Jotting Joan

In our country school miles from the nearest book store, each class received a monthly Scholastic Book Services list of age-appropriate books. I relished reading each book’s tantalizing, if brief, description and often ordered a book or two with my allowance.

The older students received a different list of books, so we always had plenty of wish lists to consider. One day my year-older brother gave me a couple of quarters to order a book from my sheet that his class sheet had not included. I had not selected any books that time, so I tucked his order in my pocket and headed for the school bus.
By the time we arrived at school, I could not find his quarters. Embarrassed with my lack of diligence in carrying his quarters to school, I told him my problem. He did not say a thing. He did not even raise his eyebrows. He just handed me another two quarters and I ordered the book for him.

Several years ago I saw that same quiet grace in action in the days after my father died. As the oldest, he quietly settled differences of opinions about how things should be done. And then he planned one more thing: a memorial service, not as part of the funeral, but a gathering of family and friends who wanted to just sit and visit after the funeral and funeral dinner. He arranged for a piano player to play one verse of the old hymns we all had known as children and with a smile insisted we sing only “one verse. Just one verse.”

Between hymns he invited comments on Dad or growing up together as siblings, cousins and friends. None of us professed to have the perfect father. We knew his flaws, but we also remembered that when it came to family game night, Dad pulled out the Monopoly board or set up the ping pong net. Many Sunday mornings we woke up to Mom quickly assemblying a picnic lunch at Dad’s behest.

The cousins remembered working the farm together. We remembered the good times and put the perspective of time onto the other times.

And now my big brother has done it again. With his early retirement and a part-time contracting job that left his evenings unencumbered, Mel used his spare time to write down eight different lessons he really wanted to share with his grandchildren – lessons that have grown into a Bible Study type of book for others to use.
On the bookseller’s website at http://melhibbard.tateauthor.com my brother described his writing process and gave a brief description of the book.

Several years ago while teaching the adult Sunday School class at our church, my father- and mother-in-law suggested I should write a book. The topic we were covering on that particular day was about how to conduct ourselves at work. That thought lingered in the back of my mind for a couple years.

I decided it was time to give it a try. So with those writing skills taught in seventh and eighth grade in a small country school, I put together an outline based on seven key points from Psalm 37. That outline sat on my desk for another three years. Then in February of 2012 I had three weeks of free time to put the outline to words. When it was done it became the “Eight Heavenly Focused Work Habits.”

“You just need to reach down within yourself and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Over 30-plus years of adult education, whether a one-day seminar or several weeks of training, have taught me the answer to self-improvement is you. You make the adjustment that is needed, improve your weaknesses, and grow your strengths. However, as believers, we have a truth that goes way beyond man’s understanding. All we need to do is follow the wisdom of Proverbs 3:6, “In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy path.” In all our ways, work, friends, home, church, recreation, etc., no matter what we are doing, we need to let the Lord control our ways. Living by those words is a lifelong commitment that is never taught in typical adult education.”

“This book takes eight of the Godly actions discussed in Psalm 37 and applies them to everyday life situations. Each chapter discusses one of the actions with supporting verses and illustrations from my personal experiences. My prayer is that people will better understand some of our Heavenly Father’s desires for daily walk as we serve Him.”
That is my brother, a man described as “Mel Hibbard has an bachelor’s degree in engineering technology and has worked in both engineering and operations for 35 years. He lives in Canisteo, New York, with his wife and is actively involved with his church, where he teaches Sunday school and serves as a deacon.”

I bought a copy of “Eight Heavenly Focused Work Habits” online at tatepublishing.com/bookstore – and because I used my credit card, I did not lose any quarters.

By Joan Hershberger
jhershberger@eldoradonews.com

Years ago I ran across a quote that reflects my interests and my passion: “I have always imagined that paradise will be a sort of library,” by Burge. I chose the thought as the theme for our living room when we re-decorated it several years ago. The quote fit the room and my lifestyle perfectly. I wanted to use it on a cross stitch picture that would balance a completed cross stitch I had found at a yard sale.

I wanted a picture of books. Pulling out box after box of cross stitch patterns, I flipped through pages searching for cross stitch patterns of books. I found a couple of very small pieces that would fit onto a bookmark, but they were hardly adequate for a wall hanging. A larger pattern of a stack of three or four books seemed too squat and simplistic for what I envisioned. I could expand on the pattern, but I did not like the look.
I consulted my husband about my dilemma – after all, he does have about 30 hours of college credit in art.

“Take three shades of any color: stitch a couple rows of dark on the right, a few rows of the main color in the center, then a row of light and back to one row of the main color,” he said. With a darker outlining thread, a few strands of metallic thread for the band found on hardback books and I filled my shelf with 16 books.

I would like to say that I sat down and thought about all the colors and sizes of the books. I didn’t. In fact, I began by stitching the border to match the size of the framed cross stitch piece I already owned. Then I began stitching whatever looked good. Tall books, short books, some fat, some thin and some in-between. Whatever looked good to me.

The finished, filled bookshelf pleased me, but the books needed titles. For a while, I puzzled over what to write on the back of the books: the names of my favorite authors, the names of my favorite books, all the places I had lived or attended school? I realized I did not want any of those. I wanted the books titled with the names of my children and their spouses.
My husband framed it and we hung it on the wall.

There it hung until I saw a contest at The Stitcher’s Workshop in Norphlet for completed work. I had to share this piece. Several folks saw it and asked the owner, Pat Dugan, for a copy of the pattern to stitch their own family bookshelf.

Dugan had to tell each one that there was no pattern.
And that’s where things stood until a couple of years ago when again someone asked how they could replicate the pattern. Pat and I happened to be in the same room. I said, “I don’t know how to make a pattern. I just made it up as I stitched it.”
“I know how to make a pattern,” Pat said. I gave her the framed picture and permission to replicate it.

She took it back to her shop and began working out the details of the colors of the thread, charting where each color of stitch needed to be and the quote that I had used to frame the shelf. With the chart carefully charted in black and white, she asked Kerri Tittle to replicate it to verify the chart and to stitch Pat’s family members’ names onto the back of the completed books. It looks like my original design, but with the finesse of an expert stitcher. I tend to wind the threads when I stitch.

Pat copyrighted the chart under her new design name “APH-Design,” found a distributor for the pattern and printed out a bundle of covers, patterns and pictures of the completed project neatly framed by her husband, Bill Dugan, who frames pieces for many of her customers.
In a recent conversation she explained that my haphazard way of developing a picture tends to be the way that many designs in needlework have been developed. Someone wants something, has an idea and they begin stitching. Only afterward do they chart the results for others to replicate.
Pat Dugan has been working with needlework of all varieties for the last 20 years. She began in South Carolina and re-opened her shop in Union County when her husband was asked to move here to help set up and establish Pacific MDF. Her knowledge and expertise became the basis for naming her new business APH-Design.

“It began in Atlanta when I had a little shop with several women who came to stitch. My son would come in after work and talk. When I bought a brand new Windows 95 computer and had to set up my first email account, I had to choose an email address. He suggested ‘askpathow’ because he said he was always hearing the stitchers say ‘I don’t know how to do it, ask Pat how.’”
“I still have a couple emails with that as my name,” she said. “My whole career in needlework has been working with charting and designs.” She went on to describe the technical difficulties she encountered in developing her first chart using a computer.

Only then did I realize that literally, my first cross stitch design was her first venture into the world of charting on a computer and her first design for APH-Design. With this chart and some others that she has lined up to be charted and printed, Pat Dugan of The Stitcher’s Workshop in Norphlet  launches a new branch of her business this month – creating and selling needlework patterns.

Through a couple decades in the business she knows that interest in various forms of needlework wax and wane; styles come and go and personal abilities vary. While shoppers can still find the intricate patterns popular 20 and 30 years ago, the current trend has shifted towards more simplistic, folk art patterns that can be completed in an evening or two.

My pattern, which Pat called, “Reader’s Paradise” (and many other needlework options) can be purchased at The Stitcher’s Workshop, 104 Kennedy Road in Norphlet. Or you can order online at stitchersworkshop.com or email her at pat@stitchersworkshop.com or call her at 546-2272.

One of the hardest parts of parenting requires that we stand back and do nothing while we watch our children struggle out of the cocoon of immaturity and let them stretch, reach and flap their wings until they are strong enough to fly.

We may want to peel the shell away from the baby chick pecking its way free, but the process uniquely strengthens and prepares them for freedom. The butterfly’s struggle to leave the cocoon pumps fluids into its wings so it can fly.

As an overprotective mom, I want to detail every step of my child’s path through life. As a pragmatic mom, I stand back.

As a wealthy mom, I want to reach deep and make all their financial problems disappear. As an observant mom, I know that is not necessarily the best solution. I remember that 97 percent of the winners of lotteries eventually found themselves in worse conditions financially. The money comes, the money goes, because they missed the hard-won lessons of struggling to stretch a dollar, of learning to say “no” to impulse purchases.
The harsh reality of life hits early.

For my grandson entering kindergarten this year, it came the second week of school. He really enjoyed the first week with all the new toys, the new friends, and being a big boy going to school. But nothing in life happens without a few glitches. Now he had to learn the rules of the new adult in his life, the teacher. She wanted him to sit down at certain times, to move on to other activities, to realize that in school we do not lay down on the floor to do the work and we say “yes ma’am” even when we feel like “no ma’am.”

Students who fail to comply get a slip of paper to take home to their parents. Two or three slips of paper is not good. His mom promised him a reward if he only brought home a few warning slips.

He did pretty good, but by the middle of his second week of school, he started the day out crying.
“Why are you crying?” his mom asked him. “Tell me what the problem is.”
“I have to be good all day!” he cried.

As much as his mother might want to take it all back, to keep him home and just teach him his letters and numbers, to go and tell the teacher to take it easy on her kid, he needs the lesson of plodding through the five or six hours of dealing with other people. He needs the discipline of learning to live in a world where he must be “be good all day” and finding a place to be “not so good.”

His little sister struggled with the same lesson.

Mom cannot make everything okay all day. She needs time to herself. So my daughter began setting aside time to gather her thoughts when her husband can parent the children. If they have a need, he is there. If they just want to sit and be cuddled, he is there.
But for the pre-schooler that was not enough. As she screamed her protest her dad asked, “what is wrong?”

“I want to be selfish. I want Mom. Now.”
She did not get Mom. Instead she had to accept her father’s comfort and allow her mother time to rest.

Encouraging our children to move out of the cocoon of their comfort zone feels miserable during the process, but such a blessing, such freedom, such pride when they discover their wings and fly.

Or as Trina Paulus writes in Hope for the Flowers:
“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked.

“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer at the El Dorado News-Times.)

The time has come for spring cleaning, but don’t just trash everything because you are tired of it. Call the Salvation Army, Goodwill, the Recovery Thrift Store, the St. Agnes Thrift Store or any thrift shop and find out if they will accept the items. Find out if there is a place that will take the unwanted clothing and bundle it to send to be recycled. Set up an appointment with Clean Harbors to take your hazardous household waste.

Don’t send it to the landfill … instead, fill up the thrift stores and the recycling bins. Ask yourself, is it really trash, or is it an opportunity?

In 1990, Zhang Yin, now one of mainland China’s richest persons, started collecting wastepaper from Los Angeles and shipping it to China to make the cardboard needed by growing export industries. Her company, Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd., became China’s biggest packaging maker. Zhang’s fortune placed her on Forbes list of the richest people in the world. She made the list because she saw treasure where others saw trash.
Just because you don’t want something does not mean someone else won’t want it, or have a way to use it. The poverty stricken garbage pickers in Paraguay (who salvage the garbage of the wealthy) uncovered a violin in the city dump and discovered music. Since then they began building violins, violas, even wind instruments from trash and became a small orchestra of 20 students who play instruments made from oil barrels, bottle caps and other odds and ends of unwanted materials. Via clips on YouTube they share their music with the world.

The greatest generation – those who lived through World War II – spent their childhood gathering goods for paper and metal drives and tending victory gardens. Early in life they learned the value of recycling and re-using.

In America we use disposable dishes for meals, but in Indonesia even at the food courts at the mall, customers return the trays, plates, silverware and glasses to a central collection point to be washed and sanitized for re-use. Not only do they reduce the landfill collection, they provide employment for the dishwashers.

So you have outgrown or lost interest in that outfit or shirt. Donate it to one of the thrift shops in town. What they cannot sell goes to regions of the world where just having something to wear will be most welcome. If it really is beyond repair or use, it can be shredded and recycled.

Take the books that you have and recycle them. Christian literature can be donated to Love Packages in Butler, Ill. They have already sent out 200 tons of literature this year. The program began with one man wondering what to do with the books and literature he no longer wanted. His missionary friends welcomed it. Those few packages he shipped 40 years ago have multiplied into Love Packages for which the organization accepts and sorts literature and then fills huge shipping containers that it exports every week.

Or, take books to the thrift stores, donate them to book dealers, sell or swap them online at Amazon.com or Abebooks.com.

Green Marketing LLC decided to bridge the gap between recycling and unused book donations at Goodwill of Columbus, Ohio. Previously, books that could not be sold made their way to the landfills. The company found a way to turn old, worn out pages into pulp, which can then be turned into consumer goods like paper towels, tissue and toilet paper through their sister company book-destruction.com. The books are stockpiled at the distribution center. When they have a truckload, Green Marketing LLC purchases the books by the ton. The company hopes to collect around 40,000 pounds of unused books a month, which can then be sold anywhere from $15 to $80 a ton, according to the article.

Just as books become outdated and no longer wanted, so do the technology and tools we use every day. Check the Internet for a system that recycles the hardware before adding it to the landfill. Many urban areas insist that individual households recycle glass, metal, paper and plastic.

The average person has eight, one-use plastic items in their hands every day. Think you are an exception? I did until I realized I had overlooked the plastic bag holding the lettuce, the plastic fork I used at a meal because I could not find the metal fork I took to work and the condiment package.

At a yard sale in an upscale neighborhood, the woman said her husband had urged her to just toss the stuff the family did not want anymore. Many items looked brand new. All of them were items that many families on lower incomes or with restricted financial means would welcome the opportunity to purchase at yard sale prices, to find at a thrift shop or receive through Freecycle.org.

Be kind to your world, recycle.

They lied. Lied to protect their tiny daughter, Amillia Sonja Taylor, born October 24, 2006, a mere 21 weeks and six days after her in vitro conception. At birth she weighed under 10 ounces, and stretched a whole 9.5 inches long. The first child of Sonja and Eddie Taylor, from Homestead, Fla., Amillia is among the youngest babies recorded to survive.
The Taylors told the medical doctors at the time of her too-early arrival that Amillia was 24 weeks past her conception date. They lied because they wanted to make sure the medical staff would not assume she was too young to live. They corrected their lie after Amillia proved she could live.
Amillia was conceived by in vitro fertilization “which made it possible to pinpoint her exact time in the womb, and was delivered by Caesarean section,” the Associated Press reported.
“Amillia was born with a mild brain hemorrhage, respiratory problems and digestive problems, but her doctor, William Smalling, said she showed a strong will to live.”
Her parents appeared on Good Morning America (GMA).
“This baby showed signs of being viable at the time of delivery, which means she showed signs that she was mature enough to survive,” Smalling told GMA. “She made efforts at breathing, [an] attempt to cry at birth. So when she was assessed at the delivery, she showed signs that she may have been mature enough to survive, and she proved us right.”
“She’s truly a miracle baby,” Dr. Smalling, a neo-natal expert, told the BBC. “We weren’t too optimistic. But she proved us all wrong,” he added.
Dr. Paul Fassbach, who cared for Amillia since her second day, said, Amillia’s name joins 100 other of the smallest premature babies who survived and now thrive thanks to medical intervention that helped them live.
Ironically, while medical scientists continue to work to improve the survival rate of even the youngest, prematurely born children, on March 27 Alisa LaPolt Snow, the Planned Parenthood lobbyist in Florida, testified before Florida state legislators considering a bill meant to protect a baby born alive after a botched abortion from dying.
The video of her video testimony has gone viral on YouTube. She refused to acknowledge that a breathing child should be given every possible assistance available to ensure it kept breathing and further contended it might be a problematic if the breathing infant were 45 minutes from a hospital.
She carefully stated that an abortion that results in breathing child remains an issue between the patient and the health care provider. When the legislator asked, “I think that at that point the patient would be the child struggling on the table, wouldn’t you agree?”“That’s a very good question, I don’t know how to answer that,” Snow responded.
LaPlot had no answer to the breathing child of an abortion, but for three decades, at least one physician, Dr. Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia, Penn., had his own answer to that question. He is accused of taking aggressive measures, and dictating to his assistants to do the same, to make sure that no child survived the abortion procedure at his clinic. According to the AP story, “Gosnell is charged in the deaths of seven babies and the 2009 overdose death of a 41-year-old patient. Authorities allege the babies were killed using scissors.”
His trial began five weeks ago and is expected to continue for several more weeks. Already seven former employees have been convicted in the case. One former employee, unlicensed doctor Stephen Massof, has pled guilty to two counts of third-degree murder. Massof testified that Gosnell taught him to cut the necks of babies after they were born to ensure the babies died.
The dichotomy in this ongoing contention to protect the most vulnerable of our nation continues. In one hospital pediatric specialists employ every modern invention and technique possible to sustain the life of the youngest and most fragile of infants. Across the city in an abortion clinic, medical providers could legally make sure that same child did not survive.
In legislative halls at the state and federal capitals, with great dignity and carefully phrased responses, abortion advocates refuse to admit what the courts of Pennyslvania have already acknowledged: Abortion is murder and that little ones like Amillia prove it time and again. Without medical and legislative interference, allowed to stay in utero the full nine months, the 1.2 million children aborted each year would live.
They just need parents as determined as the Taylors and medical support to keep them alive to ensure that they have a chance.

A couple years ago my son, Merton Hershberger, began working at a community mental health agency as a peer support counselor. He recently described to me the physical benefits as well as the financial benefits already seen in this pilot program.
From the late 1950’s to the early 1970’s, across the country, governments were setting up community mental health agencies (CMHs). While for some it was an improvement over asylums, for others, it simply meant a change in residence. It did not end the fact of their diagnosis with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic-depression), chronic depression, anxiety or some other host of problems.
In fact, recent studies have shown that people who receive services through CMHs die, on average, 25 years younger than the rest of the population. There are several factors: people with serious mental health challenges are more likely to be obese, smoke and abuse alcohol, aside from a higher rate of suicide. Poor mental health tends to lead to a lack of ability to focus on other areas of health.
As this fact came to the surface and the startling barriers to recovery were faced, beginning in 2009, federal grants to facilitate integrated health in these CMHs were given.
Washtenaw County in Michigan is the home of a forensic psychiatric hospital, three inpatient psychiatric hospitals and a Community Mental Health Agency, along with a couple of schools for social work and graduate psychology and psychiatry programs. It is a great place to get sick if you have a mental illness.
However, people with a mental illnesses tend to die younger and that is not so great as was underscored with the recent news that another agency client died. My job is to help reverse those trends, and we are seeing SOME progress.
Michigan is a national leader in equipping those with a history of mental illness to give back by opening the door of employment for those who are further along the road to recovery to share their lives and stories and hope with others.
For several years, the CMH in Washtenaw County has had an Integrated Health program which sought to address chronic health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and respiratory disease (often caused by smoking), as well as prevention and now substance abuse. While there are other issues that have been addressed, these are what helped lay the foundation of a bridge from mental illness to creating a medical home and giving broader access to mental health services.
We are finding that as we engage with clients on a personal basis, whether our role is as a nurse, dietitian, nurse practitioner or peer, people are recovering.
Sometimes people are hard to reach or will not return phone calls, but those who respond to our interaction are more likely to get better as they walk with us on the road to recovery.
I have seen people become more active physically in taking walks, working and biking. I have seen people make reductions in their smoking habits and choose healthier diets and lose weight.
I have even seen one fellow get to the point where he no longer needed diabetic medication. Another is frequenting the hospital far less and visiting the doctor and making safer, healthier decisions that have led to weight loss and greater involvement in the community. Another has become a deacon in his church and said he feels better now than ever before.
Clients are being hospitalized less frequently and, consequently, they are using fewer government dollars. So while it did require some initial government aid, in the end, it is costing less. The investment in health is paying off.
There is no magic formula. We cannot mass produce this. While we teach classes, this is not where the most change happens. Statistically, when we give personal attention to those who are most vulnerable, they get better.
Whether we as peers are taking folks to food banks to get enough food or walking with them through the park, or just hearing them recount their series of medical dilemmas and going to appointments to advocate for them, people are realizing that they count. Their lives and their choices matter. Those we serve are coming to value themselves and their role in the community.
We are also connecting people to new resources and information so that they can improve their own health and wellness. We are helping them access their own medical records so that they can take even more personal ownership of their health.
Some peers focus on helping people get free of addictions. There is also a registered dietitian who works with clients to create meal plans and to guide in managing diabetes and weight. A nurse practitioner sees clients without insurance for non-emergent concerns. Nurse case managers educate and assist clients with a wide range of appointments and medical concerns.
The team provides an extra set of eyes and ears for the case managers. When they are unaware of what is going on, we let them know.
The purpose of the team reminds me of another team assembled by a wise leader. He sent them out two by two to heal the sick and remove the spirits which would afflict. He also said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In walking with them, He showed the way. Indeed, He is the Way, and He walks among us still.

(Writing with her son, Merton, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)

“Come and see my really cool room,” my grandson greeted me. I followed him upstairs to his room. He proudly pointed out a corner filled with his treasures, the map on his wall, the knick-knacks on his dresser and the clothesline weighed down with childish drawings in the hall between his room and his sister’s.
The lad obviously comes from our family. The minute folks walk in the door, my husband drags them to see his newest woodworking project: a cutting board, recently hung pictures or a newly trimmed hedge.
During the year he built his shop, he wanted folks to come see the project and its progress. Once he finished it, he invited everyone to come explore its interior. If he wasn’t home when we had guests, he asked me if guests had seen his shop.
I understand his compulsion. He spent many hours planning, preparing and putting it together. The building reflects his skills and ideas. He wants folks to admire his efforts, just as he has since the first 10 years of our marriage when he re-modeled our century old home. He began with a new roof to stop the rain from drenching the kitchen. Only the 72 year-old neighbor who climbed up to help him lay shingles saw those efforts. Actually my husband ultimately admired the neighbor’s work: That guy laid shingles at an astonishing rate.
Once back on the ground though, hubby insisted I stand back and admire his completed cupboards, newly installed floors, ceiling tiles or counter tops.
Room by room, he re-did that house. Shovelful by shovelful he dug out the Michigan basement and made it a full basement. Of course, he wanted folks to take five or 10 minutes of their time to appreciate his hours of labor.
Experiences in Show and Tell began very early for me. Summer visits to Grandma Waight’s house always included a trip to her flower beds. As long as her health allowed, she planted, weeded and pruned her flowers. They needed to be seen. Standing there in the patch of grass between beds she talked about the weather and its effect on the most recent blooms on the Sweet Williams, the marigolds or the petunias. We admired her colorful blooms just as we did Uncle Allen’s hobby and prize-winning peonies.
It was not a prize-winning hobby, but as a high school senior I covered the kitchen table with family pictures and spent days organizing a family album. And then I quietly glowed when I saw one family visitor after another sit there turning the pages, studying the long forgotten pictures.
In recent years, I returned the favor to my husband’s brother who has collected and arranged a family album of pictures dating back to the early years of photography. He brings them to family reunions and explains who each person is in each picture, their family connection and details a brief biography.
In recent years with online and in-store computer programs to design picture albums from digital pictures, I have admired books and calendars made by my offspring. This last year we hauled our photo albums to every family gathering so we could invite others to “come and see.”
The audience may be smaller, but I do insist on hanging little dresses and aprons from the chandelier for my husband to admire before giving them away. Finished quilts stretch across the couch and bed for days and weeks before I take them to their intended recipient.
Right now, though, I have at a half dozen or so quilts waiting to pass along as soon as I take them to one more Show and Tell. The quilts from the last year and a half wait to be seen this Friday and Saturday at the Festival of Quilts at the Conference Center.
Besides having one more chance to show off my quilts, I will also respond to other quilt makers’ invitations to “come and see” their quilts. I know that the hall will explode with creativity and color in bright, bold, beautiful colors, subtle pastels and subdued darker tones. Traditional to modern, beginner to expert, the Festival of Quilts promises a colorful feast for the eyes.
It is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. There are door prizes and vendors from quilt shops around the area, but first and foremost the doors open for the public to come and see what we have made. Hoping to see you there.

The fun part of this job is meeting Union County folks and hearing their stories. Recently I interviewed Dan Winn for the special edition we will publish on Veteran’s Day in November. During the course of our conversation, we expanded beyond Dan’s military service. With his wife Shirley’s input, they shared the following incidents from his life.

“In 1942, when I was 12 years old, I had gone home to eat lunch. (At that time there were no school lunchrooms.) My dad was home because he had passed out at work. I went back to school. In the afternoon Mrs. B.W. Reeves came into my classroom and told my teacher that she needed help to move some plants. My teacher asked for a boy volunteer. Every boy in the class raised his hand, except me. However, she point blank asked me if I would go help Mrs. Reeves. When Mrs. Reeves and I got in her car, she explained to me that she really did not need any help, she just needed to talk to me privately. She explained that my Daddy had just died. I thought to myself, “That’s not possible. I just saw him at lunch.”

Winn’s mother told him that his dad “got sick and passed out at work. He drove himself home. She called the doctor. As they were waiting for him, my dad laid his head on my mom’s lap. She was wiping his face with a cold wash cloth when he died. He had had a heart attack and passed away at age 44. Even with his casket in our dining room, it was not until his funeral was over and I was walking down the steps of First Baptist Church that the reality ‘hit’ that I would never, ever see my Daddy alive again. I cried and cried because I loved my daddy very much.”

In high school Winn helped deliver papers for the El Dorado News. In the early morning hours he coordinated the routes of the other carriers, waking the sleepers and finding substitutes for the sick carriers. He left school an hour early to return to the newspaper offices for the afternoon delivery of the El Dorado Times. His early experience in business introduced him to the business world, where he worked until he retired.

The family medical history of heart problems touched Winn’s life in 1992.
“We had just moved and I was taking a week off from my business to put up and straighten things out. I walked outside to pick up the paper, went back in the house to the bedroom and sat on the side of the bed. I was opening the newspaper, when I experienced an odd sensation flow through and over my body. I felt ‘funny’ but had no pain. I thought to myself, ‘I wonder what this is!’  At that point, I heard a voice saying, ‘Dan (He called me by name), go to the hospital. Go to the hospital NOW!’  He shouted ‘NOW!’ I knew it was God speaking to me. I called my son Scott. He helped me get dressed and drove me to the hospital.”
Although he had no pain, he had an EKG.

“According to what I’ve been told, I had approximately 30 minutes to live. I had had a massive heart attack and was dying.

“Dr. Berry Lee Moore gave me two shots to try to get blood flowing to my heart. He explained to my wife what he had done and stated, ‘by 2:30 this afternoon, we will know one way or the other.’

“As Dr. Moore was explaining this and looking at the monitor, the blockage was partially broken. At that point, with the doctors not expecting me to live, the helicopter was called and I was air lifted to Little Rock where Dr. Bruce Murphy performed an angioplasty.
“When I asked Dr. Murphy why he did angioplasty instead of his new procedure which I had read about, he said, ‘Dan, you do realize that you were a very sick man when you got here? You would not even have survived lab preparation. The only chance of you living was for me to get in and get some blood flowing and get out and pray.’”

Winn finds it ironic that “all of the doctors who worked on me and with me in El Dorado in 1992 at the hospital have since passed away.”

“I have no doubt, none at all, that I heard God speaking to me. I believe 100 percent that I am alive today because I heard and obeyed His voice. And I am very grateful for the healing miracle that I experienced when I was 62. I am now 82 years old.”
Not a story one hears every day, which is why I wanted to share it with you, my readers.

While the cat’s away, the mice will play. And that’s exactly what this grandma did the week our fourth grandson made his appearance. I had plenty of ways to occupy the five-year-old granddaughter and two-year-old grandson with the guarantee of no parents around.

For one thing, I really wanted to try a dish for dinner that someone had posted on Facebook. Little brother and I cut up a hot dog, opened a box of spaghetti and poked the dried spaghetti sticks through the disks of dog. As he poked at his meaty chunk, the fragile stick broke, “That’s okay,” he assured me and picked up another wand of spaghetti.

Once we had 10 or 12 strands sprouting out like whiskers from the bites of hot dog, I dropped them into boiling water. In about five minutes it looked more like a squid, but the child relished his meal of pasta and hot dogs. Later, big sister and grandpa found it just as fun to make and eat their own squid dogs at the counter.

The day the sky dropped its clouds around us, I snapped shots of Grandpa on his hands and knees cleaning the floor while first one then the other of the grandchildren grabbed his belt, stood on his legs and straddled his back for a free horsey ride. He put his head down so that they slid off and onto the floor. He stood up and they landed on their feet. He rocked back and forth to buck them off but the two little cowboys insisted on snatching a ride the minute he bent over again.

The counter served as our meeting place the day we found a bag of Play-doh with an assortment of plastic molds and machines. Grandpa spent an hour or more helping the children extrude the globs of dough and cut out cookie shapes. Big sister importantly announced to her little brother, “I know how to make a snake. Watch me,” as she began rolling the dough back and forth, spreading it out into a long rope.

We read books from the library, watched Beginner’s Bible stories on YouTube, explored the backyard, had tea parties for our afternoon snack and, when the weather dried the streets, we pulled out the little electric cars I had found at a yard sale and took them for a spin.

At first the oldest said, “stay with me” as she nervously worked at steering the little car in a circle. But soon, she broke free and repeatedly tried to drive up and over the bit of snow forming a tiny hill. She understood how the steering wheel worked. Her brother did not. He yanked it back and forth without regard for where it took him. Keeping him safe, I grabbed the wheel, the car, the bumper, the windshield – whatever was handy – and re-directed him back to the path.

In between times of play, we all paid homage to the tiny little person with golden hair that my son and his wife brought home from the hospital. The little feller stretched and yawned, stared at us with bleary eyes, grimacing at our looming faces. We wedged his brother and sister into the corner of the couch and sat close by while they held this fragile little person who ignored the fuss and snuggled cozily in anyone’s arms to sleep away the morning or the afternoon, but not the night.

As I held this tiny person, I watched the older children play, eat, shed their coats and shoes like unwanted skin. And I realized how quickly he too would be joining them. Children grow so quickly. Now is the time to sit down and simply enjoy them and discover their personalities. Which I did. And sometimes while I was there I also washed and folded a few baskets of clothes, made a few meals, picked up toys and did dishes, but believe me, compared to my usual routine, helping the family with the 17th grandchild was a great vacation.