Adventure in Bird Feeding

(This happened more than a decade ago--a different home, a different cat.  I wrote this draft right after the event, but am only now sharing it.  It is all true.)

The bird feeder had been a gift.  Not an unexpected or unwelcome one.  I had dropped a couple hints after hubby and I moved into the upper unit of an urban duplex.  I thought it would be nice to have a bird feeder of some sort on our balcony.  Entertain the cat. I wasn’t much of a bird watcher, but I had no objections to seeing them flit about.  Back, about a decade and a half before, I had two felines and a home in the country and a bird feeder by the window. The cats loved it.  They would spend hours staring, their tails thwacking back and forth.  I figured my new cat would also enjoy it.  

We installed the birdfeeder in the corner of our balcony railing where I had a perfect view of it from my chair.  It was my bird feeder after all.  For the first week, nothing.  Not a pip, not a wing.  Nothing.  I knew there were birds around.  I’d seen dozens of them in the alley when I’d walk home from my volunteer gig in the neighborhood, but they did not seem to explore.  Then there was a little gray bird with black and white markings.  He would zip to the feeder, never land, grab a seed, and fly back to the tree that was between our balcony and the street.  Big tree.  In the summer all we saw beyond our balcony was green.  In the winter we’d see a tangle of branches and then some brick buildings beyond.  

The view from my chair.  You can just make out bottom of the birdfeeder in the upper left corner.

Eventually the alley birds did find it.  A whole flock of little brown birds cleared the thing out in one afternoon.  I filled it again, and it was half gone when they stopped coming as frequently.  First there was the hawk that parked in the tree.  He seemed to be focused on the squirrel that was also in the tree, but the birds, I guess, decided that between that predator, and the one with the whiskers on the other side of the glass, there were better places to be.  Competition moved in across the street.  Two bird feeders in the front yard.  Close to the bushes on the ground.  Less exposed to the wind.  Less room for large birds of prey to swoop in.  No felines popping up disturbing the feeding.  The brown alley birds only came when seed was low across the street.  Before a cold snap, I topped it off and enjoyed seeing the gray bird with the black and white markings swooping in and out. 

We got a snow.  No one ate for days as the whole feeder was covered with several inches of fluffy whiteness.  Then the snow on the base melted and a few investigated and the whole gang came back.  The feeders across the street were perhaps empty or covered over, so now they were all on my balcony in the bitter cold.  That food was gone.  Well, not gone.  There was still plenty of food, it is just that it was in an ice cream bucket in my kitchen and not in the feeder.  I felt bad for the birds. It was going to be a task to get it filled, but I didn’t anticipate any difficulty.  Go out grab the feeder, fill it, and bring it back.  What could go wrong?

First I had to move the cat.  With no birds to watch he found the nice pile of blankets and cushions that were keeping some of the draft out from the balcony door.  He was all curled up and giving every impression of not wanting to get up.   He had to be moved.  I went over and slipped my hand under him.  My not-nearly-as-warm-as-the-blankets-and-the-pillows-and-his-fur hand.  He gave me a “What is your problem?” look  and meowed and nipped at me.  It was so cold and dry that I got several static shocks in the process and I knew he would probably bear a grudge for some time, but I believed he’d be happy once his feathered friends returned.  He always made this funny meeping sound when he first noticed a bird at the feeder and then he’d run over and crouch low with his tail whipping back and forth in his fervor.  When the birds flew away he’d pop up to watch them.  It was amusement for him, which in turn was amusement for me, and really that was what the bird feeder was all about.  It was, after all, a gift to me.  

The cat having been moved under protest, I was able to stack all the blankets and cushions on a chair that I pushed away from the door , so I would have enough room to have leverage to jar the door open. (or should I say doors? There was, after some repairs, a storm door that actually latched shut.  When we first moved in, the way we kept it from banging around on a windy day was with a shoe lace we tied to the latch handle that had to be brought though a gap between the frame and the  main door and wrapped around the door knob on the inside.  It worked as a lock in its own hundred-year-old-house-with-original-door kind of way).   The door itself was a pathetic affair.  A victim of being painted too many times and not quite closing with ease, while at the same time never having an air tight seal.  It had an old single pane window that, thanks to the now fixed storm door, was not frosted over.  I held the door responsible for the living room being the coolest room in the house during winter.  The dryness helped with how tight the door was, but the snow that had accumulated around its frame melted and froze again did not help.  The door knob itself is a bit of a challenge.  You want to grab it firmly, but carefully, as the metal covering holding the knob to the door did not quite reach the base and if it jiggled the wrong way you’d give yourself a terrible pinch.

So I was careful, and grabbed the door knob and pulled.  Nothing.  I almost gave up.  Pulled again.  It gave a little, so I braced myself and pulled hard.  At first it did not budge. Then budged too much, and my elbow jabbed into the new stereo that was ,for reasons that still mystify me, placed on top of some shelves that were rather poorly placed by my husband, what with there being a door there and all. The stereo was not damaged, but I did push it and that caused some things on the other end of the shelf to go careening to the floor.  That was enough to send the cat scurrying out of the room.  Worse, I hit that particular little spot on the elbow that causes shock in the entire arm: the proverbial funny bone.  

The good news was that the door was now wide open. My elbow shock was mitigated by the shock of the arctic breeze that now was filling the living room.  I decided that the five steps, maybe ten, to  the  birdfeeder was not too far and the snow did not look deep so I dared to go out in my slippers.  I had not bothered with socks.  After all, I was just going to grab the feeder and come right back in to fill it.

Hubby, the chair, the cat, the old door, & the ill placed bookcase.

First you have to realize that the step down to the balcony was rather deep.  It did not look deep because of the snow, which was several inches deeper than the half inch that I imagined, and even deeper right below the door making me miss judge the depth, and I had that terrible thing that happens when you think you are planting your foot, but there is nothing solid for it to rest on for another five inches.  The shock of it and the snow on my bare ankle was enough to cause my knee to buckle and there I was on my hands and knees on my balcony.  The cat investigated standing at the door and sniffing at me.  I was already cold and out there so I thought I may as well get up and grab the bird feeder.   That is when I realized that one of my slippers had come off and landed sole-side-up in the snow.  I managed to stand up keeping my bare foot out of the snow.  The birds needed to eat, but I needed better footing for that to happen.  

Using my bare hand on the iced over wall next to the door to steady myself,  I bent over and grabbed my fallen slipper and then quick as I could, put the snow filled slipper on my foot.  BIG mistake!  I got myself back inside, closed the door, but failed to close the storm door that now banged shut with a gust of wind, and since the latch was fixed, actually stayed shut.  Well at least something was working right.  I ripped off my slippers and shook out my hands and chanted in a most useful breathy way, “cold cold cold cold cold…” as I made my way to the kitchen to find a towel and some cool water and try to warm up.  I sat at the chair at the end of the table and was greeted by a blast of cold air from the vent next to the sink. But I did not care.  Any minute the air would become very warm and very dry.  I rubbed my hands together and then rubbed my feet.  I got up and propped the slippers up on a towel on the seat of the chair so they could get the full benefit of the kitchen vent.  I headed to the bedroom.  This time I was not going to be unprepared.

I was looking for some socks when I heard something fall in the kitchen.  I figured I had propped my slippers precariously, but when I returned to the kitchen I found the cat looking smug.  One slipper on the floor and the other next to him on the chair.  I had arrived just in time to see him take his paw and push that slipper out of his way.  He seemed quite satisfied with the thunk it made on the floor, and then he settled himself down shaking each paw before he tucked it under his ample chest.  The guy was a  heat hog.  We had always known that.  

I went back to my sock search and found the thermal hunting socks that I usually only bothered with when I had to commute to work on sub zero days.  Next I headed to our unheated  back steps and grabbed my coat and scarf and boots.  The boots were dry so I figured I’d put them on inside where it was warmer.   I had my mittens too, but knew I’d need to take them off once I got to the feeder.  While it was a nice bird feeder, it was a bit cheap and plastic and getting the lid back on could be tricky.  It took just the right angle.  I didn’t think I could manage that with anything on my hands, but otherwise being bundled up I figured I could just fill the feeder outside and not risk making a mess in my apartment.  

I ventured out this time, not jamming my elbow, not misjudging the snow depth and where the step was.   I had the ice cream bucket with seed and a scoop in hand and believed I was ready to feed some birds.   Somehow from where I had fallen before to where the bird feeder was on the corner of the balcony, the surface of the snow went from being soft and fluffy to being hard with a glaze of ice.  Even with my boots, I lost my balance and ended up grabbing the icy balcony railing—feeling smart because I had mittens on, and then feeling stupid because my right leg shot out and somehow managed to get between the balcony vertical rails.  The fall also caused me to drop the ice cream bucket that fell open with the seed remaining in a bag but the scoop skidded under the rail and dropped to the ground below, lodging itself in the middle of a snow pile next to our front walk .  This I would not discover until after a very awkward extraction of my leg from the rail.  Now despite my learning from the slipper incident to dress better, I still stupidly figured it was such a short task, that I had not bothered to tie my boots.  I carefully extracted the leg hanging over the ledge, but a dangling boot lace had caught on a nail sticking out from the gutter and simply refused to let go.  There was no way to reach the nail with the boot still on my foot. I was not at all certain that the boot would not fall to the ground below if I took it off.   I sat there stunned for a minute and then carefully pulled my foot as far as I could towards me, being limited by the length of the boot lace.  With my hands I reached through the rails and took hold of the boot and slipped my foot out.  If I had not been a gymnast as a child this would have been quite impossible.  I was able to set the boot down on the icy ledge and then maneuvered to my knees without my exposed foot touching the snow.  Before I reached through the rails to extract the boot, I had a stroke of genius.  I tied the opposite lace to a rail as insurance against it falling.  

I then reached forward.  The rails were too close for my head to get through them, but I reached as far as I could with my arm.  I needed more give, so I reluctantly untied the boot from the rail and was probably a spectacularly ridiculous sight as I waved and yanked with the boot to dislodge it, all while trying to keep the foot that only had a sock on from touching the snow.  I failed completely on both counts.  The lace wouldn’t give, and I again was getting quite cold.  I decided to retreat.  I tied the opposite lace to the rail again and went back in, needing to step in the snow with just a sock or risk falling again on the slick surface.

I got back in and found another sock.  Warmed my foot.  Grabbed one of hubby’s boots and tied it as tight as I could, hoping that it would not come off.  I also tied my other boot. I grabbed a pair of scissors and went out again.  I had no choice.  I had to cut the lace to free my boot.

I was not taking any more chances so I steadied myself with the rail and squatted down and cut the lace and grabbed the boot.  I took it to the door and set it inside along with the scissors.  I then decided that those birds were getting seed.  If I was going through all this I was going to get more out of it than just a cut lace on my boots.  

I ventured over to where the ice cream bucket had landed and was happy to find that the seed was still there.  I then carefully made my way to the shepherd hook that held the feeder and slid it off the hook and set it firmly in the snow.  The scoop was gone but I figured I could just pour it from the bag.   

It now became clear why the seed had not spilled out when the bucket had dropped.  I had never opened that bag.  It was brand new.  I considered what to do.  I just did not want to have to make another trip back to the door for the scissors, so I decided I could just rip it open.  I was not quite able to do that, so I found a seam and gave a good pull and then it burst open, seed covering me and the balcony and spilling down to the sidewalk below.   I did not spend much time lamenting the spilled seed. The birds would eat that too. There was still some left in the bag and I was then determined to get some in the feeder.  I removed the lid from the feeder.  It sounds simple but it was not.  My fingers were cold and the plastic had little give with cold the temperature.  I finally got the lid off and filled it with what was left in the bag.  It only went up about half way.  More struggling to get the lid back on and finally I hung it up and got back into the house without further incident.   Before I removed my coat and mismatched boots I went down the back stairs and outside to retrieve my scoop from the snow pile in the front of the house.   I took a few moments to look up at my accomplishment.   I could see the lace dangling from the gutter nail.   The birds had food and I had a ridiculous story to tell.    

Our home a few years later when we had a new balcony door, a new cat, and gave up on feeding birds and just hung decorations from the shepherd's hook.  The boot lace was removed when the house got painted.

Violin Rosin box with Dad’s High School Science notes

 Violin Rosin box with Dad’s High School Science notes

Description:

Violine-Rosin box (the outer sleeve of a matchbox style box) It is flattened so it measures about 1 & 3.4 inch by 2 inch.

Inside are two 1.5 by 2 inch booklets.  One is a Dictionary for Chemical Terms with Erno Szedlak written on the bottom. It is done in fine black ink.  It is 37 little pages with terms divided by letter.  It starts with Antiseptic and ends with Fusion.  The other booklet is done in tiny fine pencil and has biology notes. Pages include lists of vitamins, bones in the body, nutrition notes.  Notes about mammals.  The pictures has a diagram of a bird. I scanned them with a quarter for scale.

Story:

My father came to the US and didn’t know any English when he started high school in River Falls Wisconsin.  He graduated in four years.  He loves music and science.  He played trumpet and cello.  The Rosin case was no doubt for his bow.  If it was about being frugal with ink and paper or just showing off a precise steady hand my father had always liked to use tiny print.  When I was growing up he would include a paragraph in the bulletin called “Some Notes on Todays Sermon” SNOTs we called them.  The drafts would be written on 3 inch squares of paper in Dad’s own unique short hand.  These notebooks don’t have any of the short hand.  

My Grandma Szedlak did not throw things out unless she had to.  When her children left home she left their rooms as they were, We would visit the house in River Falls and when I was bored I’d wander upstairs and spend time nosing around in the closets and dresser and desk drawers.  I found this box in the top desk drawer and would look at it almost every time we visited.  On one of my last visits, I took and kept it.

Mandate non-compliant

 

A long rambling blog about the reasons my life has taken a dramatic (maybe that is too strong of a word--sudden, unexpected, yeah lets go with that)  A long rambling blog about the reasons my life has taken a sudden, unexpected turn.

When I took the library job with the city I did it with my eyes wide open.  I had worked for the bureaucratic beast that is Milwaukee Public Library two decades prior and I understood how inflexible that organization is.  I was pleasantly surprised that as a branch librarian there is more variation in what you do.  It is a smaller sub team and each person has strengths and weaknesses.  I discovered that I’m quite happy to help folks bridge the digital divide. I didn’t save lives, but in small and (to the patrons) vital ways I made their life better.  “You are awesome”  “You are a life saver”  “I appreciate you”  “Thank you” “Have a blessed day”  The job at times is quite rewarding.  I like helping folks who are frustrated by technology and managing to get them to laugh, because computers and printers and scanners are stupid, and the way to use them is something that you can not know, until you know.

That being said when I got transferred to the southside and went from a 5 minute drive (or 19 minute walking) commute to a 20-40 (pre covid) 16-25 (post covid) driving commute I was not happy.  I still think my being moved had nothing to do with me or my talents.  I was better suited for the library where I started.  My first winter at the new branch was hard.  Too much driving in the dark, too many unfamiliar things and I got the overall impression that my predecessor was missed more than I was welcomed.  I was just starting to sort of come into my own at that branch when the pandemic hit and we were shut down for five months.  Five months of working from home and spending way too much time doing training videos, and creating resources that were mostly ignored and never used (everything had to go through levels of administrative approval) and doing online library programs that seemed to mostly be attended by other librarians. August 2020 we finally came back into our building with all sorts of crazy restrictions and safety theater procedures.  Our branch had to move to curb side to accommodate early voting, and then we were open, and then covid surged and we went curbside-only again, and then we opened, and then our parking lot and courtyard were redone. So about every four months what door you could come into and how much you could do when inside changed.  We lost a lot of patrons to the more open suburban libraries and I’m not sure if we will ever get them back.  

Finally last summer the administration decided that folks were not going to die a terrible death if we let them browse the shelves for their own books; and apart from the masks that are still required in all city buildings, and the security guard hired to make sure you keep your mask above your nose, and firm rules about unattended children, it is almost normal.

During a library all-staff town hall zoom meeting last winter plans for getting the staff vaccinated was discussed.  In the open forum of the meeting, some staff said that getting the shot should be mandated, but the administration quickly said no such thing would happen, that each person should learn and talk to their doctor and do what that person thought was best.  It was not the city's place to mandate such a thing.   I believed them.  Most library staff were able to get a vaccine quite early, because we had a deal with the health department that at the end of the day, if there were leftover doses from folks that didn’t show for their appointment, they would call a library branch and staff at that location could come downtown and get the leftover shots while supplies lasted--I was visiting my folks across the state when my branch got the call. 

My manager, knowing there may be some strong feelings about the vaccine, announced early on that our thoughts and decisions about the vaccine were personal, and he didn’t want us talking or arguing about it.  I really appreciated that gag rule.  There are a lot of reasons I don’t want the vaccine, among them is the use of fetal stem cells in the creation, testing and in one, the production of the vaccine.  This is something I am deeply morally opposed to.  

That is how it went until the FDA approved one of the shots, and then two days later the city announced the mandate.  Every time the mandate was mentioned it was quickly followed by the statement that staff could apply for a religious or medical accommodation.  It is true you can apply for such a thing.  But that does not mean that the city will actually grant you an accommodation.  Feel free to ask, but they can say no and there is nothing you can do about that.  On the form where they rejected my accommodation request there is a line to fill in that says, “Date discussed with employee.” They filled that line in with “emailed on October 7th.”   Since when does sending me an email that says “Attached please find the decision regarding your request for an exemption to the City’s vaccine requirement”  constitute a discussion with me? When I emailed follow up questions about benefits during a time I might be suspended the response was an email saying, “Please let me know whether you intend to comply or not, so I can take the necessary next step, namely the scheduling of a pre-disciplinary meeting in order to determine what, if any, disciplinary action you would face.  I would like to schedule that on 10/27 or 10/28 before the Vax deadline.”   I wrote back to make it very clear that I am quite willing to be regularly tested to assure the library I am covid free.  A day later I got my answer, “Your compliance with the vaccine mandate is clear.  The request for accommodation has been denied.” 

So it goes. The mandate is written as a qualifying  requirement for working for the city.  It is done the same way the old residency requirements were done, so barring a city rule change or an intervention from the state (as was done with the old residency requirement) if I don’t resign I will be let go as no longer meeting the qualifications for the job. My research lead me to believe that there is no way for my job to end that would let me collect unemployment benefits.  I’ve chosen to resign.  The rather dismissive way the administration has dealt with me left me feeling deflated.  As the old saying goes, you can’t fight city hall.   Also by resigning I leave in good standing and if sometime in the future the city comes to its senses and realizes that my being unvaccinated does not pose “a direct threat to public safety” I can come back picking up where I left off in salary, benefits and seniority.  

So now what?   What indeed?  I have very mixed feelings.  I truly loved the job.  I believe in the mission and purpose of the library.   It feels strange that for the first time since March of 1996, when I started as a part time “limited personal” circulation worker at the Medical College of Wisconsin, I am not associated with a library.  

For now the plan is to take six months and see if we can live okay on what Mr. Gaba brings in.  He has been very kind and supportive in all this.   As for me, I will be a housewife and focus on writing.  I also plan to make use of the amazing resources Milwaukee Public Library has to offer.  I mean, why not?  There is no rule (so far) prohibiting me from going into their buildings.  Similar in illogic to how it’s “safe” to take your mask off if you are sitting at a table with food in front of you, I’m only considered a danger to others in the library if the city is giving me a paycheck.  This is all going to be a major shift in my thinking and my use of time but I believe that God will work this all out for His good.  

Calgary Stampede ticket stub

Description: Ticket stub reads : Calgary Stampede Chuckwagon Races & Grandstand Show 8:00pm Friday July 9, 1982  Admits to Stampede Park 2 2 2 2 TWO 2 2 2 2 The bottom of the stub is pink and says NORTH MAIN T*** 

Sec: N box: N row 0 seat 82 $12.50 s/c included

Story: In 1982 my family vacationed in Canada heading west from Winnipeg, we visited the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy in Regina Saskatchewan, we attend the Calgary Stampede and spent a bunch of time in Banff and Jasper looking at mountains. We also stopped and visited relatives in Edmonton.

The day in Calgary was memorable for many reasons.  It was a very long day.  My mom had a cousin who worked downtown, and he let us park our car at his place of work.  From there we hauled lawn chairs and blankets and found a place on the street to watch the parade. We were told to get there early, so there was a lot of waiting.  Finally the parade started.  Lots of horses.  Lots of floats.  Mom made a point of taking  a picture of the float sponsored by the city of Winnipeg (her childhood home). After the parade we headed back to the car and by then we were hungry.  My childhood is one of a lot of picnic lunches.  Eating out was mostly for special occasions, but it was too long of a day and there were really no places to picnic in downtown Calgary.  We found a submarine sandwich shop and, for the first time ever, we all shared submarine sandwiches for lunch.  The long bread and the stacking of vegetable and cold cuts - it was all very new to us in 1982.  They were good.  After that we walked, and walked, and walked, to get to the Stampede grounds.  I remember a lot of walking.  As the grounds came into sight things got a bit more crowded, but it wasn’t hard to stay together.  

I understood what a county fair was, and Mom said the Stampede was like a big fair.  We went into the exhibition hall and explored various products and things.  There was a floor sales pitch about cheese.  It had samples.  The guy explained that cheese is best eaten at room temp and talked about how best to eat it.  After that our family became cheese and cracker enthusiasts for the rest of the trip.  I remember eating a lot of farmers cheese. I had very limited cash resources, so I contented myself with picking up free buttons from whatever booth was offering them.   I remember my Dad getting into a long debate with a man about abortion in front of a booth for a Canadian right to life organization.  The man angrily walked away saying my father didn’t understand what a burden having a child was when you had no money.  Dad yelled after him saying that every child is a blessing. The people at the table shook my fathers hand and thanked him for his support.  

The day went on and I remember the walk up the grandstand to our seat being long.  I took my seat and was happy to be able to sit for a while.  Then it was time to wait again.  The chuck wagon races came first.  There were two men in front of us exchanging cash  after each race.  I asked my mother about it and she said they were gambling.  My parents did not approve of any form of gambling.  

The races were fun to watch. As the show went on it got darker.  They had a fireworks ground show celebrating great legends of rodeo.  I didn’t know any of the names or faces that were lit up on their pyrotechnic display.  After that they launched fireworks set to music.  We were in Canada.  So the selection of songs was interesting.  One was familiar. The words sung were “I love the sky on the 1st of July.”  Sarah was amused by the lyric change since we knew it as “I love the sky on the 4th of July.”  They were impressive and right over our head.  It made up for the fact that we had once again had poor country timing and were in the US on the 1st and in Canada on the 4th.  Something that annoyed Sarah greatly, that so many summers we missed seeing any good fireworks shows, because we always seemed to be in the wrong country.  

After the fireworks it was a long walk back to the car and then from there to our hotel.  It was dark and unlike when we arrived, everyone was leaving at the same time.  I was fine while we were in the grounds but after we got out of the gates I got distracted for a moment and almost got lost.

On this long trip, in the days before portable electronic movie players, we amused ourselves in the car in various ways.  One was to try to get a list of license plates from as many states and provinces as possible.  Rebecca was the keeper of the list.  We had gotten so many states and as I was leaving the grounds I saw it, a car with an Alaska license plate.  I had never seen one before.  I stopped to read the numbers to commit them to memory so I could report it to Rebecca, but then when I looked up I realized that I couldn’t see my family any more.  I was scared, but I kept moving with the crowd concerned that I didn’t know enough to know what turns I would have to take to get back to the car.  Suddenly I saw my father walking at a quick clip towards me.  He grabbed my hand and we caught up to Mom and my sisters who were standing still while the flow of people broke around them.    My feet hurt and I remember shivering a bit in the night air.  I kept holding my fathers hand.  It had been years since I had held his hand, or any grownup's hand for that matter.  After all I was going to be in the 5th grade.  Still even when the crowd thinned I didn’t let go.  I hung on to his hand until our car was in view.  

We didn’t get into our hotel room until past midnight.  It was very late for me and I was exhausted.  At most places Mom was able to get a cot for Rebecca, and Sarah and I would share a double bed.  This place didn’t have cots and mom was not going to waste money on a second whole room, so it was decided that I would bring in a sleeping bag and just have to sleep on the floor.  I was not used to being on the floor, so I didn’t sleep well that night at all.

Name tag from the Weitzel Family Reunion

 

Description:  Needle point name tag with just the name and a border stitched into the canvas.  It is soot damage but you can see it was some sort of green.  The canvas was cream and backed with white paper and placed in a plastic sleeve with a pin on the back.

Story: I’m in the middle of writing and revising a book about my mom’s parents and there are a lot of stories to tell there about this event, but for here let me simply explain that my Grandma Schaefer had one brother and seven sisters.  In 1982 a great reunion was planned and all but four people were able to attend.  Each sister had a role to play.  Auntie Elsie made the name tags.  The great part is that they were color coded according to which Weitzel you were descended from.  I imagine she used up a lot of scrap yarn.  Auntie Teeny had no kids and her husband Micky stayed away so her tag would only need about a yard of yarn to stitch it. Larger families with lots of kids, like the Riegers or the Kosses, would need a lot more of the same color.  The Schaefers were green.  I think there were three different family greens.  Ours was neither the prettiest shade nor the ugliest.  To my eyes, it appeared that a lot of the yarn came from needle point projects she started in the 1970s.

Door to door sales goal sheet

Description:  Single white sheet with grid for making and tracking goals.  It is a mass produced sheet that is not particular to any business.  In my handwriting under weekly goals I had “have all materials for each day and Get pitch down completely. Under Tuesday is written:  "1. Smile going up to the house.  2. Get pitch down (don’t hesitate) 3. Do better on Intro. " In the bottom is the Juice with each letter written down in columns in my hand Join Us in Creating Energy.  There are some other words I can not quite read.

Story: This is the only evidence I have that for two days I was a door to door sales person--well a trainee.  It was in that "hey, I’m not going to be a classroom teacher, but I need money phase" of my post college life and I was applying all sorts of places and just looking for work.  This was after the three weeks I spent doing temp work assigned to a research company doing telephone surveys.  I answered an ad offering advancement and looking for a team leader.  I had almost zero idea what I was getting into.  I showed up with a few other recruits to an office park in Brookfield called Bishop Woods (You can see the sign along I94)  tucked back in the trees. I had a meeting with a man who said something about not worrying about doing sales. They were there looking for management.  But he was very vague.  Anyway I took the job and the next morn showed up for the "team meeting."  It was in a large open room with no furniture.  I’d say over 100 folks were in the room and with that we endured about an hour of what seemed to be a product brief, a motivational speech and what I was reminded most vividly a high school pep rally cheering kind of gathering.  I felt uncomfortable and that is putting it mildly, but we needed for me to work.  After the team meeting I was pared with a guy and spent a day driving around Port Washington stopping at houses and knocking on doors trying to sell a sheet of prepaid golf outings.  It was not the only product the company did.  They also would sell bundles of oil changes and other service things.  I picked up a few things about sales.  The importance of having the customer hold the product while you talked about it.  Give them a sense of having it and then feeling like they are loosing something if they don’t pay for it.    They guy who I road with that day was not much older than me.  I learned too much about his life, he had a girlfriend and a son and didn’t think he was ready for marriage.  We met up with other sales persons and their trainees for lunch.  It was a long day.  Lots of car time.  At the end of it we went back to Bishop Woods and all the sales folks were back in the big room yelling and loudly celebrating their successes and trading stories.  I felt very out of place.  

I came back the next day.  Was pared with another guy.  He was more reserved and professional.  We headed south knocking on doors in affluent mc mansion neighborhood around Delevan or some such.  It was another long day and by the end of it I knew I was not cut out for this kind of work, nor was my 84 Chevy Cavalier cut out for that much driving each day.  Lesson learned. On one hand I felt like a quitter on the other I knew I needed a job where I would not spend eight plus hours and more than a tank of gas and come home at the end of the day with nothing to show for it.  

I took what lessons I could from the experience and went and signed on with another temp agency the next day.  They had free training on Microsoft products so I sat in a room for a few hours and worked though some tutorials on managing electronic files, word processing and using spreadsheets.  With that I was able to get work updating the inventory lists of Sears repair vans.  Eventually I got a full time job at an expired pharmaceutical return company, but that is a whole other story.  

Drawing of the front of my 4th grade classroom

 

Description:  white letter paper drawing in pencil of the front of my 4th grade classroom

Story: The details are a bit fuzzy on this one.  I think there was a thing where stuff from the school could be submitted to the county fair.  I don’t know if I got a ribbon or certificate, but I recall it won some sort of prize.   I obviously had not learned anything about perspective and only knew a tiny bit about drawing three dimensional shapes.  Mostly I sat at my desk with the paper and tried to draw what I saw in front of me.  I left out some details and drew it all free hand without using any kind of straight edge.  I really wanted to fill the page and in that it was a pretty good effort, though even when I drew it I was bothered by the fact that you can’t see where the floor ends and the wall begins.  I had a lot of issues with the teacher's chair.  Part of the reason the floor is so dark under the desk is that I was covering up my light pencil attempts to get the wheels right.  I was never happy with it.  They hardly look like they match the back of the chair that I also had issues with.  I do rather like the effect of having the PA system box with sound lines coming out of it.  I also played a bit with texture on the bulletin board.

You can tell it got pinned up a few times with the holes in the upper corners and there is some soot damage at the top again.

Pamphlet about Tourette Syndrome

 

Description: 

Light blue tri-fold-out pamphlet with questions and answers about Tourette Syndrome from 1991.  

Story:

My earliest memory of a motor tic was in my high school English class.  My head seemed to move on it’s own and I went from looking at my textbook to looking at the clock on the wall.  It was weird.  Did I really want to look at the clock?  I’d move my head slowly back to my book and be thinking about it, trying to decipher if I had chosen to look at the clock or if it just happened on it’s own.  Then I’d do it again, but I was thinking about it, so that was my conscious choice...wasn’t it?  Tourette is weird that way.  It is like it is it’s own impish thing, knows when it’s being talked about, so as I write this I’m having symptoms that I have not experienced in some time.  Anyway it was a very infrequent thing, and I didn’t give it much regard.  Then I started my sophomore year in college.  I was taking some intensive courses.  I was writing long letters to Mr. Gaba who was in basic training and there I sat on my college bed trying to read Candide by Voltaire and my head kept turning to the side and I kept losing my place.  It came to be an ongoing issue with reading.  It didn’t hurt, it was just annoying and more persistent than my sudden odd high school clock watching.  My roommate who was a nursing student noticed it.  I looked up a few things in some medical books in the library, figured out what I was doing was called a tic. 

Finally I went to see the campus doctor.  There is this Loony Toon cartoon of Tweety taking a Jekyll and Hyde formula. Every time Sylvester looked at Tweety he looked normal, but then Sylvester turns his back and Tweety becomes a monster.  My visit to the campus doctor reminded me of that cartoon.  Every time the guy looked at me I was perfectly still.  He’d look down to make a few notes and my head would tic.  He checked out what he could about balance and interviewed me and suggested that I see a neurologist.  I didn’t have a car and know what to do, so I called home, and Mom set things up for me to visit a doctor during spring break in North Dakota. 

I was tested for various things. Tourettes is a diagnosis of elimination.  If no other cause can be found, it must be.  Well it wasn’t Tourettes, I was told it was transient tic syndrome.  If symptoms went on past a year it would be chronic tic syndrome.  In reading up on it as best I could in the days of pre-internet, the only difference between chronic tic syndrome and Tourettes is that Tourettes has both physical and verbal tics.  I had no verbal tics.  So life went on.  I had no interest in trying to treat my condition with medication.  My tics, while at the time annoying and bothersome, were not debilitative, and knowing some girlfriends with epilepsy and how the medications messed up so many other things and had to be counteracted with other meds, I reasoned that any medication that would help the tics would cause me other problems.  Things stayed pretty much as is.  Got married, graduated, eventually ended up working at Todd Wehr Library at the Medical College of Wisconsin where I did a second shift that ended at midnight five days a week.  In was on a drive home that I started to have verbal tics.  A really loud ear piercing "HA!” I could feel it coming, and couldn’t stop it.  Well that cleared it up.  I have Tourette syndrome. '

What I have learned over the years is the number one thing I can do to reduce my tics is to make sure I get enough sleep at night.  I’ve had a few times when I was prescribed medications for other things and found my tics got much worse.  If it was a direct cause of the medication or simply that the meds messed up my sleep cycle I can’t say, but in both cases I simply stopped taking the meds and things got better.  Now things are pretty stable.  The only time I really have any issues is when I’m under a lot of stress (another reason why I’m a librarian and not a high school history teacher) or when I am visiting someone who has tics.  If we are together and one person tics and the other sees it...well, like I said, I’ve been ticking like a clock as I write this.  It’s an odd compulsive condition.  It is somehow related to obsessive compulsive disorder and I have some of those tendencies too, though much less than before.  I drove my roommate in college crazy with not being able to go to sleep unless all doors and drawers were perfectly closed and latched.  This I got over after getting married, and living in old houses where almost no internal doors latch, and in the case of the bedroom door it needing to be unlatched so the cat can get in and out during the night. 

Anyway, I don’t remember the doctor's name, thought I think he was a graduate of the Medical College of Wisconsin where I ended up working for a bit.  He gave me that pamphlet and it was in his office when he wasn’t looking at me, and was making notes, that my mother first noticed what I had been complaining about, because prior to that she had never seen me tic and had set up all the appointments not quite understanding what was going on.   My mother upon learning that my condition was somehow hereditary felt terrible and perhaps guilty that I should suffer with such an odd condition.  I assured her that unlike with the genetic time bombs of heart disease, diabetes, & cancer, Tourettes didn’t hurt and would never kill me.  I’m glad it didn't become a real issue until college, when I was much more self confident, and did not have to deal with it around people who would tease me about it.  

Years later, I went to a doctor in Fort Wayne and a nurse was taking my medical history. I mentioned it, and she stopped and looked at me and seemed choked up.  Turns out her teen daughter had Tourettes and she was very concerned about her.  I explained that my symptoms were relatively mild and I was never medicated for them.   The woman said, “But here you are, a married woman with a college degree, and you’re OK.”  I didn't quite know what to make of that exchange.  I never thought of myself as a positive role model, but this woman found some comfort in my ordinary life. 

String Art on Paper--Bunny

Description:  8.5x11 sheet of colored paper with white reinforcement sheet on the back.  Using string thread is stitched through the paper to create images using a precise method that gives the impression of an image made with a spiral graph.

Story: In 5th grade Miss Hanson had us doing various string art projects.  We were give a grid sheet with numbered and lettered holes and directions with where to put the needle each time to make the right pattern. There were the usual frustrations, knotting thread, getting a few ahead and realizing you were in the wrong hole and having to pull it out to fix it.  I deeply enjoyed this project.  

Sixth graders at St Thomas Public school made more elaborate projects of string art that involved nails and black cloth and three dimensional effects.  They were made to give to our parents at Christmas.  Mr. Stuberg, the 6th grade teacher, didn’t change it up, but he did have a selection of patterns you could choose from (train, snail, ship etc,).  Families with a lot of kids ended up with several forms.  It was not unusual for younger siblings to say “Well, Mom said I need make this one."  The joy of small town life.  There were never too many surprises.  The 5th grade projects were seasonal. We all did the same project at the same time.  I think we did three of them all together,  One was just circles, There was a heart for Valentine's days that we were to give to our parents. The bunny was by far the most complicated one we made as an Easter project.  The fire was not kind to this work and some of the strings on the back broke so it no longer has the tight neat look I produced. 

I wrote about all these archived objects in November of 2020. At that time I was asked to decorate a hand turkey for a display at work. I did it free form so there isn't the geometric precision of the fifth grade work, but I was inspired by the memory of the fun I had with those grade school projects.

Page 10 from my senior year memory book

Description: 

A page taken out of my fire-damaged senior year memory book. This page originally was filled with questions about what I thought about my future.  I covered that page completely, covering it with pink notebook paper and then glued a maze of school pictures of myself snaking up and down the page starting with one of me at age 4 and ending up back at the top with one of my senior pictures taken when I was 17 sitting next to my 4 year old self.  I made little black lines between the pictures so you can follow to know exactly what order the pictures are in.  

Stories:

There it is, a one page summary of my childhood.  Each picture I remember for various reasons. 

4 years old: The 4 year old picture is the only one in which I am not smiling.  I’m wearing one of the dresses that would never die.  My mother sewed clothes and like to make us matching dresses. As the youngest that meant that you kept growing into the same dress over and over.  The good news is that by the time I was four, Sarah and I were very close in size so I only had to grow out of that dress twice.  Mom took me to the public school in Westville, IN to have this picture taken.  The only way to get my hair to cooperate was to have it freshly washed, so I took a bath just an hour before the picture was taken.  The pony tail on top was really tight and I remember it kind of hurt.  I remember Mom being very pleased that my ringlets turned out so nice. "you just wind them around your finger and they make nice sausages." I also remember that the light the photographer aimed at me was very bright and he was a total stranger. That is why there was no smile.

Kindergarten:  St. John's Lutheran School LaPort IN. Red happens to be my favorite color (though there was a bit of the 80s when I preferred lavender) but in Kindergarten it was all about red.  This dress was a hand-me-down from someone--outside our family.  By that year my mother had determined that longish hair was too difficult to deal with and always cut it short.  It frustrated me to no end because short hair (if you couldn’t have a Dorothy Hamill style bob was very unfeminine.  My sisters both had long hair and how was I going to become a ballerina if I couldn’t put my hair in a bun.  

1st Grade: By first grade I had given up my ballerina dreams. (The only lessons Mom could find were on Monday evenings and that was Dad's day off so we'd have to give up family time--that's what she told me. They probably also cost more than my folks could afford.) Now I wanted to be a nurse.  I liked the hats they wore.  I don’t know where this dress came from, but I thought it looked like a uniform and thus I wanted to wear it for my school picture.  Rebecca, my eldest sister, did not like the looks of it and begged Mom to have me wear something else on picture day, but Mom told her it was my decision.  I was unaware of that conversation, until I heard my mother discussing it over the phone after we got our pictures back.  The photographer made some comments about the amount of girls in my class wearing sleeveless dresses and how it made them look cold against the wintery backdrop he had brought.

2nd Grade: In second grade I had a store-bought dress that I remember picking out at the store.  My classmate Stacie also owned the same dress and we kept trying to wear them on the same day and kept failing all year to get it coordinated. 

3rd Grade: St. Thomas Public School, St. Thomas ND. The summer between 2nd and 3rd grade, we moved to North Dakota.  For some odd reason school pictures in St Thomas were called pony pictures.  Not even the photographer knew why and once explained we were the only town who called them that.  Rebecca approved of my blouse with the embroidery.  

4th grade: Rebecca came into my room, pulled out of my closet the sweater I have on in the picture, and informed we that we were all wearing sweaters with big collars for our pictures and I should use the pin that a family friend had sent us from Japan.  I had no strong feelings about the outfit one way or another, so I didn’t argue with Rebecca’s choice.  My hair was a bit longer.  Mom let me grow it out, but I didn’t really take care of it. Late in the year Mom offered that if I agreed to get it cut and folks could see my ears she’d let me get my ears pierced.  

5th Grade. Princess Diana’s wedding dress had big puffy sleeves and high neck blouses were a thing.  This white blouse was bought during back-to-school shopping.  It was a nice blouse.  The thing about me is that I was very short-waisted and as a kid kind of chubby.  Then as I matured I sort of grew at the ends. My waistline in the 5th grade was the same as my senior year. I’m not sure if my ears were pierced yet. I wore very small earrings so it’s hard to tell.  All I had for the first year were studs with my birth stone and later little blue stars.  My hair in this picture was the result of a hair cut that my grandmother had given me.  Mom was furious.  Somehow she cut it so all the curls sort of curled into my head.  “You could just shave my head and paint it black” I would complain.  

6th grade. Rebecca was a high school senior and in our small town that meant she worked on the year book, in fact she was a year book editor, and thus was onsite for all the pony pictures as the classes came through.  The sweater was new, but the blouse under it was the same one I had on for my 5th grade picture.  Rebecca was upset that I had not put on any jewelry and she thought my hair looked bad, so she grabbed a comb out of my classmate Margo’s back pocket and combed my hair and then took her necklaces off and put them on me.  I'll admit it, this is one of my better pictures.  After the picture was taken she took the jewelry back.  Big sisters, what can you do?

7th Grade: Over the summer I decided I wanted long hair and started to really grown it out. (the story I tell is that I could finally outrun my mother) For a year I used flexible combs to deal with the bangs until they grew out.  I’m wearing the same blouse for the third year in a row, this time with a purple vest.  After three years, I was rather tired of the blouse and it actually fit Rebecca so she took it.  I had some growing to do vertically but Rebecca who was five years older wore the same size tops I did starting in the 5th grade.  If she wanted something different to wear she would wander into my room and help herself to items in my closet.  I’d protest and she would argue that I wasn’t wearing it. (Mind you, at this point I’d still be in bed.) When I’d suggest that I should be able to wear some of her clothes, she argued that she earned money and contributed to buying her clothes whereas Mom and Dad paid for all of my clothes, so they were family property.  

Eighth grade: I stopped wearing flexible combs.  Most days I did a pony tale but for picture day I pulled my hair back with a single long barrette.  I got a new blouse and I took to wearing a silver chain almost every day.

My freshman year Rebecca sent me a vest and blouse. She had started giving me clothes as gifts.  I generally preferred to have high neck lines, (in part because of my modesty complex and there was a certain classmate who liked to try and shoot paper wads down girls shirts, and I didn’t have any interest in giving him a target). But it was a nice combo and I figured Rebecca would be happy to see it, so I wore it on picture day.

Sophomore year I was back to embracing red as my favorite color.  In the late 80s bold colors had pushed out the pastel trends of the early decade. Mom was using her knitting machine again and she made me the sweater.  There are wide bands of different knit patterns but it is all made of the same red yarn.  It had wide sleeves.  Much to Rebecca’s dismay I paired it with a blouse that didn’t match.  If you look really close you can see that the strips on the blouse are bright pink.  

Between my sophomore and junior years we vacationed in Winnipeg and did a week of Folklarama.  At the Hungarian pavilion mom bought me a hand stitched blouse done with traditional Hungarian style embroidery.  A more traditional form would have the flowers in bright reds, pinks, and blues, with green leaves. Those were available, but I asked for the white-on-white figuring it would be easier to pair with things. I wore it for my picture that year.  By then I was very happy with how my hair looked and it seemed with the length, to curl even more than when it was shorter.   Almost every girl in my high school had permed hair and tall hair-sprayed bangs, aka mall hair.  The highest compliment someone could give my curls was to say it looked like my hair was permed.  I liked how I looked as a teen.  I was blessed with mostly clear skin and I finally had the long hair I could put in a bun or a braid or a pony tale.  

The last picture was my senior picture.  There were several to choose from but for my official portrait I like the contrast of the black sweater and pearls. It seemed timeless to me.  I believed that in 20 or 30 years I wouldn’t look and have to explain, “that was the fashion at the time.”  I remember laying out all the proofs, trying to select which one to have prints of.  I gave them names as I considered them.  This one I dubbed “I’m pretty and smart too.”  

One final story about this page.  When I was a freshman in college I was assigned a roommate from Japan, Shoko Honda.  I was sharing my senior book with her and when she got to this page she pointed to my 2nd grade picture and exclaimed “You were FAT!" Then pointing at the next five pictures in turn said “Fat, fat, fat, fat, fat,”  Um...yeah.   I could have been offended, but I chalked it up to cultural differences, and was happy that at least she had put it in the past tense.