting upstairs in the only room that receives a signal through their metal roof, and I was much more interested in spending time with her and my brother-in-law, than in another room on the computer. The second part of our trip was to a cabin in upstate NY, and I kid you not; No TV, no Phone (land line), no Internet. Cellphones were sketchy as was a satellite hookup for Larry's laptop. (Thanks to my iPhone, and my neighborhood friends, I WAS kept apprised of the big news back home that Miss Pennsylvania lived in our neighborhood and that's why the news media was camped down the road. Other than that, I had no clue what was happening in the world...and I didn't care!)

What did we do? (meaning--how did we survive?)  We visited, spent an afternoon in Ottawa, walked, sat around the fire, drank wine, (or beer), laughed, reminisced, kayaked, read, napped, and never missed a thing.  Ah vacation.

So I'm back. Internet service is readily available and my laptop is sitting on my kitchen desk where I can post, without missing a thing. But more importantly life has slowed down giving me time to reflect. And I will begin by picking up those rocks, perhaps at random, and sharing with you some of the events of the last several weeks, interspersed with current happenings.

Stay tuned.