If I’d never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds,” I wouldn’t have fallen on my back a couple of Fridays ago. Some of you may remember the movie – thousands of birds swooped all over a village, down chimneys into houses, terrorizing, among others, Tippi Hedren, who screamed prettily yet maintained her perfect hairdo throughout […]
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Remember when, remember when . . . Labor Day weekend for the past few years has become a time when our offspring converge here from California, Minnesota and southern Iowa. This year, four/fifths of our children made it. Offspring #5 had just started his first week of teaching English in a new school, so he […]
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Paying for Poor Performance Every year, we read stories of corporate Board of Directors firing a senior executive for unsatisfactory performance and then paying the executive millions of dollars upon his or her departure. Usually, the story talks about a Chief Executive Officer but sometimes it is another executive. Excessive payments to departing executives are […]
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Once upon a time, I thought I would become a nun. I was six years old and had a sweet young teacher in first grade – Sister Ethel. My vocation lasted an hour or so, until I decided being a cowboy would be more fun. We never used the term “cowgirl” back then. Roy Rogers […]
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Pies and Such Our church put out an S.O.S. last week, asking members to please bake more pies for our fair stand. It seems the ones on hand were going like hot cakes – or hot pies – or hot somethings. Everyone who had a piece of pie at our church stand can be extremely […]
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I made my once-or-twice-a-summer overnight visit to Okoboji last week. When I was younger, the visits extended over weeks at a time. My cousin, Margaret Ann, spent the whole summer with her family at their cottage and, since we are close in age (she’ll tell you I’m several months older, but she lies), I was […]
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Sometimes catching something that is highly desired involves creativity, flexibility, and even a clever sense of definition. There is a story about a salesman who wanted a dog and was driving through a rural area. A sign outside a rundown house proclaimed, “dog for sale.” The salesman knocked on the door and was introduced to […]
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Our five offspring have had a tough time with Father’s Day in the past three years since Bing died. They miss him every day, as do I, but the June celebration is a poignant reminder of what a wonderful part of their lives he was. I’ve tried to think of how to make the day […]
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