OPEN LETTER TO OUR GRANDSON'S KINDERGARTEN TEACHER

Dear Mrs. Butler:

Thank you so much for your insightful report on my grandson Luke. I found it most helpful and enlightening. The portion of the report letting us know of his inability to identify shapes was most helpful. Luke was taught his shapes two years ago, but apparently needs some review work. We did a quick review and we did indeed find that he had difficulties distinguishing the difference between a trapezoid, equilateral, acute, obtuse, scalene or right triangle. We feel we have utterly failed him. We are deeply shamed!

As to the problem of being overly protective and failing to “cut the apron strings”: This takes some explanation. You have to understand the dynamics of our family and our family traditions. These traditions go back over three hundred years in our clan, and were established by our Patriarchs Jebahdiaha Moffet and Og the Magnificent, leader to the Blankenship clan. A child in our family, until the summer of his sixth year is indeed babied and catered to. But…at the beginning of the child’s sixth summer we take action!
There are three options for members of our family clan. They are as follows:

The child is given three cans (large) of Tuna, a rusty can opener, and turned over to a den of feral cats which reside in the hills of Northern Arkansas. The child is then raised by the mother of these cats. The child is not allowed any human contact, must learn to hunt and fend for himself and we require the mother cat to litter box train him, teach him to hunt for his food and climb trees. The child is not allowed to bathe other than licking himself and must learn to purr, growl and hiss at the appropriate times. Upon the return of the child at the end of the summer, he/she is placed with foster parents in East St. Louis for further training.

The child is placed with a nomadic tribe of goat herders in Northern Mongolia. The child is only allowed to eat soured Yak Milk, dried goat meat and various roots and berries, of which he must learn on his own the difference between the poison and non-poison varieties. He/she must learn to skin various furry creatures using nothing but their teeth and are not allowed to sleep with the thirty five other members of the Mongolian family in their Yurt, but must sleep out under the stars with out a blanket as God intended. Upon their return, the child is turned over to a Georgia Chain Gang to continue his or her education. We pick them up when they turn twenty one.

The child is bought a one way ticket (via bus) to either New York City or San Francisco, is given a pint of very cheap whisky. The child is placed on the bus at midnight, half drugged and not allowed to take any clothing or money. If and when the child returns, we allow him or her to apply his or her own choice of tattoos (which, by the way, is a very useful tool in teaching him or her their different shapes), given a mullet haircut and allowed to reside in the Missouri Hotel in Springfield, Mo until their graduation.

Now we realize that this is perhaps not as harsh as you would like, but in this case we are locked into the “family tradition” and have no real choice in the matter. We are sure you understand. If, perhaps, you can think of some other methods, we will be happy to consider them the next time our clan member meet.

Again, thank you for your insightful observations. We shall certainly take them to heart.

Don Blankenship

Associated Wholesale Groceries Cat Food Letter

Mr. Steve Dillard or
Someone in Management
Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc.
P.O. Box 2932
Kansas City, Kansas 66106
June 27, 2007


Reference: Always Save Cat Food.


Dear Steve or Sirs or Madams;

I am writing in reference to your Always Save Cat Food, the stuff in the yellow bag. This particular bag I am writing about is of the 18lb size.

First, let me emphatically state that I am not looking for free coupons, assurances of high quality, corporate “gosh I am sorry letters,” and for goodness sakes, no phone calls. I am simply writing to let you know about my experiences with your product. I thought you should know.

What on earth do you people put into this stuff? We have four feral cats living on our place here north of Springfield. We feed these cats simply because we feel sorry for them and I have not the heart to shoot them. Also, by feeding them, they have turned so lazy that they refuse to hunt the birds around the place, which, for us, is a good thing as it is for the birds too. In addition to these cats (which, by the way, we feed on the back porch), we also feed several raccoons, a number of possums and several critters I have yet been able to identify.

I picked up a bag of your cat food the other day. It was $4.99 which seemed a decent price at the time. I came home, filled the dishes for the cats with the new food, taking

great care to mix it with the food we had previously been feeding them, and placed their dishes in the usual place. I waited. I waited several hours. Nothing. This is quite unusual, as normally, when the cats hear the pans being filled, there is a mad scramble.
Later that evening I sat on the porch with my Dr. Pepper, which is my usual practice each evening. First came Good Kitty, the boldest of his tribe. Good Kitty sniffed the food, looked at me reproachfully, sniffed again and the stalked away. Over the next hour all three of his mates came in their turn (did you know that cats actually have a pecking order much like chickens?). Each cat’s reaction was much the same. This behavior went on for four days. They NEVER did eat the food. This is not the worse though.

Buttercup, the wild coon who lives in our barn and comes and sets with me each evening after she eats, came just at dusk. Buttercup sniffed the food. Sniffed it again and then came over and tapped me on the leg with her paw. I ignored her. She went back to the food, sniffed it and then sniffed it again. This time she climbed up into the chair which sets beside mine, and I swear, glared at me for fifteen minutes. She got down, went to the bowls, took one small nibble, glared at me over her shoulder again, and then, and this is the truth, reached under the dish and dumped the whole thing and went stomping off to the barn. This same behavior has been displayed four nights in a row now. But wait, there is even worse!

At ten that night (you can set your clock by it) Mary and Mary II, the two possums came to the porch. Like the coon, they have established a trusting relationship with me, which I cherish, and I enjoy talking to them while they eat. Both Mary and Mary II took one sniff of the stuff, i.e. the cat food, and turned to glare at me, and for a possum, this is a neat trick, as they look like they are glaring all the time anyway. Mary II even hissed at the bowl, a behavior she has never displayed before. This has gone on for four nights now. Now I have no idea how much you know about possums, but I can assure you I know quite a lot. I can also assure you that there is not much on this earth that a possum will not eat. I mean we are talking ten day old road kill, rotten vegetables, cat scat, bugs, and even their own young, when in a tight spot. Something is amiss here folks!

As a side note – I also dropped a hand full of this stuff in the bird feeder (actually a board tailed to a tree in our yard, nothing fancy, mind you) for the Blue Jays who dearly love cat food. Four days later…you guessed it, the food is still there!

But, as with all things, there is an upside to all of this. Each year my wife Connie and I purchase a tin of dried coyote urine to sprinkle around the vegetable garden. This is a very effective way of stopping the various critters from stripping the place. This urine costs $16.50 a tin. Rather a stiff price, as I am sure you will agree. This year though, we plan to save some money! We plan to sprinkle a bag or two of the Always Save Cat Food around. I am convinced it will be just as effective, if not more so, than the Coyote urine in keeping the pests away. We pray it will not kill the cabbages and green beans as we dearly love them.



Yesterday, while at the store, I bought a bag of another brand of cat food. Again, a brand the animals have never been feed. Last night I filled three bowls. The three bowls of the new food were gone before 10:00 o’clock, at which time I refilled them. This morning all the bowls were clean again. Peace has been restored. The animals are grateful. Even the Jays were not as quarrelsome as usual this morning. I can now, again, enjoy my chats with the coon and the possums and not be racked with guilt.

It is no big deal, just thought you should know.

ONE LIFE?

"Retarded" and rejected from birth,
A "State Case."
Always last, never first,
Naught but a number in the system.

Growing older and older
Institutionalized.
Always watched and kept in order,
A sweet loving face, lost forever.

A rotten tooth from years of neglect,
A system broken.
A horrible doctor he did not select,
Pain that cannot be spoken.

"They feel not the pain like you and I,"
The rich physician said.
The dentist, he takes not state money either.
He bangs his hands on the table top in silent pain.

The tooth is a broken stub and guns are red,
No time now the doctor said.
He sets in his world, his room, his bed,
Hopelessness, dread, another night, another day.

A single tear slowly slides down his cheek,
A "State" case, we will just wait.
Existence in his world is bleak,
His hands they clutch his reddened cheeks.

No, he doesn't feel like you and me,
Just as the doctor said.
Just possibly if we look close and see,
We might just feel the tear at least.

Retarded, State Case, Institutionalized
lost

MY GLADE IS GONE!

Cedar Glades are one of the fastest disappearing ecosystems found in the Ozarks. They are wonderful places. The soil is poor, the glades are either open or over crowded with scrub cedars, there are rocks on top of hardpan rock. But despite this, these glades have a wonderful diversity of plant and animal life. I have been oh so lucky. I have one within one mile of our house. In the center of this glade is an old stone quarry, a quarry from which the rock to build the First Baptist Church in town was taken from over 100 years ago.

Over the past twenty or so years I have visited this place often. It is just off the road I take my daily runs on. I go at least six miles, and the location of this glad is just perfect to stop at, take a rest, gather my thoughts and get my wind back before returning home. My dog Brodie is usually with me now. She replaced Odie who replaced Samson who replaced GusGus. We go off the road, follow a two tire track that winds through the glade and find a ledge to set on and just watch and listen. The two lane tire tracks are fit to drive on as long as you have a high bottom truck. The kids in the area have used this glade for years as a parking spot. To follow the tracks you must wind your way through used condoms and tissue paper. This has always been a comfort to me because I at least know they are using safe sex. There is very little other trash here, and I can live with the few beer cans that pop up now and then. I suspect that half the residents in our county over the age of 40 were probably conceived in this glade, and there is something about that which is also comforting.

The glade and it’s ridge are full of scorpions, ants, ticks, spiders and a hundred other little critters. The lizard watching is excellent there (lizard watching is a very under rated pass time) and I have been able to identify five different species in just one setting during one day in June. There is a large buck deer who lives there and has for years. He is the same one who hides in one of our old sheep pens during hunting season. There is a wonderful flock of wild turkey that make the cedars their home. And oh my, the birds. In a two day period I was able to make 26 identifications. Ground squirrels, mice, various sun loving snakes, and the list goes on…all make their home here.

Not no more folks! A developer from Chicago went and bought up the place. First came the big stone gates at the head of the ruts. “Elk Ridge” they call it. We have not had a free ranging elk in this part of the Ozarks since well before the Civil War, but I guess the name is appealing. The dirt ruts are now blacktop and there are no more condoms. Last week the first house started going up. It is being built just above the small spring which runs through the foot of the glade.

Now this land is absolutely worthless for home sites. There is absolutely NO top soil. There are no trees other than the cedars (which are as I write this being dozed down), The place is on the top of a flat ridge and is subject to very frequent lighting hits and to top it all off, they cannot even get cable TV out here.

The new owners, who I understand are coming in from the Detroit area will hall in thousands of pounds of top soil in an attempt to “make a yard” which will mean that the fertilizer and chemicals they use will drain directly into the spring.

All is lost.

Where will the deer go? Where will the Turkey and warbles go? Where will the Scorpions go? Where will the kids go to make love on hot August nights? Where will Brodie and I go? I know people have to live some where, but why did they have to pick my little glade?

THE OTHER SIDE OF YORE by J. LYON LAYDEN - A BOOK REVIEW

I like books of fantasy for kids. I feel they are important. Most children love a good, rousing story, including 63 year old ones like myself, and getting the young ones to read is getting more and more difficult each year. This wonderful little story is bound to grab any kid of any age and keep him going from front to back. The story is a quest story whose setting is the world of Terramore. This world is inhabited by a wonderful assortment of creatures, from toads, to frogs to foxes, snakes, lizards, insects of all sorts and some critters I am not real sure about. Our hero, Frawg Findig III, a very special frog in many ways, finds himself caught up in an adventure, an adventure, which must be had in order to save their world. We already have plenty of plot summaries here, so I will not dwell on that further. The book is quite well written. J. Lynon Layden's prose approaches lyrical at times here, and once you catch on to his syntax, you will find it delightful. His imagination has created and entire world, an alien world to be sure, yet one that is not as alien as you might think at first glance...it is all around us. For such a short story, his character development is quite remarkable and he is able to convey the characteristics of his characters using very few, but very effective words. I like that. The poetry sprinkled here and there throughout the book is absolutely delightful, some being more song than poetry. The illustrations by Kenny Savage are in black and white and are quite effective and detailed. They are actually a delight to the eye. I would have liked to have seen them in color as I feel they would have been beautiful, but suspect this would have been cost prohibitive in the production of the book. As a retired person, needing something to keep me from being underfoot all the time, I do a tremendous amount of substitute teaching at local school. I took this book with me and "forced" a number of the young folks to read at least the first two chapters, and indeed read them to the entire class on several occasions. There was not one student that did not want more. This of course is the ultimate test for this genre...do the kids like it and will they read it. If response here is any indication, the answer is a yes for this book. I do hope we get more of Frawg from this author and this illustrator. This work is a joy to read but it does leave you with wanting more. Highly recommend this one.

THE SOUVENIR - by Louise Steinman - A BOOK REVIEW

Like so many in my generation, the author, like the rest of us, really had no clue as to what made her father tick. These men, and women, of the "Greatest Generation" were a different breed. I had to blink twice when the author described her father, his attitudes, work ethic, treatment of his family and on and on. She could have well been describing my own father. The author, after her father's death, discovers a box of letters written to his wife (the author's mother) during the war. Her father fought in the Pacific, taking part in some of its most brutal of battles. Amongst the letters, in an envelope, was a Japanese Flag, a "souvenir flag" which her father had sent home. The flag was of the type carried by many Japanese soldiers, which was a sort of good luck piece. The story is basically Ms. Steinman's search for the family of the soldier whose body it was taken from and a story of Ms. Steinman's search for her father, i.e. who really was her father, and how had the war changed him? Now I will be honest, there were parts of the book that disturbed me. I am not all that certain if the author ever did have a clue as to what made her father the man he was and how the war truly affected him. The author never actually says it, but after reading her description of her father, which gave us some idea of the kind of man he was, there is really no doubt where he got the flag, and how he got it. He did not seem the type of man who would simply pick up a flag off any old dead body and keep it. While this falls into the realm of speculation, I think it probably would have been better if the author had faced reality. Be that as it may, the author did quite a good job with her research and I certainly admire her objectives.

1001 BOOKS YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE - A BOOK REVIEW

I love this book. I love other books in this genre. I love lists of books that "ever one must be read." They serve many useful purposes. Not only do they expose readers to works they would never consider, but they give the reader some sense of continuity, something to follow, some idea of where we have been with our literature. This particular list of books goes further than some by giving us a bit of the history of the work being addressed along with the plot line. This is very useful information. Also, just look at the reviews so far concerning this book. Almost everyone has some disagreement with which books were included and which were left out. Folks, this is a health thing. If I had read 60 some odd revews and everyone had agreed to this author's selection, then I would have been gravely worried. I myself disagreed with a number of choices and there were certainly at least 100 additional works I would have included had I written the book. Again, this is healthy! I was quite encouraged when I read all these reviews...people are actually reading and actually thinking for themselves. This is truly wonderful and this is one of the primary strengths of this particular book...it brings out opinions, it causes the reader to think. I for one am glad it is on my shelf. I turn to it quite often and enjoy each and ever page, even if I do not agree with everything between it's covers. The book does indeed lean toward the 20th century as several others have pointed out here. This is okay. This is the author's opinion and that opinion is just as valid as mine, even though we don't agree in this area. I have plenty of other list that do include pre 20th century literature and can use those. The book is well organized, easy to read and, as I said, quite useful. Recommend this one highly.