Musings on Route 66

There’s something ‘not right’ about a monochrome library

2012-03-09T19:51:00.007-06:00

I stumbled across a photo the other day that troubles me still. It caught my eye at first -- as it was designed to, I suspect. Yet, the more I thought about it and what it represented, the more it troubled me.

I had just logged on to the social networking site, Pinterest, to see whether any of my blog posts or other social media articles had been re-pinned. I noticed others had pinned some recipes, motivational sayings, clothing items and more on their boards, which I see upon entering the site.

I had no need for the recipes, as I have a sign in one room of my house reading, “I only have a kitchen because it came with the house.” I didn’t have much use for a pencil skirt or red-polka-dotted high heels, either. The motivational sayings always give me pause, though, and cause me to reflect, so I lingered a bit, looking at them.

But what stopped me dead in my tracks was a shelf full of books, all in nearly identical shades of green. When I clicked on the image, I found that it led to a website where people can buy color-coordinated books by the linear foot.

There’s something wrong with that, with creating a library by color scheme, instead of by subject matter, author, interest, passion. This site seemed to be created for designers, people who are helping others amass libraries just for looks.

That’s just not right.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe every home should have books in it – in every room, if possible. Yes, even the throne room. You’ll find books and/or magazines under the sink in mine.

But the books should be carefully selected, strategically placed.

In our home, you’ll find coffee table books about the American flag and about Abraham Lincoln in the living room, classics, poems and short story collections in one guest bedroom, novels and collections of motivational stories in another. In my office are several reference books I use for my writing, and on my bedside bookstand are the books I’m reading now, as well as those that inspire me.

My library, collected a paperback here and a hardcover there over the past five decades, still includes the Janet Lennon book I received from a friend at a birthday party in a park on my twelfth birthday, a dog-eared copy of The American Dream and The Zoo Story by Edward Albee, with his “dog-eared signature” collected 25 years ago, and novels penned by a high school classmate.

It ranges from thin little books I ordered in grade school to big, heavy ones I purchased and had inscribed by scholars at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

In those other rooms, the books are arranged by genre and sometimes by size. But in the library, you’ll never find my books organized by color, nor purchased for looks instead of substance.

I have every volume for a reason, because of the content or the person who wrote it. And they’re organized the only way a home library should be – by the Dewey Decimal System.

And, yes, I know that is every bit as obsessive-compulsive as organizing them by color.

But, you know what? There is something ‘right’ about it.

(Image via)

Baby Boomers are supposed to live forever, aren’t they?

2012-03-05T21:42:00.005-06:00

A few months ago I wrote a story for a website I co-edit. It was an article based on some research about how Baby Boomers aren’t serious enough about their health, that we’re just not realistic.

The study called us “delusional.” It implied, I guess, that we think we’re indestructible, and I tend to agree.

That’s why, when Davy Jones of the Monkees died of a heart attack last week, it hit many of us hard.

For some of us, it wasn’t even that Davy or the Monkees were our favorite groups.

Simon and Garfunkel were my favorite musicians of the era -- hands down, closely followed by Peter, Paul and Mary.

We lost Mary Travers a few couple years ago, but hearing that she was gone was different. Poor Mary had struggled with health issues for several years, so we were prepared a little, I guess – as prepared as anyone can be for something like that.

We squelched our selfish wishes to hear her sounds with the assurance that finally her suffering had stopped.

But, Davy Jones, that Monkee who looked like a youngster when we first heard him and never seemed to lose his boyish enthusiasm or charm, was moving along just fine, we thought. He was still touring, raising horses, savoring life.

Then one day, it was all over.

Davy was gone – the victim of a massive coronary. He was 66.

When we Baby Boomers were kids growing up, we thought 66 was absolutely ancient. My first grade teacher must have been about 40 when I was in her class, but looking at her, I was sure she was 100. Our parents’ and grandparents’ generations were always old, grown up, mature, responsible.

Some of us never wanted to grow up – to feel or act or look 40 or 50 or 66.

And, we sure didn’t want to grow old, or frail, or like, Davy, to die.

My argument when I wrote that earlier article – still my belief today – is that we aren’t delusional. We’re optimistic.

But, the sunniest outlook in the world can’t change what happened last week.

No matter how much we want to believe otherwise, Davy left us with this reminder when he went away so suddenly:

We are destructible, after all. And that, I guess, is not a delusion.

Darn it, Davy. Those are lyrics we’d rather not hear.

(Image via)

Move over, slow down, don’t forget to wave

2012-02-29T08:47:00.003-06:00

I was driving a long, flat, lonely stretch of highway in central Illinois the other morning when I saw an oversized pickup truck coming toward me pulling something that extended way beyond his vehicle on both sides and overlapped the stripes marking his lane.

I couldn’t tell what it was at first, but as I got closer, I could tell that it was a disc, a farm implement often used to help prepare the soil for planting.

Back when I was a kid, halfway through the last century, some of the discs pulled by tractors like our Oliver 77 were maybe five feet wide or so. Today when fully extended, some can extend more than 40 feet. Even when they’re folded up, they reach way beyond those widths I remember.

As the truck and its tow load got closer, I noticed a road sign on the other driver's side of the road, which meant he had some choices – to slow down, so that he didn’t reach the sign as we met, to pull out around it, edging further into my lane or to stop – probably not a good idea.

I had choices, too. The best one I saw was to slow down and move on over to the shoulder, which, fortunately, was wide and level.

What did happen was that we communicated without communicating – farmer today to farm kid of yesteryear – both knowing what had to happen. We may have raised chickens at some point in our lives, but we both knew better than to play “Chicken.”

The farmer slowed a bit, I scooted over some and we passed without incident before the road sign – or one of us – became a victim.

It was a simple act, really, just the type of thing folks who live in the country do for one another – move over, slow down, wave an acknowledgement, a “thanks” and a “hey, no problem.”

The problem, this time of year, though, and through the summer into fall, is that not everyone traveling the roads of rural America is a farmer or grownup farm kid, a cautious driver or a patient soul.

As they fly down a 55-mph road at 70, radio blaring, checking text messages, bounding over the crests of hills or around curves as if they’re on the world’s fastest roller coasters, drivers often fail to consider that, somewhere along that road, may be one of our nation’s farmers driving a slow-moving vehicle or pulling jumbo equipment.

When drivers aren’t paying attention, it’s an accident waiting to happen.

In the coming months, if you travel those farmland byways, keep your eyes carefully on the road – no texting, careful with the cellphone use, don’t take your eyes off the road to adjust the radio.

When you come up over a hill or around a curve, slow down. You never know when a farmer may be traveling that road to get from field A to field B or going from the machine shed on the farm that’s been in his family for more than a century to a piece of land he’s cash renting down the road a piece.

He’s someone’s son, maybe a dad, an uncle, a cousin, a nephew or a grandpa – or she’s a daughter, a mom, an aunt, cousin, niece or grandma. Your inattentiveness could rob others of precious years together with this farmer they love, so, please, stop and think when you’re driving those country roads.

Move over, slow down, and when you meet or pass that farm driver, whether on Route 66 or another tranquil two-lane, don’t forget to wave. Betcha you’ll get a wave in return.

(Image via)

What makes a town a ‘hometown’?

2012-02-27T07:53:00.006-06:00

Ever notice how some little thing crosses your mind, such as a question that should have an easy answer – one that you shouldn’t have to mull over, not even half a second, before you spit out your response?

But like a needle on an old 45 rpm record, you get stuck there. You can’t move forward. You can’t move back. You’re just going round and round trying to find the answer.

Let’s take this one for instance: What’s your hometown?

Ought to be simple, right?

Maybe, maybe not – seems as if to answer that question we need to ask some others.

Like these:

Is your hometown where you’re born, or where you started school, or where you graduated?

Is it where you married and had your children, where they went off to school?

Or is it the place you moved so your family could have new opportunities?

Is it where you want to go to rest, rejuvenate and volunteer when you retire?

Is it where your family has roots, where your ancestors settled as immigrants or moved in search of the American Dream, though you didn’t live there yourself?

Is it someplace you’ve always loved when you visited – or maybe someplace that you’ve never been, but it’s always called to you as if it were home?

For me it’s a little of several of these.

Though I’ve never visited Ireland nor had my grandmother, she was so proud of her Irish heritage that the Emerald Isle has always called to me, “Come home.” Someday, I hope to.

The Missouri hills where a grandfather was born and raised have always had a pull for me. I think it’s because when I’m there, I feel as if I’m stepping back to that slower pace, those simpler times. I’ll soon move there.

My hometown is also the Illinois community where I was born. Though I didn’t reside there until I started high school, my birth gave me a connection to its history that I cherish still today. And, because I spent nearly 30 years there, it earns a berth by sheer longevity.

My parent’s hometown draws me, too. It is where both sets of grandparents settled, raised their broods, lived until they died. It’s where I first learned the joy of volunteering, savored the taste of a soda fountain treat, visited a five-and-dime and went to a prom.

When I look at a Facebook wall or a newspaper article or watch a state championship football game, I see names I remember from my childhood visiting that town, including surnames found in a 130-year-old county history book. I watch that community come together to help a widow with a special-needs child or pay tribute to a fallen soldier, and it warms my heart.

Yet, when a town not quite as large, but just as much in love with its Friday Night lights as that one, opened its arms to welcome us for a few years, it, too, felt like home.

Before you say, “Heck, she calls every place home,” let me say, “No. I don’t.”

There were a couple of towns through the years that just didn’t feel right – kind of like trying to put a 78 rpm record on a 45 rpm turntable with its big spindle up. It doesn’t fit right, sound right or look right. No matter how hard you try, it’s never going to be right.

Stop and think about it, if you will. How would you reply if I asked you today, “What’s your hometown?”

Or is it better to ask: “What do you call your hometown?”

More than likely, when you look for that answer, it will have less to do with where you lived when, and more to do with how the community welcomed its newcomers and guests, looked after its own, celebrated its history, and emitted a harmony that sounded loud and clear.

When I meet someone who can name several towns they call “home,” it reminds me of how I felt when I was a kid and learned a friend’s family had a phonograph that would play all three speeds.

“Wow, are they ever lucky!”

Still, there is something to be said for the old 'maid' I remember who spent almost 100 years in one little town on the prairie, beloved by it townspeople, loving them in return, and for the young widow I met who sought and found the ideal community, works to promote its heritage and though she has lived many places, knows deep in her heart that she’s found her hometown.

Lucky, I think, is hearing the sounds in your heart that sing “hometown” to you.

(Image via)

Pin me up, Scotty

2012-02-25T08:00:00.002-06:00

I like to think I keep up on most of the latest trends in social media. After all, when I began my current career, one of the requirements was that the applicant “lives and breathes social media.”

I do.

It’s the first thing I do each morning – after reading my hometown newspaper online – and the last thing I do each night, sometimes after I’m already under the covers.

Off and on through the day and into the evening, I tweet, link in, goggle at Google+, face-off in Facebook, whip up blog posts, and watch my virtual stock fluctuate on Empire Avenue – when I’m not writing about all of the above, that is.

I try to keep up with my millennial colleagues and readers and stay ahead of my Gen X and boomer friends when it comes to understanding what’s what, who’s where and how it all works.

At least I did until a couple weeks ago.

One of my former coworkers is a busy 30-something mom, with one child in grade school and another who is a preschooler. With kids to shuttle here and there, special treats to bake, school projects to help create, and that little one tugging on her jeans, begging, “Mommy, can I?” or “Mommy, would you?” she doesn’t have much time or excess energy to spend using social media.

I didn’t either when my kids were that age.

So I knew I was in trouble the day her Facebook wall said, “Melanie (not her real name) pinned to Fun Recipes (not the real board) in Pinterest.”

My head started spinning faster than an out-of-control old-fashioned playground merry-go-round.

“What? Pinterest? Melanie is on it before I am? She doesn’t even LIKE social media! I am in trouble. This thing must be big – really big. I’d better check it out.”

It took me a day or two. Yeah, I know. I must have been sick. That’s not like me – not at all.

When I finally did venture over to look at Pinterest, I didn’t get it. The crazy place looked like the chair-side table at the beauty shop. It was like Midwest Living, Good Housekeeping, Taste of Home, Country Gardens, Elle, Zappos and Zulily all stirred up together, with a sprinkling of Guideposts and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations thrown on as garnish.

I took a deep breath, sucked in my pride and asked Melanie for an invite to the invitation-only site. When the email arrived from Pinterest, I signed up and started exploring a bit.

I still couldn’t understand what anyone saw in a social networking site that was nothing but a bunch of photos – that was, until I clicked on one and found out this place was much more than a bulletin board or scrapbook full of images.

A click on a photo of “Better than Sex” cake took me to the recipe. Well, so what? That’s no big deal. Even the “church ladies” have that recipe! When I clicked on an image that said “100 fun things to do with kids,” I found myself at a mommy blog with a list that might keep kids from whining, “Mom, I’m bored,” when they’re cooped up on a rainy day,

“Ah, ha,” I thought. “Now I get it. I can create boards to link to pages about books I like, websites for places I enjoy, tips that help me as a writer. And, I can use it to get readers to the stories my colleagues and I write.”

Oh, and there’s one more thing I can do. I can pin my blog posts on my boards at http://pinterest.com/lincolnbuff2/ – and you can repin them.

Yep, I like this Pinterest.

Pin me up, reader.

(Image via)

The way streets ought to be

2012-02-23T18:53:00.004-06:00

Did you ever take something for granted?

Consider streets, for instance – those thoroughfares that get you from here to there and back again, going north and south, east and west, intersecting at equal intervals, punctuated only by an occasional stoplight or stop sign, and going on until a cornfield jumps up and says, “Far enough.”

I sure did.

The first 29 years that I drove a car, I lived in a town with nice straight streets. In many cases, you could start out at one end and get almost across town before you reached the other end, whether you were going up and down or back and forth.

The other towns I’d lived in or visited were much the same. Some even had the courtesy to name the streets with numbers or letters in accelerating order, radiating out from a main drag.

Consequently, I lived more than four decades of my life, believing this as truth – all towns are on a grid.

Well, aren’t they? It only makes sense, right?

Oh, there might be an exception here and there – a place where a "grand" avenue seems all confused, crossing the others at an angle, or where other streets stop so they won’t run into the schools placed squarely in their paths.

In case, as I did, you still believe the fallacy that all streets cross each other just so, I’m here to tell you the truth as I’ve discovered it.

It “ain’t that way” everywhere else.

Almost 30 years after I learned to drive, I found myself living near a pair of adjoining cities where it seemed as if I could count on one hand the number of streets that went straight though town – and some of those only went one direction. We won’t talk about how many times I looked up to see that every car except mine was going the other direction.

Streets in these cities usually ended after a couple blocks or went in circles, triangles or assorted strange trapezoids even a geometry professor would have trouble identifying. I learned not to venture far from the two major north-south streets and two east-west streets which I trusted myself to travel, believing I’d surely get so lost even bagel crumbs wouldn’t help me find my way home.

One day, though, trying a new cross street in the twin-cities, I found an obstacle in my way, one I hadn’t stumbled upon for at least a decade. Creeping across the street was a moving train.

I felt as if I were home again – nonsensical streets or not. I got so excited that I had to call the first person to come to mind who would understand my excitement – a teen from my hometown.

I should have expected his reply, one of the few words in a youthful vocabulary, “Uh.”

I knew he got it, though. After all, he answered me, didn’t he?

A few days ago, I found myself again in the town where I learned to drive, the one with the nicely laid-out grid. But, what did I encounter on a major north-south street?

You got it – a train, stopped dead in its tracks, blocking the roadway.

The good thing about Galesburg, though, is that I know how to get around obstacles – because in The ‘Burg, the streets make sense.

They did something right when they built that town.

(Image via)

The scribe writes home to The ‘Burg

2012-02-21T12:45:00.000-06:00

If you had the opportunity to write a love letter to your hometown, what would you say? What if you’d changed, and so had the town – and you worried that you might be more in love with it than are some of the people to whom it’s still home?

And, as you wrote that letter, much as if you were writing to an old lover, you feared that, by professing your undying love, you’d turn the lover away forever?

Would you do it anyway?

This week my “Musings on Route 66” blog makes its first appearance on the virtual pages of my hometown newspaper, The Register-Mail. I’m as excited as a little kid about to take her first train ride and as frightened as a teenager about to start her first job. I remember those feelings. I experienced both in ‘The Burg.

One minute I’m thinking, “Oh, this is going to be so much fun!” The next, I’m worrying, “Ah, what if I mess up? What if they don’t like me? What on earth am I getting myself into?”

I left Galesburg, Ill. almost 15 years ago, a few years after completing my long-delayed college degree and shortly after attending my first Sandburg Days Writer’s Workshop.

I moved from that community, where I had to cross both the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad tracks on my daily drive to work in a supermarket, and relocated in a small town where the Illinois Central Railroad, Interstate 55 and Historic Route 66 ran parallel to our backyard.

On the commute to my new career, I drove a quiet, deserted stretch of the Mother Road, which ran between the Interstate and the railroad tracks over which Abraham Lincoln traveled to the White House and his body returned to his final resting place.

As I drove that two-lane, I thought of my new life and community, of the one I left behind, and of the people, places, experiences and history that left their marks on me. It was as if the stories were sitting there in the passenger seat, a huge stack of words – pushing and shoving, jostling for position – saying, “C’mon, Ann. We’re here. It’s up to you to put us on the page.”

My blog was conceived way back then, in 1997, those “musings on Route 66.” If it were a pregnancy, it would have set the record as the world’s longest. Though I’ve written and rewritten many of the stories in my mind or on a computer keyboard, some shared with no one, others with my fellow Toastmasters or nurturing mentors, the blog wasn’t “born” online until this January.

In early February, it ventured onto the virtual pages of Springfield’s The State Journal-Register. Now, it’s also journeying to the place I will always call “home” and to the paper I still read on my computer monitor first thing each day.

Galesburg friends, I’m as happy to welcome you to this blog as I was to see you when you came through my check lane at Giant Foods on East Main Street. You always brightened my day.

I liked you then. I like you now. I’ve missed you.

“Musings on Route 66” is me, throwing those passenger-seat words together on a page, sometimes just thinkin’, other times remembering what it was like to grow up in little towns and a small city in West Central Illinois, a baby boomer in a state with a powerful history and a rich literary legacy.

And, every once in a while, the words of this blog will have minds of their own, as they write love letters to The ‘Burg, for no matter where I reside, it – and you – will have a place in my heart.

Thanks, Galesburg friends, for joining my online and State Journal-Register readers on this literary “road trip.” It’s great to have you along for the ride.

(Image via)

If the timber could talk

2012-02-20T23:21:00.004-06:00

I walked in the timber yesterday.

I should do it more often.

Even this time of year, when the trees stand naked to the world and the tall native plants of summer are replaced by a carpet of rusty-colored leaves strewn with twigs and toppled trees, there’s something about being out there that makes it worth the visit.

It’s as if the wild raspberry bushes and tall slender oak trees in those Missouri woods are whispering, “Welcome back. Come visit more often.”

When I was young, we lived on an Illinois farm with a timber – a place where if you listened carefully, you could hear chipmunks rustling in the ground nearby and squirrels scurrying through the trees. If you looked closely you’d see a bird’s nest up above, and at just the right time of year, if you knew where to scavenge, you could find those delectable morel mushrooms nestled beneath a tree.

We didn’t spend much time down in the timber those days, though. Where we youngsters saw an opportunity for adventure, our more cautious parents worried over the sorts of things that parents should – snakes, wild critters, falling limbs, slippery slopes on the banks of the pond, people who might trespass in spite of the signs.

But there was one sanctuary where they did let us play from time to time. It was an area along the edge of the lane that went back past the back forty to the railroad track.

In this magical place stood a tree with a branch that hung down almost like a vine. It seemed to call out, inviting my siblings and me, “Swing from me, please.”

And, so it was that we named this little corner of our wooded sanctuary “Tarzan City.”

We could see Tarzan City and that tree from the front yard in the spring and the winter, and only imagine how it stood, hidden by the corn in the summer and fall – a sentinel, surely waiting for us as much as we longed to visit it.

When I stop and look back on the days on that farm, I miss searching for those cone-shaped morels deep in the timber in the spring, picking wild berries along the railroad track as summer came again, feasting on juicy sweet corn as it was about time to return to school, and riding a sled down our farm’s gigantuan hill in the winter.

Yet, to this day, one of the memories I hold most dear is of the timber sanctuary that for a day here and there became our Tarzan City.

I don’t swing from trees these days, but it’s funny how even in another state and another century, a timber can extend a greeting as warm and as welcome as those I can’t forget.

(Image via)

Those darned boys

2012-02-16T23:31:00.006-06:00

Boys – they’re trouble, plain and simple. Time and again as I was growing up, they got me into trouble.

I think that’s why I thought they were so cool. When they got into trouble, they had fun doing it – most of the time, at least. And I did, too.

It all started with The Three Stooges. As Larry, Moe and Curly messed with each other and with others, as those “boys” whipped up antics others never dreamed of, I was watching, eyes glued to the screen, thinking, “I want to do that. It looks like fun.”

Sometimes I did – like when I tried to swing from the dining room drapes – and got shooed right down—or the day I was bound and determined I could shinny up the radiator pipe – and got my leg stuck between the pipe and the wall.

For the record, I had fun both times.

By first grade, I was mesmerized by the antics of Dennis the Menace. For my first school Halloween party, I talked my mother into getting me a Dennis costume and making a yellow cap to cover my long brown hair.

I’m sure was the only girl in my class dressed in a boy’s costume. I didn’t care. I could barely breathe beneath the plastic mask, but I was sure the menace was with me in spirit. I didn’t need to behave badly to feel good about the troublemaker I’d become under my stifling one-piece plastic outfit.

I found some real trouble, too, that year. A cute boy sat behind me in school, and I always had something important to tell him.

Imagine that – me, talking.

Some say I never shut up. They’re probably right.

Back then, teachers – even good ones – used disciplinary methods they can’t use today. After way too many threats from a teacher with the patience of a saint who finally reached her limit, I got my mouth taped shut.

It was all because of that boy, I swear.

Things went along pretty well until fourth grade, when I had another teacher with an extra dose of patience. (I'm sure to this day it’s because she didn’t have any kids of her own.) She made one mistake. She put that cute boy in front of me.

“Psst, psst, [Cute Boy], know what?”

No response. (My ten year old mind: “He loves me. He’s just playing hard to get.”)

“Hey, guess what?”

Silence.

Teacher: “Ann, would you please come to my desk?”

Shuffle, shuffle, head hung low.

“How many times have I told you not to bother him during class?”

“It was important.” (This really meant, “He’s so cute I can’t stop bothering him. Why do you teachers keep putting us in the same row?”)

It was his fault. It must have been. I was just an innocent girl. It was always those darned boys, making me get into trouble.

In fifth grade, I’d found new heroes in paperback books. The ones I liked most were the books about trouble-making boys like Homer Price, Rupert, and Toby Tyler. I wanted to be them.

The orneriness reached its pinnacle in junior high when a new boy joined my class. Our math teacher, also the principal, was a cool guy. He tolerated quite a lot – like pretending he didn’t see us throwing our pencils so they’d stick in the popcorn ceiling.

The study hall teacher was not so cool. People got in trouble there every day. When Cute New Boy and I got caught passing notes in a dictionary, we were lucky we only got scolded and didn’t receive corporal punishment. Yep, in the ‘60s, teachers got away with that.

My trouble-making with boys came to an abrupt halt later that year when I got called to the principal’s office. Cute New Boy was flirting with me, I guess, by wadding up pieces of bread and throwing them at me as we ate our lunch on the wooden bleachers in the big school gymnasium. I threw some back.

My one and only disciplinary visit to a school administrator’s office went something like this:

“Ann, I’m surprised at you.”

“But, the boys were throwing it first.”

“Yes, but you know better, don’t you?”

Looking at the floor, “I guess so.”

And then the line that hit the hardest, "I'm disappointed in you."

So much for orneriness – darned boys.

I wonder, though. Were they really the troublemakers , or was I?

Or, should I just blame it all on Larry, Moe, Curly and that little blonde-haired boy with the cowlick?

(Image via)

He ‘don’t bring me’ flowers anymore

2012-02-13T23:36:00.002-06:00

I don’t get flowers on Valentine’s Day.

Don’t feel sorry for me, please. I want it that way.

No, I’m not an old spinster. The first half might be right—a little, depending on the definition. The other half—hardly. My hubby and I are pushing forty years of marriage.

And, for the last umpteen years, he hasn’t given me flowers on Valentine’s Day. I asked him not to.

Here’s why.

He likes to give me roses, red ones. Have you ever noticed how the price of those things goes through the roof this time of year? It’s no accident. It’s a conspiracy. (No, florists, please. Don’t come after me.)

I’m not about to have my hubby spend oodles more of our hard-earned money than he would have a week earlier or a week later. So, he doesn't.

Instead, he surprises me from time to time—like he did a few months ago.

I was working at my computer one morning when he was getting ready to leave for work. Sometimes, I’m up that early. Lots of times, these days, I’m not. And, when I’m not, he doesn’t wake me to kiss me good-bye.

And, that’s okay, too. After this long, I’ll take my sleep when I get it and my kisses some other time. What can I say – it works for us, okay?

But that morning, for some unknown reason, he left without saying “good-bye,” without giving me a kiss. I called him a little later.

“Where are you?”

“Driving.” Translate: “What else would I be doing at this time of day?”

“You didn’t kiss me good-bye.”

“Oh.” Translate: “So what? I don’t kiss you good-bye lots of days.”

“You never leave without kissing me.”

“I forgot.” Translate: “What’s the big deal?”

And, it wasn’t, actually, but I was kind of having fun with this by then, so I wasn’t about to let him think it didn’t matter.

“Well, don’t let it happen again!” Translate: “It’s okay, really.”

At lunch time, I heard my phone. “Ping.”

I picked it up, saw I had a text message, and read, “I’m sorry I didn’t kiss you.”

I smiled so big my cheeks hurt. Boy, he was sweating it.

When hubby got home from work that day, I was still busy working in my office. He came in, grabbed my shoulders, turned me to him, and planted a big, here-is-this-what-you-wanted kind of kiss on my lips. We were both laughing so hard I almost fell out of my desk chair.

Later, I went to the kitchen to start supper. There on the counter between the coffee pot and the sink was a beautiful single red rose, with greenery and baby’s breath in a bud vase.

I smiled, this time with a bit of a tear in my eyes.

“Honey…”

From the other room: “What?”

I peeked around the corner. “I love you.”

He grinned. “I know.”

I don’t get flowers on Valentine’s Day.

You know what? That’s okay. I’ll take an unexpected floral surprise any other day of the year.

But, he’d better not forget the chocolate-covered caramel pecan candies on Feb. 14, or he’ll have to pay up with a whole bouquet of roses the minute the price drops.

(By the way, if you can’t get that song out of your head, here are Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond with “You don’t bring me flowers” anymore.)

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Happy 203rd birthday, President Lincoln

2012-02-11T23:16:00.007-06:00

Since I was a small child, I’ve been smitten with Abraham Lincoln.

Why? A combination of things, probably – things like parents who told me stories of the 16^th President and took me to visit Lincoln sites, books that kept Lincoln lore alive, school trips, and living in Illinois where his aura is so strong. Chances are many of you came to admire him by similar paths.

But I like to think there was one more force even stronger in my Lincoln journey. I was born in a hospital about a block from Old Main at Knox College where a Lincoln-Douglas debate was held in 1858. I have my suspicions that almost 100 years later, there was a bit of “Lincoln dust” still in the air and it blew in the nursery window, landed on my shoulder and left me intrigued with the railsplitter for life.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Because of this love for Lincoln, or what many call my “obsession,” I started a blog, Lincoln Buff 2, during the Lincoln Bicentennial year.

In celebration of Lincoln’s 203^rd birthday, I dug back into the archives for the blog post I wrote just after midnight on Lincoln’s 200^th birthday. I spent that week in Springfield and savored all the excitement. Come along. Relive the adventure with me.

From Feb. 12, 2009: "Happy 200th birthday, President Lincoln!

"Here in the Land of Lincoln, the clock just struck midnight. The big day we've looked forward to and planned for is here. It's time to wish Abraham Lincoln a happy 200th birthday.

“As I type this, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is hosting an all-night vigil for Lincoln. In conjunction with the vigil, original copies of the Gettysburg Address, Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment are on display.

“Until after 11 p.m., the line to view the documents wound through the lobby, down the hall, into an exhibit holding area and around the museum plaza. It reminded me of a visitation I once attended for a well-loved school teacher who died much too young. As in that case, the people coming today were there to pay their respects to someone whose life made a difference.”

Feb. 12, 2012: Those same three documents are on display again this year, and the 13^th amendment is all spruced up, just waiting for your visit.

The celebrations may not be as elaborate and as many this year as during the bicentennial year, but chances are that wherever you are, there are Lincoln birthday events nearby. A great place to keep up with Lincoln happenings year-round is the Abraham Lincoln Online website.

And don’t forget to watch The State Journal-Register’s Abraham Lincoln Observer blog where Mike Kienzler spreads the word about the latest, greatest and sometimes even not-so-great goings-on in the Lincoln world.

Again today, I’ll use the words I used in 2009. I mean them as much now as I did when I wrote them three years ago:

“Please join in a celebration of Lincoln's big day. If you can't, at least take a few minutes to stop and reflect on how the life of one individual can change the course of history. Lincoln mattered then and he still matters today. Remember the life he lived and emulate the values he espoused – hard work, honesty and lifelong learning.”

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Why I love Girl Scout cookies

2012-02-09T21:29:00.004-06:00

It’s that time of year again, so Jay Redfern, an editor at my hometown newspaper, The Register-Mail, did a blog post recently on Girl Scout cookies.

I caught wind of Jay’s story through Twitter, because these days about a hundred miles separates me from my hometown of Galesburg, Ill.

The first tweet I saw said, “What’s your favorite kind of Girl Scout cookie?”

Then, as time went on, the tweets became more specific, directed to people like @AlRoker (DoSiDos and Tagalongs) and @PumaBerkman, aka Lance, the famous St. Louis Cardinal (“the peanut butter ones”). He also asked local celebrities—teachers, business people and more—which they prefer.

But one of the celebrities struck me the strongest, because when I think of Girl Scouts, I think of her.

To me, Girl Scout cookies represent all those things we said we’d try to do when we made the Girl Scout Promise, all those things we said we’d do our best to do when we recited the Girl Scout Law.

They remind me of making new friends, and keeping the old—one silver and the other gold.

I think of Girl Scout cookies and I think of loyal customers, neighbors who bought cookies from me year after year. I think of goal-setting, of wanting to beat my sales from the year before. I remember working to get each order together right and counting change back just so. I remember keeping my customer list, so I’d have it the next year. (I still have it. It means even more to me now than it did then.)

And, I remember my daughters learning all those same things.

Girl Scout cookies remind me of a pressed brown uniform and beanie, getting my wings in the fly-up ceremony, trying to sew hard-earned badges on a sash by hand and poking myself with the needle about a zillion times.

Those cookies remind me of a night spent in a big lodge at Black Hawk State Park and another under the stars at Galesburg’s Lake Storey.

That’s where the other celebrity comes in.

The year I went off to camp for the first time, with my brand new pocket knife, a potato and a can of vegetable soup for hobo stew, I met one of the smartest people in my little world—my camp counselor, an older Girl Scout who taught us how to use our knives to carve bars of Ivory soap into treasured sculptures, then clean the knives in a bucket of soapy water so we could use them to peel the potatoes for our stew.

That counselor taught us to sing silly songs about a chicken who couldn’t lay an egg and sticking our heads in little skunk holes.

She may have fallen a little out of my favor when she taught me how to clean the latrine, but she reached hero status for life, when as the whole camp lay in the grass, sleeping bags lined row-by-row, she stood under the starlit canopy and sang “Ghost Riders in the Sky” for us, while playing her ukulele.

Until that day, I’d never met anyone who played the ukulele—and it was decades before I met another with that musical gift and wonderful little instrument. As I fell asleep in the light of the moon, I figured I’d probably met one of the smartest, most talented people I’d ever encounter.

I didn’t know the word “mentor” then, but that week Semenya McCord became one of mine. Now a jazz musician and music educator, she still fills that role, inspiring me to pursue my dreams—though different than hers—just as she has pursued hers.

I think of Girl Scouts—and of Semenya—when I see a bar of Ivory soap or hold a pocket knife.

When Jay asked about Girl Scout cookies, it wasn’t just the taste of a cookie I remembered, but experiences and people I cherish yet today. Oh the memories that simple question awoke.

In case you’re wondering, though, my number one choice always was and still is today Thin Mints. And so is my mentor’s.

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A little blog begins a big new journey

2012-02-07T20:30:00.000-06:00

This is a scary, happy kind of time for me. A blog that was conceived as a musing on a two-lane highway more than a dozen years ago starts out on a new adventure.

Like the mother I was years ago watching my kindergartners, their tiny little legs climbing great big bus steps, the “Mommy” looking on as the door shut and the yellow monster rounded the corner, I can’t help but wipe away a tear or two. They’re tears of fear for what this new little blog may encounter and tears of joy for what it might become – and, yes, tears of relief that we’ve made it to this point.

My words come back to the pages where they first earned a byline in 1998, at the newspaper that Abraham Lincoln said “was always my friend,” The State Journal-Register. (Actually, he said “The Journal paper…” but that paper lives on in this one today.)

My blog will join those of veteran journalists and other bloggers on the newspaper’s website – and I’m as giddy as a junior-high girl peeking around the corner at the boy of her dreams.

If this is the first time you’ve read my words, welcome. If you read some of them before on the SJ-R Books page, on my Lincoln Buff 2 bicentennial blog, through social media, or in a publication or on a website for which I have written professionally, thanks for joining me again.

This adventure is nearly as new for me as it is for you. “Musings on Route 66” was born as 2012 opened its eyes, born to be a place where I could write about the things that tug at me, where I could share my passions with others.

I’ll tell you about aspects of Illinois history and literature that move me. I’ll write about things that touch me as a baby boomer. I’ll share stories of sensational beings and simple things, including stories about my second-favorite state, Missouri. And, from time to time, I’ll write about that two-lane road that stirred these musings in the first place – or I’ll just “muse” about something that won’t go away until I get it written down.

I’m a lifelong “word nerd,” so I’ll also write about books and quotes that I love or believe are worth sharing.

Because those same words give me great pleasure as a writer, I’ll talk about the craft. My words didn’t get to this page by themselves. Along the way, I had many fine mentors and writers – known well and little-known – encouraging me even when they didn’t realize it, sharing their pointers and guiding the way.

Now, it’s my turn. If you’re a writer or writer wannabe, you’ll want to visit the “Wanna be a writer?” section of my blog for tips that can help guide you as they have me.

If you dropped in today out of curiosity, why don’t you pretend like you’re Mike and Frank from “American Pickers”? Snoop around, climb in the attic, look in the corners. You just never know what might turn up. And, once you head down the road, don’t stay gone long. You never know what new old treasures you might find the next time you drop in.

Thanks for stopping by.

As The Beverly Hillbillies said back in this boomer’s younger days, “Y’all come back, y’hear?”

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How do you show value?

2012-02-07T08:41:00.003-06:00

I’m “all about” social networking. It first became part of my life in the fall of 2008 when I began my first blog, Lincoln Buff 2. By Lincoln’s 200th birthday, I was “experimenting” with Twitter, eventually found myself pulled to Facebook, and later, when Google+ hit the scene, I hit it, too.

I tried MySpace, but was a latecomer to it. It just didn’t pull me in – and that new kid on the block, Pinterest, I’m just getting to know her.

But, the one that prompted me to write this post this morning is Empire Avenue. I still don’t quite understand everything about it, but I can tell you this much. It’s a place where I have value. My interactions on other social networks translate to dollars and cents – not real, but virtual – on Empire Avenue.

Well, not dollars and cents, exactly. The “currency” there is called “eaves”. Members of the social network get eaves for things they do elsewhere, like writing a new blog post, posting and receiving comments on their Facebook walls, tweeting, interacting on Empire Avenue, and more.

Social media is not just my passion. Since April of 2011, it’s also been part of my job. That’s why I retired from one career and started out on another. That story – how I got from Point A to Point B, and why and more – is a tale for another time.

Let’s just say I’m almost as passionate about social media and its value to connect and teach as I am about reading, writing and Abraham Lincoln – some days even a little more so.

And, though I’m still a bit curious about the value of Empire Avenue in my life long-term, I like the way it makes me feel valued. Here’s why.

Each member of Empire Avenue has a value, beginning at 10 eaves. Just like real stock, the value rises or falls. Just like a real portfolio, a user’s net wealth increases as the stock pays dividends and as users buy stock in one another.

Right now, as I’m making more time to tweet, posting regularly on Facebook and writing blog posts, my value is increasing. Just this week, I’ve gone from 40.61 to 46.35, while most of January my stock ranged from 31 to 33. And, on Sunday, my Net Wealth increased to more than half a million eaves. I feel rich!

Why?

Because people I don’t even know are saying to me by their actions, “Ann Tracy Mueller, LINCOLNBUFF2, you have value.” As they do, I see my value increasing on the monitor in front of me. I feel more valued.

But, showing value happens more places than just on social media.

It happens at home, when we tell a youngster, “Great job. I’m proud of you.” Or when we tell our spouse, “Thanks for emptying the dishwasher. I appreciate that.” It happens when we tell a coworker or a boss, “Thanks for backing me up on that decision. It meant a lot to me” And when we tell a cashier, “I appreciate how carefully you handled my fruit. You’re good at what you do.” Or send a note to a photographer that says, “Great shot. Love how you let the light work for you in this one.” It happens when we send an email to a friend fighting cancer that says, “I’m thinking of you today. You’re in my prayers.”

Little things – little things any day, little things everyday – show others – those we know well, and those we’ve never met – that they have value.

That’s why I keep playing Empire Avenue. It tells me, “LINCOLNBUFF2, you’ve got value.”

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Reflections on reading, writing and ‘rithmetic

2012-02-05T10:58:00.006-06:00

“I’m reading about writing, and later I’ll write about reading.”

These words I shared with my husband as I left the living room where he was spending time with old friends – Sunday morning television anchors telling stories he enjoyed – as I went off to read and later create some of my own.

My old friends are on the pages of books.

Instead of reading that morning, I felt drawn to write, to capture right then, on the computer monitor before me, what was floating through my brain.

It wasn’t always that way. I didn’t always have that luxury. But, looking back, now, I know that’s okay.

As a youngster, I fell in love with words. Remember that Little Golden Book, the red book with the one word title, Words? If you don’t, you missed a little bit of magic, I think.

The book has evolved through the years. The version I remember had little boys and girls of the 1940s and 1950s, not too unlike the ones in our “Dick and Jane” primers at school.

Through that book, even before I went off to a big red brick school house, I’d learned to recognize those words, “big” and “red” and more, from that little 25-cent book.

And, as I watched how words could be woven on a page to tell stories, I began to fall in love with them. I loved putting them on paper myself and retrieving them by reading words others had left for me to discover.

Once I found out about numbers, I liked them, too. It was fun to see how numerals worked together, not the same as letters, but in their own unique way. They had an order to them that letters didn’t.

Oh, sure, letters had to march just so onto the page to spell this word or that, and those of us who got them all in the right order, words one through 20 on the spelling list, got a bright shiny, colorful star and a letter A, followed by an arithmetic sign, +. Funny, isn’t it, how even then, back in first grade, numbers and letters, writing and ‘rithmetic, were intertwined.

But there was more latitude with letters, with words. You could mix them up and they still worked. Do that with numbers and you’d have a disaster. No matter how you tried to explain it to the teacher, two plus two were never going to equal five.

Just as those words and numbers were intertwined, so it was to be in my life.

As a senior in high school, trying to decide what my major in college should be, I was torn between the math formulas that kept me mesmerized, nose to the grindstone in Sister Charles Ellen’s math class, and the words that drew me to the page in the Mike Royko articles we studied in Sister Theresa Rose’s journalism class and the contemporary novels we studied in Sister Denise’s senior English class.

In college, I ended up being drawn to my school’s English program. When I left two years later, I spent more than 20 years working with – balancing – numbers everyday as I worked with grocery store ledgers.

In the long run, the call of the words was louder, so when I returned to college in my late 30s, they won out.

Today, as a writer and online editor for a communication news website, I “skip, scan and retrieve” thoughts written in hundreds of online articles each week. Yet, when my time’s my own, as it is more often at this stage of life, I do what I love most.

I read about writing, write about reading and often do either – just because I can.

I still know how to work a mean equation when I have to – but, don’t get too excited, my math-loving friends. I’m not so crazy about ‘rithmetic that I celebrate or count down to “Pi day.”

Carl Sandburg’s birthday, yes. But, wait, what was that one poem he wrote?

Ah, yes … “Arithmetic.”

On second thought, for the sake of all those numbers I juggled, I guess I could at least treat myself to a piece of pie on March 14, couldn’t I?

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What? A blank sheet of paper?!

2012-02-01T08:57:00.004-06:00

I walked into my office and noticed the blank Word document open on my computer monitor. I rarely see such a beast, especially staring back at me like a lion with its jaws wide open, scary-looking.

Normally, I’m sitting in front of the keyboard, which is just below the monitor and, as soon as I open a new document, I set right to work putting words on “paper” – virtual paper, ‘tis true, but paper nonetheless.

It may be something as simple as a link to an article, or a working title of a not-yet-written story. It may be a date or a “Dear SoAndSo,” but 99 times out of a hundred – or more often – as soon as that document is opened, the virtual ink hits the page.

I’ve heard of people who are frightened of what the blank page represents to them, of people who lament that they have writers’ block or a fear of the words that may flow from their fingers, but I’m not one of them.

Maybe I should be, maybe I’m too bold in thinking that anyone, anywhere would want to read anything at all that I might write.

But, I’m not afraid – of the blank page, at least.

I’ll admit, sometimes words come easier than others and from time to time when I’m writing for someone other than myself and my readers, I struggle to find the right words or to craft the message I’ve been asked to craft, but I guess it boils down to this. I love words. I love the way they play together on a page. I love the way I put my fingers on the keyboard and letters dance together in front of me, sometimes saying things that surprise even me.

My wish for others who put words on a page or must or want to is that theirs, too, will have as much fun playing together as mine do.

Yet, just to be safe, so that I don’t have to walk into my office and see that big ferocious lion of a blank page staring back at me, next time I leave the room, I’m going to type something on the page before I leave, even if it’s just, “Hi, Ann, welcome back!”

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The day we almost ‘bought it’

2012-01-31T08:28:00.002-06:00

I’d never been in a canoe until just after I was married, but I fell in love with the sport nearly as soon as I discovered it. Our first canoeing excursions were on the quiet Chain O’ Lakes near Waupaca, Wisconsin – a place with no motorboats, no current – just still, calm waters, sometimes deep, other times so shallow you had to get out, pick up your canoe and carry it.

As often happens in life, a short time later canoeing took a back seat to everything else – working, caring for kids and laundry and yards and homes and all those other things that tug at our lives when we’re just, well, “living,” I guess.

Decades after those first canoe trips, my husband and I were on a mini-vacation to Missouri. We spent a couple days in Branson, and then meandered our way back across the bottom – the hilly, curvy bottom – of that state, eventually working our way back up to the little town of Eminence on the Current River, where we planned to canoe.

We arrived shortly after a period of heavy rains, so the river was “high and fast,” we were warned. Yes, it was a lot different than the canoeing we’d done in Wisconsin in our much younger years, but we felt pretty good about how well we worked together paddling the canoe.

Gee, maybe we still had it after all those years, after all.

“We should do this more often,” we thought.

Our confidence regained, sometime later we journeyed down to Eminence again, maybe the same year, maybe the next. The exact time doesn’t matter as much as the adventure itself. This time we took our then teenaged daughter with us. Years spent canoeing at summer camp – first as a camper, later as a counselor – made her well-qualified as a companion on our river jaunt.

This time, the water was lower and slower. We went along quite well, until we came to a log jam. As we tried to skirt it, the current grabbed our canoe, flipped it, and before we knew what happened, the power of the water sucked the canoe upside down. It rested on the river bottom, wedged against a brush pile.

The water was over our heads and none of us had the strength or stamina to dive down and turn the canoe upright. We knew we were in deep doo-doo. We’d been on the river more than two hours and only seen a couple other canoes, but we knew we couldn’t get out of this jam without some help.

We waited for what seemed like forever, though it was probably only an hour. Then, we heard a noise, not coming downstream as we had, but up. It was a Missouri native in a john boat with a small motor. We explained our dilemma and asked if he could let the outfitters know of our plight. He did better than that. This kind soul offered to dive down, un-wedge the boat and turn it upright. He even dove down a second and a third time to retrieve our belongings.

What was the likelihood that that man would have the day off work, be out fishing with his kids and come upon us, stranded there on the river?

We still marvel at that and we still breathe a sigh of relief – or is it a prayer of thanksgiving or both? – that we didn’t go down with the “ship” the day we almost bought it on the Current River.

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Lessons from a patriarch

2012-01-30T18:40:00.003-06:00

From time to time, as they do in real life, my musings will take me back to earlier days, special people and memories worth living anew. This piece “From the archives” was my tribute to a special uncle on his passing a few years ago.

I didn't see my Uncle Vernon often, because after World War II he left the prairies of Illinois to raise his family in California. But, every few years, he and his family would come by train to stay at my grandparents. When I think of my uncle, I can't help but remember waiting anxiously for them to arrive at a big old depot that is no more.

When God was handing out uncles, I hit the jackpot. I didn’t get just one or two. Between my dad’s and mother’s sides of the family, I got eleven.

Uncle Vernon was the oldest, and though nearly 2,000 miles separated us, his love and wisdom seemed to catch an eastward wind and blow back to his home state of Illinois.

Our chances to visit through the years were much less frequent than I would have wished, but the lessons I learned from the distant patriarch of our clan will stay with me forever.

Go west, young man (or east or wherever it is you belong), but do it.
Watch for trains in the distance. You never know when they’ll come bearing loved ones.
Savor old depots with warm wooden benches and Chiclets gum machines (or any other old building whose walls hold stories of days gone by).
Love your brothers – and love your cousins as if they were brothers.
Work hard and retire harder.
Make your golden years platinum.
See the world.

And there’s that one lesson he gently taught me that I didn’t learn very well: Just be quiet and listen.

As I think back, I can’t remember many of the words my uncle said – probably because I was too busy doing all the talking - but I can remember that he always listened.

And when he listened, Uncle Vernon’s eyes spoke for him, saying ever so gently, “I love you.”

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Road trippin’ next to Route 66

2012-01-29T19:58:00.007-06:00

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I had to giggle as I realized the name of the train I was taking home from a recent visit to the St. Louis area.

I, Lincoln Buff 2, had a ticket to Lincoln on the Lincoln Service. I snickered to myself as I heard the name of the train called out in the station, reported to the conductor that I was “Lincoln Buff 2 to Lincoln on the Lincoln,” and smiled as I posted my status on Facebook.

In fact, I was still smiling more than an hour later as I wrote the musings below.

Looking out the train’s window, I realize that for much of the journey, the tracks run parallel to the iconic highway, Route 66. From time to time, I see undeveloped timberland very much like the timbers in Sangamon County where Lincoln lived for so many years – woods full of bramble bushes, water-slogged low spots and centuries of leaves falling one on another year after year.

For much of the trip I can also see I-55 – that hustling, bustling always-at-least-four-lane-sometimes-more road, built to make an easier, faster thoroughfare between Chicago and St. Louis. It does the second, of course – makes it faster.

Easier, I think, is relative. Is it easier to have to dodge 80-mile-an-hour weavers, who change lanes on a 65-mile-an-hour highway faster than a fickle teenaged girl changes boyfriends?

I like to think easier today is taking that old road, Historic Route 66, or taking the train and having time to muse.

What strikes me most on this journey is the tranquility, the time to sit here and, if I wish, just do nothing. Or, if I’d like, reflect upon my journey, wonder about the people living in the homes and on the farms along the tracks, wonder about the stories of the people sitting near me on the train. Where have they been, where are they going, what baggage do they have besides what they’ve stowed near the door, on the overhead rack or under their seats?

To a writer, everything is a story – things like the town we just passed through with its old abandoned school, businesses and tumble-down homes. I wonder, as I look, which makes for the more interesting story – the “real” one or the one I create as I look out the window?

Thank goodness for lonely two-lane highways and passenger trains. They give us what we rarely give ourselves – time to think, time to imagine and, if we’re lucky, time to unwittingly overhear the phone conversation of a fellow passenger checking up on his mother, encouraging a friend and gently guiding a family member facing a decision. I like that guy sitting behind me without even turning to meet him. It’s the caring in his voice, I guess.

I love the peace and quiet, the time to think, the time to write – but don’t you wonder sometimes what it might be like to visit for a bit one-on-one with a fellow passenger, to hear her stories? I do that, too, sometimes, and they always seem to include twists and turns, trials and triumphs greater than what I could have dreamed up on my own.

Do you suppose the seat we end up in on such a journey is there waiting for us so lives can touch – if only for a few minutes – so we can be comforted or show caring, receive affirmation or provide encouragement?

Imagine the stories those rail cars could share if only they, too, were storytellers.

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Been to a tea party lately?

2012-01-12T20:21:00.007-06:00

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Macho men, humor me for a little while, please. Even you may find some memories worth reliving here.

Ladies and gents, stop for a few minutes and pretend you’re four years old.

You’re sitting around a kid-sized table or a coffee table or one of those Little Tykes picnic tables. You’re there with your best teddy bear, stuffed dinosaur or favorite action figure, your closest friend, and maybe even the sometimes annoying little neighbor kid.

On the table in front of you are some toy china dishes, or plastic or painted aluminum cups and saucers. You’ve got some lemonade – real or imagined – and handful of cookies. (No, you didn’t wash your hands before reaching in the cookie jar. Mom knows it, but she didn’t say anything this once.)

For the little bit of time your child-sized attention span keeps you there, you’re feeling pretty good about yourself. You poured the imaginary “tea” without spilling (not much anyway), you got to eat your favorite treat, licking the white stuff out of the middle of the chocolate sandwich cookie without getting in trouble for doing it, and, in hosting the party, you made someone else feel special, be it a fuzzy creature or a snot-nosed kid.

Do you ever long for carefree days like that and a time when you felt all grown up, but without the worries of adulthood?

I love it when my kids have ideas that are so smart I think to myself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Recently, when my youngest daughter had her first child, her older sister said, “I’m glad it’s a girl. Now we can have a tea party for the shower.”

And, that’s exactly what we did – using cups, saucers and serving pieces from three of the baby’s great-great grandmas and a great-great-great aunt and the toy china my sisters and I used for our tea parties. The babysitter who hosted spontaneous tea parties for my daughters when they were four-year-olds was gracious and let us host this one at her home, too.

I bet if you asked, each of the four generations present would tell you the afternoon was as magical as if they were youngsters again. There is just something about a cup of tea, sweets and good company that makes you feel young, special and carefree again, no matter how old you are.

If you haven’t tried it lately, leave your cares behind, brew up a pot of tea and sit down cross-legged in front of the coffee table to sip from a china cup. We won’t even tell anyone if you dig through the attic to find that old purple dinosaur so he can join you.

While you’re at it – go ahead, eat sugar cubes together for old time’s sake.

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No time to read

2012-01-10T22:17:00.008-06:00

A writer friend of mine, Jennifer Niven, whose work and work ethic I admire, has a blog called “No time to bowl.”

I won’t steal her story by telling you why it is named so. You can find out for yourself here.

Jennifer’s blog title reminds me of all the years I thought I had “no time to read.” Perhaps you feel the same way.

Here’s what I now know about “no time.”

When I was a little girl, I loved having stories read to me. Later, when I could read myself, I couldn’t get enough of books and the tales they held between their covers.

Heck, I even read between the covers of my bed, using a flashlight to flip through the pages when I was supposed to be sleeping. I kept at that until I started high school, at least. It was then, I think, that boys became nearly as important to me – or perhaps more so – than books.

When I was sixteen, I began to work, going to school by day, cashiering in a grocery store at night. I guess I thought I didn’t have time to “read” anymore. I don’t remember many stolen moments with books in those years.

In college, it seemed most of what I read was that “required” stuff, then I got married had kids and kept working. My reading was limited to the newspaper, a magazine from time to time, and a few books I’d begin here and there when I wasn’t too tired to read.

I really didn’t turn to books again in earnest until I returned to school when I was nearly 40, and even after that, I sometimes went great lengths of time without making it through an entire volume.

It was many years later that I realized that, during those “no time to read” years, I was reading all along.

My job as a cashier in a grocery store, encountering hundreds of people day in and day out, was like an entirely new lending library. Each day was a fresh page upon which I could read not words, but people. They were as different as they were the same, and each encounter, each experience taught me something new, if not about that individual, then about humankind or the way the species interacts, one being with another.

So, where ever you are, what ever you’re doing, unless you’re locked in a cave away from the human race, when you have “no time” to read books, there is something just as interesting to read.

It’s people.

Try it. You might just see what you’ve been missing.

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Why I don’t play Words With Friends

2012-01-09T21:12:00.007-06:00

Was there ever a time in your life when you just knew—with all certainty, beyond any shadow of a doubt—that you had best not try something if you knew what was good for you?

If you’re like me, you’ve hit those crossroads a time or two in your life. Once in a while, you may have done whatever-it-was anyway. Other times, it was a “Nah, not worth it.” And, then there were those times when you just knew, “If I cross that bridge, there is no coming back, never, no way, no how.”

Been there, done that. Hit each of these crossroads a time or two.

Done whatever-it-was-anyway?

The video arcade game Centipede.

It was the spring of 1982. I was pregnant with my youngest daughter. The grocery store where I worked had a couple of video games, and I found Centipede—or it found me. I’d tried Ms PacMan, but I’ll be honest with you. When they were handing out coordination, I must have been on a break or something. I missed my serving, so Ms PacMan wasn’t for me.

Centipede, though, was a different thing. As I played it … and played it … and played it, I got better and better and better. I’d play it on my lunch hours. I’d play it for a while after work and I’d probably still be playing it now, if it weren’t for the daughter I had the summer of that year.

After six weeks off work, my Centipede skills had slipped a bit. Okay, they’d slipped a lot.

And, besides that, this cute little girl was waiting for me to come breastfeed her on my lunch break and after work. I figured it was better to feed the kid than to shoot at the centipedes. Wouldn’t want the poor kid starving, now, would I?

And, besides that, I didn’t want to have to tell my husband or the sitter that I’d used up the diaper money on a video game.

“Nah, not worth it.”

Marijuana.

Didn’t have to think twice about that. I know a lot of people my age tried it. And, some said they didn't inhale. R-i-i-i-g-h-t...

I didn’t know if smoking pot was a “cross that bridge, you’re not coming back.” I did know it was a bridge I didn’t want to cross at all. If I looked at someone cross-eyed, I got caught, so I sure the heck wasn’t about to do something illegal and have to explain to my parents why I thought I needed to do it.

Anyway, I knew I didn’t need to smoke it. I was silly enough without consuming something to make me sillier.

But, Words with Friends?

I can’t go there.

I know I can’t, and here’s why.

I love words. I really, really, really love words. I’m addicted to words – the way they look on a page, the way you can weave them together to tell stories, express your love or thank someone for their kindness or for reading what you’ve written.

If I started playing with words with my friends, I’d be up before the break of day, playing long after I should have showered and begun my day’s work, skipping lunch, neglecting supper and laundry and bills, and forgetting to go to bed.

I’d surely run through all my existing friends, driving them away as I begged, “Oh, c’mon, just one more game,” and I’d be on a mad voyage across the virtual globe making new friends to replace the ones I’d worn out.

Oh, and besides the word “addiction,” there is just one more reason.

I might get beat.

So friends, I love you, but I am a little worried about your words.

(Image via)

When the vets came marching in

2012-01-07T21:08:00.007-06:00

A teenaged reflection during the war in Vietnam

From time to time, as they do in real life, my musings will take me back to earlier days, special people and memories worth living anew.

I was a teen in the sixties and most of what I remember about the war in Vietnam was wishing that we weren’t there. It just didn’t seem right to send our boys off somewhere to fight for something I didn’t understand, and it was easy to get on the “Make love, not war” bandwagon, to sing antiwar songs and wear peace symbol necklaces.

Later as I grew older and, especially after I married a Vietnam vet, I was embarrassed by the way we treated these young men upon their return, many of whom probably wished as much as we did that they didn’t have to go into those godforsaken jungles.

As I was looking through my earlier work, I ran across this piece in a notebook from English class during my sophomore year of high school. Please forgive my passive voice and not-yet-developed skills as a writer. This little article “From the archives” captured a moment in history even I don’t remember. Though the grammar and syntax would be much different were I to write this piece today, I think it’s worth sharing.

Oct. 5, 1967, Galesburg, Ill.

Friday, Sept. 29, 1967 was a big day for Galesburg. It was the day the Vietnam vets would come “marching in.”

They didn’t march, however. They rode through the streets of Galesburg in cars furnished by local auto agencies.

[The vets] arrived about 2:45 p.m., 45 minutes later than their expected arrival time. The parade began at about 3 p.m.

These men were welcomed to Galesburg from Great Lakes Naval Hospital by crowds of about 8,000 people, many of whom waved flags. Some people had flags so large they hung them out windows of downtown buildings.

Two Costa [High School] boys had an extremely large flag hanging from a third story window above Bowman’s Shoe Store.

Seeing the vets was an experience I’ll never forget. When I was going home Friday afternoon, we drove by the Travelodge, where the veterans were staying. Two of them waved when we waved, and I was thrilled tremendously.

Their activities Saturday consisted of lunch at local homes, and an afternoon of bowling, miniature golf or relaxation.

I walked by two of them Friday, and when they answered my “Hello” with a cheery “Hello,” it made my spine tickle, I was so thrilled.

Saturday evening, they were guests of honor at a dance at Hotel Custer escorted by Galesburg girls. We drove by Hotel Custer at about 9:30, and it looked as if all were enjoying themselves.

Sunday the veterans were treated to a brunch at The Huddle, a visit to Carl Sandburg’s Memorial Service and a steak dinner at Harbor Lights before leaving Galesburg at 6:00 p.m.

Jan. 7, 2012

About 20 years ago, when I was taking a class on the literature of Illinois at Western Illinois University, my professor, John E. Hallwas, talked about the way memory is always reshaping itself.

As the Vietnam War ran on and after it ended, the memories I had of those days were of how poorly we treated our vets upon their return to the U.S.

I’d not just reshaped the memory of that day. I’d blocked it completely.

Finding this essay now doesn’t undo the way we did our Vietnam vets wrong, but it does make me feel thankful that on that weekend in September 1967, my hometown extended a warm welcome to this group of young men who had given so much.

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A remedy for the wanna-be-a-writer blues

2012-01-07T07:12:00.001-06:00

Feeling a little down in the dumps these days?

You want to be a writer, but you don’t know where to start.
Your teacher or someone in your writers’ group said you don’t even have enough talent to fill a thimble.
Your parents or your husband tell you to “get a life,” and while you’re at it, get a job that pays the bills.
You just got another rejection slip.

Perhaps what you need is a dose of soup, chicken soup. It’s amazing the healing power this old-fashioned remedy can have.

In an earlier blog post, I gave some advice for writer wannabes. I’ve always believed you can not be a writer if you’re not a reader. Reading opens new worlds, spawns ideas, provides examples of what works and what doesn’t as words play together on a page.

If you’re like me, a book brings as much comfort to you as your grandmother’s old cat Snuggles does to her. You “don’t leave home without” one.

You probably already know the books you like and the ones you don’t – the writers who touch you and entertain you and the ones who do absolutely nothing at all for you. Whether you know it or not, you’re learning from each and every one of them – what to do, what not to do, how to build a sentence and when you don’t even need a full sentence.

But there’s one genre of books you don’t want to overlook. They’re books for and about writers. In coming blog posts, I’ll share some of the ones I’ve read and what I’ve learned from each and every one of them.

Yes, even the bad ones have at least one good lesson in them.

If you’re looking for a remedy for what ails you, when you’re doubting yourself as a writer and feel as if everyone else is, too, pick up a copy of Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul. It contains 80-some stories about writers, ranging from Ray Bradbury to Richard Paul Evans and Sue Grafton. You’ll read – usually first-hand accounts – of their doubts, determination, willpower, work ethic, struggles, mentors, supporters and more.

But most of all, as you slurp your chicken soup and some of it dribbles down your chin, you’ll know you’re not the first to do so and you won’t be the last. Each of these writers can show you a figurative t-shirt with years of soup stains and another which has emblazoned across the chest, “I’m a writer – and darned proud to be one!”

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Looking for balance – have you seen her?

2012-01-06T05:44:00.001-06:00

I’m not real big on setting New Year’s resolutions.

I’m more about dreaming big and trying to make them come true than I am on setting myself up for failure by saying I’m going to do something I pretty well know I’m not going to complete – like getting back to my high school weight or reading a book a week or working out every day come hell or high water.

So, most years I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but every year, for the last five, around the time of my birthday I’ve created or revised the equivalent of a bucket list.

I first got the idea from my friend Diana, who gave a speech at Toastmasters about her “50 at 50.” When she hit the half-century mark, Diana made a list of things she wanted to do. At the time of the speech, just a few short years later, she’d already done some of them – big things, like getting her master’s degree and presenting at an industry conference.

I was about 50 when I learned of Diana’s speech, but it took me until I was 55 to put the words to paper and create my equivalent of Diana’s list.

My “55 at 55” list had some way-far-out-there dreams like meeting my favorite author, some fun things like hearing my favorite musicians in concert, some feel-good things like reading books I’d always wanted to read and some things I could share with my hubby like places we’d like to visit.

Each year I’ve crossed a few things off of that list. The Lincoln Bicentennial year was a big one for that. I went places and met people I’d had on my list since the beginning. Through the years, I’ve removed some things, replaced them with others that, over time, mean more to me. And, when really, really cool things happen unexpectedly, like meeting the actor Anthony Zerbe, things I never dreamed of get added to the list just so I can cross them off and say, “Did it! Wow!”

As I’ve seen a number of dreams I never would have dared to dream come true over the past few years, I’d like to think that writing them down played a part. I’d like to think my friend Diana deserves some of the credit.

And, now it’s spreading. Last year about this time, when I had a similar discussion with some of my Facebook friends, my cousin in California made his own list. Since then, he’s taken a voiceover class and got a chance to read a book on tape, just a wee little book—NOT! He narrated an audio version of the Bible.

I’m willing to bet that when Diana gave that speech nearly a decade ago, she thought she was delivering it just to the 15 or 20 people in the Toastmasters meeting. But, a mutual friend shared it with me, and through me, it reached my cousin. Who knows where the ripple will stop.

It just goes to show, we should always dare to throw that pebble. Its impact can often be felt oceans away.

But back to that resolution…

I’m not big on setting New Year’s resolutions, but if there were one thing I’d like to find this year, it’s balance.

I’m pretty good at doing one thing at a time and doing it well.

Well, actually, the word is obsessed. I get obsessed.

In 2008, my obsessive tendencies helped me achieve a 35-pound weight loss and develop a two-hour-a-day exercise habit.

In 2009, they led to an award-winning Lincoln bicentennial campaign, consisting of more than 200 blog posts and 3,000 tweets—and I gained the 35 pounds back because I quit working out.

In 2010, I quit blogging to write my first manuscript.

In 2011, I stopped writing to renovate my house and begin a new career.

In 2012, I’d just like to find balance so I could lose some of that weight again, keep this new blog going, finish a couple more manuscripts, do a good job in my new career and begin renovations on my next home.

Oh, and just one more thing.

As I move from obsession to obsession, my husband asks if I’m going to pencil him into my appointment book.

Note to self: When shopping for balance, buy appointment book.

I’m not big on keeping New Year’s resolutions, but I just might be able to keep an appointment or two.

Oh, no!

What if the appointment book becomes an obsession?

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10,000 tweets later

2012-01-05T18:34:00.008-06:00

By the time you read this article, I will have hit a milestone. As I write this, I am at 9,999 tweets since I opened my @lincolnbuff2 Twitter account almost three years ago.

The first time I remember tweeting was on the 200^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, Feb. 12, 2009. I was in a conference room at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum tweeting about an event held in commemoration of the bicentennial.

I’d already been blogging for nearly four months at the time, and I’d heard about this thing, Twitter. I liked the social media interaction on the blog and the way it was helping me spread word about the year-long bicentennial celebration and Lincoln’s life and legacy.

As I sat there next to the back door of the conference room, I wasn’t too sure what I was doing, and the looks I got from others seemed to say, “How rude! Why are you ‘texting’ in the middle of this esteemed scholar’s presentation?”

Their looks of disapproval were enough to make me stop after a handful of tweets and put my phone away.

As the bicentennial year and my social media presence progressed, I became more comfortable on Twitter.

By the time of the Lincoln Forum symposium at Gettysburg in November, I was so comfortable on the social media platform that I was the first person to ever live-tweet a forum lecture. The highlight of my day was when a follower tweeted a question, which I presented in the open-mic Q & A period at the end of the lecture.

Imagine what it felt like to have the presenting scholar say, “Well, I think that’s a forum first!”

It was history—and, somehow, deep in my heart, I was sure Abraham Lincoln himself was looking down, smiling on that moment. I’m convinced the president who was so mesmerized by technology and who spent so many long hours in the telegraph office during the Civil War would be using Twitter himself, if he were here with us today.

Through Twitter, I’ve build friendships around the world, talking social media with an enthusiastic young social media expert from Malaysia, lifting a toast with a cup of Joe from time to time with a cameraman in D.C. and sharing a lemon pie recipe with an author whose work I’ve admired for more than four decades.

In the more than three years since I began my first blog, Lincoln Buff 2, with its 200-plus posts celebrating the sixteenth president, Twitter also led me to a new career, as a co-editor for a health care communication website. The job post listed “lives and breathes social media” as a requirement.

My family will tell you that I do just that.

And now, with my new blog, “Musings on Route 66,” I’ll use my words to share my enthusiasm for other things—such as writing, being a baby boomer, living in Illinois and Missouri, loving old airplanes and steam engines, treasuring books, being inspired by people who have dreams and achieve them, and just plain loving life.

If you’d told me 10,000 tweets ago that social media would have led me to new friends, supportive mentors, and a new career, I would have asked, “How can 140 characters do that?”

Now I know.

(Image via)

Be like Abe

2012-01-04T19:53:00.012-06:00

Ever have one of those days when you have to leave the house, but you hope beyond all hope that no one, not anybody, no where, no how, sees you?

Happened to me once – sort of.

I knew when I left home that I’d see a couple people, and I was okay with that. But, running into someone on whom my livelihood depended and on whom I’d like to make a good impression? Not so okay with that.

Just so you understand where I’m coming from here, I’m no prima donna, no prissy pris, no girly girl. I know people who won’t leave the house without lipstick, no less.

I’m not one of them.

In fact, I’ve gone months without a stitch of makeup, years without wearing a skirt or a dress. I’m just a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal. But I take a bath every day, and I wash my hair, brush my teeth and wear clean clothes.

Sometimes, though, even clean clothes don’t look clean, and in the course of a day of hard work, the most well-scrubbed bod can appear otherwise. This was one of those days.

For more years than I care to remember, we owned some apartment houses – not big complexes, not slums, just a handful of nice older two-family homes that we rented out to mostly nice people (though some fooled us a bit).

One summer, we’d decided we’d save money heating the homes come winter if we’d add insulation, so we called the local installation guy and had him do the job. He had some sort of high-powered blower that would fill the attics and side walls with the stuff once he drilled holes in the siding.

A few days after his visit to one home, I got a call from a tenant.

“Hi, it’s me, [name omitted to protect the innocent]. I went down to the basement to do laundry.

“You know that room next to the washer? It’s full of insulation.”

It sure was – pretty nearly, anyway.

When I went over to check it out on my lunch hour, I found that the area, originally the home’s coal room, a long narrow space about four feet wide and ten feet long, was almost half full of gray blown-in cellulose insulation.

Back then, I had Wednesdays off. So, the next Wednesday, I pulled on my work clothes – an old comfy t-shirt and a pair of faded, paint-splattered bib overalls. I took some garbage bags, a snow shovel, a broom and a dust pan with me and set off to un-insulate (Is that a word?) the overstuffed room. If I remember correctly, someone was helping me – another renter or a high school boy who worked with me. Thank goodness.

Within an hour or so, we’d made a lot of progress on the drift of gray snow. It wasn’t heavy, but it was messy, and I was looking the worse for wear. The insulation stuck to my clothes, my shoes, my face, my arms, and burrowed its way into my hair.

I needed a break, and if memory serves me correctly, I also needed more trash bags or boxes or something.

I headed to the grocery store where I worked, just a couple blocks from the house.

An “Oh no!” moment

Did you ever have one of those times when you wished you could just turn invisible, say “Beam me up, Scotty, NOW!” and be outta there? It was one of them.

I wasn’t worried about my coworkers or customers seeing me in my “work clothes.” We’d grown up together and they were used to seeing me all scruffy on my quick trips to the store in the midst of cleaning or painting projects.

What I didn’t count on was walking down the produce aisle toward the double doors to the back room and running right smack dab into one of the store’s owners, an “older” gentleman in neatly pressed suit, starched shirt, shiny shoes and tie. He and his brother had come for a visit.

What I hoped, as I spotted him at the end of the aisle, was that I could just pretend I didn’t see him, and that he wouldn’t see me either. It was too late to take a detour down another aisle.

I’d seen him in the store before, but never met him formally, so I was hoping he’d pay me no mind.

No such chance. In his friendliest voice, the owner, a man named Abe, smiled, and said, “Hello, how are you?” with a warmth not often seen or felt -- as if he really cared.

“Fine, thanks. And you?” was my answer – or something of the sort, smiling back, but thinking “Oh, $@&#!”

Then, I went ahead, pushed through the doors and did what I’d come to do.

To this day, I don’t know if Abe knew I worked for his company, or if he was just being as friendly to me as he was to anyone he met. I like to think it was the latter.

Even before that encounter, I had always tried to be friendly to every customer, no matter how dirty, unfriendly or stand-offish they seemed. I always just felt it was the right thing to do.

But after the morning that Abe treated me as if I were wearing party finery and I was the most important person he’d ever met, I always tried to treat his customers – ours – the same.

I wanted to be like Abe.

I think he would have liked that.

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The musings begin

2012-01-03T01:45:00.009-06:00

More than a dozen years ago a writer-wannabe moved into a house a couple hundred feet from the train tracks that took Abraham Lincoln to Washington, D.C. a century and a half ago and brought his body back home a few years later.

On the other side of those tracks was Historic Route 66, the Mother Road, often called “the most famous road in the world,” one that stretches from Chicago to California.

She could look out her bedroom window or stand on her deck and see these two roads, which had moved so many people and held many stories.

She could see another road, too.

Just beyond Route 66 was Interstate 55, a hustling, bustling road, stretching from Chicago to St. Louis, a thoroughfare where people drive too fast, get too impatient and seldom treat their fellow sojourners with caring and respect.

The writer-wannabe had loved playing with words for as long as she could remember -- watching them bound off of a page to tell her a story, putting them together to share her own stories or to spread her love. But instead of using her words to make a living, she’d spent more than four decades going down a different trail.

When her path led her to Lincoln’s rails, Route 66 and I-55, she was working in a box (a cubicle) within a much bigger box (a corporate office building) in one of a pair of twin cities through which these three roads passed.

If she’d been adventuresome, this writer-wannabe may have been able to hitch a ride on a rail car to get to her job in the box, or like many others from her community, she could have endured a stressful commute a la interstate.

The road less traveled

But this commuter chose the third, the less-traveled path each day. She took Route 66. Instead of jockeying for position, she could take her time, have her space, reflect on whatever thoughts crawled into the passenger seat of her minivan.

About this time, the writer-wannabe, who had attended a writer’s workshop the year before, began listening to books on tape – essays by authors such as Robert Fulghum, Maya Angelou and Erma Bombeck. She found the more she listened to their essays, the more she found herself writing her own -- in her head, if not on paper.

As Memorial Day approached, she submitted a piece about her reflections on the holiday to the area-wide paper. The op-ed editor liked it. Her words were in print.

Then she started writing freelance book reviews about Illinois-related books for a major downstate newspaper. The reviews gave her the writing samples she needed to apply for a job writing for the corporation where she worked. She moved to a different small box in a different big box, and she wrote for a living.

Yet, she still didn’t feel like a writer. The words she wrote were those the organization needed her to write. Even though the letters were dropping from her fingers onto the keyboard, they weren’t her words. They were what the corporation paid her to share.

She longed to write her own words, and took a stab at it from time to time, writing late into the night on a yellow or white legal pad, sitting at her desktop computer until she nodded off at the keyboard or preparing speeches to share with her fellow Toastmasters.

Directions, please

In the fall of 2008, driving through life seeking direction, the scribe ran smack dab into something that was to change her life forever. As she got her morning word fix, reading the daily paper, a front-page article told of a course to be offered at the community college about “The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln.” It was the college’s way of commemorating the upcoming bicentennial of the 16^th president’s birth.

The writer-wannabe, a lifelong Lincoln enthusiast, took the course, started a blog, began using social media to promote it, and used vacation days to attend Lincoln events nearby and far away, chronicling her journey on her Lincoln Buff 2 blog.

As the bicentennial wound down and she took a much-needed rest from blogging (she’d done 200 in a year, after all), the blogger realized she’d found something else she loved almost as much as Abraham Lincoln – connecting with people, learning from others and sharing what she’d learned, using social media.

In early 2011, as she looked forward to a physical and a career move, she knew that what would bring her the most happiness in the next phase of her career was a marriage of those two things she loved – writing about things that moved her and sharing them using social media.

A writer I-yam

I was that writer-wannabe. I am no more. In April 2011, I became a full-time writer and editor. I work from home and I love what I do.

Now, having rested from blogging for a while, in addition to my professional writing, I’ve poured tens of thousands of words into four manuscripts, one finished and awaiting its next revision, another barely begun, a third off to a healthy start, and a fourth pouring itself onto the page so furiously that I can barely keep up with it.

Along for the ride

I’m ready to blog again, but the musings I want to share this time don’t belong in a blog dedicated to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Though it’s been more than a decade since I lived in the house near Route 66, these words are the legitimate offspring of those “passengers” on my contemplative commutes. The words, the musings - they still occupying the passenger seat of my minivan, but we’ve got room for more riders.

Please, join us on this journey. It’s bound to be an adventure.

Welcome to “Musings on Route 66.”

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Musings? What musings?

2012-01-03T01:40:00.004-06:00

The concept for this blog truly was born one morning as I drove to work on Route 66. It was one of those periods in a writer’s life when the words were coming so fast and furious that I couldn’t begin to get them all down on paper. (If you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, you know what I mean.)

The little town where we lived had a small newspaper, one of those publications where just about anyone can submit just about anything, from a report on the bonnets at a ladies’ club tea to the latest pee-wee league baseball scores. (Believe me, it had both.)

I was musing and I was on Route 66. What better to call this venture than “Musings on Route 66”?

I was thinking of approaching the local editor with my column concept, when we learned we’d be moving to another Illinois community. It didn’t seem right to abandon a town, yet expect to have my words included in its local paper, so I abandoned the idea as well.

But, still, it kept nagging at me – or was it “calling out" for me?

Here, there and everywhere

Today, my musings take place almost anywhere – yes, even in the shower – but I still like that early name and what it represents – a slower pace, a time to look back, look forward, to travel in time and in thoughts.

As I realized that this blog was determined to write itself, I decided maybe I should think about the sorts of things I’d share here.

Stories begging to be shared

Here’s what I know now that I will share.

But don’t forget. I’m a writer.

Writers often have stories that just tap us on the shoulder, haunt us in our sleep, jump up and down on the passenger seats of our minivans, saying “Write me, write me, write me.” So, we must. Those stories may not always fit into one of the categories I’ve chosen, but one thing is for sure. They’re destined to be shared.

As this blog begins, I have plans to share musings that I can neatly plug under these headings. Click on the tabs at the top of the pages to learn what types of things I’ll be sharing in each of these categories:

Been thinkin’
A book is perking
Books worth reading
Boomer banter
Found a quote
Inspired in Illinois
Missouri minutes
The Mother Road
Sensational beings
Simple things
Wanna be a writer?

I’m hoping, dear reader, that if you found your way to this blog, there’s something in one of these categories that may interest you. Click on the links, check out the introductory posts and watch for links to future posts.

Just like the people who journey down Route 66, we’re heading out on a great adventure. Can’t wait to see where it takes us.

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So ya wanna be a writer?

2012-01-02T23:43:00.003-06:00

You think you want to be a writer?

Join the crowd.

You’ve got stories in your head.

How are others going to hear them if you leave them there?

You’re so busy.

Yep. We all are.

You don’t know where to start.

Start here. Start now

Start with a pen and paper or a computer keyboard. Then get those stories out of your head and onto the page.

Don’t think you have time?

Make time. Get up early or stay up late. Turn off the darned television. Keep a pen and paper with you so you can write when you’re waiting for a train or for a kid to get done with soccer practice or on your lunch hour.

Make writing a priority.

There’s only one way to become a writer – and that’s to write.

Watch for wisdom

In future blog posts, I’ll share words of wisdom from other writers, links to videos that have inspired me or given me direction, tell you about books for, by and about writers. Each and every book or magazine that I have read on writing has given me some morsel that has helped me on my journey.

But above all other things, the one thing that helped me the most was reading. I started early and never quit. As I read, I absorbed sentence structure, grammar and punctuation, phrasing and rhythm.

Read, read, read, read, read

So, if you’re not reading now, or you don’t read often, start. Start today.

Read newspapers – in print or online.
Spend the time in a waiting room reading magazines you normally don’t read, not playing Angry Birds on your smartphone.
Visit your library. You know, that place with all the rows and rows of books.
Get an ebook reader. You’d be surprised the number of volumes that are available free of charge, and you can download new releases for a fee on the day they hit the market.
If you’ve got kids or elderly family members in your home or nearby, read to them. It will expose you to things you wouldn’t read otherwise. Sharing their interests will not only broaden your horizon and theirs. It will also expose you to new material, new ideas, new writing styles.

Write often, write lots

But most of all, more than anything, to be a writer, you must write. You must write often. You must write lots.

Ray Bradbury says to write a thousand words a day -- and he practiced what he preached.

Do the same and you’re on the right path.

Don’t put a pen to paper and you’ve got only yourself to blame when ten years from now or twenty or thirty, you’re still saying to yourself, “I wanna be a writer.”

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Work clothes

2012-01-02T23:39:00.004-06:00

Work clothes -- what does that word mean to you?

When I was a little girl, my first “job” was a volunteer opportunity at my grandmother’s church, preparing catechism materials for the diocese. We’d walk down up and down rows of tables assembling loose-leaf booklets, picking up a page at a time and setting it on top of the others. My work clothes for that first job were whatever I’d brought with me for my stay at Grandma’s – perhaps shorts and a top, maybe a dress.

Later, as a young teen, I babysat. Those work clothes were my jeans and a sweater in the winter, shorts and a t-shirt in the summer.

'Real' jobs, 'real' work clothes

At sixteen, I started my first paying job, and I had to wear a uniform – a nearly see-through light green nylon dress with big white buttons in the front from top to bottom. It was the sixties, so it was short. The stockers in those grocery stores never seemed to complain about their female coworkers’ garb.

That uniform later gave way to a series of smocks, none as flattering to a youthful figure as the green dresses, but able to hide a multitude of unwanted curves and bulges on an aging, out-of-shape bod.

During those years, I wore a number of other work clothes, too, as the store where I worked had themed promotions a couple times a year or so. I was a movie usher, a clown, a bearded prospector and more. It was fun hitting the thrift stores looking for things like bold plaid slacks and Mork-style suspenders for my costumes.

When I began working in corporate America, my work clothes changed. I wore business attire or corporate casual, often tending to go on the dressier side, wearing a blazer or jacket over slacks, in leaner years wearing dresses and in frumpier days, a sweater and slacks.

Today, I work from home, so my work clothes are whatever I feel like wearing. Believe it or not, even though I could spend the whole day in my smiley-face flannel pjs, I do get dressed – usually in jeans, yoga pants or sweats and a comfy long- or short-sleeved t-shirt.

'But, I want them -- really, I do!'

There were a couple of items of work attire, I’d never owned, though, and long desired. I wanted a sturdy brown-twill lined jacket and bib overalls. You know, the kind the linemen for the power company or farmers or tradesmen wear.

Sounds silly for a woman, you think?

Not when there’s six inches of snow on the ground and you want to use the snow blower, but don’t want to have wet jeans in 15 minutes as 30-mile-an-hour winds blow the white stuff back at you. Not when you want to go out for firewood when it’s 10 degrees outside. Not when you’re heading to town on ice-packed roads in the middle of the winter.

Not when you want to lay down to work at making snow angels with your grandkids in the middle of the winter.

“Happiness is found in simple things,” says E.B. Michaels.

My new “work clothes” make me happy.

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Lose a friend, find a coffee house

2012-01-02T23:33:00.001-06:00

“Let no man grumble when his friends fall off; instead let him go to the coffee house and take another.”

Gee, sounds like something someone might say today, right? It must have to do with Facebook and Starbucks or Panera, right?

Think again.

This little morsel, which I had in my little green binder, is attributed to Lord Byron, who lived from 1788 to 1824.

The actual quote, found in Don Juan, Canto XIV, is:

“Let no man grumble when his friends fall off,
As they will do at the first breeze:
When your affairs come round, one way or t’ other,
Go to the coffee-house and take another.”

So, next time you notice someone has “unfriended” you on Facebook, don’t “get bent out of shape.”

Get coffee.

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True Grit: Still magic after all these years

2012-01-02T23:31:00.003-06:00

Do you have an all-time favorite movie?

Or do you have a favorite for a year or two or ten, then one day along comes something you like better and your all-time favorite moves into the number two spot, eventually lower or perhaps someday even drops off your list?

For me, there’s just one – always and forever. It’s the original “True Grit.” I have to admit -- the remake is good, really good. The actors are incredible. If anyone could give John Wayne, the Duke, a run for his money in this film, it’s Jeff Bridges. He’s not John Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn, but his Rooster is one hell of a character.

Hailee Steinfeld is this side of amazing as Mattie Ross. Honestly, how is this kid ever going to top her performance here?

But she’s not Kim Darby.

Matt Damon makes LaBoeuf a little more believable that Glen Campbell did and he’s not too hard to look at, either. Yet, who couldn’t love and laugh at the bumbling LaBoeuf characterized by the singing cowboy.

And, my bet is we’re a lot more likely to remember Josh Brolin’s Tom Chaney than Jeff Corey’s.

Jeff who? Josh, ooo…

But what made True Grit, the 1969 version, my favorite film ever, the one I saw five times back in the days when people just didn’t spend money that frivolously, was the cast, the story, the way they interacted, and the soundtrack.

I was sad when I left the theatre after watching the new version of the film. It just wasn’t the same without hearing Campbell singing, “… some days, little girl, you’ll wonder what life’s about … you’ll look around to find someone who’s kind, someone who is fearless like you. The pain of it will ease a bit when you find a man with True Grit.”

The magic of it all

For me, back then, part of the magic, the appeal of the movie was the soundtrack, the way Campbell’s music helped to tell the story. For novice True Gritters, the lack of music in the remake was surely a non-event, but for me, it was a big disappointment.

There aren’t many movies for which I can remember where I sat (the left side of the mezzanine of Galesburg’s Orpheum Theater), who I was with (name shall remain undisclosed) and when I saw it (the summer before my senior year in high school).

But what really captured my heart and holds it still today was that spunky little tomboy and the relationship she built with the big, bad Rooster Cogburn, the love the tough guy showed for the “little lady,” even when he tried not to, and the best movie quote of all time.

Who can’t love “Fill your hands, you [expletive deleted]?”

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Meet Robert Waldmire

2012-01-02T23:29:00.003-06:00

When I think of Route 66, I think of one man, Robert (Bob) Waldmire, and his VW bus. Waldmire was an artist. His subject was the Mother Road.

Waldmire spent much of his life traveling the highway, capturing its heart and soul in his work, living in his vehicle.

As he was nearing the end of his life, the Chicago Tribune interviewed Waldmire in the converted school bus he called home.

I never met Bob Waldmire, but I have always been convinced that if I had, I would have liked him. We’ve got a common bond. I don’t know about “kicks”, but I think we both agree we got our ideas on Route 66.

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What’s it like, writing a book?

2012-01-02T23:27:00.001-06:00

Wonder what it’s like to write a book?

You can ask any one of a number of authors and you’ll hear a different answer.

My friends who write historical fiction or fiction set in a specific time period do tons of research to make sure their books are believable. If you want to see how that process works, check out Jennifer Niven’s blog.

Others, like some of my Lincoln author friends, spend years pouring over original source documents in archives across the country, make sure as they’re writing to footnote every single word they’ve plucked from someplace else, and get to do that lovely task of indexing the volume.

Gee, and we wonder why they don’t have time to blog about writing a book.

Some fiction writers, like Richard Paul Evans, also share their writing journeys on social media. If you want to follow the writing process and life as a writer busy with the publicity requirements of the trade, follow Evans on Facebook. He rarely misses a day of posting. And, when he’s working on his Walk series, he uses his blog to share his adventures on the road. For one book, he even solicited dumb jokes from his followers and used some of them in the story.

There are some of us, though, writers of fiction, who just step aside and let our characters tell the story. Richard Bach offers three simple little rules on how to do this in his book, Writer Ferrets: Chasing the Muse. The book is so good that I won’t share the rules here. Please, go discover them yourself.

I can tell you from experience, if you let your characters take your story and run with it, you’ll have a blast and your story will often catch even you off guard.

Try it. Just get out of the way and let the characters write the book for you.

It works.

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