Reviews, the Prequel to the Minnesota Main Street Women, and August Events

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The world of book reviews:  I have to admit, besides staring at a blank page on my laptop screen on a day I have nothing to say or write about, asking for a review of one of my books is not only daunting but scary. I feel like my whole being is laid open for surgical purposes.   Self-critical thoughts like–who told me I could write? run through my head.  Then when the reviews arrive, I beat myself up with how could I have not seen what the reviewer saw?  

So when I received a few 4/5’s,  80% or B in the world of education, I felt humbled. I also have had little control over my editing process with any of my books, but that is to put blame on others instead of myself. Each book I have written has had many eyes on it throughout its process. Yet once it is published, I see glaring typos.  How can this happen?  These editors and proofers have wonderful skills, but regrettably, mistakes happen.  No excuses.  I know that the author is responsible for her own work–no matter how she can’t see the proverbial forest for the trees.  Yet, when I received a 3/5 because a reader didn’t like the topic or chose the wrong book, I have a hard time not getting angry.

Overall, I have a crowd of people who love following the lives of my Minnesota Main Street Women series. I am humbled again, and thankful for their generous comments.  Here are just a couple reviews:

PINS & NEEDLES

  •  “In this historic novel set in 1909 Maude Porter and Jennie Phillips balance their careers with fighting for women’s basic rights – some openly, others behind the scenes.  These old friends, who we met in Cindy Stupnik’s earlier Scruples & Drams, continue to face fearsome adversaries with growing courage and conviction.  Along the way, we meet the historic characters who populate the village of Clearwater, Minnesota and get a flavor of early white settlement and its challenges. Stupnik has a gift for drawing us into the time and place, and this book hits the mark.

Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D.; Executive Director, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, Inc.

  • Frank-Stupnik’s Minnesota’s Main Street Women series does not disappoint. First with Jennie Phillips and now with Maude Porter, the unheard, real-life stories of early Clearwater, Minnesota, residents are coming to light. These women don’t exactly fit the narrative for what we think of when we think of women living in the early twentieth century. Neither of these women married, and both ran their own businesses in town, thriving in an age when most women worked in their homes.

I can’t wait to see which of Minnesota’s Main Street Women Frank-Stupnik decides to highlight next.  (Read                       more:       https://inkstandeditorial.com/2019/04/05/book-review-pins-needles/

Anne Nerison, Instand Editorial

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I’ve been researching and collecting data for my next novel, a prequel, in the Minnesota Main Street Women’s series.  If you have read Pins & Needles, you can make a guess who the main character will be.  There is so much for me to write about.  I am having a hard time sorting and narrowing.  A hint:  She was the first woman in the early village of Clearwater and married a fur trader.

Nanny knows who will be Frank-Stupnik’s protagonist in her prequel to her Minnesota Main Street women series.

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Upcoming August Events

Clearwater Heritage Days  https://www.facebook.com/events/498211524260628/

This year, August 2-3, will begin Friday night with the parade down historic Main Street Clearwater, MN at the Clearwater River dam.  Down here where the Clearwater flows into the Mississippi is where the original town began, along the banks.  Sawmills, flour mills, Quinn’s Tasting Saloon, and so many other businesses got their start. Parade-goers will follow Main all the way down past the original Porter farm (told about in Pins & Needles), eventually sold to Frank Kothmann, and down to his property on the Mississippi River at Driftwood Golf and Fitness.  Those of us who love the history of Clearwater are shouting out a big “Hurray!”  Welcome home.  This is where the Heritage in Clearwater Heritage Days should be!

August 3-4 Clearwater Rendezvous at the Clearwater, MN Dam off Highway 75

August 17    Buffalo Arts and Crafts, downtown Buffalo, MN

 

 

 

 

On the road again

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6th Floor St Cloud Hospital

ON THE ROAD . . .

–TO RECOVERY–For those who didn’t know–

I finally had a knee replacement on May 3.  Many of you saw me hobbling around.  I’d have good days and bad days, but this winter was the worst. Not only had I needed this surgery for quite a while, but the knee had caused my ankle to degenerate from the reconstruction I had in 2005.  This caused my podiatrist to have a brace designed and cast for me to wear to protect my ankle from further issues.  My doctors, family, and I took special precautions in order to commit to my recovery–blood thinners due to a previous pulmonary embolism, intensive, in-house rehab physical therapy for 2 weeks 3 times a day, and when I was released to go home, lots of care and more physical therapy 3 times a week with my favorite PT.  After 8 weeks of physical therapy, I’m doing great, and better yet, NO BOOT to protect the ankle.

–With REV. MARY MACNICHOLL-–

I am putting the final touches on the powerpoint slide presentation for the first woman to be fully ordained in the Minnesota Methodist Conference in 1958. Most of you know that I earned a grant from the United Methodist General Commission on Archives and History to write her story.  Little did I know that this woman, Mary MacNicholl, who would be my minister in Clearwater, Minnesota, in the 1960s, had broken through her own ‘glass ceiling’.  How did I know back then our church community would be served by such a celebrity?  Not sure I or anyone else knew Mary Mac’s impact, but I know I felt honored to be noticed by her when I sang in the choir, attended Methodist Youth Fellowship,  enrolled in our short confirmation class (Methodist youth usually have only a six-week education), she came to my graduation party, and when she often stopped to have coffee with my mom. She awoke our consciences, our awareness of the world around us, and our knowledge of our Methodist tradition.  Sixty years after her ordination and forty years after her death, I hope to do justice to Mary MacNicholl’s story and service.  The essay is ready to be sent to the United Methodist General Commission on Archives and History.  The new and improved powerpoint will be tested when I speak at Wykoff United Methodist Church.  This was one of the three churches Pastor Mary MacNicholl was charged with after she graduated from Drew Seminary in  1949. I will be presenting her story on July 21 during the church service at 8:30, a.m.

–BRINGING THE STORIES OF STRONG MINNESOTA MAIN STREET WOMEN TO MY READERS–

I was busy up to surgery–actually, less than a week before I sold my books at the St. Cloud River’s Edge Convention Center.  Then the hiatus. Now, I am excited and ready to begin my busy time of the year–July through November.

After I present Mary MacNicholl’s story in Wykoff, I’ll be bringing my books, Minnesota Main Street Women series–Scruples & Drams and Pins & Needles, Around Clearwater, and Postcards from the Old Man to sell at the Clearwater Heritage Days at the Rendezvous at the dam, off Highway 75 and the north end of Main Street, Saturday and Sunday, August 3-4.

Come see me at the Clearwater dam where I’ll be participating in the Rendezvous. Here where the Clearwater River merges with the Mississippi, the village was first created.  In the 1850s, sawmills lined the banks and built the first houses and store buildings.  Feed mills, sawmills, stores of all kinds– hardware, general merchandise, jewelry, clothing, shoe, and furniture sat on the banks of the Clearwater or up on Oak Street and Main Streets.  These buildings and the people who occupy them are the subjects of my Around Clearwater history and Minnesota Main Street Women series. Each protagonist, Jennie Phillips in Scruples & Drams and Maude Porter in Pins & Needles,  a real woman pioneer from Clearwater, made her mark on the community.  They both see gender inequalities in the world as far as suffrage, health, education, and legal issues.  Their desire to make things right for the women and their families they encounter is a major theme in my series.

If you want to know history, Arcadia Publishing’s Image of America: Around Clearwater is the most up-to-date word on early Clearwater.” Burrowed below bluffs overlooking the Mississippi and Clearwater Rivers, Clearwater’s houses, its churches, and most of its original businesses resemble those that settlers had left behind in the East. With its arch-like trees sheltering Oak and Main Streets, the community remained home to many who lived and died there and those who had moved on only to return for yearly Old Settlers gatherings. This sense of community allowed Clearwater to thrive. Flour and pulp mills lined the shores of the Clearwater River. Mercantile, hardware, jewelry, and drug stores cropped up, providing the products for a growing community. Trade once powered by steamboats on the Mississippi was taken over by James Hills Great Northern Railroad. While the village and surroundings have changed over time, the original charm is still there, ready to be explored again.”

Whiting Building sat kitty-corner from the Masonic Hall.

–WITH SOME FINAL THOUGHTS–

Speaking of Clearwater, Minnesota’s heritage that I have been writing about for a number of years, Clearwater’s Heritage Days is coming up August 2-3, with the Rendezvous lasting through Sunday.  Along with coronation activities going on before the celebration begins, the parade comes back to downtown Clearwater on Friday night at 7:00 beginning at the Clearwater Dam.  What a great move back to come back where the village began by the Clearwater and Mississippi Rivers. The parade route will begin there and end up at Eagle Trace Golf Course.

This length of Main Street will take you by many of the historic sites– past the Boutwell Hardware and Pat Quinn’s Saloon (neither are standing–that I write about in Maude Porter’s story, Pins & Needles.  It will take you past the historic United Methodist Church  I attended when I was in my youth, and down to the drug store (now an apartment building) I write about in Jennie Phillips’s, the woman druggist) story, Scruples & Drams.  Three blocks further you will come to the Thomas Porter home and farm that he built beginning in the 1870s. He was a fur trader, farmer, village treasure and besides serving Wright County, and served in the Minnesota Legislature for a few terms.  Your final stop will be at Eagle Trace Golf Club, which was his original land that extends down to the Mississippi River.   I had trouble with the golf club’s webpage but this gives you at least the location: 1100 Main St.      https://www.yelp.com/biz/eagle-trace-golf-and-event-center-clearwater

 

Come join us for some fun.  I’ll keep up better from now on and let you in on the different spots I’ll be located over the next few months.

Cindy

P.S. Please “Subscribe” on my homepage.

 

 

 

Post-Op, Alice Leonard, “Scruples & Drams.”

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I am now a bit over 3 weeks post-op from knee replacement.  It has been an adventure I never expected to have.  I was so ignorant of the pain I’d endure.  Yet, if I’d have known, I’d have postponed surgery again. Instead, because they had to keep an eye on my blood and oxygen levels post-op because of a previous pulmonary embolism as well as the pain levels, I stayed in the hospital nearly four days and was transferred to Country Manor Rehab.

My nurses and PT and OT people at the “Home” Rehab unit, said I was healing remarkably so they let me go with my insistence after 2 weeks.  I am now going to my regular PT 3x a week.  I use my walkers yet, but hope to be using a cane this week.  My brain, post anesthesia is something else, LOL!  I can stare at a project, activity, or sentence before anything clicks.  I’ve talked to others about this and they admit for awhile they were a bit slow in the noggin for awhile.  I haven’t attempted much concentration on my writing or posting because of this.  I guess all my brain activity has gone into healing.

Before surgery, sister Becky and I went to the Tamarack Swamp to video part of Irish Town or Lynden Township were Alice Leonard lived her last days and where she was murdered, as written about in Scruples & Drams.  Unfortunately, the audio is bad because of the wind.  I sent the manuscript of the first video of where she was murdered due to this problem  I am doing the same for the 2nd because audio is not any better.  We will get this figured out before we continue with other Clearwater landmarks.

Watch the youtube video about Alice Leonard’s home with at the Hayes’s place.  Here about a half mile from the swamp where she was murdered, she lived with her grandmother, Grandma Hayes, her aunt Bridget Hayes Smith, and her young cousins,   Nelly and Tom.  Mike Larkin, another character in the book and who was accused of murdering the young girl,  often stayed over in the tiny cabin to help with the chores.

https://youtu.be/hbDCe6eEg_E

 

Short blog

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Hello and happy May.  I am taking a couple weeks off to have knee replacement surgery.  But we made our first YOUTUBE production.  It is outdoors and sometimes hard for you to hear me.  I’ve included a transcript of what I am saying.

In May, 1893, a young Irish girl, Alice Leonard, was murdered.  The inquest showed that she had been “violated” and bludgeoned to death near the Tamarack Swamp in Lynden Township, Irish Town, Stearns County, Minnesota.  Some people who lived near the swamp  heard a child crying and believed it was the ghost of Alice Leonard.

Jennie Phillips, an apprenticing druggist in Clearwater, Minnesota, is delivering a prescription in Lynden Township.  She stops to pick some wild flowers and soon hears a menacing cry. It frightens her.  She soon learns that others believe she has heard the sobbing cries of Alice’s ghost.

My sister and I went out to video-tape me at the Tamarack Swamp. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing and nature was singing, so you can’t hear much of what I am saying. This is the area a group of people found Alice on an early Sunday evening in 1893.  She was a pretty girl, but small for her near sixteen years.  What a carriage driver thought was some clothes on the road was the bruised and bloody body of the girl covered with a blanket.

Read more in “Scruples and Drams,” the first novel in the Minnesota Main Street Women series.

You can buy from me directly, books@cynthiafrankstupnik.com, go to my paypal link on cynthiafrankstupnik.com,  amazon.com, or https://www.barnesandnoble.com/.

Spring

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Oh,  yesterday was lovely.  A day like that creates in me a joyful and expectant heart, and wax poetic.  I can’t help remembering one of my favorite poems I first learned in Poetry 101  by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy pear tree leaves and blooms, they brush
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling . . .

Robins are sweeping my back yard and singing their hearts out.  Lambs and calves are taking their first quivering steps. Mostly, hope is in the air as well as a sweet smell of redemption.

Today–rain. While we don’t want floods, maybe the moisture will melt the remaining snow banks and urge early flowers to burst forth.  With Easter bouncing upon us this Sunday, I am putting away winter coats and pulling out spring/summer clothes, which in my closet equals capris and short-sleeved T’s.

I am also eager for  the last weekend in April-27th, 28th.  I will be selling my books  at the Midwest Homemade Artisan Fair  at the River’s Edge Convention Center. 

  • “We will have over 75 artisans from 5 Midwest States at this handmade only event held in room Terry Haws C at the River’s Edge Convention Center in downtown St Cloud, MN.
  • Saturday Leighton Broadcasting will have KCLD on site from 10-12, and WILD Country from 1-3.
  • The reasonably priced concession stand will be open 10-4 Sat and 10-2 Sun.”

In addition to taking place near my favorite locality, the Mississippi River, and one which I write lots about in my books, including my Minnesota Main Street Women series, this event promises to be fun and a great way for the wonderful artists to show off their stuff.

Happy spring, and hope to see you soon..

Cindy

Reverend Mary MacNicholl: A Woman with Vision

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Unfortunately, this event has been postponed.    We will be rescheduling soon.

Spring is here, unfortunately causing lots of water and damage.  I sit on sandy soil so house and hubby are high and dry.  Other people and places–less so.  And I am taking a trip to southern Minnesota–where lots of snow and rain have made life uncomfortable for so many.  Hopefully, this melt will slow down soon, floods will recede, and white, yellow, and lavender-blue wood-sorrel will sprout on the Midwest prairies.

As I said, I am heading south over the weekend of April 6-7. Many of you remember that I earned a grant from the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Archives and History to research and write about the life of one of my minister’s, Reverend Mary MacNicholl. She served almost entirely in Minnesota from 1950-1971.

I’ve learned so much about this woman.  As a child living in Merchantville, New Jersey, Mary MacNicholl felt an early call to become a minister, and told her kindergarten teacher her plans. We have no idea what her teacher might have thought or said to her; it was the early 1920’s, women just received the vote, and many became hopeful for their futures.  Yet, if the woman tried to discourage her, Mary stood fast to her goals and let nothing dissuade her. Truth be told, Miss Mac seldom swerved on her path, even if she had to side-track around a few boulders to get where she needed to go.

I am bringing the story of  Reverend Mary MacNicholl’s story back to one of the churches, the Wykoff United Methodist, where she first preached in Minnesota in the 1950’s and where she became the first ordained woman minister of the Methodist faith in 1958 in Minnesota  The woman minister’s courage, strength, endurance, perseverance, and quality of character impressed many.  Just as important, Reverend Mary MacNicholl, Miss Mac, Miss Mary, Mary Mac–paved a path for so many to follow.

If you are in the area, come and learn about this inspirational woman.

Wykoff United Methodist Church, Wykoff, Minnesota. 

April 7 at 10 a.m.

 

I’ll be posting again soon.  I have a big event in St. Cloud at the Convention Center the last weekend in April.  More to come.

Cindy

 

 

 

 

Bringing Minnesota Main Street Women to the League of Women Voters–St. Cloud

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I had a wonderful time last night presenting strong Main Street Women to the group of men and women at the Marriott.  I was well-received, thanked profusely, honored, and congratulated for my presentation.  Again, thank you, League of Women Voters. Thank you, Pat Fillmore, for bringing me to your  group of people who are still persisting in the fight for equality.

I want to thank my sister, Becky Frank, for helping me.  She hauled, decorated the table, took pictures, took money and much more–supporting me in this endeavor.

 

Becky’s display of my all my books.
I am being introduced to the crowd.

The crowd filled the speaker’s room and it was varied–men and women.  Here are a few highlights from the grand evening

Here I am presenting Women Awakening.

I sold lots of books as well.  So it was a good night all around. The weather even cooperated.  It sounds like we have more on the way this week and into the end of Feb.

Hope to see some of you again soon.

Cindy

Valentine’s Day

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I was saddened to hear Necco was no longer making their  candy hearts.  These little sweet messages were the main staple of my childhood Valentine’s Day.  I strategically placed “First kiss,” “Be mine,” or “Forever,” in the envelopes  that I filled out for my friends, special likes, or sweetheart.  Of course, I never signed my name to  any of the cards that were for that special someone.  He had to guess who gave him the sweet tidings.  If he were a 3rd-6th grader, he probably tried to escape the thought that I found him special.

I know we made special cards in class for our parents,  but we bought the wonderful boxes of individual cards to give to our classmates.  Sometimes we decorated our Valentine’s box in school.  Sometimes we had to decorate them at home.  Usually, created out of a shoe box, I made use of white paper doilies, red construction paper, and other bits of flowers or ribbons I could scrounge from my mother’s stash.

On Valentine’s Day, we placed our boxes on the top of our desks.  Before school started, we walked the aisles, slipping cards in each other’s boxes through the  slit on top.  We had to give everyone a card whether we liked him/her or not.

I learned to play the game at an early age.  I saved the cards I didn’t like to give the kid I didn’t like and the same went with the candies–the most nebulous sayings went to those I didn’t like so much.  The sweetest sayings and cards went to the one or two boys I really liked –always anonymously. Of course, I signed my best girlfriends’ cards, giving them special messages of undying loyalty and friendship– and always the candies with the sugary and cutest words went to them as well.  I don’t think the boys really got into the whole Val. Day thing, but we girls loved this tradition from an early age.

I wonder if any of this game playing has changed with kids now.   Although Necco is no longer sending these discreet and sweet verses, we can always count on Brach’s for “Tiny Conversations” to send to our loved ones.

Of course, my needs are a bit more complicated as I’ve gotten older. I am wondering if my husband will find one on his supper plate that reads, “Please, do the dishes,” especially since I made him a romantic meatloaf and baked potato supper.

XOXOXO

P.S.  Don’t forget, I am still offering good sales on all my books.  Before sending me a check or looking at my paypal set up, check with me.  I can make you a deal, and it won’t be anonymous!