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CELEBRATE MAY DAY TODAY

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Celebrate May Day the “Old Fashioned Way.”

Find a nine-inch square of paper. When I was a child we used scraps

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MAY DAY BOUQUET

of wallpaper. Today I chose a piece of colored computer paper

1. Fold it into a triangle

2. With the fold toward you take one of the points and fold it to the middle of opposite edge.

3. Do the same with the other point.

4. Now fold the front flap of the top into the front bottom cup.

5. Poke or punch a hole into the top flap.

Now go outside and find flowers – even dandelions will be pretty. Tuck them into the pocket or cup you have made.

 

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HOW TO FOLD

As children we would hang them on a friend’s door, knock, and then run and hide. The person coming to the door was surprised and hunted down the giver to thank them with a kiss.

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You can use this cup for many things. It will hold a drink for a short time.

As a teacher, I always made them for children who lost a tooth at school. It could be safely stored in a lunch pail or coat pocket for the tooth fairy.

Mostly I remember the fun we had making these baskets at school and then going home to search for flowers. I’d beg my mother to let me go down by the creek where I knew the May flowers were in blossom along with purple, white, and yellow violets. I never really went alone because Chum, our cowdog, would not let me. He assumed the duty of protecting me no matter wherever I wandered.

Resolutions: Old or New

Image ~ ~ lakeafton ~ 2 Comments

Is it too late to come up with New Year’s Resolutions?

Have two.

One, I will blog more consistently. So I’m already behind here. How about twice a month, rather than once a week? Perhaps I can do this. I will try. Sometimes, probably usually, it’s just that I don’t open a new document and type an  idea that’s been floating around in my brain.

Two, I will get my manuscripts out to agents and editors. I find this more difficult than writing the story to begin with. I don’t mind editing and rewriting. I see my manuscripts and writing improving as I do them. But preparing that query, synopsis, cover letter? Those are very difficult.

TODAY

As I contemplated what I’d do today, I studied the photo of my great grandfather Van Steenbergh that hangs in my bedroom. He was born in 1849.  His great great grandfather Van Steenberghen was born in New York in 1704.  How different were their lives than mine. How different my great grandchildren’s lives will be. Each generation has its own tale of modernity.

My great grandfather traveled mainly by horse and buggy, although cars were popular when he died in 1935.  In my lifetime local travel has always been driven vehicles and planes for long distance. Now driverless vehicles are new.

Who knows what local travel will be for my great grandchildren. I have long dreamed of travel on a highway in a vehicle that would be primarily on a highway to take you from place to place while as a passenger I read, talk, play a game or nap. Then at my destination, my vehicle would be exited on a ramp where I would take control to go to a particular address. All of this technology is available now. Then again travel might be something yet undreamed.

 

 

AHUAS, HONDURAS

Image ~ ~ lakeafton ~ 1 Comment

In the early summer of 2003, I saw an ad in our Reformed Church Magazine that said an elementary teacher was urgently needed in Honduras. I was an elementary teacher.

I went into my husband’s office and said, “Would you like to go to Honduras?”

“No.”

I wanted to go and gently persuaded and bribed Richard to agree. We left Syracuse on October 1 at six in the morning and arrived inHonduras’s third largest city, Le Ceiba (which is the name of a tree), about five in the afternoon. The airport there was closing and the person we expected to pick us up had not arrived. Finally, a kind taxi driver, who knew our contact, took us to her house and then us to the Hotel Paris in center city.

We’d left Syracuse on a large jet and after three plane changes, arrived on a thirty passenger plane.  Two mornings later we left LaCeiba on an eighteen passenger plane that was half filled is boxes and cases of things. We made an intermittent stop on a grassy field after buzzing it to make sure there were no cattle in the way. We were invited to get off the plane, while they unloaded stuff. Back on the plane we landed a short time later in Ahuas. We were greeted by one of the two doctors of the hospital.

As Richard stepped from the plane it was into a cowflop. Dr. Gerard walked us to our new home a hundred yards from the airport. Other men from the hospital compound had been there and grabbed our suitcases for us.

Our house and the doctors’ home formed a triangle  with about fifty-foot sides. At ten in the morning the heat was already building to be brought down later in the afternoon with a sudden shower.

The hospital is a mission of the Moravian church and the Reformed Church in America. I was there to teach the doctors’ son. Our home had a classroom, kitchen, dining area, living room, two bedrooms and two bathrooms and a wonderful screened porch the full length of its front. Sufficient, yes. Luxurious, no.

Looking across from the hospital were several cabins where relatives of patients stayed to care for them, such as providing the patients’ meals.

Two four-passenger airplanes flew up to twenty flights a day bringing and taking to and from the hospital. Both pilots were missionaries and assisted by local mechanics.

I taught three children, Peter and Hazel in first grade, and Toby in kindergarten. Having taught first grade seven years, I designed my own materials using whatever books were available. When six months had passed, Peter and Hazel could read, write, and do required math. Toby, whose parents were Norwegian missionaries, had learned all the English sounds and was well on his way to be a reader in English, as well as Norwegian.