They Were Born On This Day

Today, January 18, is designated for two of my favorite things. It is Winnie the Pooh Day...

...because it is the birthdate (January 18, 1882) of...

(Source: Wikipedia)

Alan Alexander (A.A.) Milne, the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin stories.

(From a portrait by Thomas Pettigrew, 1843)

It is also the birthdate of Peter Mark Roget (January 18, 1779) which makes today also...

...Thesaurus Day. I imagine it was one of my high school English teachers who introduced me to the Thesaurus, most likely Mr. LaChapelle as he was the one who encouraged my writing. He is also the teacher from whom I learned the meaning of trite when he wrote it on one of my essays.

Roget's first Thesaurus, a book of words and their synonyms, was published in 1852. There have been many editions since, but the one I remember owning was a paperback edition like the one pictured.

Or, using Roget's help: "Existence is a voyage to be faced, not a complication to be unraveled."
Milne said it better, didn't he? Happy Pooh and Thesaurus Day.

Minor Mispronounciation

There is this valley, river, county in Illinois, that, perhaps if I had known that my Great-great grandparents lived there before trekking on to Iowa, I would have known how to pronounce, and would not have elicited the laughter of a former employer.

If new words came to you from reading, rather than hearing, you must have had a few you mispronounced, too. (I have one, ennui, that even after learning how to say, I still hear incorrectly in my head.)

When my oldest son was little, some fifty plus years ago, I was hired to help in the office of the Municipal Utilities. The men would go out once a month and bring back the meter readings which the office manager and I would then calculate and, with the aid of a behemoth machine, turn into bills. Those would go out in the mail and for the rest of the month we would take the money of customers as they came in to pay.

I still had spare time after the front office duties were done, which is how I *got* to learn and help keep track of inventory - probably my least favorite part of any position I've ever had - aka, a necessary evil. The crew would go out to replace a meter, fix a line break, etc. When they came back, they turned in a list of all materials used, which I would then subtract from the appropriate list of inventory. When supplies got low, an order was placed to replenish them. There was a tiered shelf of supply books to consult when something was needed and salesmen who came around on a regular basis.

One of our suppliers was Sangamo Electric Company of Springfield, Illinois. I never heard how Sangamo was pronounced, I just figured it was San-gom-mo. One day my boss and I were talking about ordering something and I asked if we would get it from San-gom-mo. He looked at me with a strange expression and then started laughing. "Do you mean Sang-a-mo?"
Well, maybe I did, but I thought my pronounciation had a more Spanish, romance language, sound. To me the name looked like it would be Spanish. I'm sure the next time the salesman for Sangamo Electric came in my boss shared my error with him and they both had another good laugh.

Sangamon County Illinois is where the state capitol of Springfield* is located. The county was named for the Sangamon River, which was thought to be named by an early French explorer, the Jesuit priest, Father Pierre Charlevoix. Another theory is that it's from the name the Sauk Indians had for it.

Sangamon County History .org has more possibilities about the naming of the river/county/area at their website, which I found very interesting - history lover that I am. According to them, "Strangers to the area often pronounce the word, San-ga-MON, while locals prefer a slurred SANG-uh-min." I wonder if they would also laugh at my San-gom-mo? Probably.

(*Springfield is where my Great-great Mauderly grandparents lived before settling in Nodaway Township, Adams County, Iowa. Two of their sons, Jodright and Joseph both died June 7, 1865, while in Springfield and are buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery. (The cemetery where the Lincoln Tomb is located.)

Inbound Missile; Seek Shelter

I can't even imagine what it must have been like in Hawaii Saturday morning when the false alert of an incoming ballistic missile went out. It had to be terrifying, especially since the island state has been practicing what to do the last few weeks since the threats from North Korea. I've seen the clips of people running for shelter and personal stories of how they thought they only had ten minutes left to live.

No matter how good your imagination is, it is impossible to know what that feels like unless you are/have been in such a scenario. Son, Douglas, has an aunt (my former sister-in-law) who lives in Hawaii. I don't know how she was affected, she hasn't posted anything about it on Facebook, but I've been thinking about her and her family.

I know what I would be doing in such a situation - the same thing so many were doing that morning - calling or texting their loved ones to say one last time, "I love you". I'm more concerned about our kids on the two coasts than the ones here in Iowa - Kari and Ken in Portland, OR because of the closer proximity to North Korea, and Mark and Juliet in New York City, because NYC is/has already been, a favored target.

It may not be an inbound missile with a nuclear warhead, it could be a car accident, a heart attack or old age, but sooner or later, I may not have the ten minutes to call, so know this all my loved ones, my last message would be, "I love you."

The Great Sugar Derailment

Growing up, no meal was complete without dessert. Dad had a huge sweet tooth so Mom was baking something to satisfy it almost every day - cakes, pies, cinnamon rolls, or, my favorite, cream puffs. Consequently, she used a lot of sugar.

I think, possibly, before I was old enough to really remember, sugar was purchased in cloth sacks, maybe twenty or twenty-five pounds? In my memory, it came in ten pound paper bags. Whenever it was on sale, Mom stocked up.
One of my clear memories about those ten pound sugar bags was cradling one in my arms before my baby brother was born. Mom had said the baby would most likely weigh between eight and ten pounds, so I wanted to practice - to see what holding ten pounds felt like. I digress. Back to the derailment.

(Photo credit to Mike Kennon, Cass County EMS via KJAN Radio)

Reading the news this morning, I saw photos of this semi wrecked on I-80 in Cass County during the snow last night. Seeing all the freight scattered around made me think of a train derailment west of the town of Nodaway which occurred sometime in the 60's.

Whether the call went out for people to help clear the tracks or if my Dad just went out of curiosity, he ended up at the train wreck. One of the rail cars had been loaded with sugar and there was sugar all over. Dad came home long enough to get some buckets and went back to load up with *free* sugar. I know there was other stuff scattered along the rails*, but I only remember the sugar. How sweet it was.

(*Bud says he remembers a neighbor of theirs coming home with a trunk full of magazines.)

Sunday Snow Showers

Like Snow

"Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly.
leaving nothing out."
    (Wendell Berry)

Pork Pie Hats

I like the idea of wearing a hat, but except in winter, I rarely wear one even though I have several. Wearing a hat for any length of time usually gives me a headache. That, and I always feel a little conspicuous when wearing one.

Mom was a stickler for wearing a hat or scarf over our ears not only when we were young, but when our children were young, also. She was a believer that not having the little ones' ears covered was the cause of earaches.

I was thinking about hats Wednesday when I wore my Newsboy cap to the grocery store. The term pork pie hat popped into my head. I had to look up pork pie hat to learn more about them - what they looked like.

Which is when I realized that is what was on my head in a few pictures when I was two to three years old. Here with my older brother, Ronald, and baby sister, Betty. (Spring of '46)

And again with Ron on the tractor.

Supposedly, they are called pork pie hats because of the resemblence to an edible pork pie. They have been around since the mid 1800's, but were most popular during the depression years of the 1930's. Part of their popularity is attributed to Buster Keaton and his movies, where he is almost always wearing one.

Another old time photo taken the same day as the above. Here, Ron is holding a cat, Dad looks like he is telling our neighbors, Maurice and Shorty how to fix their plow, and I am sitting on Shorty's Ferguson tractor seat with my back turned to the camera, but pork pie hat clearly in view.

Naturally, I have no memory of this hat. And there are no pictures of my little sis wearing it two or three years later when she was the age I am in these photos. What does fascinate me, though, is this picture of my future husband:

Bud, when he was two to three years old in 1948. He could be wearing my hat!

Here's the picture that close-up was cropped from - Bud with his sister, Diane, and his Grandpa Nelson in Grandpa's car. Diane and I are the same age, Bud is two years younger. As far as I know, our parents weren't acquainted at the time, so I don't really think Bud has my hat.

I don't know if these hats were popular for kids when we were little or if they were just something both our mothers happened to like. I just find it cutely funny that Bud and I both were photographed in our pork pie hats back in the day.

The Color of Winter

Ah, you think the color of winter is the white of snow? That spring holds all the colors in her trees and flowers?

The color of winter is in her sunsets.

The unusual cloud formations.

The dark silhouettes of naked trees.

"It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam."

"What a severe yet master artist old winter is ... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel."

The flaming end of another winter day.

(Quotes from philosopher, naturalist, essayist, John Burroughs - 1837-1921)