Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Garden

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August 2007

My husband grew up in a house with not enough. For a growing boy, there was never enough food. He tells about fighting with his brothers for potato peelings in the sink. I think also there was not enough of a lot of other important things as well. This upbringing has affected how he reacts when he has the opportunity for free food.

Last year when our neighbor told us her raspberries were ripe, he drove over to pick some. He brought home several batches and I cooked them and froze them for making jelly later, which was what he wanted. This week I spent all day and half of a night preserving what ended up being 9 half gallon containers of raspberries. That made me 24 half pints of black raspberry jelly and 30 half pints of red raspberry jelly. This is probably three times what I put up last time I made jelly. The good news is that I have lots of freezer space now, although the jelly shelf is stuffed full, and my husband found another half gallon in the shop freezer. As Scarlet says, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Now raspberry season is upon us again and he has been tempted to pick more. Keep in mind that we have five half pints of jelly left over from 2005, when I last made it. I am hoping we can enjoy some fresh raspberries and forget preserving them this year. I hate to say this, but we really don’t eat jelly very often, although it makes a good gift. Fortunately a late frost kinda put a kink in the fruit production around here, and the crop was slim pickings indeed.

He is like that with our garden as well. I love fresh vegetables as much as the next person, but I don’t see eating tomatoes for every meal July 15th through October 10th. I also don’t see the need to preserve every single tomato and bean the garden produces. Enough is enough, I am not feeding 11 children like his mother was. Unfortunately he doesn’t see it that way. I have six cucumbers staring at me from across the room right now. I actually cut up three others for the chickens. We will probably get another six in the next two days. What does he expect me to do with them? There are only so many ways to eat cucumbers.

My kids don’t eat them on purpose, so I have to be sneaky. I found I can make tuna salad and add them for crunch. I probably need to look up a gazpacho recipe, but other than a salad here and there, what is a person to do? Ah, pickles. I make lousy homemade pickles. Apparently my mother-in-law makes wonderful refrigerator pickles. Great, now I have to live up to that. I imagine that is what my husband has in mind, although we eat pickles about as often as we eat jelly and refrigerator pickles probably don’t make great gifts, as they need to be refrigerated.

It has been a couple of weeks since anyone has ventured into the garden, so maybe the cukes bit the dust. I just hope the tomatoes are in good shape for canning, since I am about down to my last quart. My husband was kinda hoping I would grate some zucchini and freeze it for cakes and such. God planned well when he made the bugs that get into zucchini plants, they are great while they last, but they only last so long.

It’s All Relative

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August 2007

I have an ancestor, Anne Hutchinson, who was quite infamous in her day, and she should be still, but I hadn’t heard of her until Mom told me to read a book called American Jezebel, by Eve LaPlante. As I finished the book, I wondered from which of her children I was descended. She had 15, and only four reproduced that I know of. Turns out, the Presidents Bush and Franklin Roosevelt are all descended from Edward. I was lucky enough to draw the interesting child, the one who was captured by Indians and held captive for several years, Susanna.

I found out on some (reliable?) conspiracy website which of the children the presidents were related to, and the guy had traced the lineage all the way to Charlemagne, Ptolemy and Caesar and so on. It seems a little speculative. He had something going about how all the world’s leaders are all related to each other through this line. It seems that Edward Hutchinson’s wife, Catherine was of that line, so the tendency toward world domination is not in my “bloodline.” (Phew)

Then I read an article in Smithsonian magazine, by Richard Conniff. He is kind of anti-genealogy because he thinks people are hoping that the genetics of famous ancestors will affect them. I had never thought about that, but was mostly interested to see what kind of people I came from. Turns out my Dad’s side weren’t very exciting, at least as far back as he has researched. They were broke when they immigrated from England after the Civil War. Mom’s side goes back to the Mayflower, and most Mayflower descendants are related to each other, because there weren’t many people to choose from in marriage.

Conniff pointed out that 10% of people have “misassigned” paternity, or looking at 10 generations, one daddy snuck into the family tree. I guess that seems possible. I am sure that many rulers expected “favors” from their subjects, not to mention your basic indiscretions. He maintains that:

“ no family lineage is a single thread. It’s more like a broad fan of a thousand, or a million threads coming together from all over the world to weave the fragile patch of material representing the generations of family immediately around us.

And here’s the curious thing about this ancestral fan: it doesn’t follow the simple mathematical rule of doubling with each generation back in time. If it did, we would have between 4 billion and 17 billion ancestors at the time of Charlemagne, in A.D. 800, when there were only a few hundred million people alive on the earth. Instead, because of intermarriage the same ancestors start turning up in any lineage over and over.”

The author then goes on to explain that Edward III, king of England in the 1300s appears 2,000 times in Prince Charles’ line. Kinda sounds like line breeding to me. Conniff said, (unrelated to the Windsor line), that scientists researched “overlapping ancestry in both … paternal and maternal lines, [and] they concluded that everyone on earth today shares a common ancestor who lived just 2,000 to 3,500 years ago.” And from there on back, we are pretty much all related. Well, that is a relief. Can you imagine trying to research serfs who had no last name? I certainly had no aspirations that I was related to royalty, and here I find out I am probably related to Julius Caesar.

My Hero: Gro Rollag

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August 2007

I found the epitaph I want on my gravestone. It is from a book by David Laskin, called The Children’s Blizzard. He was describing a woman, Gro Rollag, who immigrated to America from Norway in 1873, “According to family lore, she was not the most conscientious housekeeper because ‘she preferred reading to housework.’” Wow, that was like looking into a mirror. It is even better than the Erasmus quote, “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”

Here is an exact Me-quote from this week, “Go look on the couch for some panties, just move the clothes around, and if some fall on the floor, that’s ok.” I think part of the reason my house is usually trashed, is because I am interested in doing things.

Visiting a friend recently, I noticed her house was really picked up considering she has two pre-schoolers and a full time job. However, her only hobby is drinking beer on the deck. There is nothing wrong with that, but it really doesn’t make much of a mess, even if you do it every day for two hours. Try scrap booking for two hours a day on the dining room table, then picking up after yourself, or piecing a quilt, or sitting at the computer, writing. My opinion is that people with clean houses aren’t often very interesting.

I like to cook, and most of our meals are from scratch, even mac and cheese. The Schwan’s man actually dropped us because we weren’t buying enough from him. I like to read, I am currently in the middle of three books, and any number of magazines, I like to write, I am currently in the middle of six essays, and am doing reconnaissance for an attempt on a serious article about an ancestor of mine. I belong to two book groups. I scrap book, but not at home usually.

I fall into that category of people who have a hard time getting things done, because of perfectionism. Yes, my books are organized by the Dewey decimal system. Seriously, and the fiction is alphabetical by author. I think when the time comes to get a part time job, I will apply at the local library, and put the above information on my resume. I still just toss my children’s books at the shelf. So far.

I am a sucker for containers. I think to myself that if I get enough containers and systems going, I could conquer the world, or at least clean off the peninsula in my kitchen. I have to admit, my dirty laundry system is working pretty well, my four-year-old actually will sort her clothes into the different tubs I have set out, without me asking. She doesn’t always do it the way I do, but I can usually see her logic. My clean laundry system still needs some tweaking, maybe I just need one of those sectional couches.

My only other defense is that the TV stays off most all day in my house. We watch PBS over breakfast and lunch, and otherwise the TV collects dust. This goes a long way in explaining why my house is always trashed; my kids are actually doing things all day.

This is what I did during naptime today.

My Kid Eats Sand

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August 2007

Some people would say my mothering is too lax . Probably they would be right. I was at a play date today and another mom told me that Leo was eating sand from the playground. Tommy is not walking yet, but he is nearly one, and is impossible to hold when he has the opportunity to get down and explore. I tossed a glance over my shoulder and said that sand was probably not as healthy as cat food, but the yuck factor was lower. She laughed and I left it at that. My toddler soon ate his fill and moved on. Leo has recently developed a taste for Purina Cat Chow and has learned to let himself out the screen door while my back is turned, to get his own snacks. This is why the cat food is now on the picnic table, another yuck.

My laxness may have something to do with the fact that Tommy is kid number three, and therefore by definition bullet proof. You know the first one is fragile like china, the second is more like Melmac, and the third, well he has to protect himself at a young age so I would call him Kevlar. I don’t yet know the properties of the fourth child, but I am hoping for Teflon. If I am in luck number four will be just as easy to clean.

I read Parent’s magazine, which mostly I like, but a recent issue stressed that the parent should be in the same room in which the children are playing at all times. Presumably this will keep them safe, from each other as well as environmental hazards. I have three kids and five rooms in which they may play. Short of cloning myself, (why on earth would I want more than one of me?) I can see that my kids will have to find ways to be safe on their own. I can child-proof my house, but they will learn to be better citizens if I am not supervising their every move. I wish those editors would get a dose of reality. How do these people cook anything? They are probably the same people who made it nearly impossible to buy soft soap that isn’t anti-bacterial.

How much supervision can anyone provide while trying to do other things as well? Part of the job of being a stay at home mom (or even a working parent) is keeping the laundry washed (and folded if possible) and enough clean dishes around to be able to serve at least one meal. I can’t be there when they get older and go to school, and they need to have a working set of social skills long before that.

I belong to MOPS, Mothers of Preschoolers, and I like their magazine because it doesn’t have articles on being the perfect mother. It has articles that say “well, I did a better job parenting today than I did yesterday, but who knows about tomorrow?” The last issue had an article about dealing with a poopy potty trainer in public. I can relate to real life.

Grandpa Reg and the Library

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March 14, 2023

It’s the general understanding in my family that my Great Grandpa Reg’s schooling ended after second grade. When he was a child, his father needed him on the ranch, and as a result, working took priority over his education. As an adult, he was busy making a living. He lived 30 miles from Scottsbluff and didn’t make it to town very often. 

Somewhere along the line Grandpa Reg took up reading for pleasure. He liked reading westerns and was buying paperbacks from the store. In the 1950s or early 1960s he mentioned to my dad, his grandson, that he was running out of westerns to buy. Dad asked him, “Have you ever been to the library?” Grandpa Reg said, “No, I haven’t.” So Dad took him to the library to see if they have any westerns. Grandpa Reg signed up for a card and started checking out books. As he made his way through the large western section, he found he couldn’t remember what he had read. He started penciling his initials in the inside corner of the cover to keep track.

I did some research and found that western author Louis L’Amour (1908-1988) published around 100 books. Most of which I’ve read. Zane Grey (1872-1939) published 85 books. Grey’s book “Riders of the Purple Sage” is on my to-read list for this year. You can see how a person might lose track of what they’d read, just between these two authors.

Grandpa isn’t the only one to mark in books. When I was a patron at the Mullen, Nebraska library, I found lots of western books with tiny penciled-in brands on the front and back covers. Note: librarians are not fond of this particular method of keeping track of your reading. Nowadays, patrons can use sortable spreadsheets and word documents to record which books they’ve read. There are also several websites like Goodreads.com and Storygraph.com designed for this purpose. Readers can use them to record which books they have read, which books they want to read and what they think of the books they’ve read. Spiral notebooks are also readily available if you aren’t computer savvy. If you absolutely must write your initials in library books, (and remember, we prefer you don’t) please use a pencil.

Reading trends change, and mysteries have taken over the shelves that once bulged with westerns. Some mystery authors write about the west though, and that is almost as good as a Louis L’Amour book. If Grandpa Reg came into the library today, I could recommend several authors. I would start with Craig Johnson, C.J. Box, Margaret Coel, William Kent Krueger, Tony and Anne Hillerman, C.M. Wendelboe, Paul Doiron, and Keith McCafferty.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many westerns being written these days. Gering Library has western titles by Jeff Guinn, William W. Johnstone, Lauran Paine, C.M.Curtis, Johnny D. Boggs, Loren D. Estelman, Kevin McCarthy, J.D. Arnold and John Nesbitt among others. Most of these authors are in their 70s (or have passed away), and their writing style is not always as family friendly as westerns once were.

Grandpa Reg was born in 1887 and died in 1972, so we didn’t overlap much. When I worked at the Scottsbluff Library from 2010-2015 there were still some hardback Zane Grey novels that had been published in the mid-1960s. If you were to open them up, sure enough, you could find RP penciled in the front covers.

Chaos Explained

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This page is a combination of three blogs. This is where they all live, not necessarily in harmony, since they are all listed in the order that I posted them on this homepage rather than any sort of order that makes sense.

Blog 1 I currently write a weekly library column for a paper which, I have been told, has 151 subscribers. I know my mom reads the column, and sometimes dad does, but I want some more exposure. If you are here for the library stuff, I recommend clicking on the Library Column tab.

Blog 2 Presumably I will have something to write about that is not library-related. It will be posted under the Personal Blog tab.

Blog 3 I started a blog in 2007 on a wonderful site called Xanga. Xanga went broke in 2013 because they grew too fast and weren’t prepared, either financially or technologically. I no longer have access to edit the site where the posts are languishing, but I can repost my archived blogs. I am going to pick through the backlog and post what I believe is still of general interest.

As a stay-at-home mom, I had three kids and nearly four. For privacy reasons, I called my kids by their middle names. I am planning to fix that as I post them here, but I may miss a few instances. I miss the babies, but not the husband of those days. If you are here to walk down memory lane and marvel that my children have survived their childhood, this is your place. Click on the Archived Blog tab for peek into the unraveling mind of a woman who preferred reading to housework.

Reading to Children

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July 2007

Before I was even married, I read to my step-kids. It was a stupid Sesame Street book. When I got done and had put them to bed, their father said to me, “I know why you like to read so much, you read really well.” He is probably right. My mother was a librarian, and my father should have been. I got read to a lot, and I got to see adults reading for fun. Both my brother and I still read quite a bit.

They say you should read to your kids 30 minutes a day. I don’t do that, but I do read to them a lot, and I have learned a couple of things about books. As a parent, you have to make a quick decision. If you think you will not like reading a particular book to your kids, get rid of it as soon as possible, before they have a chance to get attached. This way reading to them is still enjoyable to you. If you aren’t enjoying it, they will catch on.

I don’t have a vendetta against Sesame Street, but their writers just aren’t the same caliber as other contemporary writers. Some of their books are better than others. I really like There is a Monster at the End of this Book. However, none of their books holds a candle to Sandra Boynton or Dr. Seuss. I literally have read Mr. Brown Can Moo over 500 times, to just two kids, and I’m not finished, I still have two to go! Luckily for me, I am not tired of it yet, although the book is looking pretty tired these days. I’m not even bored with Goodnight Moon, but I do have both memorized. I also can recite large portions of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by heart, and if you are under 10, I’ll even sing it.

When I read, I don’t always read exactly what is on the page, so my kids can’t call me on making the story shorter that it is supposed to be, although I don’t try to do that. Some authors write well enough that their words flow off the tongue with ease, and others’ phrasing just isn’t right. I guess that is the writer in me coming out. I also make my kids participate. When we read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day you can guess what I had my kids do. That is a lot of words to memorize, but my three-year-old Sarah did pretty well. Some of the best books don’t even have words, like the Carl the Dog books.

When Lydia was really little, we belonged to the Cat in the Hat book club. After several months, I cancelled my subscription, for two reasons. Some of the books were lousy, and as I told the lady with whom I canceled, we have more than 100 children’s books at our house as it is, and I probably should not be acquiring more on a regular basis. As my Mother-in-Law helped me pick up one day, she suggested putting away most of the books and only keeping a few out at a time. I was appalled! I would rather take away all of their toys than all of their books!

I am anxious for my daughters to become old enough to enjoy Laura Ingalls Wilder, and the Betsy Tacy books. Unfortunately, I yawn when I read out loud. A lot. I can only imagine how many yawns for each chapter, probably upwards of 50. Even Skippyjon Jones ranks about six. For some reason I do it when I am singing too, but not when I am talking. I try to project, so I can inhale more oxygen, but haven’t had good results, fortunately my kids are patient.

Sesame Street

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July 2007

I don’t let my kids watch Sesame Street. Why? Good question. We don’t watch much TV at our house, we get the Prairie Package: Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS. Since I don’t watch soap operas, women gossiping, or people suing or exploiting each other for entertainment, the TV sits off until Jeopardy comes on at 4:30, (although I have been known to sneak in a little Rachel Ray). I do let the kids watch TV for a while during the day, a half hour here and there, usually when we are eating lunch, or when I need a diversionary ploy. The TV is not on for noise at our house.

Back to Sesame Street. It was great when I was a kid, in fact my brother learned to read by watching Sesame Street before he went to Kindergarten. The program has changed though, and not for the better. The first half isn’t so bad, but the second half, the half aimed at younger children, specifically Elmo’s World, is lousy. Although we don’t know what causes autism, it is widely assumed that children should not watch things that “flash”. The whole premise behind Elmo’s scenery is flashing and throbbing. Several other segments like “one of these things doesn’t belong here” flash as well.

The other thing that offends me about Elmo’s World is that when Elmo wants to learn about something, for example music, he asks Mr. Noodle, who is silly but harmless, then he watches “the music channel” on a TV then he asks a baby. I don’t see anything specifically wrong with these things, but as an adult, I would not be able to learn anything useful from these sources, even a grade school child would not learn anything from these sources. Apparently the Sesame Street neighborhood lacks the basic fundamental of learning, a library. As annoying as he can be, at least Barney has a library card.

(2023 side note: One day Lydia Mae came to me in the kitchen and very solemnly said, “In Germany sometimes women wear a dirndl for special occasions.” I was floored. Then I went to a dictionary to look up dirndl. Sure enough, Lydia was right. Where did she learn this? Several weeks later I was walking past the living room and there was Barney’s Colorful World, and Barney was explaining just that same thing in those same words.)

Personally, I love Curious George. He has a great personality, he doesn’t speak English, and the show focuses on his imagination and how he learns through trial and error. I also love Mr. Rogers, and so do my kids. He isn’t flashy and modern, but he is engaging and interesting, his program provides the kind of television environment a young child should expect. George and Fred have both visited the library, although George didn’t go there to look at a book.

Barney is a little sappy, but also good. I don’t mind Clifford or Calliou either, although we don’t watch them as much. I wish these things were on Saturday mornings. What passes for children’s programming Saturday mornings is awful, and what isn’t is very scattered. I don’t mind Babar or Veggie Tales, but finding them and having the TV off in between isn’t easy. We either leave the set off or watch a movie. There is nothing wrong with having the TV off, but sometimes I just want the kids somewhere that doesn’t involve being under my feet.

I now take an active role in my children’s television viewing. When my oldest child was a few months old, I wanted to mop the floor, so I put her in a swing, in the living room and turned on Saturday morning TV then left for the kitchen. When I got done mopping and went to get her, she was watching some kind of skanky women’s wrestling. I felt horrible for exposing her to such programming, but I atoned by setting aside a special “counseling account” for her.

June 21 2007

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This was the first post in my first Xanga blog. I was a stay at home mom, and pregnant with my fourth child when a friend suggested blogging. I didn’t know what I needed, but this was it. Xanga saved my sanity. And believe it or not, I still have several friends I made on the site.

Organizing Recipes for Fun

What a luxury, today I spent all afternoon organizing my recipes. These would be the ones I tear out of the paper, various magazines and get from the Country Woman subscription Grandma gives me for my birthday. I purchased a binder, made some tabs and stapled recipes to sheets of paper. To deal with the magazine ones that took up a whole page, I simply used my punch to make three holes along one side. It would take too much time to copy them all out, and they might not be any good anyway, so this way I can rip them out and toss them if we don‘t like them.

I found some really sturdy plastic Post-It tabs that were tough enough to flip through. Now I don’t have to mess with cramming teeny pieces of paper into slots. I first used the tabs to make dividers for my recipe box several years ago. The dividers that came with the box were woefully lacking. If I wanted to find a breakfast casserole I never knew if I should look under “casserole” or “egg and cheese dishes.” Now I file it under “breakfast.” I never used the “lamb” tab, so now I have a “snack tab.” It works very well for me.

Why do I save so many recipes, when it is mathematically impossible to use them all in a single lifetime? I come by my recipe problem honestly, and from both sides of the family tree. My step-dad accused Mom of having too many recipe books and claimed that she had never used some of them. That was a mistake, because she is now working her way through them making a meal from each one to prove him wrong. She said he’ll be surprised some day because she has a book of just cookie recipes.

My father’s mother, the one who blesses me with Country Woman, has an archive of stuff she’s clipped out of the paper for over 70 years. It must rival the Library of Congress’s recipe collection. I need to remember to ask for a tour next time I am home, or she will surely think nobody will want to deal with it when she is gone, and she will toss the whole collection. God forbid! My dad gave my great grandmother’s original Better Homes and Gardens cookbook to me for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I use it occasionally. It has her notes in it, and she was quite a cook. On my wish list is a Fanny Farmer cookbook. I think that was one of the first cookbooks widely published.

I heard an essay on National Public Radio by a woman who made every dish in her Julia Child cookbook over the course of a year. She must not live in Grand Island. Even though I shop in a town of over 40,000, I am unable to find “exotic” ingredients such as bean sprouts in my regular store. I do have the option of several stores, but hunting through ethnic Mom and Pop groceries, or unfamiliar supermarket floor plans for obscure ingredients with three pre-schoolers is not my idea of fun, especially since none of the other stores have carryout. Recipes with ingredients such as prosciutto and gruyere strike fear in my heart because I know I will never find the right stuff. I know that ham or Swiss cheese would work, but surely these others are better, or the recipe would call for ham and Swiss cheese. I long to get my hands on some fresh mozzarella. Until then, I will just hang on to my recipes and wait 50 years until I can bequeath my recipe collection to an unsuspecting grandchild.

National Library Week

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April 25, 2023

National Library Week falls on April 23-29 this year. The American Library Association chose “There’s More to the Story” for this year’s theme.

What is the Gering Library’s story? In 1895 a handful of women started the Gering Women’s Literary Club. They solicited donations of used books and the collection rotated between various members’ houses. As the collection grew, it moved to a series of businesses like the Gering Irrigation Office, the Swan Hotel, and City Hall.

By 1920 the City of Gering was supporting the library with tax dollars. When the library outgrew City Hall in 1962, it was moved into a new building, specifically designed to be a library. By 1980 the library had outgrown their quarters again and added an addition which more than doubled the size of the library. 

But there’s more to the story.  

After more than 40 years the library is ready to grow again. Moving things around inside the building has helped, but the building itself poses a lot of restrictions.

Because of the limitations of our building, we hold some events in other locations. Last fiscal year, our community room was used 163 times. Some of those were library programs, and others were community members using the room. If you add the events the library was not able to hold in the community room, that number becomes 187.

Our ADA compliant lift is an easy target for discussion. My understanding is that no local business installs or repairs lifts of any sort. I have also heard lifts are notorious for breaking down. Every time something happens to our lift, we have to contact someone in Colorado to repair it. If they didn’t bring the right parts, they have to reschedule. It’s my understanding this happens everywhere in town, not just at the library. This is why most new buildings are built on one level. 

While our library met ADA regulations in 1980, these regulations have changed. We have a patron in a wheelchair who must pull themselves up the ramp using their arms and the handrail because the ramp is too steep for them to wheel themselves up on their own. We can’t see them coming, so we can’t help until they are nearly all the way up the ramp and in the library.

Our building is woefully lacking in space where someone can study quietly or attend a Zoom meeting. Out of town businesspeople, hoping to catch up on work, stop in and ask where they can set up their laptops. Oftentimes our one space that works for this is being used. 

I wonder how many people have turned away simply because we cannot offer basic library services to them, like access to the building or an electrical outlet.

Moving on to what we could have. I like to visit other libraries when I am out of town. If we had more room we could add so much.

One thing I would like to see is a maker space with items that would be unique in our community. We have the beginnings of a maker space with a Cricut, a button maker, a heat press, and a spiral binder. All are available for the public to use. What if we had a leather sewing machine and other leatherworking equipment like Casper does? Access to this equipment could help someone start a career.

Podcasts are very popular right now. The Legacy of the Plains Museum has a podcast called Voices on the Prairie Wind. Every time I listen to it, I think “they need a recording studio.” But the museum doesn’t need a recording studio, they just need to be able to use one from time to time. If the library had a soundproof room, anyone could use it to produce their own podcasts. If we had a green screen people could produce YouTube videos as well.

We hold an annual program called the Local Author Showcase. I never have difficulty finding local authors who want to promote their books. If we had the space, we could get a book publishing machine (about the size of a large copy machine) and help people publish their own books, right here in the library. 

There is more to our story, we are writing it every day. The story will continue next week with the fun changes we have made to the children’s section of the library.