My TV is small. Snowy picture. Went to the neighbour's. They said whatever I had to say ... say it quick(ly) ... cause they were busy in the LR ... watching the inauguration! So I watched it, too. Congratulations on living up to the inherent wisdom of your forefathers and having the grace and courage to choose a person of mixed race as your leader. We all need to set high goals for ourselves ... to seek excellence, as I said elsewhere relative to Mr. Sullenbergr bringing that dead-engined airliner down on the Hudson. And to reach out to others, sharing rather than grasping. We, who live in multi-cultural societies, can carry messages of understanding and brother-/sisterhood to many parts of the world where there is great need for it. Good wishes to you all, good neighbours - for us Canadians, the only close neighbours - for the years ahead. ole joyful

About 1958 our mission agency had bought a farm on the edge of a city in rural Korea and wanted to build a modified Western-style home for an agriculturalist who was to come to operate it as a demonstration farm. Most Korean farmers made their living on just under 3 acres of land. We'd had trouble finding Korean builders to build houses in the ways that suited us in the cities, let alone in that rural area and made a deal with a U.S.-based company who was building for various U.S. agencies. On one occasion a military helicopter (capacity about a dozen) brought some of them to our location and they took some of us up for a brief ride. There are mountains and hills through most of Korea but our area, but we could see some in the distance, and the East China Sea, between Korea and China, was a few miles away, to the west. There are over 20-foot tides there - which we enjoyed, with a sand beach that stretched out for about 1/8th of a mile when the tide went out, at the beach which mission agencies had leased, a few miles from there. Unfortunately ... the builder "went broke" ... leaving sub-contractors holding the bag ... and, with walls up and roof on, with door and window frames in, they put a "stop-work" order on the house. There it sat through most of the summer, looking like a skull, sitting up there on the hillside. We had to pay about one and a half times for that house! We looked for alternative accomodation for the Findlay family, with four daughters aged 4 - 14 ... but couldn't find any. So, when they arrived in early September, we shoe-horned them into Ed's little 2-br. Japanese-style house, with the sliding, paper-covered doors and all ... with the little girl in a semi-crib in a small room just off the parent's room, while we settled the three older daughters on a built-in sofa and other beds in the living room. I went to Japan to meet Sue in early Oct. (she said that had I not been there to meet her ... she'd have gone home to Mother), we travelled to Korea on a ship ... and were married in Seoul a week or so later. It took us three days to get married: you'd think that it would have stuck for more than 11 years! Then she, too, was shoe-horned into that little Japanese-style home - we had an upstairs bedroom, and an office at one end of the house, to more or less call ours ... for about 3-1/2 months, till the Findlay's new home was finished. _______________________ In 1967, Canada's Centennial Year, when we had a World Expo in Montreal, Sue's Mom, a teacher/librarian, came up from Iowa in early June to attend with us, then returned to finish her M.A. course in Iowa City. When we went down in late summer to her grad., she took us and Sue's brother's family for a holiday to the Wisconsin Dells and one of the activities there was that we went for a helicopter ride over the town and the park. Unfortuately, Bruce, approaching 6 at the time, remembers little of it ... I don't remember whether Kathryn, closing in on 3, went: I think not. Hi Glenda, Sure glad your son didn't stay in the cemetery ... ... did he? I've been accused of being full of hot air, on occasion ... but haven't put any of it into a balloon yet. Have never ridden in one, either. Hope you're well started on a busy week. It's been snowing and blowing today and getting colder - it's to go down to about 5 degrees tonight and about 3 or 4 below for a couple of days. I think that I'll stay home - until the Old Farts' meeting at church on Thurs. morning. And there's a Financial Forum in Toronto on Sat. that I want to attend. ole joyful

I stopped by the thrift store and found an Eagle (Brand) Craftstor craft module. I have a large tote, the sewing module, and two compact totes (saving to give to a couple of my nieces), and several of the smaller insert storage modules. I'm still searching for the older, dark purple totes or another sewing module. I can't find them, even on eBay now. The first photo shows a sewing module. It's about 9x9x9x. The one I have is purple! It holds everything I need to take to the quilt shop for an evening of piecework. The module I found yesterday has different inserts, I think it's a knitting or crochet tote, but it's the same size as the sewing module. This was an excellent line of craft/sewing totes, well made in the USA and now discontinued. :( Here's the large craft tote with several inserts. I'm hoping to find this in the original deep purple/fuschia/teal colorway.

Nope - Primer Class ... started at Easter, went to First Class in that fall. The Jr. and Sr. each of 2nd, 3rd & 4th ... ... for eight classes in all. One-room rural school, less than half mile walk from home - Miss Jean Abbott, a nice lady, was the teacher throughout. Many rural schools scattered around the country - no school buses then. Fast-learner senior kids helped the junior kids with their work - partly to keep them out of mischief, possibly? How would you like to manage eight groups at the same time in one room? When our children were in elementary school, they started this wonderful new concept - four classes in one room, separated by dividers, with a teacher for each. I said that it smelled a lot similar to parts of the old one-room school, to me. ole joyful P.S. Since the "definately" that I see around here so frequently is definitely not part of my vocabulary, is that the modern way of spelling ... with our way being sort of dinosaurish? o j