A new big sister

My little student has a brand new baby sister. "What is your baby's name?," we ask. The student answers firmly, "Bah-ba-deer."

Baby Dear? That's what it sounds like. My own little sister had a lifelike, floppy baby doll named Baby Dear in the early Sixties. The doll looked like Eloise Wilkin's illustrations of babies in several Little Golden Books. The doll needed help supporting its head, just like a real baby. The doll also had hair just too tempting to a child who received a pair of left-handed scissors the same Christmas.



I read The New Baby to my sons hundreds of times. My Eloise Wilkin favorite from the Fifties was My Teddy Bear. I had a dress just like the girl on the cover.



Will the new baby really be named "Bah-ba-deer"?


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Newspapers, breakfast, & indigestion

My Dallas Morning News hasn't been arriving early enough for me to scan it at breakfast before I go to work. I need my newspaper to arrive between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. on weekdays, and between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. on weekends. As a hard-core lifetime newspaper subscriber, it really eats my Cheerios when the paper shows up after 6:45 on a weekday.

The day the paper wasn't delivered until 7:20, I called the DMN customer service number and told the woman I was cutting back to the weekend subscription (Friday-Sunday only). Explained to her while she smacked her chewing gum that it really sticks in my craw when the paper is late. She did not know what a craw is, and didn't care.

Waiting for a late newspaper ruins my breakfast. I might as well read the paper online, which cuts down on the recycling. The bad thing is I can't do the crossword puzzle while drinking coffee in bed with an online newspaper.

Some newspapers do more than ruin my breakfast. They cause indigestion. It's been many years since I subscribed to the Plano Unproofread. That newspaper should go straight to papier mache, just as some movies go direct to video without a theater release.

Papier mache translates as chewed paper, but a bird would find the paper stuck in its craw.

My dear old red American Heritage Dictionary has

craw n. 1. The crop of a bird. 2. The stomach of an animal. --stick in the (or one's) craw. To be unacceptable or offensive. [Middle English crawe. Old English craga (unattested). See gwere...


According to Language Log:

IDIOM: stick in (one's) craw To cause one to feel abiding discontent and resentment.

Etymology: like something you cannot swallow, based on the literal meaning of craw (= the throat of a bird) craw

O.E. *cræg "throat," a Gmc. word of obscure origin.

There must be an Aesop's fable to cover this situation... The Editor and the Early Riser, or The Crab and the Craw. I'll check my childhood copy tomorrow morning between 5:30 and 6:30 with a mug of hot coffee in bed.

Perhaps the late papers are a hint that I could check in with my tiny patch of nature out the back door instead of fretting about the news across the nation:

Morning has broken, like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning

Praise for the springing fresh from the world

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven

Like the first dewfall, on the first grass

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden

Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning

Born of the one light, Eden saw play

Praise with elation, praise every morning

God's recreation of the new day


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Ready to cut

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Fine motor/fine costumes

Playing paper dolls required fine motor skills, patience, perserverance, frustration tolerance, imagination and delayed gratification. It would be difficult to find such a twenty-nine cent education in any toys today.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Ballet paper dolls

This book of paper dolls and costumes was published by Whitman, copyright 1955, and cost twenty-nine cents at Kresges over at the Gateway Mall. From the sales slip, which was tucked in the cover folder pocket (for storing your paper tutus), I can tell I purchased it on June 27, but I can't read the year. Since there was a one-cent sales tax on the twenty-nine cents, and another tax-free purchase for a nickel, I bet that I bought the paper dolls in 1967. That was the year Nebraska instituted a general sales tax. A five-cent pack of Wrigley's gum was probably considered "food", and therefore tax-free. I'm guessing Doublemint or Spearmint. By '67 I was tired of the way Juicy Fruit started tasting like pickles after fifteen-twenty minutes of chewing!

4 Ballet Dancing Dolls

Annette Funicello & Audrey Meadows.

Lt. Cmdr. Data? & Kerwin Mathews?

Found this folder of paper dolls on my last trip to Nebraska. Just pretend that the yellowed Scotch tape reinforcements are Ace bandages. As a kid, I thought the female dancers resembled Mouseketeer Annette and Jackie Gleason's wife on The Honeymooners. The male dancers seemed devoid of identity. Perhaps they were androids.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

How long can you tread water?

Came home from work and found red alerts from my Avast antivirus program letting me know that VBS malware was breeding like the rabbits on the ark all over my computer system. Rats! I should have gone to Vacation Bible School instead of weaving those sit-upons at Bluebird Day Camp. Avast.com can't seem to wrestle the VBS worm virus into the quarantine chest because the worms are being used by some computer process to eat holes in my files. Ack!

I knew it would come back to haunt me. This is all because I sometimes put all the pennies into the benevolence side of the First Plymouth Sunday School offering envelope instead of splitting the five or eight cents between the local church expenses and benevolence. Somebody up there was agonna get me eventually. I just expected it to be while I was still wearing itchy petticoats, lace-edged anklets and black patent Mary Janes.

Bill Cosby and my dad taught me how to saw. My dad told me to let gravity do the work. Bill Cosby taught me that sawing should sound like VOO-bah, VOO-bah, VOO-bah... The Lord told Noah to build an ark, and Bill Cosby created a wonderful stand-up routine about their conversation. The VBS malware worm has me peering into the bottom of the computer ark. Who is going to clean up the mess down there?



Two-sided offering envelopes were a strategy for Protestant congregations with regular expenses beginning in the 1920s:

Excerpted from Samuel A. Stein, A Guide in Church Finance, (Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1920), 11-18.

The one and best envelope system to introduce is the Weekly Duplex Envelope System. This system is recognized practically by all Protestant denominations as the most successful method at the present time for congregations to raise money for their own up-keep and for benevolences. ... We solemnly express the opinion that a congregation which fails to introduce the very best possible method in keeping with the tasks imposed by God lags behind in obedience to God's Word.

Here is a sample of the weekly duplex or divided envelope--one for each Sunday in the year. Study the reading.
1. THIS METHOD HELPS TO INTELLIGENT GIVING
The church, at insignificant expense, tells the giver fifty-two times a year what the Lord needs His moneys for; what His moneys are expended for. It answers many questions. In many congregations not half a dozen people half have a clear idea of what is required to support the Kingdom of God in their own midst, and their support is according to their hazy views ...

The system is decidedly educational ... Here is a system that leads up to intelligent giving. It instructs, teaches and informs regularly and repeatedly each contributor as to the needs of God's Kingdom. And it reaches more persons, old and young, than any other method. In the parable of the talents, Matt. 25:14, Christ teaches us to use our money to the best advantage of His Church.

2. THIS METHOD ENCOURAGES CHEERFUL GIVING.
... Cheerful giving ought to flow throughout all the year. The weekly double envelope offers this opportunity. "God loveth a cheerful giver" (2 Cor. 9:7).

3. THIS METHOD ENCOURAGES REGULAR GIVING.
Regularity here means good order. Mild regularity is needed everywhere--in the clock, in the home, in the state, and why not in the church?
What happens in the biggest business concerns if irregularity creeps in? The Church of Christ is the biggest business on this planet. Regularity and good method cannot be separated. A minister, layman, or congregation can accomplish more with good methods than without them. There is a business side to the church ... Method and habit go together. Much of Christian virtue consists in good habits. A good act comes from faith; often repeated it becomes a good habit.

... Many Sunday Schools use the weekly double envelopes. Their use is of great educational value
... Several months ago we read: The envelope system was introduced recently into a leper church in Siam. In imitation of their more fortunate brethren, the lepers with mutilated fingers made their own envelopes out of scraps of white paper from a mission press. On the first Sunday under the new system their offerings increased from 60 cents to $1.44...

4. THIS METHOD ENCOURAGES PERSONAL GIVING.
...The old custom that the head of the family should pay for all is out of date. And why should the husband not give his wife money for the Kingdom of God as well as he gives her money for a new hat? All housewives that have an allowance certainly ought to give to Christ's Church. Then, remember, it is the Christian Church that has given to woman the high place that God wants her to have. Parents give their children money for useful and often even for useless things; why not for the Church?

A certain father was liberal and the main financial supporter of a church. When he died the church was hardly able to survive the financial loss. How about his large family? Oh, the sons and daughters give practically nothing. They were not taught to give. Pa always gave for themThe training feature of the weekly duplex envelope system is great. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Prov. 22:6).

5. THIS METHOD ENCOURAGES RELIGIOUS GIVING.
Giving belongs to true religion. Christian giving is worship. "Honor the Lord with your substance." We worship God by paying as well as by praying. ... Some insist upon paying by the year; but God gives us grace every moment. It seems when the Christian congregation on the day of its Lord hears: "He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich" (2 Cor. 8:9), it ought to respond also with money. The weekly duplex envelopes give the opportunity to all worshippers to give of their substance "upon the first day of the week," "the Lord's day." This is one of the underlying ideas of this method.

6. THIS METHOD ENCOURAGES PROPORTIONATE GIVING.
...God is the owner of all money. He gives it to us. We are not the absolute owners, but stewards. Some of the money God gave us we received for the purpose of using it for the upbuilding of his Kingdom. How much? A percentage need and cannot be stated here--that would be legalism; but this much is certain that we ought to give a fair share of what He gave us. That means, in dollars, much more for the rich man than for the poor. God's Word lays down a certain principle: "Every man should give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which he hath given thee" (Deut. 16:17). "According to ability": "As God hath prospered," "not grudgingly, or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver" (2 Cor. 9:7).

Now, is it reasonable and God-pleasing for a man to hold off bringing an offering to the Lord until some festival, or until six months or the congregational year is up, and then try to figure out what proportionate giving is? Does the good Lord not give to each one every day in the week; and would it not be much more reasonable for him to bring his offerings each Lord's Day? A man says: "I'll pay mine in a lump when the year is up." Suppose he wants to see then how the Lord has prospered him. Well, we do not see how he can see at the end of the year whether or not the Lord has prospered him, if he cannot see it now. Experience shows that he never gives a due portion. Moreover, what right has a man to hold up "his share" for months when the Church of Christ needs it today? ... Many Christians hate to think of the old way of giving. We can see no doctrinal difficulties in the new may. We know the Spirit of God says, "Give as the Lord hath prospered you," and the weekly plan reminds us of this, offers the opportunity for it and encourages us to do so. It makes the service of love easier. Is it right to tempt to covetousness by unsuccessful methods?

Oh, and VBS malware isn't really divine retribution. Visual Basic Script seems to be a handy tool for folks who like to disrupt a wide swath of computer communications and functions. I hope Fat Albert sits on them.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Fry Babies and Weed Whackers

The day after the harvest gold blender leaked all over the place when we were making a fruit smoothie with the preschoolers for their weekly "cooking" activity, Tammy Faye died, and I discovered my Presto hot air corn popper in the deepest recesses of the kitchen cupboard, unused for at least five years. Bumped my head on the cupboard shelf, but I didn't cry, and my mascara didn't run! It just set me off pondering the last thirt-five years of small household appliances, aggravated by the reissue of the recall on Hasbro Easy Bake ovens.

We received a hand-mixer, a blender, and a steam iron in lovely harvest gold as wedding presents. Our first crockpot was avocado green, although I'd probably never even seen an avocado in 1977.

[Lincoln had two "real" Mexican restaurants, one near 11th and Q, and the other near 48th and R streets. We had a new Ticos Restaurant on 17th that still exists, Taco John's and a Taco Bell. Grocery stores had six to eight aisles in that primitive time, and fresh produce selections were not the international, exotic and out-of-season extravaganzas we see now. Except for one brief encounter with Romaine and endive in Mrs. Starr's seventh grade Home Ec class, salad lettuce meant iceberg. Looseleaf was that soggy leaf for decoration under your canned pear half and cottage cheese in the hospital cafeteria. Of course my preschoolers still think lettuce is called "salad".]

We also received a Presto Fry Baby, aka Presto Fry Daddy, Jr. They were very hot items that year, but we exchanged it for a Salton yogurt maker. I didn't use the steam iron much because we were dressing in Dacron polyester and Quiana!



We had an electric skillet, of course, a waffle iron, a Presto electric percolator, and a greasy golden popcorn popper that survived the dorm years. I still had my big yellow hair dryer, although my sister was all about blow dryers, steam rollers, and curling irons. I still had the pink electric blanket my great aunt bought me in 1967, and the electric typewriter I got for high school graduation.



My parents had an electric knife, and an electric charcoal starter for the broiler. My uncle liked to send kitchen Christmas gifts, so they had an electric warming tray, a fondue set, a crepe maker, a wok (whatever for!?)

My new in-laws had an electric can opener for the cat food, a Mr. Coffee, grow lights, a Clairol Foot Fixer, an electric pencil sharpener, a Weedeater, an intercom system, and a new-fangled microwave oven. I held out against microwave ovens until 1985, because I was sure they caused cancer in rats.

By 1980 we all had DustBusters. We still got to choose between a toaster, an electric heating pad, and a bathroom scale when we opened a bank account after moving to Omaha. It would be fifteen more years before I owned a hot glue gun. My ex actually bought one of those Wagner Power Painters seen on cable infomercials, and made a huge mess!

In recent years, at my sons' suggestions, I've acquired an electric coffee grinder, a George Foreman grill, and a toaster oven.

So which ones do I actually use?

Once a day

• Microwave oven
• Mr. Coffee
• Toaster oven

Once a week

• Coffee grinder
• Blender
• Electric skillet
• Wok--not electric

Once a month

• Steam iron
• Blow dryer
• Pencil sharpener
• Hot glue gun
• Crockpot
• Hand mixer

Once a year

• Curling iron

How often do I eat an avocado? Once a week!

Microwave history:

The First "Radarange"

In 1947, Raytheon demonstrated the world's first microwave oven and called it a "Radarange," the winning name in an employee contest. Housed in refrigerator-sized cabinets, the first microwave ovens cost between $2,000 and $3,000. Sometime between 1952-55, Tappan introduced the first home model priced at $1295. In 1965 Raytheon acquired Amana Refrigeration. Two years later, the first countertop, domestic oven was introduced. It was a 100-volt microwave oven, which cost just under $500 and was smaller, safer and more reliable than previous models.

By 1975 Sales of Microwave Ovens Exceeded that of Gas Ranges

Technological advances and further developments led to a microwave oven that was polished and priced for the consumer kitchen. However, there were many myths and fears surrounding these mysterious new electronic "radar ranges." By the seventies, more and more people were finding the benefits of microwave cooking to outweigh the possible risks, and none of them were dying of radiation poisoning, going blind, sterile, or becoming impotent (at least not from using microwave ovens). As fears faded, a swelling wave of acceptance began filtering into the kitchens of America and other countries. Myths were melting away, and doubt was turning into demand.

By 1975, sales of microwave ovens would, for the first time, exceed that of gas ranges. The following year, a reported 17% of all homes in Japan were doing their cooking by microwaves, compared with 4% of the homes in the United States the same year. Before long, though, microwave ovens were adorning the kitchens in over nine million homes, or about 14%, of all the homes in the United States. In 1976, the microwave oven became a more commonly owned kitchen appliance than the dishwasher, reaching nearly 60%, or about 52 million U.S. households. America's cooking habits were being drastically changed by the time and energy-saving convenience of the microwave oven. Once considered a luxury, the microwave oven had developed into a practical necessity for a fast-paced world.

An expanding market has produced a style to suit every taste; a size, shape, and color to fit any kitchen, and a price to please almost every pocketbook. Options and features, such as the addition of convection heat, probe and sensor cooking, meet the needs of virtually every cooking, heating or drying application. Today, the magic of microwave cooking has radiated around the globe, becoming an international phenomenon.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Burchfield's Nature

Thirty-seven years ago I flipped through a TIME magazine and spotted an image that still haunts and inspires me. I tore the story out of the magazine, and filed it in my first file cabinet. That image was Charles E. Burchfield's painting, "Dandelion Seed Heads and the Moon." It felt true to my experiences watching sphinx moths around the honeysuckle, catching fireflies, clover, dandelions, playing hide and seek outside just before bedtime, and spitting watermelon pits in the dark. It was beautiful, eerie, and symbolic.



Charles Burchfield's painting gave me a new way to look at the soft, rich, dark colors of evening, the glows, hums, and flutters against the window screen. It was a wonderful bridge between my personal summertime experiences, and Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

Twenty-five years passed. I became an accidental art teacher and sometime storytime lady. I pasted the Burchfield image on a sheet of paper with another saved image of a dandelion seed head. This week I dug that paper out of an old file to show students.

Children are so involved in organized activities from dawn to dusk now. Do they ever get to sit on the warm concrete driveway watching for sphinx moths, listening to cicadas, watching fireflies, and eating fresh strawberries dipped in powdered sugar? Do they have to register for a team for competitive watermelon pit-spitting or an enrichment class to learn Bing cherry fence crooning? Does anyone have an old canning jar for catching fireflies?

From the 6/15/70 TIME:

"As an artist grows older," Burchfield explained, "he has to fight disillusionment and learn to establish the same relation to nature as an adult as he had when a child." That was no mean task. His greatness was that, through the alchemy of paint, he was able to restore that childhood wonder for others too. As the [Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica, N.Y] Institute's Joseph Trovato put it: "It is not given to any one man to tell the whole story of the world of nature, but Burchfield tells a very important part—a part that touches us all. We will never be able to see the world in the same way again."

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

To hold their pants up

Dad wants to know why crews have spent many hours working on each fire hydrant in the neighborhood just to paint them bright red again. Why red?

This is a good meditation while walking around the neighborhood. I wish Bennett Cerf could stroll with me. I've driven through towns where somebody decided it would be fun to paint the fire hydrants to look like dalmations, or circus clowns, robots, elves, or old-timey policemen.

My theory is that bright red hydrants are invisible to all except those who are looking for a place to connect the fire hose. Hydrants painted like dalmations are cute for the first week, then annoying for the next five years.

What's your theory?




Q. What time is it when an elephant sits on a fence? A. Time to get a new fence.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

The Little Squeegy Bug

Set out to find some children's books about fireflies, and found history as well. My students will be making art relating Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting to our current unit on insects.

Last time I was home with my dad, I was entranced by the nightly firefly show in his backyard. The best evening was the third of July. As neighbors were beginning their family firework fun, Dad's backyard became a haven for rabbits. The rabbits and I watched the fireflies, with occasional dramatic back lighting by fireworks, leaving little bunny silhouettes inside my eyelids.

The Little Squeegy Bug was one of my very first books, and perhaps a baby gift. A plain little bug who wanted a stinger, the little squeegy bug received a lantern to hang from his tail instead. The illustrations had a certain mid-century feel that William Joyce reawakened many years later with his The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs.

My childhood book disintegrated decades ago, and I was stunned to see a new book entitled The Little Squeegy Bug at my library. How dare they!! But the author was Bill Martin, Jr., the author of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, to name just two.

In 1946 two young GIs, Bill Martin, Jr. and his brother Bernard, created the original Little Squeegy Bug as a project for Bernard while he recovered from a war wound. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about the book on September 7, 1946:

Our two little boys came down from the top cottage for supper with me last night and we read a delightful children's book called "Little Squeegy Bug", story of a firefly by Bill and Bernard Martin. The illustrations are just the kind that appeal to children. There is a moral to the tale but it isn't too obvious.

Squeegy is a little "nobody bug" who wants to be like Buzzer, the bumblebee, and carry a gun in his tail. Hunchy, the spider, weaves silver wings so that Squeegy can fly like Buzzer and live at the turn of the road just south of the Moon. But instead of a gun, Hunchy hangs a lantern in Squeegy's tail so that he can be a friend to all the world. Thus he becomes "Squeegy the Firefly, Lamplighter of the Sky."





© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Attracted by the Duplos

Enjoying my leisurely visit to the Dallas Museum of Art, I wandered into the children's area in the Gateway Gallery. My inner child's peripheral vision had spotted a huge pile of Duplos, those preschooler chunky Lego bricks. I can't resist Legos, and these were the pure, basic, clean Duplos with no little people or trees.

Just the other day I did a little lesson with my students about building stronger, sturdier Duplo walls by overlapping like real brick-layers. The phrase that really got through to them was, "put the Bandaid over the cut." We worked together to make Duplo structures that could be picked up without falling apart, and they were purdy amazed. We also made a domed Duplo igloo, and talked about interior space. This seems obvious to you and I, but preschoolers tend to build by piling things up in a dense mound, instead of surrounding and roofing a space.



So I wandered into the Gateway Gallery to see what kids and parents were doing with all the Duplos, and found that the museum was asking visitors about how they connect to the art. There was a questionaire to mark, label styles to rate, and two pieces of art to write our responses. One section of the research asked the visitor (me) to sit in an armchair and put on headphones while I looked at a landscape painting. The audio asked me to focus my attention on different sections of the painting (top, bottom, sides, middle), then close my eyes and see what I remembered in my imagination. The next section involved seeing the foreground, middle-, and background, and then placing myself in those areas of the painting with my eyes closed. Another section asked me to choose the color I was most drawn to in the painting, then imagine being bathed in that color, and recognizing other personal associations to that color. That's an audio tour I could appreciate.

I signed up to receive emails about the results of the study. Participating enhanced my visit. Things to consider:

• Do you like to view art by yourself or with others?
• Do you like to listen to audio tours, attend lectures, or have a guided tour?
• Do you enjoy having music and performances to enhance your appreciation of the art?
• Do you like discussing art with other people?
• Do you feel comfortable explaining an art work and its meaning to other people?
• Do you read labels and explanations as you view an exhibit, or just react to the pieces themselves?
• Do you like interactive computer programs to enhance your understanding of an exhibit?
• Do you read reviews and critiques of exhibits?
• Do you like to write your responses to the art?

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Fabulous Fans

Feeling warm? Take a little mental break and fan your imagination with the current exhibit of Eighteenth century painted fans on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. The twenty-five elaborate fans are part of a collection given the museum by Wendy Reves.

Painted by primarily female artisans looking at an example in front of them, the watercolor and gouache* images include political, biblical, bucolic, wedding, mythological, and travel scenes of great beauty and detail. Fan leaves are of silk, vellum, or parchment. Fan sticks of carved ivory were either imported from India and China, or made by the guild of comb makers and inlayers in Europe. The fan sticks are inlaid with mother-of-pearl, brass, glass or rock crystal, paste gems, tortoiseshell and silver foil. Clearly, these aren't the fans of simple folk. The pamphlet that accompanies the exhibit says a fan like this cost five to ten times the amount of a linen shirt.

A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection
June 17–October 14, 2007 Focus Gallery II

My own fan collection consists of one given me by my Nebraska great aunt, and probably about ninety years old. Its sticks are painted wood. I can't tell what kind of paper the leaf is made of, but it has an opalescent sheen. The design is painted or printed with watercolors and metallic paints.



*Gouache is similar to watercolor, but with chalk or gum added to the mixture of ground pigment and water, making it more opaque. Allegedly easier to control than watercolor, it has a livelier look than tempera. Tempera is also basically ground pigment and water with an egg or egg yolk addition to bind it together. Poster paint is tempera with a binding of gum Arabic or glue instead of egg. Casein, a milk protein, can also be used as a binding. The definitions and boundaries between these paint types are variable.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

August Sasse wisdom

Dont hunt for trouble!

But look for success ---

You will find what you look for --

Dont look for distress --- ---

If you see but your shadow

Remember I pray

That The sun is still shining -

But you are in The way. ----

Dont grumble, dont bluster

Dont dream, and dont shirk -

Dont Think of your worries; ,,

But Think of your work:" ----

The worries, will vanish -

The work will be done -- -- --

For no one, sees his shadow

Who faces The Sun !!! ---

Yours - with Eternal Love :,, your

Mother and Father

Dorothy and August Sasse

October 15th 1911.

Orleans Harlan County

Nebr

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

August Sasse excerpt #2

More from the handwritten biography of my great grandfather:

{In The Year 1879, our daughter Maggie was born but died a few month later;,,}
{The Year 1881 brought us our Son Henry who also died when but a few month old:
So Time passed with Sorrow -- Grief -- ; and happiness; for all of us:" --- --- --- Excepting The Year 1880, we raised fair to good Crops, and with the Childrens help; we got along - pretty well:,, but yet we needed help, for if one on the top of the list got married; it was nessessary, that another Took her place -- -- -- -- -- So on The 11th day of October 1882, our Son Nicolai was born; and promised to take The burden off The old mans shoulders -- -- but that still left your Mother, to carry her big and heavy load: --- --- --- --- --- Therefore kind providence was with us; and on The 15th day of August 1884 our daughter Dorothy was born:,, ---- ---- This made it an even dozen; That the good Lord had given to us;,, and as we now look back over the past; we must say: Father in Heaven we Thank Thee:" Amen!! In The Year 1885, we sold off, our stock on hand; for I was too sickly; to do the farm work any longer -- we rented a house in Orleans, where we lived, untill the fall 1889. When we moved to our farm 2 1/2 miles west of Orleans; and which I had prepared while living in The City. -- -- -- During our residence in Orleans [?] four years;,, I worked in a store --- and one winter I thaught German, to a Class of Eleven;, all grown Men & women. ---- ---- While here I was Thrown down, on my sick bed, for a couple of month, suffering from Neuralgia of The heart. -- and at the same time of Erysipelas over the whole head:'' - What I suffered, when near death door; nobody Knows but me -- and The almighty father in Heaven. From The fall of 1889 untill The spring of 1910. we lived on our farm, west of town; Then we moved into one of our houses; which we had built in 1909. and where we now live happy and Contended -- -- spending our old age, in peacefull retirement, and will not go forth, to any other home, untill The good Lord says:,, Come!! --- --- Now in conclusion, of This short:; and yet long life -- of your old parents -- -- let me say to you, our dear Children ; That at all times, we never looked for trouble in The future!! We always took the bright side , of happennings, as they came to us ; and were always trying to face The Sun: So That we couldnt see any shadow! -- -- And to you each and every one we would say : Always try and face The Sun!!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder