Merry Christmas From Wisconsin

We always enjoy hearing from Russell and Delores Miller in Wisconsin.  That goes for any time of year, but especially during the holidays. 
 

 It's time for Christmas, although we have no snow and the temperatures are always above freezing which we like, no icy roads or yards or plowing snow.    But it is dark gloomy days, the sun seldom shines. Got the bill for the farm taxes, over $3000 which made a dent in the checking account.  Threw out my back and going to the chiropractor, which helps.  Russ decorated the small Christmas tree and the gifts are gathering up under.  Thanksgiving was November 26, had 17 people for the feast, most stay nights.  Also went out for Indian food.  Then one Sunday afternoon went dancing.  The band Don Peachey played 60 years ago at the Caroline Ballroom, before we were married.  He is now an old man, but still has good beats.  Deer hunting season was for 10 days.  Russ does not hunt.  But it was the 'rut' and so many deer in the middle of the roads, getting hit and killed.  

Watching professional football, the Green Bay Packers and the New England Patriots and the University of Wisconsin Badgers.  Bucky Badger always entertains.  Sandhill cranes finally left, they stayed longer than most years.  Where do they go?  Veteran's day was November 11.  Programs honoring all military personnel.  We went to 4 of the programs.  Good food, music.

Here is a picture if it comes through taken at grandson Tucker's 5th birthday.  In the back row is Barb Olson, the other Grandmother, Sam Olson, and of course Delores.  Front is Lisa, Leon Olson , Russ and Matt with Ollie and Tucker.

So that is it for the year 2015.  And a Merry Christmas to all.

Russell and Delores Miller

copyright Russell and Delores Miller, 2015

Making Hay While The Sun Shines; 1929 Klingbeil Style

By Delores Miller

r

So it is summer  on the farm and time to make hay on the Klingbeil Farm in the Town of Little Wolf, Waupaca County, south of Dupont.  But first a little history and genealogy:

Wilhelmine and Gottfried Klingbeil left Posen Province Germany in 1873, traveling aboard the ship S.S. Leipzig landing in Baltimore.  Over two hundred passengers crammed in steerage.  Two small children, one died  on the boat and is buried at sea, another son Herman died shortly after they arrived.  Train ride to Bloomfield, following the river to Fremont and then to Little Wolf.  Along with their steamer trucks, they brought their Bibles and Lutheran religion.  Eight more children arrived in 18  years.  Gustav Jule, Bertha Lembke (my Grandmother), William, Albert, Ella Johnson, Minnie Becker, Robert and Marie Becker.  Thirty years later, the family gathered for a group picture at the Quimby Studio in Manawa.  The land of opportunity provided financial means for this expensive  lithograph. 

Age and infirmity  caught up to these patriarchs who had been married for 62 years.  Gottfiried became ill, he had cataracts on his eyes, after a few operations he lost his sight.  Lost his hearing, had lip cancer, suffered from eczema.   Long white beard that frightened the grandchildren.   Wilhemine, who had heart trouble  and Gottfried died several days apart in 1929 and the funerals were held together. 

CONTINUED HERE:

http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/10/continued-make-hay-while-sun-shines.html

Retirement

By Wanda Spannuth

Slugs. I think they are the most disgusting looking creatures on earth. For a short time I became a human slug. No, this isn’t science fiction, just the story of a woman who retired.

The best thing about retirement is not having a schedule. The worst thing about retirement is not having a schedule. Until May 3, 2014, the first day of my retirement, every day of my life was on some sort of a timetable.

As a baby and toddler it was likely I had a feeding and sleeping routine. The feeding more or less led to pooping at a regular time, more or less. During the weekdays a trip to the sitter was at the same time, as was a return home, dinner on the table at 5:00pm every day and so on and so on.

Starting school meant a new schedule. It wasn’t long before I had to plan time for housework, fixing dinner, homework and after school activities. Before summer employment was added to my to do list there was babysitting my sister.

I mistakenly thought college would bring some relief. Although I was able to create some free time by cutting classes I learned, the hard way, that it wasn’t in my best interest.

CONTINUED HERE:

http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/09/continued-retirement.html

Wanda Spannuth finished her career in Human Services and was encouraged to pursue her passion for writing by author Lisa Doan.  She completed her first children’s book, “Meesha’s Secret”, in 2013, followed by “The Turtle and the Pond Life” in 2014. Her books teach life lessons in hope, courage, acceptance and tolerance.  Wanda is currently working on a one-act play based on “The Turtle and the Pond Life”, will continue with additional children’s books and hopes to complete a novel based on some of her work in Human Services.  Wanda earned a Master’s Degree in Education and Counseling from Indiana University and is an avid IU Basketball fan.

Memories Are Made of This ...

An East Too Far

by Chester Tuthill

            Chester is stationed in Tsingtao, China.  It is 1945.  He is in the Marines.  Although the Communist's have by now taken over much of the country, he has been there some time now, people know him and he visits local places with immunity.  He is by himself.  He enters  a small Chinese market where they sell trinkets, vegetable and meat.  He buys a small brass incense burner and some small glazed children's kitchen ware toys for a few cents.  The people crowd around, smiling,  The little boys call out "Da Beedza lai".  The people bow and smile. They do not know that Chester knows Chinese and that the boys are saying "Big Nose Comes'.  Chester smiles.  The crowd smiles.

      He goes over to a meat market where a big butcher is about to prepare some meat for someone to take home. The butcher's block is covered with 'blowflies'.  The butcher shoos them away to clear a space to cut the meat. The files return.  The butcher slams his cleaver down flat on the butcher's block.  Them flies scatter but don't move fast enough and a few are killed.  The butcher uses the cleaver as a spatula to scrape off the dead flies and puts down the meat to be cut up.  The butcher wipes his cleaver off on his bloody apron.  Chester moves on to the vegetable section.

      Chester then leaves the Chinese marketplace to go visit his new chinese friend who has invited him to supper.

      Chester approaches the small house.  A puppy is playing in the front yard.  It sidles up to Chester and prances around.  Chester tickles the puppy under the chin.  "Hello, Ming," says Chester.  "What's for supper?"  Ming replies, "we're going to have stew.  You like puppy stew?  You were just playing with supper."  Chester looks horrified.  You don't mean that puppy there, do you?"  "No," says Ming, "I was just joshing you.  We are having dog stew though.  The puppy's mother.  Dog just right age for stew.  They get much older than two years  dog gets tough; like shoe leather.  Time to eat, come on in."   Chester says, "Gee, sorry Ming we'll have to postpone supper.  I just remembered I have a very important meeting I should be at.   I'll see you later."

      Ming says "Wait, don't go yet.  I have a present for you."  Ming goes in the house and brings out a bag.  In the bag are about two dozen shoes such as the chinese women used to wear to stunt the growth of their feet.  They are embroidered and truncated, but much like the shoes two year olds wear .  Chester says, "They are very interesting, do you really want to give them to me?"  Ming nods assent.  Chester takes the shoes back to the United States where he is discharged and keeps them for many years, showing them off to anybody who will listen.  Chester finally dumps the whole lot in the trash bin to be rid of old memories.

 Chet Tuthill served in the Marines and after the end of WW2 was sent to China.  He took advantage of the Bill of Rights for veterans afterward earning a college degree.  Married with four children, he is now widowed and retired from the Education field.  He is the sole homemaker and caretaker of his son.

Resuming Operations

I'm back and on light duty.  If you have an article or fiction piece or verse and would like to send it along to me, I'll post it here on Lunarticks. No guarantee as to amount of time it will take me to do it.  Some days I have energy, some days I don't.

But it would be great to have a couple of stories to put up, so send them to me at:
dave@windsweptpress.com

Thanks.

Ebert On Writing

Roger Ebert on Writing: 15 Reflections From 'Life Itself'


By Spencer Kornhaber

September 22, 2013

Roger Ebert was making 90 cents an hour when he started working at the Champaign News-Gazette in high school, and that was more than enough. "To be hired as a real writer at a real newspaper was such good fortune that I could scarcely sleep," Ebert remembers in his new memoir Life Itself. His love for writing still remains; you can sense it on each page of Life Itself, as the Pulitzer-winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times tells of growing up in central Illinois, struggling with alcoholism, traveling the world, hanging out with movie stars, and battling the cancer that left him without a lower jaw—unable to speak, eat, or drink ever since 2006.

The book charms and entertains, but it also teaches. Ebert's TV talk shows with Gene Siskel brought him to fame, but some of the most striking passages in Life Itself are where Ebert talks about his first craft: journalism. Below, a few of the lessons Ebert has learned from a lifetime of written words.

Ebert's reflections begin here:

www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/roger-ebert-on-writing-15-reflections-from-life-itself/245408/#slide1

Editor's Note:  I especially liked the sarcasm: "[In high school] I was a subscriber to the Great Lead Theory, which teaches that a story must have an opening paragraph so powerful that it leaves few readers still standing."    -- Dave

Isle of Devils

by Peter Schaub

Beautiful Bermuda was on nobody’s bucket list in the 1600s. Named for Juan Bermudez, who discovered them about 1505, the islands were feared by the Spanish and Portuguese who rode the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean to Europe. The reefs surrounding the islands are treacherous, making a purposeful entry to harbor all but impossible in that era. The screeching cahow birds would have sounded to superstitious sailors like wailing demons. They called the place the “Isle of Devils”.

Sea Venture was the flagship of the relief fleet sent from England to Jamestowne in 1609. Hit by a hurricane, six battered vessels made it into Jamestowne with most of the provisions spoiled. The Sea Venture carried the senior leaders and wrecked on Bermuda. Even as the gunwales were awash, Captain Newport, Admiral Somers and Governor Gates must have been wondering which fate was better: drowning at sea or being wrecked on that abhorred shore.

CONTINUE at:

http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2014/08/continued-isle-of-devils-by-peter-schaub.html

 

Peter Schaub retired in 2010 after 40 years in management at the electric utility in Washington, DC.  He and his wife moved to Williamsburg, Virginia where they enjoy the arts and the immersion in history available within a community that includes the College of William & Mary, Colonial Williamsburg, and Historic Jamestowne.  They also enjoy travel, especially when it has a connection to history.   Peter is a Master Gardener, and an amateur letterpress printer, continuing a hobby that began in his teen years.  He is currently president of the American Amateur Press Association. 

 

Soppin a Possum

by T. Allen Winn

 
In a grandson’s eyes, growing up in the fifties and sixties, and in the shadow of a grandfather, a famed and fabled rabbit and squirrel slayer, setting rabbit boxes had been a tradition and just the natural thing to do. The rabbit box, a wooden rectangular trap with a trip wire door, placed strategically could thin out the ever exploding cotton tail population.

Me, a man in my forties back then and the famed hunter, my grandfather, no longer walking among the mortals, I carried on the tradition with a friend of mine. He constructed the boxes. I placed several of the crudely but affective constructed wooden traps on my three acres, baiting them with apples and periodically checking them.

Sharing the bounty with my friend and grandmother, alternating between the two, the boxes provided plenty of rabbits for stewing, fricasseeing, frying and making dumplings. The problem with these boxes is they can often attract other critters besides rabbits. The aromatic sliced up apples strategically placed in the rear of the trap are just too mouth watering to ignore.

CONTINUED at:

http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/08/continued-soppin-possum.html

Battle for the Marshall Islands

by Kevin Schmitt

I thought I’d share with you some of the things my dad told me about his Navy days. It all began in Idaho, believe it or not. That’s where boot camp was, near Lake Coeur D Alene. (That’s about thirty miles east of Spokane Washington, in case you’ve never been there.) For Dad, it was a great experience. The lake is long and narrow, like Loch Ness, and so clean, they even had a rule against pissing in it.

Dad was seventeen years old and had been brought up with wood chopping and winter outhouses. So the rigors of a Rocky Mountain boot camp didn’t ruffle his feathers one little bit. In fact, there was just one thing that came into his life that was totally new to him, and that was a young man who was half black, and half Cherokee Indian. His name was Jamie Jameson, and he hailed from the state of Georgia.

I suppose you could say that Jamie was a social trail blazer. In order to gain acceptance, he had to be twice as good as everyone else, but real modest about it. Dad didn’t take to him right off because Jamie could run like the wind, whereas Dad was built for weight lifting. Running is a very important part of boot camp training, so if you’re a bit slow at it, you just might resent those who are not. Maybe Jamie sensed that---maybe not. But one chilly night when Dad was standing guard duty, Jamie showed up with a cup of coffee. Dad didn’t stop being a racially ignorant person that night, but it was a beginning.

Continued here:

http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/08/continued-battle-for-marshall-islands.html

 Kevin Schmitt lives in Shakopee Minnesota and has been a factory worker for 35 years. He kayaks in the summer and writes fiction during the cold weather months.

See Kevin's fiction here:
http://beforekevlar.blogspot.com

Self-Confidence

“There is no deeper principle in human nature than the craving to be appreciated"
                  ~ William James, father of American psychology

I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times as a teenager it was suggested I grow up. I never remember it offered as a casual suggestion. More often the message had a fire lit under it. And I seem to remember the main advice given to me was usually to be realistic.

In my adult years I became much more realistic. But I pride myself in not having overdone it. I’m a dreamer. Always was, always will be. I'm just blessed to have been able to provide well for my family and still build castles in the air.

There’s a price to pay, of course. It is called acceptance. For example, Bill Gates insists on doing everything his way. He’s a genius and he became a zillionaire. I insisted things be done my way much of my life. I drive a ten year old pickup truck. There’s a message there somewhere.

Self-Confidence


by David Griffin

  Any dead hero will tell you that youthful overconfidence and a craving for appreciation can be fatal. I find myself overjoyed to have muddled through my younger years without anyone killing me, although a few friends and relatives may have given it a thought from time to time. Unrestrained and unwarranted self-certainty happily leveled off a half century ago at the end of my teen years. Had it followed a natural arc of ascending absurdity, I would have been impossible to live with today. As it is, I’m only annoying.

All I ever wanted was to grow up. My earliest memories as a child are filled with instances where I tried to be a man long before I was able. As I grew older I stumbled forward on the narrow boards of my ego.

In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as a boy I thought I was the world’s next genius.

CONTINUED HERE: http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/08/continued-self-confidence.html

The Willawaw

By Hugh Singleton

In the valley of the Chattahoochee the consistently muddy river flows at a rapid pace between the tree-lined banks of plantations established in the days when the red man occupied most of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Andrew Jackson had yet to bring his army to Horseshoe Bend and determined white men often had to defend themselves from hungry red scavengers who regularly raided along the river in Georgia, then escaped into Alabama with livestock from the Georgia farms, often leaving dead and wounded farmers in their wake. Owners constantly searched for different ways to intimidate the fierce warriors. This was said to be when the Willawaw came into existence, although nothing of a factual nature was ever found to substantiate the rumors.
     Captain Winston Burnett, owner of the four thousand acre Burnett Plantation, was credited by his slaves with releasing the Willawaw on the banks of the Chattahoochee in response to a raid which resulted in the loss of almost fifty prime beef cattle. Captain Burnett never claimed credit for the Willawaw, nor did he ever admit having anything to do with the massacre of a thirty-eight member raiding party found two days later lying dead and mutilated less than a day’s distance into Alabama. When the Captain and his party of armed slaves left that scene of horror to search for his cattle, the slaves spread their wide-eyed tales that a Willawaw was loose and roaming the banks of the Chattahoochee.
     Superstition was rampant in the lives of slaves as well as among the redskin tribes. While no two people could describe a Willawaw nor agree on its habits, blacks and Indians agreed that it was a ghostly phantom, never seen and it was inescapable; a vaporous monster given to ripping apart the bodies of anyone or anything that crossed its path. Some seventy-eight red bodies were found torn apart and scattered along the river banks between Irwinton, later known as Eufaula, and Fort Gaines, a small stockade with just eighteen permanent troops. It was rumored that Indian raids in that stretch of the river ceased entirely until Captain Winston Burnett was killed in a duel and ownership of Burnett Plantation passed to his oldest son, Marcus. During the Indian wars that brought Andrew Jackson’s army south into Georgia, Florida, and finally to        Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, Indian raids increased and slaves who fled their plantation homes to live with the Indians spread tales that the dreaded Willawaw had left the Chattahoochee. Indian warriors claimed that fear had driven the monster away; that the redman’s magic was too great for it.
     Through the years that led to civil war and freedom for the slaves the Willawaw seemed to have disappeared. Then in 1999 a gruesome murder occurred at Shaw’s Landing. Miss Angie Criddle, a life-long resident of Clay County was fishing in the river, something she loved to do on Saturday afternoons. She was brutally attacked and left for dead by a river tramp, who then proceeded to take the radio, the spare tire, tools, blankets and a flashlight from the vintage auto that Miss Criddle had driven for thirty years. As the tramp was loading his spoils into his bateau, Miss Criddle regained consciousness but remained quiet despite her throbbing head and watched the thief furtively.
     “He was just starting to push his boat into the water,” she told Sheriff Watson later, “when something hit him so hard he went head over heels into the river. Then it looked as if he was yanked back out of the water and thrown into the thicket around that big pine tree. I couldn’t see into the thicket, but there was a great deal of thrashing about before everything got real quiet. That’s when I ran to my car and called 911 from the cell phone I keep under my seat.”
     Deputy Palin drove Miss Criddle to the hospital in Eufaula while the sheriff and two deputies combed the area where she was attacked. They found no tracks except those of Miss Criddle and the thief. His dismembered body was strewn where Miss Criddle had pointed out and blood was splattered everywhere. The sheriff was never able to identify the dead man nor trace the old bateau. Miss Criddle appeared on several television news programs and also described her encounter to various civic groups. Sheriff Watson never mentioned the red eyes that had watched him from the thick woods along the Chattahoochee.

copyright 2014, Hugh Singleton

Hugh Singleton was born 1931 in Cuthbert, a small agricultural town in southwest central Georgia.  The Singletons date back to the pre-civil war days, with older roots  paternal roots go back to England; maternal to Ireland.  Hugh’s higher education consists of business school training in accounting and administration.  He served four years in the U.S. Navy, 1951-1955.  Hugh  enjoyed a career with the NCR Corporation and retired at the end of 1993.  Hugh and his wife  live in a retirement community near Leesburg, FL where they enjoy a number of activities.

Sassafras Fortune

by Clarence Wolfshohl

The first spring we lived in our house, I stumbled upon the sassafras trail. I was clearing brush from around the house, which we had built in the midst of our nine-acre wood, saving what wood I could for the coming winter’s fireplace. A pile of logs and cut brush ran across the streamlet alongside the house, gathered there by the previous owners. They had cleared only a small area before they were transferred and sold us the mostly white oak and hickory woods. As I chainsawed the logs into fireplace lengths, the air suddenly exploded with the odor of sassafras. One of the logs was of a sassafras tree.

Two images immediately appeared in mind. One was a dollar’s sign. Back when we lived in West Virginia, it had cost us a small fortune (at least, for us) to have one of Patricia’s teeth capped when she broke it on a piece of sassafras candy. The other was a page I had seen recently in the Norton Anthology of British Literature, a page containing a poem by Michael Drayton, a contemporary of Shakespeare, entitled “Ode: To the Virginia Voyage.” Not being an Elizabethan scholar, I had never read the poem before but found it as I was browsing through the anthology on an idle, rainy Sunday. The poem was in celebration of an expedition to Virginia that set off from England in December 1606. Drayton had published the poem before the three ships left and had anticipated the fortune to be found. Among the treasures of pearl and gold; fowl, venison and fish; fruitful soil; and “earth’s only paradise,” were

The cypress, pine,

And useful sassafras.

Continued CLICK HERE

http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/08/continued-sassafras-fortune.html

 Clarence Wolfshohl is professor emeritus of English at William Woods University. He has published  both creative and scholarly writing in small press and academic journals.  He is a member of AAPA and operates El Grito del Lobo Press.  A native Texan, Wolfshohl now lives with his writing, two dogs and one cat in a nine-acre woods outside of Fulton, Missouri.

My Theory ...

by June T. Bassemir

Here on Long Island, NY,  there seems
to be and overabundance of obese people
and I have a theory.  It's this:  If we

got rid of the big box stores in town we

might put a dent in our over weight people.

It's staggering to see what one can buy

at these stores.  Huge jars of mayonnaise,

cereal boxes so big they do not fit in the

kitchen cabinet; meats and large dinners it

would takes an army to finish at one sitting.

I think folks see these consumable foods

and feel they are saving money by buying

such large quantities but in the end I

believe they only eat it because it's THERE,

not because they are hungry!  Thus they

put on weight meal after meal.

       

If you visit these stores just stand at

the exit door and look at what people

have piled high in their baskets and then

look at the waistline of these shoppers. 

I believe we in America have fallen for

a false sense of grocery shopping...buying

only because its cheaper in quantity.  We

don't need all that food!  Cut up your

membership card and buy in smaller quantities. 

Then maybe you won't need to go on

a diet.

copyright 2015, June T. Bassemir


June Tuthill Bassemir is the widowed mother of four and grandmother of 10.  An artist and writer, she  volunteers as a docent in a 1765 farm house.   June loves old cars and antiques, and has also enjoyed furniture stripping and rug hooking.  "I used to say I was a stripper and hooker.but with so many trips around the sun, no one raises an eyebrow anymore. They only laugh."  June has given up furniture stripping, but is still an avid rug hooker.

Tiger Story

by David Griffin

 I met an older woman named Crystal in the public day room at the homeless shelter where I volunteered and she told me she had worked with tigers in a circus.  She ran off with her boyfriend at age 16.  He ditched her a month later, leaving her with the bill at a one-star motel on the west coast of Florida.

Rather than fly home to Mom and Dad, she found work as a lady roustabout with a wintering circus.  After the circus management … or what passed for management … realized she couldn’t pound a three foot tent stake into the ground with three whacks of a long handled maul, they put her on the crew of the food truck. There she met the lion tamer.  But the circus could no longer afford lions, so he was now a tiger tamer and was working on his act over the winter.  He’d show up at the food truck for lunch, lay his whip on the counter and order a hot dog, “medium rare and free of all condoms and mints.” She laughed and said it was love at first sight, even though she was unsure if the tamer or his whip was the larger attraction.  His  name was Wesley.  His whip’s name was Saint Francis.

"That's an unusual name for something so cruel," I said.

"He was a  very religious man," she said.

CONTINUED, CLICK HERE.

copyright 2015 by David Griffin