My mother, Edythe (Bergstrom) McAlllister, died in July of 1950, two months before I started first grade at St. Sabina’s grammar school in Chicago. She died from a blood clot after a gall bladder operation. I was devastated. My brother, Danny, and my dad took over the household duties. In the summertime my Aunt Margie […]
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“Canned tomatoes are like summer saved- all that deep sun kissed flavor ready to be enjoyed.” -Better Home & Gardens As the summer sky turned dark, stars burst overhead with pinpoint lights. Crickets strummed their tunes with the rhythm of bullfrogs as bass. Traffic noises all but disappeared in the sleepy town of Fort Atkinson, […]
It is difficult to write about another shooting in a school. Unfortunately, in America, this type of tragedy has become far too common, but not less horrifying. Less than a year after the unspeakable events in Sandy Hook School in Newton, Conneticut, the sounds of gunfire invade the Middle School in Sparks, Nevada. Not urban […]
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“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” -Albert Einstein My quilting friends, Carolyn, Diane, Joyce and Jan, feel alive when the sewing machine is whirring, the pedal meets the metal, unique fabric flows between their fingers, and coffee brews nearby. Minutes melt into hours as the pieces slide over the […]
“Without the aid of home front women warriors, maintaining the needs of the country and the military during the war would have been impossible.” – Sue Reich The Grannies Quilt The call for quilts to help in the war effort fell onto the ears of many on the home front who knew how to wield […]
Philip Schubert is the meanest teacher in the world. I know, because I was in his Speech Class during my sophomore year at Fort Atkinson High School inWisconsin. The whole idea of taking speech class, a required subject, terrified me. You see,Fort High was exactly the seventh school that I had attended in three different […]
“Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.” -Natalie Goldberg Remember learning about the Hierarchy of Needs developed by a psychologist named Abraham Maslow? As a college student with a bent for creativity, it bothered me when Maslow predicted that most people would never get to […]
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One of the college courses that captured my imagination was The History and Philosophy of Education. Yes, it sounds mind-numbing, or like a session of fingernails scraping a chalkboard, but our professor told stories. He regaled a class of rural students with the lives of real educators who practically clawed their way through challenges to get to […]
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“I started a school with a dollar and fifty cents, five little girls, and faith in God.” – Mary McLeod Bethune History and Philosophy of Education was a class that was never dull. Although the teacher’s name escapes me, the stories he told of early educators enthralled my imagination and sparked a desire to follow […]
Mary Jane Butters is teaching the next generation of farmerettes and young cultivators how to embrace the land and survive. She runs an 80 acre spread in Moscow, Idaho that provides a line of packaged organic foods that she sells online. On this plot of dirt, she also customizes a non-profit educational program that offers […]