Category Archives: family

family, Health, letters

Another Busy Day

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Here it is, late on Friday afternoon, and I’m just now getting to my blog post. I have several posts started, but none close enough to complete to justify spending my currently limited brain capacity on.

I’m writing very little these days. Today is typical of that. I began the day, after devotions and prayer, transcribing and scanning old letters, putting them into Word files so I can get rid of the paper. I’m currently working on my old poetry notebook. I thought this was mostly critiques (which I also need to digitize) but it turns out, so far, to be mostly e-mails and IMs from what I call “the poetry wars” at Poem Kingdom and other places. The years covered are 2003-04-maybe 05. I’m able to “save-out” i.e. digitize close to 20 old emails a day and put those sheets in recycling.

This morning I got that done. I digitized 18 old e-mails. It seems like that’s not many. What I do is, after the scan is complete, I open the scan file in Word, save it as a Word docx to the right folder with the right, descriptive file name, and clean up the text. That means setting margins, eliminating formatting irregularities, changing the font, correcting outright scanner errors. So all this takes a little time, but that makes the file ready to be added to a collected correspondence file whenever I choose to do that—if ever.

I also, this morning, completed the inventory of the Stars and Stripes newspapers. This was specifically of the duplicates, which I am keeping and not donating to URI. Those duplicates are now in a box (a little bigger than necessary) and ready to be distributed to Dad’s descendants or kept by me. This special project is thus almost done. I only have to complete the boxing and decide if I want to ship them to URI soon or delay the donation to a future time, maybe sometime next year.

I also made my weekly run to Wal-Mart this morning, and almost got away without talking to anyone except the pharmacy clerk. Alas, the self-checkout station wouldn’t accept my dollar off coupon, and the cashier hoverer had to help me.

I got some time in the sunroom, most of which went to a nap (after sleeping less than optimally last night). Lynda and I took a walk on one of our easier trails this afternoon. I went 1.64 miles, her less. That was mostly in the shade with a nice breeze, and was pleasant.

The good day will not be marred by my having to go prepare supper. The microwave decided to die after just three years of service, so I am having to cook the old fashioned way and not really enjoying it. Tonight will be simple hamburgers, tomorrow frozen pizza, I guess.

Well, this isn’t much of a post, but it’s all my mind can take right now. Hopefully Monday I’ll complete my three-part book review. I have others lined up in the queue.

Oh, the other good news: Went for labs yesterday, with the result posted today. My A1C was down to 6.1!

family, holidays, The Forest Throne, Writing

Writing Progress

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I have great hopes that this will be one of my better sellers. Two of my grandchildren, Ezra and Elise, think it will be a best seller. We’ll see.

I interrupt the review of The Control of Nature to just talk. Last weekend we were in Big Spring, Texas, doing the grandparent thing. We drove up on Thursday, had a grandson’s birthday party on Friday with many 6-year-olds and their parents, a grandson’s cross country meet on Saturday, taking or picking up grandkids from school or activities. It was quite enjoyable.

Then, on Saturday, the family drove to western Oklahoma for our son-in-law’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. They boarded the dog, which left Lynda and I alone in the house with the three cats. That lasted only about 30 hours, but it was a good time.

During the days, when the kids were at school, Richard was at work, and Sara was either working at home of going to the office, we had lots of solitude. This was quite enjoyable.

For me, it was like being on a writers’ retreat. I had no special projects to work on, no household chores, no yardwork, just peaceful time. So what did I spend my time on? I got back to work on the sequel to There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Titled The Key To Time Travel, I had written a prolog, chapter 1, and most of chapter 2, consisting of around 3,650 words. But I hadn’t done any work on it for close to a month—other than re-read it and edit. I had just been too busy with those special projects and things around the house.

But from the first day, I found time to write in it. About a thousand words a day. The plot flowed easily, the words found their way to pixels on screen. By the end of four days, I had 5,500 words added to the novel, pushing it to 9,200 words, or just under 25 percent of where I think the word count will end up.

I asked our granddaughter, Elise, to read it, which she did (all but the last 500 words or so), and she loved it. She mentioned certain things that made it good, things she liked to see in a book. So I think I’m on the right track.

We drove home on Wednesday. I’m writing this on Sunday. How many words do you think I’ve added since I got home? None, that’s how many. I made progress with my special projects. I finished one book I was working on both before and during our trip. I did a major amount of yardwork on Saturday. Then I had to prepare to teach our adult Sunday school class, a new series that I developed. That took a fair amount of time on Saturday.

Here it is Sunday evening. I’m brain dead. The microwave quit this morning, only a little over three years old. Lynda has a medical appointment tomorrow. Let me rephrase that. She may have a medical appointment tomorrow. She thinks she cancelled it and we’ll have to check first thing Monday.

So I don’t expect to get lots written either tonight or tomorrow. Maybe Tuesday.

America, family, home improvements, letters, Stars and Stripes

Special Projects Interrupt Writing

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The newspapers have taken over my work table, as well as my writing time.

It has now been close to two weeks since I have done any significant writing. Why? Not writer’s block, but three special projects, things I’m doing that are capturing my time and will soon (hopefully) be done, allowing me to go back to putting words on paper.

I wonder if Dad modeled for any of these Bill Mauldin cartoons.

The first is going through my dad’s Stars and Stripes newspapers from World War 2. I’ve posted before about this collection. Dad, a typesetter before the war, was able to get a transfer from the invasion forces to the G.I. newspaper. In Africa, Italy, and southern France, Dad set type in war areas for more than two years. He sent copies of the papers home and his parents kept them. He took them when he came home and kept them till his death in 1997. He had told me they would be mine.

Publication locations of the “Stars and Stripes”, and the editions, changed during the war as US troops advanced.

I kept them for years, hoping to go through them, to learn more about the war and Dad’s part in it. Alas, too many years have passed without doing that. I’ve decided to donate the collection to the University of Rhode Island. They will preserve them, make them available to researchers. I was to do that in August when we were to drive back there but, alas, had to cancel that trip for health reasons. I decided I would inventory the collection (though URI told me I didn’t have to). At least that would give me a better idea of Dad’s movements through the European Theatre of Operations.

Starting with about 30 issues a day, I slowly did more and more. I’m now down to around 100 to 150 newspapers, having inventoried over 900. This has been hard work, but it’s almost done. The good news is I’ve found a fair number of duplicates, maybe 50 to 80 issues that I will be able to keep and distribute some day to Dad’s grandchildren. That is a manageable number to keep. I anticipate finishing this project before the end of September.

The next project is digitizing my letter collection. I’ve been at this for a year, and can see the end of it—sort of. I keep finding more letters to digitize. Two weeks ago I pulled a notebook off a shelf, a notebook I thought included some magazine essays (not mine) I had printed. Not so. They were copies of e-mails from the late 1990s, emails I had printed and saved then deleted the electronic copies. What was I thinking, right?

Now, to reduce possessions, I’m scanning them, saving them in an organized way. The process is slowed because sometimes the scanner doesn’t produce the letters exactly as they are. So I have to check the text to make sure it’s right in my new electronic file. Then, I’m also converting it to better fonts, spacing, and layout on the page, just in case I want to assemble them into books in the future. This project isn’t that close to being done.

I’ll finish with this notebook in about a month or a little longer. Then, I’ll get to start going through copies of handwritten letters. I’m not looking forward to that, and won’t start it right away. Gotta finish and publish at least one book first.

The end is in sight of this special project, proofreading our Kuwait Letters book.

The third project is also related to letters. Lynda and I are proofreading the Kuwait Letters book that I put together over the last two years. I ordered a proof copy of it, and saw a number of places where there were typos. Our son looked at it last month and suggested I add more photos to it. Our grandson Ezra read in it while he was here in July. One letter that his mom had written when she was not quite seven years old, looked wrong. I looked at the original and, sure enough, I had skipped a line when transcribing. How often had that happened?

So Lynda and I are proofreading it. She reads from the original letter, I follow along in the book and mark whatever changes are needed. There are too many changes needed, showing that I’m not the world’s best transcriber. We are a little over halfway through the book, able to do about ten pages in an hour in the evening. Only 14 or 15 more sessions to go.

Once that’s done, I’ll pick more photos, reformat the book, and see what I have. I also added in five lately found letters, including one taking six or seven pages. The current file is 325 pages. More photos will likely expand it to 340. No, we’ve found a couple of letters that need some editing either due to repetition or the nature of the material. Maybe only 337 pages. I see that all coming together around the middle of November.

C.S. Lewis, critique group, family, Health, letters, miscellaneous, reading, research, Stars and Stripes, The Forest Throne, Writing

A Busy Week Ahead

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I hope to do some writing on the sequel to this this week.

It’s Sunday evening as I write this, multi-tasking as we watch the specials about 9/11. I’m looking ahead to tomorrow, and realize I don’t have time to write the type of post I’d hoped to have for Monday. Even Friday is a little iffy for a post that takes a lot of time.

This is a killer week. Not so Monday and Friday, but the other days have a lot of activities and appointments.

First, I have two “gigs” this week. On Tuesday, I will repeat my presentation on the Universal Postal Union to the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society. I made this presentation in May, but almost everyone who normally attends was gone that day. So I’ll do it again. Fortunately, all I have to do is dust off my PowerPoint and run through it once or twice.

Then, Wednesday morning, I am to be at John Tyson Elementary School in Springdale (40 mile drive), where I will make a presentation of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel to Henry and Izzy, the two students I had Zoom meetings with about a writing project they were doing, then had them be beta readers for my book. They don’t know I’ll be there and giving them the finished book. This will be at 9:00 a.m.

I have several hundred more of these WW2 newspapers to inventory.

Then, at 12:00 noon, I have an appointment with my cardiologist’s P.A. Hopefully I’ll learn how well the cardio rehab program went. Between those two appointments, I’m hoping to meet someone for coffee. We’ll see if that happens.

Then, Wednesday afternoon, Lynda and I have dental appointments. I’ll barely have time to get home after seeing the cardiologist to leave for the dentist. But, unless we head to church that night, that will end appointments on Wednesday.

At noon on Thursday, Lynda will have her MRI to find out what, exactly, caused her sciatica attach in July. That has been twice delayed, not because of us, but because of insurance and provider problems. Then, that evening, is a semi-monthly meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes critique group. I’ll have some preparation time required for that.

In addition to this, I have my normal activities, which at the moment include:

  • morning 2-mile walks
  • digitizing a minimum of 10 printed letters a day
  • inventorying a minimum of 30 issues of the Stars and Stripes
  • whatever writing I can squeeze in, most likely on The Key To Time Travel, though I have other projects to work on as well, if I want to do so.
  • A little bit of yard work, although the work I got done on Saturday puts me a little ahead of where I normally am.
  • reading for research as well as for pleasure, including a couple of C.S. Lewis writings.

At some point, I need to begin the strength exercise program recommended in the cardio rehab program. I hope to begin that on Monday.

So yes, it will be a busy week. Hopefully I’ll be able to see progress on all my tasks.

family, home improvements

Routine Interrupted

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Dateline Sunday, 21 August 2022

If there is anyone who reads this blog regularly, including on days when I don’t make mention of a post on Facebook, they will note that I missed posting last Friday. I can’t think of the last time I totally missed a post. A few times I’ve made a minimal post late in the day. A few other times I did my post a day late. But it’s been a long time since I totally missed one.

Why did I? One reason was our son was here for a week’s visit. A few weeks back, when Lynda’s sciatica came on very strong and debilitating, he was ready to hop on a plan in Chicago and come right down to help out. We advised him not to at that time, and he complied, but he scheduled to come see us at his first opportunity after this. He came last Sunday and left Saturday.

He had to work remotely much of the week—it wasn’t vacation for him. After his workday ended, he helped us in our decluttering process. The main target was the garage. This has become a catchall place for things we wanted to get rid of, but we never seemed to get around to deciding what was trash, what was for donation, and what, if anything, actually needed to go back into the house.

We already had a donation pile. Tuesday we worked around 3 hours, sorting trash from donation vs keepers. We had a full trash barrel and a large donation pile. Wednesday evening early, Charles and I loaded that in the van and took the stuff to Goodwill. Then we worked another three hours. Thursday, I had writing critique group meeting. I worked a little that afternoon on organization, and that evening drove the car into the garage. That hasn’t happened for 15 years.

Friday evening, we drove into Bentonville, took a walk on the Chrystal Bridges Trail, then walked to the square and ate at a somewhat fancy restaurant. At least it was a good restaurant. Then it was walk around a little to find a certain store, then get some ice cream. Saturday, we took Charles to the airport, dropped a few electronic items off at the Benton County recycling facility (for a cost), came home, and relaxed for the rest of the day. I could have written a post then, but I just wanted to read. I also worked on an inside the house project: converting paper files to electronic files. I did that to 10 old letters. This is a long-term project that I do a little on each day, and hope to get done in around a year.

The other reason is that our air conditioner went out. That was last Saturday. We suffered through it until Monday our HVAC guy got here and gave us the bad news: complete replacement, costing in 5 figures. But supply chain issues means we won’t get the replacement for 2 to 4 weeks. Yuck. A man at church loaned us two portable vent-through-the-window unit. On Tuesday our HVAC man loaned us a third, It’s not quite 90 in the house as it was early on Monday, but it’s hotter than normal, and that leads to not feeling like doing much, including things like blog posts.

Now it’s Sunday. I taught Life Group this morning and will head back to the church shortly for a Teams meeting.

Tomorrow, I hope to get back to writing, something I did almost none of last week. Maybe I’ll even take time to write the next couple of posts in my climate change series.

Stay tuned.

America, family, History, memories

Disaccumulation Is Hard: Finding a Home for the “Stars & Stripes”

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Dad’s headline in the VE edition, Marseilles, France.

Dateline 26 July 2022

The day is surely coming when we will sell this big house and downsize into something smaller. Dis-accumulation is in progress. The next big item to go will be my collection of Stars & Stripes newspapers from World War 2.

It’s a lot of newspapers. Maybe as many as 200-300. I haven’t yet counted them.

The collection is mainly newspapers that my dad, Norman V. Todd, set type on as a G.I. during WW2 in Africa and Europe. Dad gave them to be in 1990 and I brought them home in 1997. There they sat. Twenty-five years and I’ve done nothing with them. I had such plans to read them, research them, and come to a better understanding of that war from the perspective of the men fighting it. Alas, that never happened.

I always thought these would be good to research the “fog of war”. How much printed as the war was in progress would be found to be inaccurate or untrue under the scrutiny of history?

Seven years ago I arranged to donate them to the World War 2 museum in Natick, Massachusetts. My first trip to RI since making that arrangement is coming up next month. I e-mailed the museum to confirm they still wanted them. Not receiving an e-mail in response, I called them this morning. The phone was not in service. A quick check on-line revealed that the museum closed in 2019. Bummer.

A wartime portrait, probably 1944. HIs “Stars & Stripes” insignia shows.

I’ll make this story a short one. Where could I donate them? Or was this a sign I should keep them, do that research that eluded me? I had already checked with the big WW2 museum in New Orleans, and they said they didn’t want any S&S. I checked with the S&S seven years ago, and it seems they didn’t need them.

I thought of three possible places: the University of Rhode Island, which has a special collections center at the university library; the University of Chicago, where our son works; and the Newberry Library in Chicago, an independent research library.  This morning I reached out to all three.

The University of Rhode Island got back to me first, and said they would be happy to take the collection. They often have students researching WW2, and this seems to be of value to them.

The trunk is a family heirloom. At least it will stay in the family for another generation, maybe two.

So the deal is complete. Next month these newspapers will find a new home. From 1943 to 1945, they went from Africa, Italy, and France to East Providence, then to Providence. Then in 1950 to Cranston. Then in 1997 to Bentonville Arkansas. Then in 2002 to Bella Vista Arkansas. All this time they have been in a steamer trunk that my grandfather, Oscar Todd, brought with him when he emigrated to the USA in 1910. The trunk will soon be at a different home in a cousin’s family, and the newspapers will be in Kingston RI.

In some ways, this feels like a betrayal, not to keep them in the family. I’m trying to look at it as solidifying Dad’s legacy in a permanent way, but it’s hard to do, and I’ve shed more than a few tears this afternoon on the realization that this piece of Dad will soon be gone.

Ah, well, when Dad first showed me them in 1990 (I had wondered, as a kid, what those trunks in the basement held; I learned then what filled one of them), he said he hadn’t looked at them since that trunk went into the basement in 1950. If they will now be in a place where maybe someone will make good use of them, where they will be protected and preserved, I guess that’s a better outcome. And my children won’t need to make a hard decision one day.

family

Time With Grandchildren

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The first night family was here was a major blackberry picking event.

It’s about time for my post this morning, but I have only 8 minutes before I go upstairs and wake my oldest grandchild, Ephraim, and his friend Carter.  Ephraim, 14 and a long-distance runner in school, wants to run a timed mile this morning (actually, every morning), so I’ll drive the two of them to a high school track and watch. Possibly I’ll walk a 1/4 or 1/2 mile. We’ve doing it early because the forecast temperature today is over 100°.

All the time wasn’t spent on screens.

Last week, we had the three youngest grandchildren with us, and had a good time with them. I meant to do a couple of posts about that, but haven’t. They played and read and spent time on screens. A trip or two ago I established a rule: 30 minutes reading in a book each day (each morning) until they could get their screens. All but the 5 1/2-year-old, who can’t read yet, seem to embrace this rule well. Ezra, the second oldest, does a lot of reading in books without being prompted. He found my book, The Kuwait Years In Letters, and found pleasure reading in it. Elise did too. Of course, they both laughed at their mom’s juvenile letters, at spelling and grammar errors. But, hey, their mom wrote letters as a 7-year-old, and they don’t. End of story.

Only one of the grandkids, Elijah, is still young enough to require help bathing.

Last week we had the three youngest. This week the oldest and his friend. We made the switcheroo on Saturday, driving halfway to their home in West Texas and meeting up with their dad. That was a lot of hours in the car, but time well spent.

So this post is a bit short today, and not focused at all in writing. I have a longer post planned for Friday. We’ll see if the week allows for completing it.

Meals with grandkids can be entertaining.
Christianity, family, memories

100 Years of Life-Giving Community

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A century of life-giving community completed, ready and looking ahead to the next.

Last weekend, over a year and a half of work came to fruition as our church celebrated its Centennial. Actually, it was our 101st anniversary on July 8. We delayed the celebration a year due to a combination of the pandemic and adjacent construction.

We didn’t sell out of the book, but we sold a lot.

I joined the centennial committee in November 2020 at the request of our pastor, mainly to write the church history. But I got involved in other activities. Brainstorming. Planning. Seeking people whose ancestors had roots in the church. The history was written, printed, and issued for sale on May 22nd.

We did the setup for the Sunday banquet on Thursday. I found out then that the special choir for the Sunday service had some people drop out, and the director asked if I had choir experience. I decided I had just enough experience to help them out. One more thing added.

It’s always good to catch your daughter in a candid shot.

The activities started midday Friday with a ribbon cutting ceremony for our re-established food insecurity ministry, reopened in recently constructed quarters and now called the Community Table. The Chamber of Commerce ran this event. I enjoyed finally seeing the building and how the ministry is stocked and managed.

Friday afternoon our daughter, son-in-law, and four grandkids came for the weekend. By that time I was more or less exhausted, so we had a nice meal out for supper. Meetings and events remained.

Good worship with music mostly unfamiliar to me. Lots of energy.

Saturday morning was choir rehearsal. It was kind of nice to sing after a 25-year hiatus from choir. Saturday afternoon was a concert by Remedy, a band from Southern Nazarene University that included two college students from our congregation. It wasn’t my type of music, but the Holy Spirit was present, and worship happened. This took place in our newly constructed space for youth and Hispanic ministries.

David and Pranathi, among the many who helped out.

Sunday was the big day. Choir rehearsal at 9 a.m. To help with transportation (transporting 8 people in two vehicles, our daughter volunteered to sing with the choir and came with me. We were done by 9:45. That gave me time to greet visitors, signed books and helped direct people, especially to Centennial Hall.

Many visited the diorama in “Centennial Hall”.

The service was magnificent. It included special music from the Mitchell family, the choir number with two soloists and great live backing music. We *nailed* the choir special. I was thankful for the strong tenor from the Mitchell family being next to me. There was a time for introducing some out-of-town visitors who attended because of their family connection to the church. And we had a wonderful, apt message from Dr. Jesse Middendorf, former General Superintendent of the denomination.

Dr. Mark Lindstrom, our former pastor/now district superintendent, brings greetings.

Immediately after the service, we had a congregational photo taken in our new sanctuary. Then it was to the gymnasium for a BBQ lunch, with the Mitchell family. We had nearly 300 people for that.

Dr. Middendorf brought the Centennial message.

The final event of the weekend was the dedication of the youth/Hispanic worship space. It turned out to be a 45 minute service, with music in Spanish, responsive readings, scripture readings, the actual dedication, and brief messages from our pastor, district superintendent, and Dr. Middendorf.

They opened the Community Table for anyone who wanted to go through it, and our daughter and granddaughter did (the rest of the family having gone home). We got away at 2:45 pm, a full day.

The final congregational song.

All in all it was a great weekend. Bentonville Community Church of the Nazarene is 101 years old. We actually spent more time looking forward rather than backwards. That was an emphasis I tried to put in the history book as well, making it a Centennial book rather than a strictly history book.

Some of the family had gone home before we thought of the photo booth. And don’t give me grief about not smiling—that IS me smiling.

It’s now time to unwind a little. This week I don’t have to attend any special events. No weekly history post to write. No committee meeting to attend. Instead, we have the three youngest grandchildren with us this week and the oldest grandkid and his friend next week. Time to get back to writing. Ezra and I began work on The Key To Time Travel today.

America, family, miscellaneous

Independence Day

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Another holiday, another non-post post. I had great plans to work about an hour in the yard early this morning before the heat of the day came. But I woke up around 6:15 a.m. with leg cramps, probably from dehydration. Got up and sat in my chair for half an hour. At that point I decided to just have a simple holiday. The yardwork can wait a day or two.

I’m about to enter a very busy week and next weekend. Medical appointments, church Centennial duties, Scribblers & Scribes meeting. Preparing for kids and grandkids to come. Much writing work to do. Too hot to walk outside, so I’ll see if I can get some good minutes on the elliptical.

See you all on Friday, with a book review.

expatriate life, family, History, letters

The Kuwait Years In Letters

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Some time ago, in July 2020 to be more precise, I began transcribing the many letters we had written home from Kuwait, which our families had preserved for us. My original intent for doing this was to preserve the information and the letters themselves. The act of transcribing meant gathering, arranging, typing, and storage.

I wrote about this in several blog posts.

The first post, on getting started.

The second post, on the acceleration of the transcription.

The third post, a brief mention on progress.

The fourth post, on how the project came together.

Yesterday, I received a proof copy of the book. I’ve gone through it and found only two typos and one formatting problem. Of course, spelling and grammar in the originals wasn’t always correct.

In that fourth post, I said I hoped to someday add commentary and photographs and make the project into a book for our family. That day finally came. Two years ago, I said I hoped the book would be 300 pages. It is 299 pages. It contains 181 letters and around 30 photographs. I’m not sure how many of the 103,600 words are the letters and how much is my commentary. I also put in the four blog posts mentioned above as an appendix.

The photos turned out better than I expected.  I’m still learning how to manipulate photos. One of them is dark; I’ll need to figure out how to lighten it, preferably using G.I.M.P. rather than PowerPoint, so I can keep it at a good pixel count. The photos include some of the picture postcards we sent from our trips.

Our villa in Kuwait. I need to work on the back cover still.

Otherwise, there’s not much more to do with this. Make the few corrections, including one to the back cover, publish it, and order three copies: one for us, one for our son, and one for our daughter. Then I will un-publish it so that someone browsing my list of books won’t order one out of curiosity. The grandkids, if they want one of their own…well, that is unlikely to happen until they are older. I’ll worry about it then.

Once this project is over (and it’s really, really close), what next in terms of letters? Maybe transcribe the Saudi years letters? Or start with our juvenalia and go forward from there? We’ll see.