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Here are some things I didn’t know

Here are some things I didn’t know before today: Jerita Nelson loves shoes as much — maybe more — than I do. AnNyce Kelting Hoff knows that my mother, who was a dear friend of her mother, would have had a cup of coffee front and center with her dessert at the Lenten Luncheon on Tuesday at Trinity Lutheran Church. AnNyce remarked on this because I was quaffing water. Someone would have had to scrape me off the ceiling if I drank the coffee. That someone would likely have been Kolleen Taylor, seated on the other side of me, who remarkably realized that I was having too good ...

Who you are because of where you were

A convention program many years ago left a lasting impression on me. I have remembered its message all these years since. The presentation was entitled “You Are Who You Are Because of Where You Were When” — or something similar. Dr. Massey, a professor from a Colorado university, was the presenter. His theory was that at about age 9 or 10 the average child looks around and — concluding that what is seen must be what is right — creates a values system on which judgments will be made the rest of his or her life. Only two things, Dr. Massey said, will change that values ...

April Fool

The best April Fool joke to completely blind side me was pulled off by my reporters at one of the newspapers I edited during the early 1980s. They were a spunky crew: Two graduates from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut; the son of the guy who managed Madison Square Garden; a granddaughter of the Knight Ridder chain ownership; and a local woman named Cindy who managed to show them all how to do things faster and better. I was tougher in those days, tough in the way that if I got my teeth into a juicy story I could be like a hungry feral cat. The story on which I had most ...

It might be the best thing

When I was a kid I enjoyed listening to older folks talk about the changes they had seen during their lifetimes and their first-time experiences. First time driving a tractor, first time seeing an airplane, first time they had electricity on their farm … I enjoyed their stories. Thinking about some of these dear older folks recently, I realized that I have now lived enough years to join in those conversations. There are a lot of “firsts” that I can recall. For instance, I can remember the first time I realized what turn signals were. When my father purchased a new 1953 Ford he ...

Highways of the past

Zipping down today’s interstate highways it’s easy to forget what Iowa’s highways were like just 70 years ago. Too young to remember? Well, let me fill you in. Though some two-lane highways were being widened at the time, many of Iowa’s primary roads and bridges were too narrow for the increasing amount of traffic and larger vehicles. Rounded curbs on hills threw your car to the left if you steered a bit too much to the right. In 1954 a white dash replaced a continuous black line as the center line on Iowa’s paved highways and a continuous yellow line identified no-passing ...

You, with pain in your eyes

This is for you with pain in your eyes. Years ago, I stood where you stand. I wrote those words way back in 1987 when I was managing editor of a Connecticut newspaper and a volunteer rape crisis counselor. I remember it was in the spring because I had just announced I was leaving the job to head to England. Sometime during the three months' notice I had given my employer, I stopped at the local grocery and almost immediately was approached by a young woman who said: "Oh my God. I've been looking for you. I was raped." She was the young woman who accompanied her friend to the ...