Category Archives: Family

books, Family, Uncategorized

Reading

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I come from a family of readers.  My paternal grandfather was a farmer who read voraciously, and had shelves of books in his house. He had an entire set of Dickens, all of Shakespeare’s plays, and many, many history books and novels, which he picked up at farm sales during the Depression. When he died, I took the books, and my librarian cousin took the shelves, which were the kind used by lawyers that had glass fronts that opened up from the bottom.  I think they are called Barrister’s bookcases

Grandpa’s grandfather was a reader, too. He was named Martin Cornelius Freerks, and was born in Rysum, Ostfriesland Germany in 1827. He was a laborer there, and immigrated to the US in about 1851. He lived first in Pekin, Illinois, and worked as a drayman, which meant he was responsible for meeting passengers at the train station to haul them and their goods where they needed to go.  Family history indicates that he was often absorbed in a book when the train came in and would arrive late or not at all. “Ganz in boeken besiet” (completely lost in books) friends and family would say.  He eventually moved to Iowa and lived the last part of his life with my grandpa and his family. Grandpa said that Martin had “a whole roomful’ of books accumulated over the years.

I used to read all the time, but for some reason, perhaps due to life stress with my parents’ deaths, children’s transitions, work issues, etc., I stopped reading for pleasure about five years ago and filled my spare time with crossword puzzles.  I am trying to start reading again. Husband visits our local libraries regularly, and we have scores of books in our house. I just have to pick up something and start and apply myself. I typically like traditional murder mysteries, but I find them hard to appreciate now. I am impatient waiting for the plots to resolve. I don’t like suspense these days.  Perhaps I need to start with non-fiction and work my way back to previously unread novels.  I think it will be good self care if I do.

Daughter says she is going to join a book club when she graduates from college, and admits she has a book addiction problem.  Great Great Grandpa Martin would be pleased.

What are the pleasures and pains of reading for you? What is hard/easy for you to read? What do you want done with your books when you die?

Business, Family

Just Breathe

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Today’s post comes from tim.

the need to breathe is well documented

i find myself breathing differently when under stress especially newly realized urgent response called for kind of stress is introduced

i remind myself to breathe, to try to stay in a thinking vs reaction mode (dual mode are the reality) to try to help by doing a meditative shoulder roll and uhmmmm kind of mantra and then to look for avenues to the desired end result in light of newly introduced whatever that input was

some times like when i switched the bald tires from the front to the back on my car only to get caught in icy conditions the next day and have the 65 mph rear end of my freshly rotated vehicle go around the curve on the freeway ahead of me like a snowboarder in the x games

i bet i did do a little body english and a quick look to the side ala dorthy in the tornado at the sights going by during my rotation but i must have had an instinctive response because upon completing one full rotation i regained my original trajectory and found a new appreciation for simply going forward.

last tuesday after assurances from my property manager that my landlord word discuss extending my lease beyond  the 6 month offer made when she was confronted with the reality of her thoughts of selling the leaky lifeboat she had me occupying, i told her i’d fix it up and give her a fair price but only through my mediator. i tried to push for a conclusion before taking off for china and by golly thursday i got my wish

notice to be out by may 31. i get back from china may 3 and leave again may 8 for the week to return the 12th. my breath got short, my shoulders tensed the meeting with developers needing my direction for the final tweak of a program we are working on hiccuped severely and i decided how to break the news to my wife 48 hours before my departure.

i tried talking to the property manager and went invisible

i told my wife and sent her the rental property entities i am familiar with and she started her search

she found a new one who is custom made for people in my circumstance and i called the guy at 2 and was viewing houses by 245 with 2 more than acceptable options to take her to on friday morning and as i am getting ready to board my flight for the detroit to shanghai leg of my flight i am trying to decide on bigger quieter with a yard or exactly the right size with a busy street and no yard to speak of but parks across the street and bicycle paths lake access etc less than 3 minutes away.

i am breathing ok and hope my application goes through as expected.

i hate having to remember to breathe.

 

when have you felt relieved?

 

 

Family, Nature

A Day at the Zoo

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It was a beautiful day for the zoo. In the morning, as many families were still hunting for eggs and chocolate bunnies, we headed off.  Starting off in the Tropics we discovered that every morning they simulate a little thunder shower near Gibbon Island.  Since Young Adult and I have easily been to the zoo 50 times in her lifetime, it was quite a surprise that we’d never encountered it before.

The moose and bears were in fine form and the Amur leopards were all three putting on a fine show. We happened upon coyote feeding and, of course, sat through the bird show. We packed a partial lunch which was supplemented by waffle fries and then wandered up to The Farm for baby goat, piglet and calf petting.  And then there was the obligatory 20 minutes of watching YA pet sharks in Discovery Bay.

But the most amazing display was YA, who suggested the outing to the zoo in the first place, willingly posed for several photos, engaged in conversation about our straw bale gardening over lunch and even said thank you after I purchased popcorn for her. It was a beautiful day.

What is a favorite haunt of yours?

Family, Stories, Uncategorized

Name That Breed

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Today’s post is from NorthShorer

His name was Lucky. My father acquired him when we lived north of Isabella where my father was lumberjacking after WWII. A man in the lumber camp was leaving and did not want to take the dog. My father took him before the man shot him. It was that kind of age. My father was not objecting; he simply wanted a dog. We then moved down to our farm near Two Harbors. I suppose my father had in mind to have a farm dog.I remember him but have no visual image of him, except for these pictures. Every time I see these and other photos I am surprised by two things. First, how big and rough looking a dog he was. Second, that the only images of him are with me. Apparently we were buddies, which makes sense because of all the time I spent playing in the woods. He lasted with us for a couple years. I can guess what happened to him. He certainly does not look like a cattle dog. I used Lucky as the image for a short story about a half wild dog living on the edge of northern town in 1908.

He was replaced by a collie, who was beautiful, an image of Lassie. She played with the deer in our garden in the snow in the winter time. She was not around very long. Next we briefly had a female mixed breed, mostly border collie. Then we acquired a full breed border collie from a neighbor who did not want the dog anymore. He was THE DOG of my childhood.

What breeds do you see in Lucky?

My only companions of my pre-school years were two older nasty cousins up in the forest, my sister, and various animals.

What do you remember of your companions of your pre-school years?

Family, History

Tumbling Socialists

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Husband and I attended a family wedding in Milwaukee, WI recently. The ceremony and reception were held in the ballroom at Turner Hall, a historic building constructed in 1882. It takes its name from the German word “turnen” which means gymnastics or physical fitness. It was built for the members of Milwaukee’s Turners, a German-American gymnastic and political association. The photo at the top is of actual Milwaukee Turners.  The building was quite ornate, but under restoration, with murals and photographs all over the walls and stairwells. The hall boasts of a ballroom, beer hall, and theatre, as well as a gymnasium where gymnastics is still taught.

The Turners began in Germany in 1811 to train young men in physical fitness and to resist Napoleon and anti-democratic forms of government.  It was a nationalistic gymnastic organization, usually quite liberal in philosophy.  Men tumbled and planned revolutions.  The Turners were very active in the revolution of 1848. They didn’t do so well in that revolution, and many fled to the US, with a great number serving in the Union Army during the Civil War.  Turners provided an honor guard at Abe Lincoln’s inauguration as well as at his funeral. There were Turner Halls all over the US in the 19th Century in areas where there were concentrations of German immigrants. The Milwaukee chapter was founded in 1853 with the name “Socialist Turnverein”.  All three of Milwaukee’s Socialist mayors were Turners.

The Turners held gymnastic competitions and provided social, political, and cultural support to German immigrants. The Turners are the reason we have physical education in our schools.  They supported women’s suffrage, and, by the 1920’s, girls were also getting gymnastic training at the Milwaukee hall. My sister in law’s 90 year old mother tumbled and did rings and uneven bars there, under the direction of a male coach who would wack her with a stick if she messed up.  They often espoused the motto  “A Sound Mind in a Sound Body”,  but I really like the more explicit motto below:

Liberty against all oppression

Tolerance against all fanaticism

Reason against all superstition

Justice against all exploitation

If you started an organization, what would your motto be?

Family, Nature, Travel

Adventures in Moving

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Daughter and I had a productive time in Tacoma getting ready for her move there in early May. She now has an apartment, a bank, a primary care physician, renters insurance, and is signed up with the electric utility company. She met the people who hired her, and is set to start her new job on May 15. We have arranged for movers to take her few pieces of furniture over the mountains from Fargo to Tacoma. We are set to go.

We took a fun day on our trip to visit the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. I am ambivalent about zoos, but it was a sunny day and it was interesting to see the different aquatic life in the region very nicely displayed in the aquarium.

The minute we got to the zoo we heard a very loud hooting, whining  sound not unlike that of a whale singing. We followed it to its source and met Dozer, a love sick walrus on loan from a zoo in Houston, TX.  He was hooting for a girl friend, and none of the local girls were interested. I asked an attendant zookeeper how they transported a walrus from Texas to Washington. She said that he traveled by truck.  She explained that walruses don’t need to be kept in water all the time, and so he could go in a truck without a large water tank.  He was due to return to Texas later in the week.

I think daughter’s move to Washington, although complex, is far less complex than moving Dozer back to Texas. All that hooting!

What moving adventures have you had?

Family, Stories

A Bed a Day

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Today’s post from the keyboard of Verily Sherrilee.

Nobody has ever accused me of being OCD about cleaning. I can leave a paper towel on the dining room floor for days and just walk around it (especially if a kitty is sitting on it). I can put a sweatshirt on a chair and ignore it for a week.  Dishes stack up in the sink just like at everybody else’s house.

But many years ago I got the idea that I should make my bed every day. No matter what.  Now it’s such an ingrained habit that the room looks bad to me before the bed gets made up.  Even when I was sick last month, in the morning I made the bed and unless I was going to take a serious nap, I sat on top of the comforter while reading or watching tv.

So it was a little startling to look into the Young Adult’s room over the weekend to see that the laundry baskets had thrown up all over her bed. I tried to channel my mom; I pulled the door closed and walked away!

Do you have an every day habit?

Family

Family Names

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My father’s family is from Ostfriesland, an area of Northwest Germany bordered by Holland and the North Sea.  Their language was Frisian/Low Saxon.  They were the people of Beowulf, and they invaded the British Isles early and were in turn invaded by the Romans, the Franks, the Saxons, the Vikings, Germanic tribes, and so on.  My ancestors were simple, poor farmers, and my did they have funny names.

I have tried to build family trees using the data bases in Ancestory, and I have found the most wonderful and weird names (actually, Wiard is one of their names). I can only imagine the trouble people had to go to to do this genealogy work, since there was a very unusual naming system, called Patronymics, used in the area until Napoleon invaded and ordered everybody to settle on a permanent last name. The system didn’t die out until the 1830’s. According to a German researcher named Ines Weissenberg, this is how first names were derived in Ostfriesland:

The first male child was named after the paternal grandfather.

The second male child got the name of the maternal grandfather.

First and second daughter were named after paternal and maternal grandmothers.

The third son was named after his father.

The fourth son was named after the father’s paternal grandfather.

The third daughter was named after the mother.

The fourth daughter was named after the mother’s paternal or even maternal grandmother.

Then, there were also other aspects of choosing a first name such as reusing a deceased child’s name for the next child of the same sex and naming the first daughter/son of a subsequent marriage after the deceased former spouse. These rules expressed the belief that a person continued to live through the descendants.

Last names were even more confusing, since your last name was usually your father’s first name.  If a man called Harm had three sons named Gerd, Jan, and Menno, their last name would be Harms, indicating they were Harm’s sons.  If Gerd had children, their last name would be “Gerdes”.  Jan’s children would have the last name “Janssen”, and Menno’s children would have the surname “Mennen”.  Last names changed from generation to generation.  The same names were used for first and last names.

One of my ancestors named Okke Poets had a son named Poet Okkens.  Lubbe Habben, a far distant grandmother, had a daughter she named Gretje Lubbens.  Zeede Ecken and her husband Riko Fredrichs name their son Ecko Riken, after her father, Ecko Focken.

Gertien, Taalke, Gretje, Geert, Geske, Mimke, Trienke, Lauke, and Evertje are some of the more wonderful women’s names I have found in my family.  Freerk, Harm, Weert, Wiard, Folkert, Heyke, Okke, Ullfert, Harrameke were some of the men’s names. Ostfriesland is no further than about 50 miles from places like Bremen, where people had names like Otto, Lena, Ernst, and Dora.

My name, using this system, would be Tilla Jacobs. My husband would be Christian Williams. Our son would be William Christians. Daughter would be Evelyn Christians.  How confusing.

 

Go back a couple of generations and figure out some family names for yourself using Patronymics.

Family, Nature

Kindness Gone Wild

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Today’s post is from Bill.

Our conversation about kindness brought to mind a story told by my elder daughter.

She returned to her third floor condo having bought some greens at the farmer’s market. On the greens, when she went to wash them, she found a worm. Now you or I might have simply flushed it but she didn’t feel right about that. Instead, she wrapped it in a lettuce leaf and drove it to a park where she could set it free.

I once gave a neighbor woman twenty dollars as my contribution toward cab fare so that a baby squirrel could be driven to the wildlife rehabilitation center. Because, you know, you can’t have too many squirrels.

Is that going too far?

Have you ever committed an act of irrational kindness?

Family, Stories

Let’s Pretend

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A couple of years I bought I bought a new, three-story doll house for my play therapy room. My old one was posh and well-appointed, but it had no stairs that led from one floor to the next. This was a real problem for many of the children I see in therapy, as they couldn’t figure out how to get the dolls from one floor to the next, and it got in the way of their play. They couldn’t suspend reality and pretend that there were stairs, or just have the dolls jump up and down. I notice that children who pretend do much better in life and in play therapy than those who can’t or who have limited pretend skills.

The new doll house has two sets of stairs, and the dolls can run up and down at will, and so do, and therapeutic play can go on impeded.  I haven’t read any recent research about the capacity of modern children to pretend in their play. I hope my clients represent a special group not representative of our children as a group.

My nine month old kitten has better pretend skills than may of my young clients. I know Luna doesn’t pretend using words. I suppose she pretends in images or actions, but I know she pretends. She hides from, and then pounces on, unsuspecting foil balls. She knows that the balls only move if she bats them or she carries them to us to throw. She walks away from them when she is finished playing, and doesn’t act as though they will move if she turns her back. It is as if she assigns some temporary identity to them when she hides and pounces, and then thinks about them differently when she walks away and goes on to new activities.  You can see her on top of a cabinet in our living room. She loves to jump up there and pounce on the Tomten figures and attack the Finnish straw goats. They are all in a closet now until she slows down and loses interest in them. I wish I knew what she was thinking about them.

How do you pretend? How do you think your animals pretend?