Israel

In 1983, I went with a tour group to Israel.  I'm glad I did it when I was young.  There's a lot of climbing and walking on a tour like that and some of the older ladies had some trouble with the slopes, steps, and hikes we took. 

We started in the upper part of the country, where I stood at the Syrian border and the Lebanese border on the same day.  I got a close-up view of razor wire.  Nasty stuff!

We covered the nation from the north to the south in 10 days. I ate everything that wasn't nailed down and lost 4 pounds while I was there. Two reasons for that, I walked all day, every day I was there, and the only sugar I had was a piece of baklava and one can of Coke - which tasted different from what we get here. I think it's the water.

I remember one night reading my Bible under the covers with a flashlight (shades of my childhood) and realizing that even the prepositions are correct.  For instance, on a map the Galilee is "up" and Jerusalem is "down". So when the Bible says Jesus went up from Galilee to Jerusalem, there is a "viewpoint issue. However, if you are on the ground traveling from the Galilee (below sea level) to Jerusalem (2500 feet above sea level), you do indeed go up to Jerusalem. 

I was able to see the places where the famous people of the Bible walked, worked and played. It made a world of difference in my viewpoint and gave me additional grounding for my faith.

Go if you are able. You will never be the same.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Dog Shirts

When I was around 50, we had two golden retreivers and lived in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire has more than four seasons. They go like this:

Winter
Mud season
Spring - sort of
Biting Fly season
Motorcycle season
Tourists with Families season
Colors (or Autumn in New England, but not Fall)
After the Leaves and Before the Snow season (optional)
Winter - also known as Ski season

We used to walk the dogs about two and a half miles through our little town and around a small lake and back home.  As you can imagine, there were times during the year when they would flip slush all over their bellies and we would be a complete mess when we got home.

At first, I would have them jump in a snow bank to clean off some of the crud from their bellies and back legs. It helped but didn't finish the job.

Finally, I decided to take a couple of old t-shirts (large fits around a golden) and cover their bellies with something washable. You need a large t-shirt to go around their backs and down as far as their armpits without dragging on them. Then there will be too much material around their lower parts. Easily solved. I took an old belt or a length of yarn and tied the extra material up close to their bellies.

When we got home, I still had to wiped down their back legs, but that was a lot less territory to cover than their until under-side.

P.S. We used to stop many times on our walks because the tourists would say, "What pretty dogs! Oh, I'm so homesick for my dogs. We had to put our dogs in the kennel before we came. May we pet your dogs?" Chester and Chelsea sucked up the attention like it was their meat-and-drink and we made many a tourist happier.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

My High School Classmates

We didn't used to look like this.  I can name about 4 of these people just by looking at them.  Well, probably they wouldn't recognize me right off either.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Early Rising

Once upon a time, very few people slept late.  Everyone had to work in a factory at the crack of dawn or milk the cows and feed the chickens.  That's what roosters were for.

My father grew up on a farm.  He never got over it.  He would be up and dressed somewhere around 5:30 every morning.  Now and again he would call up the stairs, "You're missing the best part of the day!"

I hated that, especially in my teen years.

However, when I was in the lower grades, especially in the summer, I remember waking before anyone else, putting on some clothes and running outside with barefeet.  I would watch the sun rise over the neighbor's pasture with dewy wet feet.  What glory!

Maybe my father was right.  I've missed the best part of the day for years now.  It's just that I married a night-owl and I can't burn the day at both ends. 

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Reading

The first conscious memory I have is that of being tucked under my mother's left arm while she read me a book.  I leaned against her pregnant stomach.

My brother, incidentally, claims that's why he has a dent in his head.

We lived well outside of town, so I had my parents, a little brother, and eventually two younger sisters for playmates.  I was two miles down the road from anyone even close to my age. 

We invented our own fun.  Large cardboard boxes and clothes pins turned into castles.  With a folding table in the middle of the play room, blankets stretched from piano to couch making a room-sized tent.  We had a platform in one of the trees and a swing set.  We played baseball, badminton, and tag.  We had room to run, turn cartwheels, and hide from each other.

But my favorite thing was to read.  I read so much that my mother on several occasions took the kitchen timer and turned it to one hour.  She then told me, "You WILL go out and play until this dings." 

I borrowed books from the school library and the town library.  I was allowed four books at a time from the town library which was a small Carnegie building.  During the summer after fifth grade, I crossed the aisle from the children's side of the library to the adult side.  The first big book I borrowed was The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas.  The librarian tried hard to talk me into sticking with the children's books.  I never really gave up the children's books (still read them today), but I loved the freedom to read whatever was available. 

A year later, my mother suggested a few books for me to tackle.  I read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  Believe me, I used ever single footnote and word definition to get through it, but I understood most of it when I was finished.

Mother also suggested (almost required) that I read a few books that described the Holocaust.  I went through The Diary of Anne Frank, Baba Yar, and The Painted Bird.  On my own I read, The Day Lincoln Was Shot by Jim Bishop, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and The Christmas Carol. 

It was pretty sneaky of my mother to let me read the classics before I found out that I wasn't supposed to like them.  In high school, while everyone else was moaning and groaning about the required reading list, I was checking off the ones I'd already finished.

I've gone through seasons of reading science fiction (favorites: Robert Heinlein and Anne McCaffrey), historical fiction both Biblical and other (the older, the better), mystery (many favorite authors - but more toward the cozy mystery side), and a couple of romance authors - Grace Livingston Hill comes to mind.

If you want to know what I'm reading now, check out Margaret Peterson Haddix (The Missing series) and Jan Bozarth (the Fairy Godmother Academy series). 

If I still had the time I had back then - well, I don't think I would change my habits.  I'd still read until someone set the kitchen timer on me and told me to go out and play.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Watermelons and Stuff

During the Great Depression, my grandfather was a minister in South Dakota with 8 children to take care of.  Not many of his parishioners had spare money for the collection plate.  So they helped out in other ways.

Mother remembers that Grandpa was given chickens or flour as offerings.  One farmer kept one acre set aside for his annual offering.  Grandpa was allowed to chose between keeping whatever grew on that acre or the money that came from selling the produce. 

One time Grandpa drove up to the house in his Model A Ford with a big smile on his face.  A neighbor had offered him as many watermelons as he wanted out of the field for $1.00.  Mother says she saw six large watermelons in the back of the car and she remembers that they were sweet and juicy.

The children each got one pair of shoes per year.  It didn't matter if their feet grew or not.

The family raised chickens for the eggs and kept a cow for the milk.  They also tended a large garden and ate out of that as much as they could.  The children helped with all of the chores from a fairly young age. 

I've seen pictures of Mother and her siblings as they came of an age to enter the military or go on to college.  They were all lean - not bony or emaciated - but definitely not overfed.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Child's Eye View of the Depression

My mother sent me several pages of stories about growing up during the Depression.  This will cover some number of blog postings, but here we go:

Feed sacks and flour sacking were used for clothing.  The material was printed with various patterns as they were intended to be reused. 

Mother remembers opening the sack to make a large flat piece of material.  She cut a strip from the long edge to use as the waistband.  The rest of the material was gathered some at the top edge and sewn so that the zipper was on the left side.  The waistband was added and the hem sewn at the lower edge.  This was not only acceptable, Mother says she loved doing it and wearing the final results.

My father's mother would make flour sacking over into aprons.  I still have one and the material is in excellent shape, sturdy and unworn about 80 years later. 

They used to make things to last.  And the current generation did not invent repurposing and recycling.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi