Why I love Girl Scout cookies

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.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012

(Image via)

A little blog begins a big new journey

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?”

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012

(Image via)

How do you show value?

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.”

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012

(Image via)

Reflections on reading, writing and ‘rithmetic

“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?

(Image via)

What? A blank sheet of paper?!

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!”

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012

(Image via)