Come day, go day, God sent Sunday

Sunday. Sabbath. Day of rest. While out-of-town visiting, my Sundays are about being with my family, which is delicious. That was today.

Biblically, the Sabbath was on Saturday, or the seventh day of the week. That was changed for Christians when Jesus was resurrected on what we now celebrate as Easter Sunday. According to scripture, Sundays are to be kept sacred. It is a day of rest, a day for families, a day to further the Lord's work here.

So what IS good to do on Sundays? Church, for one. Most people have the wrong idea about church, which is so sad, but a topic for a different post.

How about visiting, if you are so inclined? I really enjoy family history, genealogy, working with my photographs, doing digital scrapping. I have a joke with Jack -- he's so good working with the living, I like working with the dead. =>

The wonderful thing about the Sabbath, or one of the wonderful things, is that I can "forget" about my daily life, work, the needs of the rest of the week. At least until Sunday evening.

Now that I'm unemployed things will change about that.

Small Town America -- for me

Almost two weeks ago I drove from my home in Georgia to visit my sister in mid-state Illinois. She lives in a tiny farming town about 20 miles from where we both went to college, where her second son just received his master's degree, and where her youngest daughter is now a sophomore.

Small town America. Went to pick up my great-niece from grade school the other day and the gal who was helping funnel the kids to the right cars cheerily said that she was letting me pick Madison up because she saw my car, with the Georgia plates, in my sister's driveway during the week. A second time I picked Madison up I went by the little local IGA market. That same gal was behind me in line, and another woman in line said she wondered who owned the "Georgia" car. Quite the stir in this little square mile town.

The homes are charming and (mostly) well-kept. It's fall so people put out straw bales, corn stalks, pumpkins and scarecrows. There are locks on doors that are never used. Car keys are left in the cars. I still think you can even sign a counter check at the little grocery store.

These are hardworking people. This little town started around the grain/corn elevator many years ago. For a long time the residents were farmers who had moved "into town" when their children took over their farms. Other residents were those who worked in the elevator, bank, and little store. Things do change; the hardware store just closed as the owners' kids didn't want to take it over when the owners' reached retirement. But they got a "Casey's" down at the end of town. The library has also been refurbished.

Most folks now work in either Peoria or in Bloomington at State Farm. So there is a steady stream of traffic out of town each morning, and back again in the evening. Rush hour. (My sister, a school teacher who moved out here to raise her kids, used to get frustrated when she had to actually stop at a stop sign because there was another car on the road!) About 25 miles to either city through corn and soy bean fields. Keep the 55mph speed limit for sure -- The only ticket I ever got in my life was driving 62mph in the middle of endless corn fields with no one else on the road but me and the good officer.

I grew up in a small town, Lake Bluff, about 50 miles north of Chicago. Great place to be a kid. So is Minier.

He Can Do Anything

(picture from his 90th birthday party)

He can. Throughout his life, if there was something that needed doing but he didn't know how, he would learn and do. I always just thought he already knew everything (again, I'm a hero-worshiper when it comes to my dad!). He did all the maintenance on our 100+ year old, six bedroom home. All the remodeling. Fixed the roof (which was 2.5 stories high!), rewired, re-plumbed, even put in two bathrooms. All this in addition to being involved heavily in our church, working more than full-time as a microbiologist/virologist/immunologist, being a Navy reservist, and a half-dozen other things. (He was also an awesome husband, but that's for another post.)

Born in 1918, Dad grew up on a farm in Kansas. They were tenant farmers. Poor, as was nearly everyone else. All they bought in town were yard goods and coffee. Everything else was produced on the farm. And they used every bit of everything (my grandfather loved pickled pig's feet - can you imagine?). His mother, a very wise woman, made sure that everyone pitched a hand. She even had the boys help quilt periodically. So after my mom died and I inherited her sewing machine (which I still have), dad went out and bought a new one. He made new curtains for the bathroom, did minor fixes to his and my younger brother's clothes, and whatever else needed doing.

(BTW, Mom was no slouch either. She looked just as elegant as Jackie Kennedy, but with less than a shoestring budget. Which again, is a topic for another post.)

Dad is truly a renaissance man. He said the only thing he couldn't do (or learn how to do) was to have a baby! How lucky am I to have such a father? He's continues to be my best example and my inspiration and will be forever.

My Father Made a Book

My father made a book. Literally. When he was in his mid-80's he decided he wanted to learn bookbinding so... he found a class and made a little book. Full of blank pages ready to be filled. I wish he had filled them! He has had an amazing life. We get snippets of it periodically in his emails when he's so moved. He's written a couple little documents with his life history. At his 90th birthday bash we found out a bit more from the life-long friends and colleagues that attended from all over the country.

At almost 92 years old (his birthday is Oct 19) Dad is still a voracious reader. Non-fiction for sure. He is a continuous student of the sciences (health-related), philosophy, and politics. He even put together a little book of his own he entitled "Tidbits." Full of the important quotes he has found in the past 20 years, or so. (This must be where I get my attraction to such things.) His favorite? "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

A few years ago my dad was clearing out his bookcases to make room for his newest acquisitions and I was going through the boxes of books to see if there was anything I might be interested in. There I found the little book my dad had made. There was no way I was going to let that one go to a church rummage sale! It was something my dad made (yes, I'm a little bit of a hero-worshiper when it comes to my dad).

Since then it has been sitting on my shelf and I have wondered what to do with it. It's too good to just be a "note" book. Inserting pictures wouldn't work, either. It finally dawned on me (yes, I'm a little slow on the uptake most of the time) that I should use it in a way he would appreciate -- record "great quotations" that I find through my readings. Beginning with some of his.