Praying today for…
family and friends who are in need of peace.
family and friends who have lost loved ones.
family and friends who are sick.
a young boy in the hospital in Dallas.
all those affected by the storms.
a young woman who cares for others and now needs care for herself.
the sweet young mother who is giving birth to our newest family member today!!
all of the children who will be out and about tonight.
Please join me…
January 5, 1917
“The house and home require a head as well as any other business. No study is of greater importance to a girl; after marriage she often wishes she knew more of cooking and less of Latin. Money and love combined does not form a safeguard where there is domestic incapacity. A woman who is capable of filling her home in every sense of the word is worthy of more true applause than if she possessed many accomplishments.”
My mother would have called the item above, extracted from the Caddo Herald, a “left-handed compliment”. In her day being left handed was “not quite right” and there is certainly something about that last statement that is not quite right either.
My mother never seemed to question her role as wife, mother, homemaker, farm worker, writer. Becoming a wife was just a natural progression of womanhood and being a mother was a privilege and a duty, not a choice. Women had babies, the Bible said so, and my mother openly pitied those few women who did not. Creating and maintaining a home was also her duty and she took it very seriously. She had definite ideas about the delineation between women’s work and men’s, even though those lines blurred when it came to farm work. Farming, and working outside the home, were extras that were accepted if there was a family need, but certainly could not take precedence over the responsibilities of being a wife and mother. My mother had a grudging acceptance of “career women”, but I always had the feeling she was skeptical of their ability to “bring home the bacon AND fry it in the pan”. Of course Mother was also a wise woman who changed with the times and encouraged me, and her granddaughters to take a different path. She experienced the personal fulfillment of her writing, even though she could never bring herself to consider it a career, and she wanted her girls to find something equally rewarding. I think she knew that we would somehow manage to also be good wives and mothers because we had excellent role models.
I wonder about the young women who are becoming wives and mothers today. I fear for those who take on the roles tomorrow. With all of the emphasis on “college and career” we have somehow gone full circle and made the roles of “wife and mother” inferior to other choices. We only have to look as far as our education system to see that practical classes in home management are often scaled back or eliminated from the curriculum in order to advance more college prep classes. Young girls are not prepared for the challenges of managing a home and family unless they have good role models within their own families, and many do not. So many girls today are getting their ideas about family from watching television families, and we know that can’t be good.
We are neglecting the complete education of these young women if we expect them to take on their true roles in society without any training in home management. We can’t put more and more pressure on young women to have important careers without also teaching them how to be in a relationship with a man who has his own career. We can’t give them the skills to work outside the home without remembering that they will also feel responsible for maintaining the home they return to each night. How many women just sit down at the end of the day and wait for their dinner to appear on the table? How many women think their clothes will be magically washed and returned to the closet? How many women have or want a nanny to help their children with homework and tuck them into bed? Many men still expect and live that charmed lifestyle and until we completely change their attitudes and ways we need to at least prepare our young women for the realities of daily life. A woman will never be “just a housewife” or “just a career woman”. We will always blend the two roles and take on the responsibilities of the world. We seem to have an inherent need to do so.
I am not a saint. So despite being a pescetarian with a very healthy diet, I am still fat. I continue to offer my limited mobility and 24/7 pain as part of the problem, but let’s face it I am fat because I eat too much.
Bread is my winter vice. As soon as the cold weather arrives it’s pancakes, cornbread, biscuits, and bread at the Maurer house. I totally blame this on my grandmother Beatrice Simmons. Like my father, I automatically use her full name only when I connect her to something bad. LOL Dad always yelled “Mary Elizabeth!” at the top of his lungs if I had done something wrong. Oh yes, I wanted to hurry home when I heard that…NOT! Well, unfortunately Gran was never given a middle name so her first and last will have to suffice to let you know she was so bad. In this case she was a BAD influence on my early, formative years. She was always baking, baking, baking. And I was her little helper!
I watched my grandmother cook for about twenty years before I insisted that she write down some of her recipes. She always put in a pinch of this and a dollop of that and I could never quite duplicate anything she made. So I told her she had to stop “pinching” and measure for me or there would be generations to come that would never taste her bread! I cherish that bread recipe and have used it successfully many times. However, even with her recipes I have never been able to duplicate her delicious pies so I just gave up! Sorry Gran…
Hundreds, maybe thousands of people were privileged to enjoy Gran’s cooking. She cooked at home, at a nursing home, at school, at several cafes, for church and for friends. Cooking was her occupation and her passion for many, many years. I did not follow in her footsteps so don’t expect any great cooking at my house. But baking…that I can do! So if I look a little rounder in the months ahead, it is not my fault. Beatrice Simmons is to blame!
Psalm 51:10
Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Sometimes the demands of daily life can wear us down and make us forget the simple joy of just being alive. Personal problems challenge our brains and hearts. Work grinds us down physically and emotionally. Politics, impending disasters and stories of danger, despair, and discouragement fill the news each evening. Even our “social media” contacts serve as daily reminders that there is pain and suffering in the world.
So what are we to do? How are we to cope? Train up a child and she will return to that training in times of tribulation. I go to the source for answers. I open my Bible and seek the truth of God’s Word. And God’s word tells me that the fruit of my spirit should be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness. If I have lost any of those then I need to take some time and deliberation to renew them and regain that “steadfast spirit” within me.
I did a little of that yesterday. I spent most of the day doing trivial tasks that allowed my brain to focus on a couple of concerns. I completed a photo project. I worked on a puzzle. I walked around the yard. I did some reading. I didn’t even try to solve any problems, but instead put them into perspective and realized that God is still in control and my future is not limited by my plans or the plans of others.
Even our founding fathers recognized God’s role in our lives: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Some might argue that they didn’t specifically say God, but while they disagreed about organized religion, most claimed to be Christians.
You might notice too, that they didn’t say we all have the right to be happy, but rather to pursue happiness. I think there is a profound difference between the two that must be understood. Thinking we have a right to be happy often gets in the way of finding true inner joy and peace. We can rejoice in being alive even though we are unhappy that we are living with pain and problems.
So I offer a little advice today. If you are troubled, if you are in pain, physically or emotionally, if you have temporarily lost your joy, renew your body by resting from some of your daily chores and renew your spirit by reading God’s word.
Many of you may already be aware that Wordsmith sends out a “word a day” email so we can all get a little smarter, or at least more eloquent. I could not resist passing on today’s word and “thought for the day” because both are so relevant to our current circumstances.
I don’t comment much about politics. Everyone has an opinion about the government and our candidates and the upcoming election and I don’t think anything I might say would be all that relevant. I don’t know any more about the candidates than the next person because I am only privy to what they want us to know. I’m not sure I like or dislike either man enough to make a confident decision at this point, but I suppose I will soon have to try. Of course I don’t imagine for a moment that the Electoral College really cares what I think anyway. I kept foolishly waiting for choice #3 to arrive on the scene and it just didn’t happen. I think in the future we should actually have four choices, two from each party, but that is just my silly idea.
The thing I DO have an opinion about is the word for today: redoubtable. It means “arousing fear or awe; evoking respect or honor.” I think everyone in government, from the President on down, has given us ample reason to erase that term from our vocabulary. I don’t know about you, but I HATE seeing our President and First Lady making the rounds of the talk shows. It’s demeaning to them and to the office. They might as well be hawking Amway! When I was growing up I thought the President was the “best of the best”, culled out from among the ordinary people to be an example for us all. It seems now that the idea is to make the President seem as ordinary as possible.
And the candidates for every office bombard us daily with an embarrassing array of negative, negative, negative ads. Doesn’t anyone have a positive plan for the future? I remember when political speeches used to be mostly about hope and promise and progress. Now they just make me worry about what I will be doing to survive the next four years, no matter who is in office. If you care about who really runs the country look to the lobbyists, the incumbents in Congress, and the “money men” behind the figureheads. That is who should get our attention, not those who are talking on television.
I leave you with this, borrowed from Wordsmith:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life -- the sick, the needy and the handicapped. -Hubert Horatio Humphrey, US Vice President (1911-1978)
You’d think I would have learned quite a few lessons about self-preservation in sixty-two years. After all, my accident record reads like an entire season of a television medical show. But although I have been hurt in the past and warned by a doctor and cautioned by my children, one habit remains so, so difficult to give up. I love traipsing around without shoes. First thing I do when I get home is take those things off!
I spent most of my childhood barefooted. Yes, I once stepped on a broken bottle and had to be rushed to the hospital, but that does not count against my habit because I was wading at the edge of the river at the time. And stepping on that nail a few years later would have been painful even if I HAD been wearing shoes. And when I stepped on the barbed wire that had to be painfully removed from my toe I was in a BIG hurry to rescue my little brother from the roof of the barn!! And other than an occasional sticker or thorn or sharp rock, I seldom encountered anything too dangerous around our yard or pastures.
I came by my habit naturally, as you can see in the photo of my mother and her brother. Even in this photo with her friend and sisters I don’t see any shoes! Do you? Perhaps that is why she never insisted that I cover my feet. And my habit must have saved my parents some money! We always got one pair of school shoes at the beginning of the year and wore them until our growing feet became too big to squeeze into them or the holes in the soles became too big to cover with a piece of cardboard. Those thin little leather soles were no match for the running and jumping and puddle wading we did in our shoes!
I quit going barefooted in the yard only about ten years ago when I stepped on a red velvet ant- a wingless wasp affectionately known as a “cow killer” because its sting is so painful. I can attest to that!!!! Nothing else could have put an end to my shoeless joy.
I have rambled on in order to get to the admission that I probably should now give up going barefooted in the house. I was making our salads last night when a movement on the floor caught my eye and I looked down to see a scorpion casually crawling next to my bare foot! Killed it with the fly swatter I keep on top of the refrigerator. Quickly found my slippers! Thanked the Lord for protecting me. Vowed to keep my feet protected from now on…okay, to TRY to keep my feet protected. Once we have a good freeze I’ll probably be safe again won’t I? And Gary says the sting of a scorpion isn’t nearly as bad as that of a red wasp. Old habits are so hard to give up…
“A great many people fondly imagine that if they are honest, pay their debts, and do not speak disparagingly of other people they are among the mainstays of the town. But such is not always the case. Honesty and a careful mouth are much to be commended, but this town needs more than that. It needs citizens who will get out of their way to do something for the town, who will labor to better local conditions, who will go their length to bring new industries and new people to our community. Such people as these are in reality the mainstays of a town. And we need a few more mainstays.”
Those words were written in January of 1917 by Guy A. Crossett, editor of The Caddo Herald. Mr. Crossett was the publisher of The Caddo Herald from 1899 until shortly before his death in 1948. He died at a relatively young age, 68, but left a legacy befitting a man twice his age. He was a family man, philosopher, reporter, and one of Caddo’s most ardent promoters. I know from reading the paper for the past fifteen years that he had a sense of humor and that he was also a man of values. If he had enemies or secret vices I have yet to discover them. He and his wife Daisy were definitely mainstays.
I borrow these words from Mr. Crossett today to remind my fellow citizens that Caddo, and towns like it across America, are in danger of disappearing as their older residents die. With a few exceptions respectfully noted it seems that many younger people are not interested in town preservation and promotion. When projects are envisioned and events are planned and committees are formed and tasks are assigned they are absent from the roster of “mainstays”. I know they are busy with jobs and families and other interests, but so were the people of the past, like Mr. Crossett; and those among us with gray hair who started in community service many years ago did not wait until retirement to do so.
It is not enough to be a good person and be proud of your high school football team and be kind to your friends and neighbors. Someone has to take up the baton and make sure that in the future there IS a high school football team and there IS a neighborhood. And Caddo residents face the additional prospect of preserving or losing the downtown buildings that have proudly served the community since the early 1900s.
I went downtown recently to take photos of the old buildings and document their existence in greater detail than I have in the past. My fear is that with a few more years of neglect they will not be here. Their exquisite brick work will be lost to history. Their whispers of past events will be silenced. And we will lose something precious we can never reclaim. If you don’t believe me, go take a tour of Kenefic. Only photos remain to tell the story of that once thriving town.
Are you a mainstay? Maybe 2013 will be the year to find out.
My mind works in mysterious ways. I never know what it is going to think at 4am or what I am going to write about. Oh, sometimes I will think long and hard about a subject for weeks and it will suddenly rise to the surface. Other days I write about a news topic or a conversation with a friend or something that happened in school the day before. Often I have little time for my personal posts here because I have spent the morning writing my Caddo or Kindergarten blog. I seldom write all three in one morning unless I am really fortunate. Which brings me to my topic this morning: the writing process.
I often think about how blessed I was to be born into a writing family. Many of my ancestors felt this peculiar need to share their thoughts on paper with the public and I know that my descendents do. It must be a gene that has yet to be discovered by scientists!
My thoughts this morning were about how the process of presenting our thoughts to the public has changed over the generations. I imagine my great grandfather toiling with his pen and paper- thinking, writing, thinking, perhaps crossing out something and writing it a different way. He delivered his column to the newspaper and the type for it was set by hand. Then it was printed on paper. Then the paper was delivered to the public.
My grandmother typed her columns and stories on a sturdy manual typewriter. Of course she wrote most of them out by hand first, because you couldn’t think AND type at the same time. Those of you who had any experience with them know that the early typewriters were monstrous things that required wrist and finger strength to operate. The keys often got stuck and the ribbon tangled and mistakes had to be covered up and retyped. Some of Della’s early manuscripts have xxxx over mistakes and then the corrected word.
My mother was thrilled to progress from manual typewriters to electric and then to a huge “word processor” that seemed like the epitome of efficiency! And I was privileged to witness her writing process from the time I took my first steps. She was always reading and thinking and jotting down notes. She wrote almost everything down on paper and then rewrote and edited and thought some more before she typed a finished copy to be mailed somewhere. It sometimes took her a month to complete an article. Then it was a week to six months before it appeared in print.
So here I sit at the computer each morning typing my thoughts with a keyboard that is so easy and efficient that a preschooler can use it. There is very little “process” that gets between my brain and my fingers, especially since I spent all those hours with Mrs. Hodges learning typing skills! My fingers usually find their target keys without any problems. But if I do make a mistake it is quickly corrected by my own efforts or by the computer program.
I don’t write anything down first and I don’t take very many notes unless I’m doing some serious research. I write and rewrite here on the screen until I’m happy with the results. No one sees anything except the finished product.
Then I instantly deliver my little thoughts and ideas to you by copying them to a site that takes care of all the technical aspects for me! Of course if I want to submit something to a magazine or newspaper I have to do a few more things, but not much.
My children and grandchildren probably do most of their writing on their phones or pads or notebooks or something else that I have yet to master. Perhaps their children and grandchildren will bypass the writing process altogether and simply speak to the public on YouTube. I don’t know. Things change, and often for the best! You never know…
This is a poem written by my mother:
Yesterday Gary commented on the fact that there is a letter sitting on my desk. Yes, a real paper letter! It’s from his cousin, one of the few people I still correspond with by “snail mail”. There are two reasons for our paper correspondence. First of all, we enjoy it. Second, she and her mother were both long-term employees of the postal service and we like to continue to support them. I know one letter isn’t much support, but I would hazard a guess that other than a few birthday cards most folks don’t even match our small contribution.
Letters, unlike emails, are tangible proof of our existence and offer insight into our thoughts and feelings. Emails are just a click away from oblivion and sometimes it is quite difficult to determine the sincerity of a message, perhaps because of brevity. Email does not convey the feeling and tone of a message the way ink on paper does. It is difficult to describe the difference, but those of us accustomed to letters know it exists. I’m not sure what future generations will do without printed copies of their words. We have long depended on the letters of everyone from pioneers to presidents to give us a detailed depiction of history. I suppose our history is being recorded for the future by our blogs and YouTube. But both lack the intimacy and honesty of private letters exchanged by family and friends.
I have a collection of letters from my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother that I cherish. I’ve also saved a few letters from friends, family and even strangers. I have the letters that I wrote to my mother over a period of many years because she saved them. Even though I enjoy talking on the phone and communicating by email and FB, I know those interactions are as temporary as our time here on earth. Paper letters have a life of their own and there is something comforting about being able to read the words written by someone who is no longer part of my life.
Tonight I will write a reply to that letter sitting on my desk. Perhaps I will even write a new letter to someone else and surprise them. Why don’t you do the same?
(Note: I posted this photo because this is the house we were in when we lived in Iowa near Gary’s cousin.)
Use that new iPhone or even your old land line to contact your classmates and tell them to join you on November 24, 2012 for the Alumni Gathering in Caddo. You know you have kept in touch with at least one old friend! Call, tweet, or message them on FB and let them know you want to talk over old times where they happened- in the Caddo High School Cafeteria.
There will be refreshments and visiting from 2pm to 5pm, with a brief meeting at 3pm to recognize classes, and discuss any topics of interest. There will also be a report from the Caddo Education Foundation. This is a departure from past events so please make note of the times.
See you there! Now pass it on…
I'm a retired kindergarten teacher and author with three children and three grandchildren.
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