Kansas, she said...

.... is the name of the star

So March found us taking a trip to Kansas to see family.  It was the first time I have been in Kansas in the spring since 1975.  Ahhhh  The first few days I thought we had come just a wee bit to early, but by the time we went home the new leafy green was showing and the redbud tree blooms were swelling and opening.  That made our timing just perfect.








                                                            

We took a "blue highway" from Kansas City to Manhattan, watching the prairie sunset over and over again heading west, up and down the hills of the eastern part of the state.  We drove through small towns that I had never been in during all my growing up years in Kansas.



The next day, a drive around town and a stop at the University Art Gallery.

The next night we went out to the Konza Prairie and took a quick 3 mile walk just as the sun was setting.  Wild turkeys and deer were raiding the green winter wheat.


 
The seed pods of autumn were falling to the ground.














This rim of rock just under the soil is reason for the name of these hills, the Flint hills.  This layer of rock made
this land not very suitable for farming.except in the more fertile river valleys.  












The next night, another prairie sunset from the cemetery on the west side of town where my father is buried.


and a drive around town past former homes and schools.  Lots of memories.  Primary on the steps of that house.  The boy that was supposed to be staying at our house while his mom recovered from surgery but was homesick and ran away.  (All the kids in the neighborhood walked miles trying to find him).  Girl Scouts in the Methodist Church and in the armory.  High School marching band practice on the streets in the neighborhood between the high school and the zoo.  Yes, that is an amazing location for a high school between the cemetery and the zoo.  Babysitting for the people that lived in that house.  The bus driver speeding up to go over that hill and driving by his girl friends house so he could honk at her.  Letting our voices vibrate in the back seat of the car when driving over the old brick roads.  Track and Field day at Griffith park in the spring of Junior High years.  The VW bug that was decoration for a church dance (yes it was in the building), walking to the library and the orthodontist.  How wonderfully cold the Wareham Theatre felt if you got to go to a movie in the summer.  The watermelon seeds I planted when I was 5.  (Yes, the plants grew but we moved and they probably didn't mature so late in the season.)  raw rolled oats and sugar and cinnamon as a treat when we were playing outside on a hot summer day.  The divided highway that my friend thought was a street (yep, she went the wrong way for about 5 blocks before she could turn around)  Mrs. Loofburrow always buying a box of girl scout cookies from every girl that came by selling.  Playing hide and seek in the street with all the kids from the neighborhood on long summer nights
.
This is the place were DER and I had a wedding reception in the late seventies.  It has been added to so that it could serve a student ward.  The addition is very well done and preserves some of the historic features of this building.  Other things have changed some.  Downtown is old and new.  A Flint Hills center will be opening soon.  It has nice public outdoor space and a lovely viewpoint of the hills surrounding Manhattan.













 Much in Manhattan has remained the same.  This building was the central building in the Dairy barn where my father has some work affiliation. It is now used for other university functions and it's big lawn is surrounded by horticultural gardens.  The dairy barns are now moved further out of town.  I remember coming here for student club cook-outs and to follow Dad around.  Dad was more involved with the food side of the dairy industry, but we came here and saw the cows with windows in their sides for research purposes when I was a child.  I have stronger memories of the smell of the dairy plant and of the lab.  We stopped at the Dairy bar to buy some "squeeky" cheese (cheese curd) and to have some "Purple Pride" ice cream.      

The train station is has undergone a revival since I was young.

 It was here that I stood in the wee hours of the morning as the sun was coming up through a misty morning while Dwight David Eisenhower's funeral train came through on the way west to his burial place in Abilene. 

It was not something my 15 year old self wanted to do.  It was something my father wanted his family to do. He had been a teenager during WWII,  and in the Air Force when DDE was president.  I had never known anyone who had died at this point in my life (we lived far from extended family in a fairly young community of friends).  I was uncomfortable about paying respect to a dead person I had never known in a public way.    Dad was insistent and I went along without excessive complaint to keep him happy.  We were among a few others at the depot as the train slowed while going by.  But I felt other people's respect for someone and I felt respect for their feelings.  I felt a bit of what it meant to be an American, to value the leader who served with dedication and vigor.  I really didn't know if I valued DDE, but I knew that these people at the station did and that it mattered to them. I became a different kind of American that morning watching the feelings of others who stood in the morning dark and fog to show respect.     Sometimes in our current political climate, we forget that we may be unaware of what matters to others.  We sometimes forget to value the respect others feel. 


A Sunday morning at church found only three old timers.  Manhattan never had a very stable long term LDS population.  The kids grow up and move away like I did. The older people are getting too old to make it to church or have moved to be closer to their children.  The wards consist largely of people there for military reasons and people attached to the universitySunday afternoon was spent in Topeka with the family enjoying really good food.  Yummy, yummy.  I looked up the recipe for the coconut cake that Stephanie made - going to make it soon.

We also drove around and took pictures of the street signs we could find that represented the families of our children.  Sorry M, we couldn't find one with your family name on it.

 

Monday featured a good big thunderstorm as we drove to the airport.  Never fun for driving, but another memory relived.

Remembering Marie

No pictures today.  I just want to remember a special person.  I only met Marie a few years ago.  Her life had been reduced to a few possessions and a shared room in an adult care home.  I was there because I had been assigned.  I will admit that my first response at receiving my assignment was reluctance.  It seems that I have often had an elderly sister on my visiting teaching route.  Often it has been an elderly sister to whom I become a attached and then they pass away.  I find my self missing them.  I miss Rachel, Roma, Elise, and now Marie 

Her few possesions represented love.  The flowers, the pictures, the cards - she loved to see them.  It meant someone loved her and she loved them. She would often write down the names of people who came to see her.  She wanted to remember their kindness to her.    She would tell me with a joyful heart about her visitors.  When she couldn't remember who it was she could look it up and then we had mutual friends.

She knew how to be so positive.   I met her shortly after her husband passed away and she often talked about how wonderful it was that she had been able to see him again.  They had been separated by the needs of aging bodies. His kids brought him and her kids brought her to a meeting place, some town in the mountains, and she was so happy to have seen him again.  She remembered the good times and didn't dwell on the separation.


She did sometimes feel useless and frustrated in her situation.  Her mind was still sharp but her hands were crippled by arthritis so she was in this care home.  But she was not useless.  One of her roommates was a little disoriented to be in a care facilty and would wander around.  Marie gave her a small shawl that had been given to her.  She wanted her to feel loved and more comfortable. She watched for ways to make life easier for others in the facilty.  I occasionally found myself there at lunch time and she was always helping someone open their napkin or peel a lid off of something or ask for something they needed.  She soothed the spirits of a rather agitated resident more than once. 

I took her to the dentist a couple of times and she acted like it was a miracle that someone could do that.  We went for a drive one autumn to get her out.  She remembered that day with gratitude, not just once, but many times.  She was good at being grateful for the smallest thing.  I was very touched at Christmas time.  I had been at home putting up the Christmas tree for our household with it's trimmings filled with memories and then stopped to see her.  She was delighted that the home was putting up a tree with a few ornaments.  None of those ornaments were memory filled for her, but she could rejoice in the season without regretting the past.

She gave when she had so little to give.  She gave appreciation, kindness, encouragement, love and chocolates.  She had her children keep her supplied with chocolates so that she had something to offer in thanks to the caregivers that helped her in and out of bed and pushed her wheelchair and checked her pulse.  I would visit and she would offer a chocolate.  I would decline and say, "I'm really fine and don't need anything"  She would reply, "well, I want one.  So you have to have one with me."  We would eat a chocolate together and tell stories.  She could always tell when I was worried about something.  She gave me a listening heart.

She would tell me stories about her family.  Stories about rattlesnakes and moving across the country and lush plants by the doorstep that turned out to be illegal.  

Marie was excited to give something she had painted in the ceramics room to her daughter-in-law.  She knew that it was not to the standard she would have had for herself when she was younger and painting lovely watercolors.  She accepted that her hands couldn't do what they had once done.  But she was excited to give something that represented not her hands, but her heart.

She didn't have a home of her own anymore, but she welcomed me into her  beautiful heart furnished with a focus on the positive, loving kindness, thoughtfulness and gratitude.  It was a privilege to know Marie. 

The Newly Weds

We have had two pairs of newlyweds in this family this year.  We love it!  Our sons have been blessed with good women to be their companions in life and eternity.
In April we had Mike and Monica marry in Manti.  Their photographer took much better pictures of them than we took.  It was a cold day especially for the end of April.  There was snow!

Our second set of newlyweds got married on a windy 60 degree day in Dallas in December.  Go figure.

It was great to have the whole family together.  I appreciate everyone's travel and energy.  I know a couple people didn't feel to great and would have most liked to be in their own beds. 

There we all are, but we should have found a better place for DER to stand.  It is sort of like where's Waldo.
It was a good day also to celebrate the 4th anniversary of our other married couple.

The swamp drive

 Our swamp tour got rained out so we took a swamp drive where one snowy egret braved the rain so we could see it.

the weather outside was....

.... not what we hoped for, but the kids were so delightful!  And the food was pretty good too.  We ate out, missed the live music that was supposed to be at the restaurant, oh well... But Katie made yummmy blackbean and sweet potato burritos.  Monica made quiche and I got the easy ham for Christmas day.

We went to a living history museum nearby called Vermillionville.  Vermillionville is situated on the Vermillion Bayou and features plants and natural history as well as the craftsman and building styles of Louisiana settlement.

 These are the "knees" of the cypress trees that grow along the waterways.


A certain little boy thought the tornado model was worth chasing.

                                                         

A certain little girl loved the natural history hands on table with her uncle Seth.

 This is the Spanish moss that hangs from the trees.  It is soaked for a few weeks to dissolve the outer layer.  What is left is called bousillage.  It is mixed with clay and hung over rough lathe to build the homes.  It then has thermal mass and is cool in the hot weather and warmer in the cold weather.  The next photo is of a bale of bousillage (boo see auge)

The sticks poking out of the chimney are so the chimney can be pulled off the wall in case of a chimney fire.  The chimney is bousillage and so is the house.  The house has siding.  I wonder if the siding is Oak or sweet gum or cypress?  All of those are large timber trees that seem native to the area.

I enjoyed the textile area.  The warping frame was about as big as one of the walls of a bedroom in this house.  They were able to warp about 100 yards on that frame.  They had cotton of various colors

 The loom was impressive.  It was roughly made overall, but smooth where it needed to be smooth.  The reed was most impressive to me.  The reed is the part of the loom that space the warp yards and keeps them lined up.  It was made with small strips of cane threaded on the support structure and spaced by winding the same thread around the support.  It was amazingly accurate.

 T tasted the cotton.

His sister liked spinning the wheel.











It was fun to be somewhere new while everything was decorated for Christmas.  This little vignette was in the school house.

 French was outlawed in public schools until 1968.  Yet is survives in families and ...

 This fiddle player (in his nineties) had a nice soft French voice.

 Some building details are shown in the above picture and the next several pictures.  Homes are built up about 18 inches above the ground. 

 Doors were almost all double doors like this.

 The front porches were broad and roofed

 a water tank

 a shutter holder

 Don't know why they built the roof like this.  I loved the soft blue, green and red paints

Many homes had exterior stairs from the porch on the back to the upper sleeping rooms.  A way of providing for travelers and still having privacy I think.

 This is a close up of the door hardware.
 
The last pictures of Vermillionville illustrate ways of living not common today.

 Mosquito netting and trundle beds

 hand dipped  candles

An inspiring era

We traveled to and from Dallas the long way.  So the "space men" in our family could gawk at a Saturn Rocket in Houston.  Worth the trip perhaps for those of us who grew up in the space era.  For whom the "space race" might have inspired career choices.



It was also a good chance to play with the capabilities of the new zoom lens.
I won't be able to tell you much about the pictures but the zoom gets close pictures of things that were really too far away for my eyes to see this well.  Enhanced eyesight!

My Miss Brooks

Surely there is a character in a book named Miss Brooks.  She would be thin, gray haired, wear wire rim glasses and be quietly unassuming.  She would work in a library.  She would be those things because she was in my young life just those things.  My brother and I would arrive at the limestone Carnegie Library across the street from the courthouse and hike up the stairs to the room with a linoleum compass rose over which my Miss Brooks presided.  She was the librarian who led me to the orange bound biographies that I so loved.  I don't recall library cards or details like checking out. I suspect she and Mom just took care of it.  I just recall that she knew her books and she knew me. Years after she retired, my brother and I ran across her at one of those club bake sales that JC Penneys always allowed  near the stairs that went to the basement.  There in the blue tiled building, ten years or more since we frequented the room with the compass rose, she still knew us.

Miss Brooks was the beginning of my love of books and libraries.  We lived in another place for a couple of years and our family economy only included trips to the library in the summer when the school library was closed.  The school librarian refused to let me check out The Secret Garden when I was in second grade.  I suppose she thought I would not be able to read and make sense of words like; mystified, brilliant, contrary and sentiment.  I suppose that she wanted to keep a small supply of books appropriately apportioned so that older students would have something that would appeal to them.  But I had heard about this story and wanted to read it.  I tried twice at school and when it came to the check out line that librarian whose name I have forgotten turned me away.  I could not understand why I couldn't check out any book I wanted to check out and persuaded my mother to take me to the big downtown public library in the middle of the school year so I could check out this coveted book.  I read it and learned the meaning of words by reading sentences in which those words that seemed beyond the abilities of a seven year old had a meaning.  I don't remember the reading being hard.  I had heard some of those words even if I hadn't read them before. 


We moved back to the town with the limestone library and behold the school now had a library.  It was wonderful to go listen to the warm rich black voice of Mrs. DeGrate (sorry Mrs. D - I don't know how to spell it) read to us.  I felt a little out of step with other kids because I had not read the Laura Ingalls Wilder series in 3rd grade.  So back I went to the linoleum compass room and Miss Brooks to find them.  I don't remember when Miss Brooks retired.  During Jr High and High School, the library became a convenient place for my parents to pick me up if I walked downtown after school. The room with the compass rose had been replaced with another limestone building.  One summer while waiting for a parent the tornado sirens went off and the library staff rounded everyone up and took us about three stories down to a civil defense shelter that I had not known was there. I read late into the night in those summer months, books by James Michner, Victor Hugo, Harper Lee.... 

The Library always had an art exhibit and I began to want to do creative things because of what I saw there. I loved the linsey woolsey coverlets and learned to weave. I planned a trip to Turkey with the help of a library and shopped for a new washer with the help of a library.  I have watched movies and listened to music.  I have driven the highways of the west listening to PG Wodehouse - checked out from the library.  I have planned hikes, designed quilts, grown vegetables and painted watercolors with the help of a library.  Because the library has digitial subscriptions I have researched my ancestors while sitting in my living room, warmed by my laptop.  I have relaxed at the end of many days over many years with a library book in my hand.

I have read countless books from the library to my own children and peeked in the door as one of them acted out at bedtime the songs from a library CD.  We sang along with Charlotte Diamond on a tape cassette as we traveled; "I am a pizza," "Four Hugs a Day".... on long car trips; I have enjoyed the sharing of the great story or doing the fun science experiment that we found in  a library book.   We came to love Raven, Anansi and Brier Rabbit as the characters of many cultures became our friends.  We went to community events that we saw advertised and posted in the library.  We touched pythons and played didgereedoos at special library events.

I have browsed art books and poetry and read books that were healing as I read someone else's words.  I have learned some things to avoid from the characters in books. Characters in books made some mistakes so I didn't have to try that. I learned about racism and bigotry.  I learned about greed and infidelity.  I also learned admirable ways to behave. I learned about generosity and forgiveness about courage and curiousity. I registered to vote at the library.

In my college years, I was fortunate to work in the campus library. So libraries even got me through college, both financially and emotionally.  I found quiet places to study in the library and places that had upholstered furniture. My student apartments were often lacking in that luxury.  I liked to find the quiet places on campus to sit in a comfortable chair and just read.  I could pretend my life was not always surrounded by thousands of other young adults.  I made friends in the library, met fellows that I dated and even the man that I married all in the library.

I now live with that man in a place with one of the best library systems I can imagine.  I never walk in the door without finding several things that I would like to read.  Things that I didn't know I wanted to read or had an interest in before I walked in the door past that "Explore More" shelf.   We are looking at retirement and as we consider places to live.  I'm always asking "What is the library system like?"  "Is there a system?" "Is that community part of the system?"  "How far away would the house be from the library?"  "How does the library feel?"  "What kind of books do they buy?"   "do they exhibit art?"  "What is their programming like?" "Will I find that place where the community comes together there?" 

Libraries have become the measure by which I measure a healthy community.  Libraries are the place where someone knows my name and where I have become who I am.. Thank you, Miss Brooks.