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Step 1: Putting up the tree. I am never prepared for Christmas. I don’t sit on the edge of my seat waiting for the holiday to arrive. October–early November…I think ugh! Christmas– the work, the presents to buy, and more so, the stress about the clean up. Then around Thanksgiving, I get into the mood. Somewhere around that time, when I have the time, I start decorating. I can’t stop. I’m like a mad-woman. Oh, I love this ornament, decoration, or whatever. I hang junk all around. AND because our anniversary is a week before Christmas, we buy at least one new ornament each year. In addition, we have ornaments from places we have travelled. As I open each little box to hang my special decoration, I remember that special place or that moment. I still have my children’s special Sunday School or elementary school ornament they so proudly gifted me. They may be near shreds, but if they haven’t fallen apart, they are hung somewhere–often in the back but they are there. Maude Porter also has special ornaments that she puts on her tree in 1909, the year/the setting of my future suspense novel, Needles & Pins. “‘Tis the season!”

Step 2: I love living it too. Twinkle, Twinkle, little stars. I turn off all the overhead lights and lamps and stare into the trees. Yes, trees. Like many others, I have more than one. I’ve made many upcoming and life-changing year’s decisions staring into my tree. I even decided to retire after staring into a tree. They really give me such peace. I play Christmas music, go to special events, make apple cider and cookies, and live it up. I have in the past made a “happy cake”–okay, the secret is out bosses alike–as fellow teachers called it. This tasty and extra moist fruit cake was so happy, it smelled like a Kentucky distillery. It got my fellow teachers through the grading part of the semester and me through many long days correcting essays before I, too, could have some time off to enjoy myself. Jennie Phillips shares her mother’s favorite cake recipe in Needles & Pins that she serves in her story Scruples & Drams. Looking forward to sharing the recipe with you too very soon! “Happy Holidays!”

Step 3: I hate starting but the pulling down goes faster than the putting up. I hold each little treasure delicately and try to remember which special box it goes in. Today, I dropped and broke one that we bought in Slovenia….a little hand-painted egg. So sad. The rest get packed away for another year. The trees are still standing and lit. That’s the husband’s job. So I put away my village. This too is a treasure and looks like Concord and Lexington, Mass., an area that I love to go to…charming. The New England resembling Main Street, in All Around Clearwater still holds its charms. I can almost “hear those Sleigh Bells ringing . . .”

Step 4: Once everything is boxed up, it is time to clean up. I don’t mind this part because my house is nearly back to order or as much order as I usually live with. The vacuum comes out, the feather dusters start swirling, and Old English gold makes everything new looking. I make a New Year’s resolution to keep it this way and sing “Should all acquaintance be forgot”….hoping to see friends more often than having to clean my house.

Step 5: Carrying on…This is where I am now. It is winter with nice days and cold days. I have a few projects that I have to finish–all as tedious as the sand that comes in the house every time we come in from outdoors. My work has to get done but the boredom of cleaning makes me as lack-luster as cake without frosting. Not even cranking up the Oldies helps me kick it in the keister. I miss my twinkling lights…..

Then on the horizon–someone–a cousin… encourages my husband and I to come to the beach for a few days. My how the work gets done better and faster! We look forward to beating the cold for a few days. Beach sand is so much more friendly than snowy dirt. I am ready and raring. Maude makes a big move as well in Needles & Pins.

I make more promises: when I return to our frozen lot, I’ll get right back to life with more of a hop and twist in my life. Plus:
all of my Clearwater books can be yours for $10 (plus tax—sorry) for you book club. If you are in the area, I’ll even bring them to you, and I’ll come back to talk to you when you meet. I bring slides, pictures, era pieces etc. I have fun doing this….So send me an email and we can meet up books@cynthiafrankstupnik.com

I’ll be seeing you…in all the old familiar places…..in that small café….the park across the way…the children’s carousel…the chestnut trees, the wishing well.

Have a healthy and happy 2018!

It is hard to believe that the song/poem was written in 1844 by an excited young New England boy who couldn’t wait to get to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.    It was a tradition.

I remember that excitement too, when as a child, my folks and siblings drove through snow, over roads and bridges, crossed Highway 10, and down a couple long dirt roads before pulling into Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house. Cousins from Waite Park and Iowa as well as aunts and uncles traveled their distances too to share this holiday with loved ones. Along with a huge dish that was replenished often before the actual feast began, we gathered around the fold away tables and talked, laughed, and giggled.  It was our tradition.

Join vendors, crafts people, and artists at the Long Prairie Arts and Crafts Show and Tell tomorrow from 9-4.  I’ll be selling and signing my books, and we will be selling Jennie’s Clearwater Apothecary Pure & Simple products–creams, lotions, soaps, and balms!  If you haven’t done so already, make it a tradition!  

November 18, 1307, is  a famous date for history lovers…This day in history it is alleged that the Swiss-born William Tell  shot the apple off his son’s head.   In a nutshell, apparently Bill refused to bow before the hat of a Habsburg ruler and was ordered to be killed unless he shot an apple off his son’s head.  An expert bows man, he did that and more–he split the apple in half, thus saving his life and his son’s.  Unfortunately, Tell was a rebel and big talker and swore that if he’d have killed his son, he would have turned the bow on the ruler.  After being taken prisoner, he escaped chains, killed a ruler, and eventually led a revolt against the Habsburg governance.

So what is this history lesson all about?  Lots of events linked to November 18–and one is in Clearwater, Minnesota, this Saturday at the Lions’ Bldg in Lions’ Park on Highway 75.   The 2nd annual arts and crafts sale will be held at 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  There will be crafts, wood products, and direct sales items, arts and décor, and ME and my sister! Totally bad English-speak for a retired English teacher.  We will be there though–I’ll be selling Clearwater books, signing as well, and sis will be selling Jennie Phillips’ Pure & Simple products–lotions, creams, balms, soaps, and a host of Clearwater memorabilia. 

Check out the site–you may have to copy and past in the URL.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10159232339940538&set=pcb.1761076793956647&type=3&theater

The following Saturday, two days after Thanksgiving, Sis nd I, along with a friend,  will be in Long Prairie, MN, for another a/c even

https://allevents.in/long%20prairie/art-and-craft-fair-at-long-prairie-high-school/351325448647855

I’ve heard that this is also a fun and large event to attend.  I’m not sure if there will be any competition you can join in on with crossbows and apples, but you may hit the bull’s eye and bring home bargains galore and as you take  shot at your Christmas shopping list.

Hope to see you at either or both events.

The other night I saw a recent, 2017 film about Helen Reddy. I remember her standing thin and tall singing, “I am woman . . .hear me roar . . .I am invincible . . .I am strong!”  I was so surprised, though, to see how she had changed because I’d never kept up with her success. She is nine years older than I am. What did I expect?  I haven’t been thin for 35 years.  If I hadn’t been coloring my hair, it would be gray like hers.  She is probably still tall–I haven’t a clue–but she has “grown,” as the song goes, in a number of ways.   She states she is happy with how she has turned out, feeling as though she has turned into the woman she sang about in the 60/70’s.  “I am woman,” which she wrote, became a mantra for the women’s movement. 

She is still active in women’s empowerment, attending, singing, supporting, and speaking at conventions, conferences, and marches around the world.

Most of us have had an opportunity to see on television how some women are coming forward, finally, to indict those who have hurt them. It’s amazing what women can do when they stand together.  There’s power in numbers.  And, yes, it is time to whip the bullies, the woman bashers, the sexual perverts–anyone who hurts others.

Scruples & Drams and my upcoming novel, a sequel to Jennie’s story, Needles & Pins, Maude’s story, promotes strong women. These women stand up for other women who are caught in trouble–trouble they can’t handle by themselves.

This weekend, Sat.,November 4, I’ll be selling Scruples & Drams, Around Clearwater, and Postcards from the Old Man at the Monticello Women of Today Fall Craft show in the Monticello Community Center from 9-3.  The address is 505 Walnut St # 4, Monticello, MN 55362. 

My sister, her friend Pam, and I will be setting up Clearwater Apothecary with all sort of products Jennie Phillips would have made or sold in her shop–such as her famous Pure & Natural, wild rose facial cream, dry hand rub, skin lotions, soaps, cards, bags, and crocheted hats, gloves, and scarves.  

 

Come out and support the Women of Today!

 

I’ve experienced all types of storms.  When my husband and I visited Fort Sumter sometime between 2000-2005, we experienced the beginning of a hurricane.  The park personnel took us out by boat to the site, but hurried us and cancelled all other tours.  I felt like I had been wrapped in Saran Wrap.  The hot and humid wind bathed me in salt.  I trusted the guides to get us back to Charleston before the true storm began but I was nervous anyway.  By the time they returned us to the harbor, most of us were rain, sweat, and salt-water-logged.  My husband decided that we had time to tour the Yorktown, an aircraft carrier used during WWII.  This took an hour or so as we nearly ran the through the ship to see as much as possible.  He also decided to tour a submarine that was also there. I didn’t go–I don’t like heat and  I am claustrophobic  as well–no way I wanted to enter a sardine can. The husband had pretty much dried off from our trip to Fort Sumter, but when he climbed out of that belly, he was drowning in his own salt-water.  Sorry, to be so descriptive.  We headed out of town, following the parade to get as far away as possible.  We ended up in Columbia and stayed in a hotel.  I have no idea where those who were locals escaped to avoid this bullying storm.

I’ve lived in the Midwest almost all of my life, except for a 7-month stay in Biloxi and a 3-year stay in Oregon, so I know firsthand what a tornado can do.  Trees on top of roofs, cars turned over, houses blown away…..Nothing major ever happened to me or my kin, (except for my great grandfather and mother who lost their home in Iowa in the early 1900s–also the record player given gr great grandfather by Thomas Edison)  but summertime always brought the threat of tornadoes. I remember one in particular when we lived on Warner Lake:

IN SEARCH OF OZ

Steamy, mute afternoon—

no singing meadowlarks

no tapping crickets

no clapping leaves.

Silently, a wizard’s cauldron brews.

Across the pasture,

a smoky black cape twirls toward the sky.

Mother with diapered sister,

and I with yipping mutt,

crawl into the fruit-jarred tomb.

We pause in musty dark

when father closes the lid.

A monkey screech of lawn chairs

crashes against the house.

Lions roar above our heads.

Quaking cellar ceiling rages dust.

Flickering candles illumine

ogling scarecrow eyes and gaping mouths.

As quietness returns,

we unearth ourselves to find:

no yellow-brick road to follow,

no ruby-red slippers to claim.

We sop through melted-witch puddles,

sort through straw sticks, rusty tin,

and window shards

before stooping at the tipped wishing well

to collect our copper hopes.

 

When my husband and I and our two sons moved to South Dakota, we thought growing up in Minnesota, my husband from the Iron Range, that we had seen all that nature could provide in the way of blizzards. The one that hit in 1966 kept me and my friends home from school for quite a few days.  My father who worked in St. Cloud had to sleep at the foundry.  Can you imagine–no shower, little food, and black dust–for days?  YET, we had been in SD only a couple months when I was caught in a white-out so strong I plowed into a snow-mountain caused by the blizzard and lake effect winds.  I had to climb through piles of snow to a house to phone my husband (at least 10 years before cell service).  HE did not believe me.  He mocked me as he directed me to drive out of the mountain. The woman whose house I stopped at was really worried that a snowplow would shove my car further into the snow.  Finally, after husband promised to come save me, the snow plow came barreling down the street. I caught him in time before he shoved my car into the lake.  He pulled me out and I followed him at a distance until I got home, the road closing behind me as I drove nearly blinded in white.  When husband got to our house an hour later, he said he was absolutely shocked in how much snow had come down and how bad the blizzard was.  He had to take the long way around the lake to get home. We learned then and there never to trust a prairie blizzard.  Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t write these stories about nasty Dakota storms for nothing.  She and we lived them!

Thankfully, in all my storm experiences, I haven’t been left without homes or loved ones. I never had to pay $7 a gallon for gas to escape destruction;  I’ve never been without water. I’d NEVER listen to the idiot national radio personality who calls Irma fake news. (NOT HYPERLINKING THAT COMMENT)  I would listen to weather experts who sake “GET OUT OF TOWN!” It is always better to be safe than sorry.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the many  people who have recently faced flooding I can’t imagine and now another Hurricane Irma staring down on others.  I hope we all remember Salvation Army, Red Cross, and evacuation centers with our offerings.  Help starts with all of us.  It is amazing how powerful our nation becomes when we come together unite for an important cause.

 

 

A Chinese proverb states:  A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

I made that first step over two weeks ago, and I am finally home.  I started writing my blog before my husband and I left for a few days of vacation in northern Minnesota to stay with friends and visit relatives over the 4th.  Once I got home, I slept in my own bed for one night, and after repacking, I hopped in my sister’s car for another rode trip the next morning.   I had a nice time from north to south, and was surprisingly blessed with new information for the article I have been researching and writing about my  minister, Mary MacNicholl.  I have been excited to learn about her, her family, and her climb to become the first woman ordained Methodist minister in Minnesota.  This work has taken me on a journey that I never realized I’d take.  Now home, I decided I would finally finish this blog before July ends so I can get back to my other writing.

I love the 4th of July. It’s a time of celebration with friends and family.  This year, our newest baby celebrated with us–her first 4th and probably her first parade.  Even though my husband and I have travelled a lot, we’ve never been anywhere famous to take in parades and fireworks, we have seen some wonderful exhibitions across the United States.

For the last  years, we have gone to Ely, MN, my husband’s hometown.  Ely is proud of its heritage.  Definitely a city like many on the Iron Range built from the backs of the miners or foresters who were immigrants from Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, and Finland, and other countries, the generations that followed were proud of their heritage in America.  Everyone gets into the act to make this day special.  The parade begins at 1:00.  Many of the town people place lawn chairs at the same place each year in front of Zup’s, (the Slovenian grocery store,) up and down Harvey  or Sheridan streets to watch the lawn chair ladies, the Klown Band, and lots of floats with kids spraying guns of water on the over-heated watchers.  After some tour around the beautiful countryside where hills and trees rise up and circle the crystal lakes before gathering for picnics of traditional American of Zup’s own Polish sausage, hot dogs and hamburgers, and maybe some homemade walnut or apple Poteca. Once darkness comes, the sky blossoms with the most amazing colors as fireworks, private and public, ending the day’s celebrations.

A number of times as my husband and I headed home from Ely to South Dakota (we lived there for thirty years) because we had to go to work the next morning, we could see north, east, west, and south as the sky blasted on fire.   We could only imagine and mimic the universal “oohs” and “aahs” being shouted and car horns being honked during and after these night sky displays. Just like James Cagney’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” we feel patriotic on this day; we love to kick up our heels.

After I returned home, my sister and I headed to Iowa where my mother’s family came from at the turn of the century.  After we left Minnesota, we took 218, the Avenue of the Saints, and came to Clear Lake, Iowa, where Buddy Holly’s airplane went down in a field in 1959 after appearing at the famous Surf Ballroom.  We drove by corn fields that relatives once planted from Rockford to Floyd and  down to Nashua where our Grandma Ina played organ in the Little Brown Church.  She followed her parents to St. Cloud, Minnesota, after finishing her teachers’ training.  Her parents had moved because they had lost everything in a terrible tornado, including a record player given to Great Great Grandpa George Potter by Thomas Edison.  (The two knew each other in Port Huron, Michigan when and where Grandpa was the postmaster on the Grand Truck Railway and young Tom was selling his goods and newspapers to make money for his experiments. I have a bit more to say about George Potter in a few lines.)

Eight hours later, we pulled into Anamosa, where our aunt lives–our sole reason to go to Iowa. We visited, we laughed, she told us stories, we ate with the cousins, children of cousins and their children.  Of course,  before we left, we did some antiquing and viewing Grant Wood landscapes.  “American Gothic” and his other works are part of the culture in this small town where he lived.  As we headed north, we could see how rural scenes of neatly plowed fields and rolling hills captured Wood’s imagination.

We stopped for the night in Spring Valley, Minnesota.  Of course, no trip is complete for me without fodder for more writing.  Now what is so spectacular about Spring Valley?  Ah, Almanzo Wilder’s parents, Laura Inglalls Wilder’s in-laws, settled here and the United Methodist Church in Clearwater, Minnesota, received their woman minister from the Methodist church there. From childhood on, I have been a Laura followers, and  I used Laura’s life for part of my master’s thesis.  Now, I said I’d get back to Gr Gr Grandfather George Potter.  He was born in Franklin County, New York, just a few miles from where Almanzo was born.  It gets to be such a small world, even if  we  don’t know if the families knew each other back in New York. Spring Valley’s museum is in the old Methodist church where Reverend Mary MacNicholl preached.

The United Methodist Church Museum in Spring Valley.

Wilder mementos as well as other notable citizens fill the building top and bottom.  The historian told my sister and I that they have so much as far as historical objects that the history society has filled barns, sheds, houses, and of course, the church. From the theaters cameras invented by the Conley brothers to watches bought by Richard Sears for his mail-order catalog (the one in who is the Sears in Sears and Robuck) and who was Almanzo Wilder’s boyhood friend. The Spring Valley historical society is proud of its heritage and attempts to house anything and everything given to them.

As far as Miss Mary goes, she preached in this now museum-church with its beautiful Italian stained-glass windows, dating back to the 1700s.  The story goes that way back in Italy, a church in England commissioned the glass company to make and design these windows.  For some reason, they backed out of using them.  They were stored somewhere in England and forgotten for nearly 100 years.  From the church’s inception, the windows have shone light on the parishioners in this Spring Valley Methodist Church for 100 years and still graces the sanctuary.  Miss Mary received her ordination here before transitioning  to Clearwater where I grew up and where I and others appreciated her spiritual guidance.  I stood at the altar and tried to imagine Mary singing in front of her congregation, blessing and serving communion, or baptizing babies.  I received a wonderful gift from the historian.  She gave me pictures of the church, the rectory before it was torn down, and Mary and her mother Mary who had come to Minnesota to be her housekeeper. Here is a community that loves its history and is proud to display it!!!

A small detour before we finally headed home was to Wykoff, Minnesota, just ten miles away from Spring Valley. This was Mary’s first church, along with two others in Fillmore County.  This was Sunday about one o’clock.  I didn’t expect to see anyone come from the church so my sister took pictures of me standing on the steps.  It was a warm day so she went back into the ac of the  car while I wiggled the door handle.  Finding it unlocked, I slipped into the entryway.  Little rooms off to the side were carpeted and there were steps to the basement.  The sanctuary doors were open. I walked to the front pew.

As I sat down, I thought about all I had learned about Mary MacNicholl since I had started this process. She received her divinity degree in the late 40s and left her home in New Jersey. She became the minister she wanted to be from childhood.  This was the first church she served along with Fillmore and Fountain –a three-point charge.  Brown paneling and red carpeting welcomed me.  I could imagine this peaceful sanctuary welcoming her as well. I remembered the first day of my teaching career, and I could imagine the preparation she put in for her first sermon.  I sat for awhile, and then it was time to move on.  I closed the door behind me, but I didn’t lock up.  I left the building as I found it. As we drove away, heading home, I was impressed with how Mary faced many challenges to become a minister in a man’s world.

I refrain from breaking out into song about our country’s freedoms and opportunities that are available to men and women alike. (I am sure you are thankful for this.)  My hope is that we can feel the fourth of July every day so we can put behind our differences and celebrate our Americanism.