tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57371626308143622032024-03-12T18:27:10.133-07:00Late BloomerLaura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-70564385589000854912018-01-03T14:42:00.000-08:002018-01-03T14:42:33.815-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
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Anne Witkavitch</h1>
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONAL, AUTHOR AND SPEAKER</strong></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong> </span><span class="divider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(198, 197, 197); box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 22px; margin: 0px 14px; outline: none; position: relative; top: 5px; width: 1px;"></span> <div class="social-wrapper" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; outline: none;">
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: none;">
By the start of the New Millennium, Anne Witkavitch had progressed from working her first job behind a cosmetics counter to the world of corporate communication. In 2010, she published "Press Pause Moments: Essays about Life Transitions by Women Writers<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">." </em>The anthology, which won a national Clarion Award, starts with her own story about challenges she faced as a middle-aged student returning to full-time graduate school.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Mistake: </strong></div>
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Letting my past accomplishments get in the way of reinventing my future.</div>
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We tend to think of writing different chapters in our life, but that implies it’s the same book with the same focus and that the narrative arc is going to be the same. Sometimes, you really need to tear out the page and start a new story line. You have to write your professional life like it’s a book series and not a chapter.</div>
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The joke is that I came out of the womb with a business card in my hand. I’ve always been a naturally outgoing person who connects with people. I was the youngest of five kids. It was easy for me to connect with older people.</div>
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As I grew up my life seemed to fall into place. I got on sports teams. Was I the best? No, but I loved being part of a team. In college I found temporary summer jobs through Kelly Services and learned about business. After graduation I worked at a cosmetics counter, met people, networked, and ended up in marketing for a fragrance company.</div>
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From a career standpoint a lot seemed to fall into place. While there were the usual trials and tribulations of growing a career, I always found the stepping stone that made sense. I moved to agency roles and eventually bigger companies, first in global communications at General Electric and then to executive and employee communications at The Hartford.</div>
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Then I found myself thinking I hadn’t really taken a big risk for a while—and I went back to school for an MFA in writing. I came out of the program at Western Connecticut State University publishing "Press Pause Moments<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">."</em> Writing about women’s transitions was a natural segue from my work in strategic planning and change management.</div>
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My idea was to have my own communication consulting business—and things started off well. But talk about bad timing. The financial crisis hit in 2008; the first time for me (and I think for a lot of people) that, what had worked in the past wasn’t working anymore. I started teaching and continued consultation work, but other challenges I never expected—medical issues, family loss, a car accident—started to come into play. These were the roughest years in my life, but I come from a family of resilient Lithuanian women. You just keep going, right? Still, for the first time I think I understood my vulnerability and it threw me for a loop.</div>
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Around this time I put together a Press Pause Now retreat for women, which was all about reinvention and transformation. I thought by getting my MFA I had already reinvented myself. But now, as I advised other women, I found myself thinking, “What should I do next?”</div>
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You have to write your professional life like it’s a book series and not a chapter.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson:</strong></div>
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I’ve learned that as I search for new opportunities I have to get out of my own way and let go of some of my accomplishments. I’m rethinking what from my past still has value and how to focus that in a way that meets the needs of the marketplace today. </div>
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All this made me realize how important the fundamentals of communicating our stories are. We call it engagement now. You really need to know how to persuade and motivate, skills I am emphasizing as I look for my next career opportunity and launch Press Pause Now<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"> </em>as an online virtual retreat. The interactive program brings together a community of women who are looking for what’s next in their lives, whether it be a career move, starting a business, retiring and volunteering, running for office, or something else. The platform walks them through what I continue to explore for myself: how to assess where their values are now, what they hope for five years from now, and how to create an operating plan to make it happen.</div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Photo credit: Tobey Sanford</em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-58934281905746752292017-10-24T07:57:00.002-07:002017-10-24T07:57:52.234-07:00Crain's If i Knew Then: CHRIS FANNING, PRESIDENT AND CEO, SURVEY SAMPLING INTERNATIONAL<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.crains.com/if-i-knew-then" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="tag" style="background: rgb(18 , 58 , 97); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; display: inline-block; font-size: 20px; outline: none; padding: 5px 10px;">IF I KNEW THEN...</span></a></div>
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
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Chris Fanning</h1>
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">PRESIDENT AND CEO, SURVEY SAMPLING INTERNATIONAL</strong></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong> </span><span class="divider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(198, 197, 197); box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 22px; margin: 0px 14px; outline: none; position: relative; top: 5px; width: 1px;"></span><br />
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><br />
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Chris Fanning joined <a href="https://www.surveysampling.com/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Survey Sampling International</a> in 2012, bringing with him more than 20 years of experience in technology companies. Headquartered in Shelton, Conn., with offices around the world, the company specializes in business-to-business survey research.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Mistake:</strong></div>
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Early in my managerial career at the Boston Consulting Group I equated asking for help with weakness, an admission that I really wasn’t good enough or I couldn’t get the work done. Instead, I wanted to exercise a little bit of corporate machismo and not need any help. As you get older and as you assume a broader scope of responsibility, you realize just how foolhardy that is.</div>
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I had been asked to manage recruiting, a fairly visible project that went beyond the usual client work. Every year at BCG a promising new manager would be asked to be responsible for the recruiting efforts of the firm, which is a big deal because it brings in the future lifeblood. It was a good sign to be asked. And so I said yes to the request and coupled it with a specific project that I was trying to manage, which was trying to come up with a way to more efficiently and effectively match people who currently worked at BCG with candidates that we viewed as high priority targets.</div>
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My idea was to match candidates up with teams of consultants by their interests. So if a recruit from California was a sports person who liked to ski, I would magically want to connect them to BCG people who liked sports or skiing or might be from California, to ensure a strong affiliation with the candidate. As I got into it, I realized how complicated the solution was going to be and that I needed technical help from IT and other areas of the firm.</div>
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When I finally started to admit to someone senior to me how I was a little afraid I had bitten off more than I could chew, he just looked at me and said, “You know you can’t get it all done by yourself. But now you’re going to have to beg people to help you and you are going to put them under stress because of the time deadline.”</div>
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The ideal way would have been to get everyone together earlier and say, “Hey, this is important. We have to get it done in the next six weeks.” That would have allowed people a little bit of margin from a calendar perspective to contribute to the project without it being a super urgent, hair-on-fire, got-to-get-it-done tomorrow kind of job where there was no margin of error.</div>
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It turned out to be a rocky ride and I don’t think anybody would want to sign up for the ride again. Still, everyone appreciated contributing to the end result—the project did provide value to the firm.</div>
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I learned early in life, from my folks, to own my mistakes and talk about how I would avoid them in the future.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson:</strong></div>
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I may have created a bit of a reputation with certain people that suggested. “Boy, Fanning projects aren’t going to be the smoothest.” It wasn’t the way I wanted to work, not a great way to establish myself as a early stage manager</div>
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It didn’t take me a long time to recover because I owned up to it. I learned early in life, from my folks, to own my mistakes and talk about how I would avoid them in the future. I think most people want to see others do well if you earn their trust.</div>
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The lesson, as always, is to try to think through the different steps of your project, like when you play chess. In my case these steps were recognized areas that were either unknowns to me personally or areas that I was not going to be able to control as well. Those are probably the areas you want to seek assistance with and get substantive advice as needed. And if you have to do that, then you want to sit people down and really explain the project objective, create a team with a common vision, and get buy-ins from the team. It’s important to have everyone thinking, "We are all on this project together," and that each team member has a part of the project to deliver. And that if they don’t, they are going to let the team down. </div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Follow Chris Fanning on Twitter at <span dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/chrismfanning" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">@chrismfanning</a>.</span></em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-83747910901294650672017-10-24T07:50:00.000-07:002017-10-24T07:52:40.743-07:00Crain's If I Knew Then: NICOLE PETERKIN, AUTHOR AND OWNER OF PETERKIN FINANCIAL <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
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Nicole E. Peterkin</h1>
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">AUTHOR AND OWNER, PETERKIN FINANCIAL LLC</strong></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong> </span><span class="divider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(198, 197, 197); box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 22px; margin: 0px 14px; outline: none; position: relative; top: 5px; width: 1px;"></span><br />
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><br />
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When Nicole Peterkin began her own business, Braintree, Mass.-based <a href="http://peterkinfinancial.com/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Peterkin Financial</a>, she was determined to change the focus of financial planning from predominately selling products to advisement that would enable customers to save for the future, but not at the expense of today. Peterkin, who is also the author of "If You Love Your Money, Save Like It," will deliver the keynote address at the <a href="https://www.lootscout.com/capital-summit/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Lootscout Capital Summit</a> at the Bond Ballroom in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Oct. 5.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Mistake: </strong></div>
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Making career and financial decisions that are not in line with your value or beliefs.</div>
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My parents married when they were 21, had four kids, and should have lived happily ever. They worked hard and saved every penny so one day they might be able to enjoy life.</div>
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In 2008, when I was finishing out my junior year as a pre-med student at Boston University, my dad just passed. He went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up the next morning.</div>
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Because of a traditional division of responsibilities, my mom had not handled anything to do with money. She didn’t know how to pay the bills or the details of our financial information aside from passwords. Together we started trying to understand what we had and didn’t have. Luckily, Dad had some life insurance because everything else was a mess. The stock market was down. Because my parents had high salaries and were professionally successful, I thought they had everything together. They didn’t.</div>
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I immediately realized I didn’t want to spend the next twelve years in med school, working hard at the expense of a lifestyle. I had always thought being in business for yourself meant more balance and I was taking elective finance courses since all my pre-med requirements were fulfilled. It seemed like a natural transition to switch to business.</div>
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Since I decided not to apply to med school, I didn’t feel like my diploma had to say Boston University, so I left BU and finished up at UMass Boston. I was paying for my own education at that time. I had no student loans and I didn’t want to take any on any debt.</div>
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After graduation I got solicited by investment banks and insurance companies who were all saying, “Come work for us and sell our products, commission only.” But I didn’t feel like I could walk around and just sell people life insurance policies or mutual funds after my dad had just died. I didn’t want to sell anything, actually. I wanted to build this practice as a young woman in an industry that didn’t look like me—or think like me—and be able to help people with planning, like how I helped Mom after Dad died. My parents had been sold a ton of products; it’s just nothing was cohesive.</div>
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I was advised at the time that the way to build a business around fee-for-advice was to start on the commission route, so I got all my licenses including what I needed to be able to charge clients for my advice even if they never bought a product. It took me almost three years to be able to start charging a fee. I didn’t know how to value myself or my services and I couldn't find anyone who understood the industry and could give me a road map. I just knew that there was a gap there—a need. My business is completely different now and is still evolving, but now all clients pay for advice related to planning. It doesn’t matter if they buy anything from me.</div>
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My father’s death made me realize that what I valued was time and the ability to be able to control my schedule.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson:</strong></div>
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My father’s death made me realize that what I valued was time and the ability to be able to control my schedule and be there for my future family if I had one. When I interned in corporate banking, I heard my colleagues complain about not being able to make it to their daughter’s ballet recital—which was similar to the sacrifices I resented my dad having to go through. </div>
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I also noticed a huge gap among successful professionals who really had no idea how to maximize their money. That’s when I became committed to the idea that working with a financial planner should continue after you’ve figured out a financial strategy: when you’re worried about work and your family or you want to go on vacation. Clients need advisors who can look past old assumptions and say, “Hey didn’t you say this was important to you? Let’s do that.” Or ask, “Did you refinance your house yet? Why not? Why are you still paying PMI?”—someone who holds your feet to the fire when everything else is crazy.</div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Follow Nicole Peterkin on Twitter at <span dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/NicolePeterkin" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">@NicolePeterkin</a>.</span></em></div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Photo courtesy of Nicole Peterkin</em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-517863963005839632017-09-15T13:12:00.000-07:002017-09-15T13:16:16.889-07:00Crain's "If I Knew Then" CHRIS PAVARSARIS: FOUNDER, XAPIS STRATEGIES<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
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Chris Pavasaris</h1>
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">FOUNDER, XAPIS STRATEGIES</strong></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong> </span><span class="divider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(198, 197, 197); box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 22px; margin: 0px 14px; outline: none; position: relative; top: 5px; width: 1px;"></span><br />
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><br />
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Ten years after punting for the UConn Huskies, Chris Pavasaris has a new game plan: to meld his gridiron experience, post-grad work with the U.S. Senate, and chaplaincy training at Yale Divinity School to improve workplace culture and emotional intelligence. Through <a href="http://www.xapisstrategies.com/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Xapis Strategies</a>, he now offers individual and executive coaching, situational consulting and soft skill development, among other services.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Mistake:</strong></div>
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Taking so long to realize that my longtime knack for talking authentically with people could be a means to improving workplace morale and productivity.</div>
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I’ve always had what I now call the “gift of grocery store conversation.” I’ll meet somebody in aisle 10 and leave five minutes later knowing all about their life. Eventually I began to wonder, why does that happen? Why is that interaction going on?</div>
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When I played football at UConn I used to run a study group with some of the guys, and we’d ask fellow students and players over to our apartment. It wasn’t like we were always reading in depth. Still, as I look back now, I think it was an opportunity to come to terms with the stretch from being an athlete and also being a student—and balancing what was going on in their lives. I didn’t know it then, but it was an early venue to share the small group coaching Xapis Strategies promotes.</div>
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My role on the football team was unique in the sense that I was a punter. So I wasn’t somebody who played every down. I wasn’t somebody who was charged with having this great physical strength, but I was somebody who had to remain calm, had to remain focused, and kind of balance all of those situations that were ongoing. I think that mentality more so was something I was trying to pass on to some of my peers.</div>
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I called a colleague from those days a while ago and told him about my idea. When I asked him what he thought, he said, “You always were so good with me, helping me to stay on track and balanced.”</div>
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“I did?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me that five or six years ago?”</div>
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When I talked to co-workers at my current job in finance at Global Atlantic, right after Divinity School, I found myself, once again, listening for this meta-narrative, I’ll call it, in the stories they told. And my role became asking questions, and kind of delving into these personal situations. I’d reflect some of that back to the person and afterwards they’d say, “You really helped me work through some things.”</div>
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There are going to be challenges at work and in life, but being able to be joyful ... serves not only the person, but their workplace as well.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson: </strong></div>
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There’s a need in the workplace for “corporate chaplains,” who have an office, like you would see in a hospital, and are there to serve the workers. There already are coaches who are strictly business strategy; there are psychologists who are coaches. For me, the role would necessitate understanding the person’s present and maybe also understanding a bit of their past, though I’m not going to be one who is going to repair past relationships or experiences in the way a therapist would. It’s more like getting the client to learn to live in the present moment, at work.</div>
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A lot of employers will say, ”Oh, we have human resources for employees as long as they come and take advantage of it." But my question is, “How can I get to the people who don’t necessarily come to the door for counseling? That is what led me to this model.</div>
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Granted my own faith journey and faith life inform a part of what I do, but I’m not proselytizing. I’m not going in with my faith as a leading strategy. My goal isn’t necessarily providing happiness for my co-worker. Instead of happiness I guess I would call it joyfulness. From the theological perspective, joy is not based in feeling good. Joy has a deeper root meaning of gratitude. Joy in the present. You’re not looking for a hedonistic outcome, which I associate sometimes with happiness. Your life is going to have ups and downs. There are going to be challenges at work and in life, but being able to be joyful by having that steady state of wholeness (as implied in Xapis, the Greek word for grace) serves not only the person, but their workplace as well.</div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Follow Xapis Strategies on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/xapisstrategies" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"><span dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">@xapisstrategies</span></a></em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-73741326158713143732017-09-15T13:08:00.003-07:002017-09-15T13:15:28.511-07:00Crain's "If I Knew Then " JOHN ROCHE: AUTHOR AND PROFESSOR, WESTERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://connecticut.crains.com/if-i-knew-then" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="tag" style="background: rgb(18 , 58 , 97); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; display: inline-block; font-size: 20px; outline: none; padding: 5px 10px;">IF I KNEW THEN...</span></a></div>
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
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John Roche</h1>
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">AUTHOR AND PROFESSOR, WESTERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY</strong></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong> </span><span class="divider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(198, 197, 197); box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 22px; margin: 0px 14px; outline: none; position: relative; top: 5px; width: 1px;"></span><br />
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><br />
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John Roche is an award-winning journalist who teaches at <a href="http://www.wcsu.edu/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Western Connecticut State University</a>. His first novel, "Bronx Bound," was published in 2015.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Mistake:</strong> </div>
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I used to think real talent was all I needed to become a successful writer. Bull! Sheer talent doesn’t do it. It’s a falsehood that talent is enough.</div>
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I’m a huge Derek Jeter fan. I had the opportunity to cover Jeter when I was a newspaper reporter, when he spoke to kids at two events in the Bronx. I’ll never forget when somebody asked him, “What is the best advice you ever got?” and he said, “That’s an easy one. My father told me that there will always be somebody more talented than you, but there should never be anybody working harder than you.” I still get goosebumps when I think back to Jeter saying that.</div>
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His message might have been lost on the fourth graders but hearing it changed my life. I thought, here’s a guy who at that point had already won three World Series Championships. He had already won Rookie of the Year, World Series MVP and All-Star Game MVP. Yet, he’s talking about how there is always somebody more talented than him. He explained how in high school he might have been the best but guess what? He went to the state championship and there was somebody better there. Then he went to college, then to the minor leagues, and then he got to the Yankees. And he wasn’t even the best when he got to the Yankees. But he brought his father’s advice with him.</div>
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So I starting thinking to myself, “You know what? I’ve been given this talent,” just like everyone else in this writing program. We are all given that writing talent. But the talent’s not enough. Nobody’s going to come in and say to any of us, “My God, you have this aura of talent about you. What can I do for you?” No. You need to work at it. You really need to respect your own talent. It’s not being boastful. It’s not patting yourself on the back.</div>
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There will always be somebody more talented than you, but there should never be anybody working harder than you.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson:</strong> </div>
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Maybe I’m overgeneralizing, talking about all writers, but I know for me, I sometimes get into that artist idea. I think that I have to be in the right frame of mind to write. That the atmosphere has to be perfect; the Muse has to strike. But sometimes you just need to look at yourself like a carpenter. A carpenter never says “You know what, I’ve got to refinish that bedroom today, but I’m not in the mood. I just don’t feel like doing it.” They might feel that way but they go and do it anyway.</div>
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I had to learn how to respect my own talent enough to work really hard at it. The key to a successful writing experience is simply writing the best you can. I may look at a classroom of writers and think I know who the single-most talented writer is. But if I had to choose who will work hardest at becoming a better writer, I'd like to able to call it a tie by choosing all of them. Think about what Jeter said—there’s always going to be someone more talented than you, but there should never be anybody who works harder.</div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Photo courtesy of John Roche.</em></div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Follow John Roche on twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/johnrochewrite?lang=en" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">@johnrochewrite</a>.</em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-45639647926698627822017-08-12T15:22:00.000-07:002017-08-12T15:22:06.444-07:00Crain's "If I Knew Then: Evangeline Leah Rookey, Owner, Artistic Hair Salon LLC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
<h1 class="article-title" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 48px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.125em; margin: 20px 0px 10px; outline: none; padding: 4px 0px;">
Evangeline Leah Rookey</h1>
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">OWNER, ARTISTIC HAIR SALON LLC</strong></span><br />
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNZmLgwx0vBLIhAZCY8oRrmzYXX6F6V9a4KflJxZFvz3xuD7Kgx17MqPgfx29zJeo2fdTmw_oPPABlzqMj7JNadxJwtqh9UDNWKmMDGJZiTQcLpzzJ6Byeaxp59ZWEZIQ1d5-6lXKAmyV/s1600/image1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1372" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNZmLgwx0vBLIhAZCY8oRrmzYXX6F6V9a4KflJxZFvz3xuD7Kgx17MqPgfx29zJeo2fdTmw_oPPABlzqMj7JNadxJwtqh9UDNWKmMDGJZiTQcLpzzJ6Byeaxp59ZWEZIQ1d5-6lXKAmyV/s400/image1.JPG" width="342" /></a></strong></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong> </span><span class="divider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(198, 197, 197); box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 22px; margin: 0px 14px; outline: none; position: relative; top: 5px; width: 1px;"></span><br />
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><br />
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As a 12-year-old, the smell of a salon caught Leah Rookey’s attention. “How cool is this?” she thought, and thus began her journey, first as as stylist and then as the owner of <a href="http://artistichairsalon.com/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Artistic Hair Salon</a> in Windsor Locks, Conn. Her 37-year career has led her to travel the world to learn the latest trends of hairstyling, manage a business, and more recently, look deep into herself as a work in progress. </div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Mistake:</strong></div>
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As much as I loved to style hair, I needed to do less of that and learn how to build the salon by honing my business skills and investing in me.</div>
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When I was going through a divorce I had an epiphany. Up to then I didn’t need to work full time. I had a tiny little business. Life was great! When I realized I didn’t want to be married anymore I thought, “How am I going to live?”</div>
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I went from working three days a week to full time and now trying to hire an employee. That was a game changer. For over 25 years I had worked alone in the salon. Besides stylist, I had been my guests or clients’ therapist (behind the chair). Business was very busy but when my clients came into the salon, they liked the one on one. Some clients found it challenging when staff was brought in, but I had to keep my eye on the bigger picture.</div>
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I looked for answers and that’s when I found the Summit, a salon consulting company. The Summit gave me direction. It taught me I needed to understand my numbers. I needed to understand my P&L (profit and loss). I didn’t even know what that was because my mother did my books. Bless my mother.</div>
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So I began to get the numbers end of it. Next came learning how to brand and market with social media to build the business. That is still a work in progress. Yet I realized something was still unbalanced. It was my spiritual side.</div>
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I‘m learning how to find the balance. My mother died last year and my 93-year-old father moved in with me. In the last few years I’ve committed all of “me” to my parents and the salon. I realized I had to get back to the gym, which I did, and I hired my trainer back, two changes I’m really happy about.</div>
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Then I found Passion Squared, an online school for small business owners, because I needed more business coaching. And it’s through my Passion Squared seminars that I began questioning. "Do I really need to learn more about how to cut a straight line? Do I need to understand how to put bleach on a different way?" Yes, I’ve done a lot of that but there’s a part of working on “me” I’ve never done. Passion Squared connected me with a spiritual coach to help with that.</div>
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Fixing a problem is way harder than continuing to live with the problem.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson:</strong></div>
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If I am not centered as a person, no business technique or social media is going to build my business successfully. If I’m not whole none of that is going to matter. And that’s with anybody in anything. It took me six years to find two really great stylists that understand this, and I’m still searching for more. Just like learning about how to run a business and how to invest in myself—it isn’t easy. If this was easy, everybody would be doing it. But when it’s not easy people walk away or they say, “Oh you’re just a hairdresser.”</div>
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People let themselves stay in bad situations—business and personal. I see it everyday in my chair. People quit trying to fix themselves and stay in their unhappy lives. They quit and stay in their jobs. They quit life but stay in the insanity, and then they get stressed. I said that to a guest the other day. Fixing a problem is way harder than continuing to live with the problem. That’s why people don’t get out of bad relationships. Because when you get out—you’ve got you. If you can’t get along with yourself, how can you get along with anybody else? You know what I mean?</div>
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I can actually say I love my career. Moving forward, my passion is to help coach young stylists to help them develop their individual talent behind the chair. I was very lucky to discover my career as a hairstylist at such a young age.</div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Photo courtesy of Evangeline Leah Rookey</em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-88048309963500705832017-08-06T15:41:00.000-07:002017-08-06T15:46:03.986-07:00Crain's If I Knew Then: Rhona Free, USJ President<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
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Rhona Free</h1>
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF SAINT JOSEPH</strong></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong> </span><span class="divider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(198, 197, 197); box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 22px; margin: 0px 14px; outline: none; position: relative; top: 5px; width: 1px;"></span><br />
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><br />
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For the 50 years since Radcliffe merged with Harvard, fueling the trend for women’s colleges to become coed, the <a href="http://www.usj.edu/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">University of Saint Joseph</a> has remained an all-women’s institution. President Rhona Free talks about how she came to realize it was time for USJ, founded in 1932 by the Sisters of Mercy, to open its hallowed halls to male undergraduates. Connecticut’s last all-women institution of higher learning will begin admitting male students to all full-time undergraduate programs in the fall of 2018.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Mistake:</strong> </div>
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Applying a mission statement too narrowly</div>
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When I started here in 2015 I loved the idea of being at a women’s college and I interpreted the mission as a<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"> women’s</em> college. After being on the campus for about a year and a half, I kept thinking of things I would like to offer to the women students and realized that the constraints were in many cases <em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">not </em>financial. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the funds to create any program or another co-curricular activity, but rather that we did not have enough interested students.</div>
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To achieve the dynamic undergraduate experience I envisioned, we needed more students than were interested in coming to an all-women institution. Research indicated only 2 to 4 percent of students who take the SAT say they will consider a single-sex institution. Those statistics surprised me. I didn’t expect that it would be very high, but 2 to 4 percent was much less than I anticipated.</div>
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How could we open our door to those other 98 percent of students headed for college? Was I thinking too literally, interpreting that our mission was just for women undergraduates? </div>
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Before approaching the board of trustees with any recommendation, we created a task force with twelve different working groups. Each of those working groups looked at what would be the impact of becoming coeducational and how it would relate to our mission. Would it push us too far from our mission? Would it allow us to support the mission?</div>
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The consensus from those groups was that there have been enough incremental changes at the University of Saint Joseph, so that becoming fully coeducational would remain within our mission. Men have attended the graduate school for almost fifty years and live in the graduate residence hall. Men are enrolled in the part-time program for adult learners and also attend classes on campus as part of the eleven-college Hartford Consortium for Higher Education. For example, students from Trinity College who want to get certified as teachers come to USJ to take Education courses.</div>
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You can’t interpret mission too narrowly or be too tied to the history and traditions.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson:</strong></div>
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We came to realize our mission really focuses on educating a diverse student population to meet society’s needs, with an emphasis on developing the potential of women. I think I (and others) had first thought, “Well that means undergraduate women,” but obviously when you read it more carefully, it doesn’t say to the exclusion of men. It just says that you will keep—and we will keep—that focus.</div>
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Changing from Saint Joseph College to the University of Saint Joseph a few years ago indicated that the board understood that you can’t interpret mission too narrowly or be too tied to the history and traditions. What if someone had said 50 years ago that this institution would be starting a school of pharmacy offering a doctoral degree? I think many people would have just said, "Oh no, that is not what we’re here for."</div>
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By opening this sense of what the mission is and not interpreting it too literally, the University of Saint Joseph remains consistent with the vision of its Founding Sisters of Mercy. We will have more resources and more students that will support activities. Right now our undergraduate enrollment is about 770. We’ll possibly go up to 1,000 but we probably won’t go beyond 1,000.</div>
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I’ve learned to keep a sense of what an institution’s mission is and allow for enough flexibility to respond to change in the markets and in external conditions, but at the same time not be so loose with interpreting the mission that you get steered into directions that are not ideal for the institution. The University of Saint Joseph has always had a pretty high level of expectations for student performance and preparation and that’s a part of sticking to the mission and the history that we didn’t want to change. </div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Follow the University of Saint Joseph on Twitter at <span dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/USJCT" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">@USJCT</a>.</span></em></div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Photo courtesy of Rhona Free.</em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-4556111943526809882017-08-06T15:20:00.002-07:002017-08-06T15:45:28.931-07:00Crain's If I Knew Then: Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks Producing Director<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
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Rob Ruggiero</h1>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong></span><br />
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><br />
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Doubters warned that bringing a big Broadway musical to as intimate a stage as Hartford’s <a href="http://www.theaterworkshartford.org/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">TheaterWorks</a> would be risky. Yet, on June 26 Rob Ruggiero’s spring production of "Next to Normal" earned five Connecticut Critics Circle Awards for best musical, director, actor, debut performer and lighting. Affiliated with Theaterworks since 1993, Rob has been its producing artistic director since 2012. He said the theater is “extraordinarily supportive, which is rare to find.”</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Mistake:</strong></div>
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Listening to others when my gut tells me otherwise.</div>
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I’ve directed big and small musical plays all over the country. One of the critical aspects of being a director is knowing how to cast the show, putting the right people around you. There have been times when I have been talked into or pressured into casting somebody I felt innately was wrong for the role. And I’ve always regretted that decision. It always has resulted in diminishing the impact of a show.</div>
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Other times I’ve been told I had to have a particular designer. Or told we had to use someone who was on staff or resided in the city we were in at the time. For the most part, when I have had a strong feeling that this is not a good idea, I would say 80 to 90 percent of the time it has not worked out.</div>
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There have been other projects where I’ve thought, "Oh we have a lot of budget strain this year, do I think this is wise?" And then I go on to choose a smaller scale project thinking, this’ll be good because I know that we’ll be risking less and it feels a little more responsible. Then the project ends up actually not doing as well as I thought it would.</div>
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Doing "Next to Normal" terrified me. I took a big risk with that. There were people who reminded me TheaterWorks doesn’t generally do musicals. Some of the subscriber base asked, ”Oh why are you doing that?” Still, I knew the Pulitzer Prize pedigree would help the cause. And it’s not a musical with dance numbers. It has a strong profound story, so we made our production about a family struggling with the impact of mental illness. To me, it was just a play with music.</div>
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As it turned out, we had the largest subscriber turnout ever for an individual production – even more than "Relativity,"<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"> </em>which starred Richard Dreyfuss (in 2016). "Relativity" probably had the most single ticket sales, but they were neck and neck. They were both really successful productions for different reasons. And now my audience trusts that there are musicals that fit our mission at TheaterWorks.</div>
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I would rather fail because of my choices than because I followed someone else’s lead.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson: </strong></div>
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A lesson I have learned over and over again is to trust your instincts. Sometimes advice, however well-intentioned, can be very limiting, especially fear-based advice. There have been times where I’ve made a choice because it felt a little safer and secure and it ended up actually being just the opposite. I’ve learned to be braver and trust my gut and believe in a project—and to trust our audience.</div>
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Ultimately, as an artistic leader you chose to lead. And not everything pays off, but I would rather fail because of my choices than because I followed someone else’s lead.</div>
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Also, one of the things I think you learn as a leader is to make sure you get all the information and that you hear everyone’s side of the story before you take a risk or make a judgment. There are a lot of reactions around you—emotions around you. There are those times when I’ve had a reactive response, and usually that lacks a complete global view of what has happened. Now I try to always take a breath and talk to everyone involved and try to hear what the different perspectives are so I can make a really smart, informed decision. My decision doesn’t always please everybody, but at least it’s informed. </div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Follow TheaterWorks on Twitter at <span dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/TheaterWorksCT" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">@TheaterWorksCT</a>.</span></em></div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Photo courtesy of TheaterWorks.</em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-84163442751075256122017-06-27T10:53:00.002-07:002017-06-27T10:53:27.045-07:00Crain"s Business Letter's "If I Knew Then. . ." interview with Mariella Perna<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Reprinted from http://www.crains.com/if-i-knew-then/mariella-perna/mariella-creations</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.crains.com/if-i-knew-then" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="tag" style="background: rgb(18 , 58 , 97); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; display: inline-block; font-size: 20px; outline: none; padding: 5px 10px;">IF I KNEW THEN...</span></a></div>
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In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.</div>
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Mariella Perna</h1>
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<span class="attribution clear-left-after" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">PRESIDENT, MARIELLA CREATIONS</strong></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">By <strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Laura B. Hayden</strong></span></div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Background: </strong><br />
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Seamless operation contributes to <a href="http://www.mariellacreations.com/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Mariella Creations</a> being voted the top bridal shop in Hartford Magazine’s Readers Poll for the last fifteen years. Antonio and Antoinetta Garofalo, original owners of the 45-year-old family business, have stayed active in the bridal and formal wear boutique their daughter Mariella Perna now runs.<br />
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<b>The Mistake: </b>When my parents opened Mariella Creations (named after me when I was nine) … a bride’s search for the perfect gown started when she first entered our store. She usually brought along her mother, a girlfriend and a few magazine tears from the latest Brides magazine. The first thing I or another saleslady would do would be to walk the customer through all our closets. If, let’s say, there were 500 dresses, we would start by letting them see every one. The customer would have been familiar with only a few high-profile designers like Priscilla of Boston and Vera Wang.</div>
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That all changed when the Internet became popular. Brides searched the net to see styles of gowns before they went to a bridal store. Today’s bride comes into our store, her smartphone in hand, ready to call up her Pinterest wedding board and favorite dress picks. Some follow designers daily on Twitter feeds. These women not only have an idea about the style of the gown they are interested in; they have the serial numbers for several on hand when they first meet us.</div>
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Since I became president of Mariella Creations, I’ve always made customer service our top priority. One of the key services I’ve prided myself in was my and my salesgirls’ knowledge of our inventory. We would want to show the bride gowns X, Y and Z. But this better-informed customer would specifically ask to only see A! Sometimes we overwhelmed a customer with everything we knew, which could lead to confusion in the dressing room.</div>
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Eventually I had an “aha” moment! If today’s bride came to us so much better informed than in the past, she did not have to see everything! Now, instead of first escorting a bride through the closets, we first show what a customer asks for. We ask her about the theme of her wedding and styles she likes. If the bride has a straight-fitted dress in mind and, after trying the style on, sees it doesn’t look so good on her, we will then make suggestions for other styles. </div>
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I also realized we had to bring in more of the designers our customers saw online in place of our Vera Wang line, which was selling less and less. We had taken Vera Wang into the store in the 1990s when it was fairly new and every bride wanted to wear a Vera Wang dress. But as time went by her designs became either more expensive or a little more difficult to wear, as she catered mostly to a very tall, slender body type.</div>
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Our customers would ask for different lines by name. Remember – they were going on designer websites. “Oh do you carry Lazaro . . . Jim Hjelm. . . Pronovias?” When we heard a company asked for over and over again, we’d take a look at it and bring it in. It wasn’t difficult to let go of Vera Wang. We couldn’t keep selling dresses that just end up on the sale rack.</div>
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Sometimes we overwhelmed a customer with everything we knew.</div>
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<strong style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">The Lesson:</strong></div>
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The bridal gown may be a tradition, but the business of selling the iconic garment is by no means set in stone. Thanks to the internet the bridal customer today knows more about what she wants as an individual and as a trendsetter. When social media began to connect her to all things bridal – round the clock – we at Mariella Creations had to reassess how it affected two of our priorities – our inventory and, even more important, our relationship with this more knowledgeable customer. By listening more carefully to our brides we learned to serve them better.</div>
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<em style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Follow Mariella Creations on Twitter at <span dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/BuyBridal" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b88bf; cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">@BuyBridal</a>.</span></em></div>
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<i style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none;">Pictured: Mariella Perna, left, with her daughter on her daughter's wedding day.</i></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-14592416420642417162017-05-11T04:25:00.000-07:002017-05-11T04:26:49.636-07:00Why Marjorie?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://pooryorickjournal.com/interview-joanie-dimartino-4/">Previously published in the Poor Yorick Journal</a></i></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The roundabout road that led me to start digging deep at the Woody Guthrie Archives began well over forty years before the site opened. Yet it wasn’t the iconic folk singer’s legacy (nor that of his well-known son Arlo) that I focused on. Instead, I sought insight into Marjorie–Woody’s second wife–the lesser-known yet arguably most influential Guthrie of them all</span><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Through my early teaching years in the mid-’70s, I had read about Marjorie’s grassroots effort to educate and support families affected by Huntington’s disease, which debilitated Woody for well over ten years before his death in 1967. Her call to action inspired the students in my high school folk club to arrange a bake sale to raise money for the cause.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />After we made the contribution, the students and I were thrilled to receive her personal reply, in which she reminded us that her project was “important not just to the ‘family’ [sic] but to the public.” </span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Lo and behold, about a week after receiving Marjorie’s thank you note, another letter arrived. She wrote, “with all the young people passing through your hands . . . hope you would let them know that their names are welcome to our mailing list. . . even if they can’t make a contribution! I feel certain . . . that when people know what we are doing . . . . they will want to help when they can!”</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />She explained, “a larger list might give me the opportunity to look for federal and foundation grant support!” (eventually, the organization became the pioneering Huntington Disease Society of America). She closed, saying “ . . . and if you should visit New York would love to say hello in person. You have made MY day!”</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Intrigued by the woman and the cause, I vowed to keep up with her projects. Maybe take her up on her offer to visit the CCHD office in New York . . . sometime . . . after I married, I thought, busy in the midst of wedding plans and teaching. In 1983, I read about Marjorie’s death from cancer at age sixty-five. I had missed my chance to meet her, but her sense of service stuck with me; I was a thirty-something “flower-child” still grounded in the idealism of the sixties that had motivated me to canvas the streets of Hartford in support of peace candidate Eugene McCarthy in 1968, strike in protest after Kent State in 1970, and organize Hartford’s first twenty-five-mile March Against Hunger in 1971.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Shortly after Marjorie’s death, I read Joe Klein’s biography <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Woody Guthrie: A Life</em>. With a mention of Marjorie here and there, it reacquainted me with her as Woody’s second wife and mother to four of his children (their first died in a tragic accident at age four). I learned that she had danced with the renowned Martha Graham in the forties and fifties. I was struck by how, even after their divorce, she managed his health care from hospital to hospital, for over fifteen years. Marjorie accomplished all this while raising their three children and working full time as a dance teacher at her own studio in Brooklyn, New York.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />I spent the next dozen or so years raising my children, teaching part-time, and then I returned to full-time teaching in 1996. This left little time for reflection on myself, much less Marjorie. Until in 1998, the clock seemed to stop; my husband died suddenly. Overnight, I had become a single mom, and in the inexplicable way a mind works, thoughts about Marjorie raising her three children during Woody’s long convalescence and after his death regularly surfaced in my stream of consciousness.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Working full-time while raising two grieving children through adolescence consumed my every minute and, in a convoluted way, prevented grief from consuming me. I finally got to read <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ramblin’ Man</em>, Ed Cray’s 2004 biography of Woody. A single chapter focused on Marjorie. It was not enough to fully flesh out Klein’s sketch of her but enough to reignite my curiosity to find out more–if I only had the time.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />While getting my MFA at Western Connecticut State University, I began working on an enrichment project on American folk music. More information about Marjorie’s dance career came to light. However, the work on my final thesis–a memoir of loss and recovery about my family’s tragic loss–took precedence. A year after my memoir was published</span><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, I longed for another serious writing project. In a typical one-click-leads-to-another Internet search, I discovered that an official Woody Guthrie Archive was opening in the spring of 2013 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This piqued my interest, since I had already exhausted every secondary source about the Guthries I could get my hands on, in print and online. </span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Around this time, a close friend asked, “What do you want to write?”</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />I blurted, “I really want to write a biography about Marjorie Guthrie,” realizing it to be true.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />With an official archive now accessible, was this now possible? Yes and no.<br />Although a full listing of the archive’s collections is available online, the actual sources are not. This meant I would have to travel to Tulsa, 1,500 miles away–an expensive proposition.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />The Woody Guthrie Center website also offered information about an annual fellowship to support research at the Tulsa site. I applied, and eight weeks later, received notice I had not been awarded the fellowship. Once I put aside my initial disappointment, the sentence that welcomed me to continue my research at the archives resonated. <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Why not?</em> I thought and started a “Tulsa or Bust” fund. A year later, I spent a week in Tulsa sorting through correspondences, news articles, and tapes of interviews.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />To say I was overwhelmed by this 2015 trip would be understatement. Even with the guidance of Kate Blalack, the helpful archivist at the center, I had no idea how time-consuming it would be to read deteriorating papers or how exacting this work would be.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Kate greeted me warmly as we sat down for my preliminary interview. As we talked, Kate agreed that Marjorie had been overlooked in the Guthrie legacy, especially since it was Marjorie who first began collecting what fills the archives today and it was Marjorie who did groundbreaking work for the Huntington’s Disease Foundation.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />The next day, I began digging. Kate supplied me with automatic pencils (no ink was allowed near the documents), a yellow legal pad, a flat tool to turn pages (to keep the oils from my washed hands from compromising the papers), and a magnifying glass. I started with</span><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> the first box of the Woody Guthrie Correspondence Collection, some of which contained letters Woody sent to Marjorie during his Merchant Marines days and Marjorie’s first pregnancy. He wrote to her daily, sometimes hourly, professing his love and discussing his politics. Although Woody’s letters alluded to her replies, Marjorie’s letters did not appear in this collection (or any other onsite). I wondered why as I tried to figure out as much as I could about their two-way interactions, using only his letters.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />I expected to get through boxes and boxes of artifacts during my week at the Woody Guthrie Center. Instead, I tackled only one box. During the week, my pencil-written notes were secured in my locker overnight until my last visit, at which time my week’s worth of notes was photo-copied for the archive records. And even with my bounty of information, I would still have to apply for permission to use the material in published writing. Severe standards, one might say, until realizing archives offer full disclosures of families’ lives, lives whose histories are a privilege to share.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />I left Tulsa physically and mentally exhausted yet oddly committed to do that again sometime. I can only liken it to the rigors runners put themselves through–voluntarily–when they take on a marathon and–</span><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a day or two later–start to plan their next twenty-six-mile run. My archival research was a mental marathon, and I was already looking toward repeating the long-distance event.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />I applied once again for the grant money in the spring of 2016, with a much more focused letter of application and a complete book proposal. This time, I was named a 2016 recipient of the eleventh Annual Broadcast Music Incorporated Woody Guthrie Fellowship. My second week in Tulsa this past summer proved much more productive. I found myself more focused, taking time to be moved by correspondences and even documents: the marriage certificate, the divorce certificate, the hospital admissions and doctors’ reports, Woody’s death certificate–a whole quarter of a century of a married couple’s life together assembled in a single box of brittle papers.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />I had read about Woody’s physical deterioration from Huntington’s Disease in the Klein and Cray biographies. Even during their subsequent marriages, Marjorie would bring Woody home from a distant hospital for weekend visits. When he could no longer make the trip, she traveled with the children to his bedside. She drew cards for him stating “YES,” “NO,” and “?” to help him communicate when he could no longer speak. The official hospital reports I found revealed, in clinical detail, the steady progression of his disease with which Marjorie had to cope. She documented everything, from his “random uncontrollable jerks” in April of 1961 to his “severely deteriorated state,” which rendered him bedbound at the New York State Hospital, unable to a communicate with anything other than “high-pitched groans” in June of 1966. In addition, an official doctor’s report documented the heartbreaking perception that “He seems to perceive and suffer from his own helplessness.” Information like this caused me to leave my second trip to Tulsa not only physically and mentally exhausted but also emotionally exhausted.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Through both visits to the archives, I became a connection-maker as well as a note-taker; I became more and more conversant about all things Marjorie. Kate and I would find and discuss photographs of what appeared to be Marjorie’s fragile beauty onstage, though she bore her rigorous dance regimens with remarkable strength. I passed on information to Kate and introduced her to sources the archives did not contain, such as Aaron Lansky’s <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Outwitting History</em>, in which he chronicles his seventies’ mission to rescue over one million Yiddish books from extinction with Marjorie’s help. Kate and I shared frustration over the absence of letters penned by Marjorie. However, I located her letters to folklorist Richard Reuss in a collection at the Indiana University. We are in the process of trying to attain copies. And a new conversation started when Kate arranged for me to interview folklorist Guy Logsdon and his wife Phyllis, friends of Marjorie, who assisted her when she traveled to Oklahoma to connect with families of Huntington’s victims. This interview is now available at the archives.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />I can’t help thinking back to Marjorie’s 1975 letter reminding me that her activism was “important not just to the ‘family’ but to the public.” Forty years later I would begin to discover, through my research at the archive, the full purport of these words on other aspects of Marjorie’s life as well: her dance career, her political and creative influence on Woody, and her efforts to secure his legacy. There are more researching and conversing ahead: another trip to Tulsa with the remaining grant money, more digging at the New York Public Library of Performing Arts, and visits with students and colleagues who were fortunate enough to have Marjorie involved in their lives and their projects. As with the marathon runner, the road goes on and on and on. There is no turning back now, just a bit more sure-footedness on the journey ahead.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Special thanks to the BMI Woody Guthrie Fellowship Program, Woody Guthrie Publications, and the Woody Guthrie Center for supporting the research and development of this article.</span></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-59795445750205280172017-05-10T14:45:00.006-07:002017-05-10T14:45:52.321-07:00Mom Didn't Need A Designated Day To Think About Saving The Earth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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When I was a child I never counted trash cans. The neighbors, however, did.</div>
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''How do you manage to have so little garbage?'' my mother was asked more than once.</div>
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''We eat our garbage,'' she would reply wryly.</div>
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Today environmentalists call my mother's 1960s tactics recycling. She called it common sense. Nothing was wasted in her home</div>
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She cooked fresh foods, so she didn't need most of the packaging paper and paperboard that make up 41 percent of most households' trash. The vegetables in her soups were not dehydrated or stored in cans. Full meals were not frozen inside cardboard and plastic containers that weighed as much as the edible contents. The cardboard my mother accumulated was smashed by an efficient, low-energy compactor — her foot. It was separated from wet, metal and plastic wastes by hand.</div>
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Much of her household trash was reused. My children's favorite toys at her house were two Quaker Oats boxes she made into drums. The strings attached to the drums came from packages she received. If the paper that made up Mom's accumulation of junk mail was blank on one side, she used it as drawing paper or cut it into scrap paper for memos and lists.</div>
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My mother laughed at advertisements for 17 plastic storage units priced under $20. Her glass and plastic containers came free from supermarket purchases such as peanut butter and deli salads. The amount of metal in her trash was also below average because she washed and reused aluminum foil and pie plates.</div>
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The bond of those who conserve and reuse runs deep. My mother and her closest friend once discovered, over coffee, that the two of them shared the same dark secret. Though I wouldn't recommend this energy-saving strategy, neither of these two women turned on cellar lights before going downstairs. Instead, they counted steps.</div>
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My mother didn't profess to be saving the planet for 40 years — just her space, her money and her self-respect. More than economic or ecological edicts, she follows a basic ethic: You don't need what you can't have; you don't waste what you may need.</div>
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Environmentalists continue to ponder ways to bury, burn, recycle and decrease garbage. If only my mother's neighbors followed her simple measures of careful consumption, creative reuse and economy, the trash collection on her street could easily have been cut in half. That would have meant 4,000 fewer garbage cans of waste sent to the local landfill a year — through the efforts of just 40 families. Think of what would happen if we all followed her example today.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Photo by Laura B. Hayden</em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-1994764515104474552017-05-10T05:58:00.000-07:002017-05-10T06:02:18.991-07:00Adam & Eve Would Have Been Way Better Off Noshing on Figs!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Previously published on Windsor Locks/ East Windsor Patch 5/10/2017</span></i><br />
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A fig tree that grew in Brooklyn, in the tiny back yard of the family four-plex, remains one of my sweetest childhood memories. Late summer, I could reach up and pluck the ripe reddish-brown fruits at will. When the temperature started to drop, my grandfather would prune it and wrap the trunk in burlap to protect it from the cold.</div>
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That memory rushed back to me when I walked into Vinnie's Little Acre on 265 Main Street in Windsor Locks this week. Among the usual spring stock of planters and flats of vegetables and flowers were eight fig trees, some of them with early figs already visible. I'd never seen a fig tree at a local nursery.</div>
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Katherine, the store clerk, told me this crop of Brown Turkey Fig Trees came from California and were supplied by Geremia Greenhouse in Wallingford. She admitted that, though this species is cold-hardy, it can be a challenge to get a fig tree to survive a New England winter which usually runs colder than New York City's. Then she surprised me by saying that the <a href="https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/Brown-Turkey-Fig.htm?utm_source=msn&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=%28roi%29%20fig%20trees&utm_content=&utm_term=fig%20trees" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #256bc9; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Turkey Fig is as comfortable in a container as it is in the garden</a>. "You can bring it indoors in the winter and replant it into a larger container next spring."</div>
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According to the <a href="http://foodiegardener.com/grow-figs-101-plant-fig-trees-in-containers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #256bc9; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Foodie Gardener</a>, planting a fig tree in a container encourages greater fruit production.</div>
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Who knew?</div>
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Tempting.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Photo credit: Laura B. Hayden</em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-34826092552950942742017-03-27T07:39:00.001-07:002017-05-10T06:04:00.696-07:00Make Way For Memories of a Kid Lit Classic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Previously published on Windsor Locks/ East Windsor Patch 3/27/2017</span></i><br />
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In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the beloved children’s book set in Boston, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Make Way for Ducklings</em>, a <a href="http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/make-way-for-ducklings" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #256bc9; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">spring exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts</a> tracks the career of the book’s author and illustrator Robert McCloskey (1914–2003), with art from <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Make Way for Ducklings</em> at its center.</div>
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The book has been a favorite for generations in my family. I can still see my son (who just turned thirty) in his footed pjs, begging his father to read <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Make Way For Ducklings - </em>night after night. Our dog-eared copy of the story actually belonged to his dad when he was a child.</div>
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As with Dad, the character of Officer Michael fascinated my son. He'd lean closer to the page whenever they got to the part about how the man-in-uniform would plant himself in the center of a city street, raise his white-gloved hand to stop busy Boston traffic, and then direct seven ducklings safely across the road: Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, and Pack, all in a row.</div>
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The exhibit portrays the creation of the children's classic, a narrative as entrancing as the duck tale itself. McCloskey chose brown ink instead of full color, which gave the illustrations a warm and natural feel. And the reader gets a true bird's-eye view in illustrations drawn from an aerial perspective.</div>
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But the story within the 1941 story that amuses me the most is how the illustrations evolved. At first McCloskey had difficulty drawing the ducks. That is until he bought a brood and kept them in his apartment bathtub. The ducks started their day quacking away as McCloskey followed them around with a tissue in one hand and a sketchpad in the other. When he couldn't get them to sit still long enough, he actually gave them wine to drink!</div>
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Like his books, the exhibit manages to fascinate children, their parents, and their grandparents alike. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Make Way For Ducklings: The Art of Robert McCloskey </em>exhibit runs through June 18. <a href="http://www.mfa.org/tickets" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #256bc9; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Click here for ticket information.</a></div>
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Photos credit - Laura B. Hayden</div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-46870611641325840692017-03-21T04:55:00.000-07:002017-03-26T14:51:30.150-07:00The Feasts of Saint Patrick's Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://patch.com/connecticut/windsorlocks/feasts-saint-patricks-day">Previously published</a> on Windsor Locks/East Windsor Patch, March 20, 2017</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When it comes to food Saint Patrick’s Day tends to be the second Thanksgiving in my circles. The feasting is fierce. Traditionally, my in-laws host a huge corned beef and cabbage dinner on the weekend closest to the actual feast day of the patron saint. They have a knack for perfection. The brisket slices as cleanly as a turkey breast. The potatoes are just-right soft and the carrots are just-right crisp, all atop a bed of cabbage that has neither lost its color nor its taste. That’s always the March meal I savor the most.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I like to try my best at the same menu usually a few days before or after their party. This year I slow-cooked my Irish boiled dinner the day before Blizzard Stella when my daughter’s family came by. The actual Saint Patrick’s feast day fell four days later – one day before the relatives’ invite. I wanted to cook something Irish, but not another brisket. So I tried something new: a <a href="http://altonbrown.com/shepherds-pie-recipe/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #256bc9; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">lamb shepherd’s pie</a>. I’ve made shepherd’s pie before – but only with beef. The lamb tastes different. Some call it stronger, some sweeter, and some, simply “less beefy.” But that wasn’t the only difference. The last step in preparing the mashed potatoes that would form the “crust” of the pie was to blend in a raw egg yolk. Odd, I thought as I followed the final step before spreading the potatoes over the meat and vegetable bottom layer. The result after baking: a firmer more pie-like crust than a typical mashed potato topping.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There were no complaints at the dinner table or the next morning when my son and future daughter-in-law decided that reheated lamb shepherd’s pie would make a fine breakfast. There was, after all, one egg in it.</span></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Photo credits: Laura B. Hayden</span></em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-75951717439694882572017-03-21T04:46:00.000-07:002017-03-22T05:50:57.897-07:00Blizzards Past and Present<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://patch.com/connecticut/windsorlocks/blizzards-then-now">Previously published</a> on <i>Windsor Locks/East Windsor Patch, </i>March 17, 2017 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I just happened to be reading a biography of Ella Grasso this week. In 1974 the voters of Connecticut elected Ella the first woman governor to secure the position in her own right. I’m especially interested in Ella because, a few years ago, I moved to her hometown — Windsor Locks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’ve been trying to figure out exactly where she lived for a while now. I had it narrowed down to one street of modest homes about a mile from me. Finally, Jon E Purmont’s biography of Ella pinpointed the exact address: 13 Olive Street, across the street from her parents’ house at 12 Olive Street. Both are small capes on tiny plots of land, like my own house. If I stand in my side yard and stretch both my arms out, I can touch my house and my neighbor's</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Reading Ella's biography this week turned out to be appropriate not only because it is National Women's History Month. Coincidentally, Ella’s first term as governor put her in charge of the State’s response to the Blizzard of 1978, an epic storm that cast “nearly two feet of snow,” over three days, February 5 to February 7. Governor Dannel Malloy followed her example when he closed the roads Monday to Tuesday of this week in deference to Blizzard Stella.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I headed off to bed Monday night planning to read a little more about Ella. I could still see an almost full moon through my bedroom window, though the Old Man's Face appeared hazier and hazier as storm clouds rolled in. When I woke up in the middle of the night, the snow- glow through the window, so typical of a nighttime winter storm, drew me to take a peek outside. Flakes weren't falling. Not down, anyway. Sheets of whiteness fiercely flew horizontally, before my eyes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Took a while for me to get back to sleep with that image frozen in my mind, accompanied by the howling of the night’s idiot wind. The next morning the blizzard continued in full force. I could barely see across the street. I heard a constant whistle which went on through early afternoon until about four, when visibility dropped to zero and I heard a loud, reverberating hum. But it wasn't the storm. My neighbor was plowing my driveway!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I couldn't see the dear man's face, scarved as he was, but I knew it was him — the best neighbor in the world who can stand in his side yard, reach out his arms, and touch both our houses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">His start at cleaning up my driveway gave me the incentive to put my book down, bundle up, and take on my snow-filled porch, fronts steps, back steps, and patio.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The next afternoon, still snow-weary, I picked up the Grasso biography where I had left off: the start of her second-term election year. I was reminded how nine months before the second election Ella prevailed in a Mother Nature vs. Mama Grasso blizzard showdown. The Governor took “full charge of the emergency operations." Even spent one night “catching a few hours of sleep on an office sofa” in the emergency headquarters. At the time it was a bold move for her to closed the roads for three days. There's no telling what added havoc the Blizzards of 1978, 2013 (another one Governor Malloy closed the roads for) and 2017 might have wrecked without these closures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've finally finished the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ella Grasso </em>bio. Ready to start Edith Wharton's novel <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Summer.</em></span></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Photo credits: Laura B. Hayden; Top snow image via Shutterstock</span></em></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-53385900569877441742017-03-01T07:23:00.000-08:002017-03-21T04:34:38.446-07:00Step this Way to Ballroom Dancing!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 18px; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px; text-align: left;"> Previously published in the March 2017 Sturbridge Times Magazine. Text below photo.</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq-psLcnJVXUqJNCkRAvkWVPpfW33WXkzOvxLrtun1Gq_tympiNTAil7cPS8OydsGXYv8wFyTbI3adh4GEy9l75rU69_yoD5QyTmkabyy2pEI3-7PsDg_lf6UGMBGDOuTPoAdlO13wG3vV/s1600/Dancing_2177.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq-psLcnJVXUqJNCkRAvkWVPpfW33WXkzOvxLrtun1Gq_tympiNTAil7cPS8OydsGXYv8wFyTbI3adh4GEy9l75rU69_yoD5QyTmkabyy2pEI3-7PsDg_lf6UGMBGDOuTPoAdlO13wG3vV/s400/Dancing_2177.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Why just settle for watching the start of the new season of <i>Dancing with the Stars on March 20? With the number of area venues that offer beginner ballroom lessons and nights out, there's no better time for you to get up from your couch, face the music, and do some dancing. </i> </span></span></div>
<div class="font8" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Without beginners, you don’t have
dancing,” says Steele Shane, Director of Dance Programs at the Longfellow
Tennis and Health Club in Wayland. “It couldn’t sustain itself.” Steele delights
in guiding inexperienced dancers through a West Coast Swing lesson from 8 to 9
PM, the first hour of Longfellow’s monthly WCS dance held the second Saturday
of every month. This month’s dance is March 11.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="font8" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Talking with Steele, I remembered my
first ballroom lesson, some fourteen years ago. Silly me, I was approaching my mid-fifties
and never had a dance lesson. Yet, there I was learning to waltz with a partner
who understood rhythm much better than I. He emphasized the initial step of
each cluster with ease, as he triple-stepped down the school cafeteria floor: <i>ONE – two – three, ONE - two – three</i>. I followed
his lead, stepping to the rear, attempting to do what Ginger did with Fred,
every move backward and in heels. This was no time for fancy. I needed to stay
on my feet. And stay on them I did. Still do.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Newcomers who have fun with this same
kind of learning experience at Longfellow’s monthly WCS dances often sign up
for <span class="color17"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">private, semiprivate, and group lessons afterward.
Steele and his staff teach</span></span> Waltz, West Coast Swing, Salsa, Cha Cha,
and Two-step among other dance styles. As with the monthly dance, you do not
need to attend class with a partner.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Deborah
Schur, who has danced her way from beginner to intermediate levels over the
last decade or so, enjoys meeting up with friends at Longfellow’s dance nights and
taking lessons from a variety of instructors. Though she calls herself “a
person who just likes to dance,” her initiation came at a time when her
confidence waned, after a second bout with breast cancer. “The dance floor
became my safe spot,” says Deborah. A spot where she has danced with a variety
of partners, young and old, including a thirteen-year-old boy from Canada who
is now a Worlds champion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Jared
Vigneault, owner of Poise Style & Motion in Worcester says a private single
or couple class can be less frustrating than a group class for the
inexperienced ballroom dancer. PS&M offers one free private lesson with any
one of its ten instructors. From the look of their bios on the studio’s website,
TV’s <i>DWTS </i>team has nothing over their
range of expertise in traditional ballroom dances (Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango,
Quickstep, Rhumba, Cha-Cha, Swing) and nontraditional ones (Hustle, Salsa). All
levels from beginners to advanced dancers can attend the studio’s weekly Dance
Parties on the first three Friday’s of the month. On the fourth Friday, the
Party moves to S.A.G. Park, a larger venue in Shrewsbury. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Every
Saturday night the ABL DanceSport Center in West Boylston transforms its 10,000
square-foot facility to Club Ballroom, attracting singles and couples ages 18
to 80. The weekly event starts with beginner lessons from 7 to 8 PM. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> When
it comes to teaching inexperienced dancers, “it’s all about customer service,”
says Steele. The dance instructor’s job is to figure out solutions to the
problems beginner customers encounter as they learn to trip the light fantastic.
Trip – as in the poetic expression for “dancing
with quick light steps” that is. For more information about adult classes and
dances call these venues or visit their websites.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Longfellow
Club, 524 Boston Post Rd., Wayland, MA 01778, </i><i><a dir="ltr" href="tel:(508)%20358-7355" x-apple-data-detectors-result="1" x-apple-data-detectors-type="telephone" x-apple-data-detectors="true">(508) 358-7355</a>, </i><a href="https://www.longfellowclubs.com/dance"><i>https://www.longfellowclubs.com/dance</i></a><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Poise Style & Motion, 97 Webster
St, Worcester, MA 01603, <a dir="ltr" href="tel:(508)%20752-4910" x-apple-data-detectors-result="4" x-apple-data-detectors-type="telephone" x-apple-data-detectors="true">(508) 752-4910</a>, </i><a href="http://psmdance.com/"><i>http://psmdance.com/</i></a><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">ABL DanceSport Center, 184 West
Boylston St. West Boylston, MA 01583, <a dir="ltr" href="tel:(508)925-4537" x-apple-data-detectors-result="7" x-apple-data-detectors-type="telephone" x-apple-data-detectors="true">(508)925-4537</a>,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<a href="http://abldance.com/"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">http://ABLdance.com</span></i></a><i style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-693750439131928552017-02-06T08:35:00.000-08:002017-05-10T10:48:57.716-07:00Dearest . . .<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">(Previously published in <i>The Sturbridge Times Magazine</i>, February, 2017. Text enlarged below photo.)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3arJy6hbBH6F-oN8X1G5yCAksZXXGwxqVEZDIR6oJIaGUgFdEsYzHR-ifNnhSXY0zFHjYfdrQ89Y1m6pDZwCO1wy4v-YDnq5dOLGtq0tqfAzoJOFfRRCuTpDaMdPp_8_KE-2lpRW0KhtN/s1600/IMG_2079.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3arJy6hbBH6F-oN8X1G5yCAksZXXGwxqVEZDIR6oJIaGUgFdEsYzHR-ifNnhSXY0zFHjYfdrQ89Y1m6pDZwCO1wy4v-YDnq5dOLGtq0tqfAzoJOFfRRCuTpDaMdPp_8_KE-2lpRW0KhtN/s640/IMG_2079.jpg" width="438"></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If Jean-Jacques Rosseau had been a
jeweler rather than a Romantic philosopher, he would have crafted the locket.
As it is, his 18<sup>th</sup>-century writings are credited with influencing
the movement toward sentimentality. The feeling was soon reflected in jewels
dedicated to one’s beloved – living or deceased. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Three centuries later, lovers still
give and receive lockets containing a portrait or personal memento, such as a
lock of hair. The hinged case, often engraved with lovebirds, flowers, or
initials, traditionally hangs around the lady’s neck or wrist from a velvet
band. It can even be suspended from a pin or brooch. These days heavier,
chunkier lines of lockets are geared to a growing men’s market as well.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As Valentine’s Day nears, round, oval,
and heart-shaped lockets fashioned in white gold, yellow gold, and silver are
frequent purchases at Garieri Jewelers in Sturbridge. Store associate
Alexandria O’Brien says that men usually buy for their wives and significant
others. Moms and dads also come in together to pick one out for their
daughters. And there are memorial lockets specifically meant to honor deceased
loved ones. These date back to when Queen Victoria went into a long period of
mourning after Prince Albert’s death. She wore a locket ring on her finger dedicated to his
memory, starting a fashion trend for the middle class as well as royalty.
Garieri Jewelers carries lockets with screw tops that ensure a tight seal to
keep cremated ashes intact. Alexandria says some customers carry pet ashes in
them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Pandora line offers a more
modern design for lockets that bring back that loving feeling: the floating locket.
The hinged pendant crafted from sterling silver and sapphire crystal glass
provides a visible chamber that stores one or more Pandora charms called
“petite memories.” These include a variety of tiny hearts, stars, angels, and
seasonal tokens.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The thought of a locket unhinges
warm memories for my friend Susan Grimm. She likes to tell her son and daughter
how, as a child, she would rummage through her grandmother’s purse, looking for
the zippered compartment that held a locket. Inside the opened locket lay a
photograph of her on one side and her grandmother on the other. “Gram would
always tell me, ‘It keeps us close when we are far apart,’” sighs Susan.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are many lockets on display at
Garieri’s, and additional choices that can be ordered from their catalogs. In
the store’s estate collection, however – not so much. “Lockets tend to stay in
the family,” says Alexandria. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I have two lockets. A silver heart
preserves my adult children’s youthful grins from two decades past. A
Valentine’s lyric written by my husband is folded inside the other locket, which
is shaped like an oval. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">“Dearest,” it begins. And the rest?
A treasure held secret between his heart and mine.</span></div>
Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-57261264055822162122017-01-22T08:34:00.000-08:002017-01-22T19:37:56.322-08:00Signs of Hope<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Today I feel more hopeful than I have in over a year of
watching the American beliefs I have held dear since my college days – over
fifty years ago – denigrated. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Those beliefs of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness for all law-abiding Americans, regardless of our differences, have
been overshadowed by a warped and dark vision of our newly
elected president who has misread the values of the people he says he now represents. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What brought about this lift in my downward spiral of the
recent past? A dear friend and I joined 10,000 equally frustrated women and men, in a peaceful, post-inaugural
rally meant to re-inform our new President’s outlook that isolates our country
and separates its people. We were surprised to run into </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">PTO mothers we hadn't seen since our adult children's school days board the train to Hartford along with us. "What's going on?" asked the train conductor as she took our tickets, surprised at the cluster of passengers that had just boarded at the very small stop. After telling her about the rally she said,"That's cool!" and flashed us a great big smile. She also made an effort to wish us well when we got off the train in Hartford.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We soon assembled at the Hartford State Capitol building
in solidarity with the same-day Woman’s March on Washington D.C. Little did I
expect this state and national turnout of like-minded peoples to multiply to over 670 demonstrations, one million-strong, at peaceful demonstrations across America and throughout the world. Through Facebook posts I learned my brother and his children marched in Boston. Students I had taught at a local high school posted from the D.C. march.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAOw_SnnM0g6VOHpVHxRC4RgOKGuuFxVRPmpL_MC6VEEnwGlCCoeZWhtFUkfqT8EZp3CPuud5r2ZhRKpEdNh02i1MKQRe5mq4uZynbgIOwHC3fDNvDvpxhzcvMpQbLZpao2xaO93S7dbnQ/s1600/my+sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAOw_SnnM0g6VOHpVHxRC4RgOKGuuFxVRPmpL_MC6VEEnwGlCCoeZWhtFUkfqT8EZp3CPuud5r2ZhRKpEdNh02i1MKQRe5mq4uZynbgIOwHC3fDNvDvpxhzcvMpQbLZpao2xaO93S7dbnQ/s400/my+sign.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MY SIGN! </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;">On the Hartford Capitol grounds I was surrounded by signs that expressed the peoples’ deepest feelings: fruits of their imagination, not sour grapes. </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I did not see the name of ANY political party on any
placard. My own sign simply expressed why I, a senior citizen, chose to attend : </span><b>IN SUPPORT OF MY DAUGHTER, GRANDDAUGHTER, AND STUDENTS' HUMAN RIGHTS. </b></span><o:p></o:p><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another Connecticut woman who stood near me held a sign that listed many of my beliefs:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> <b> </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>IN OUR AMERICA </b></span><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>WOMAN ARE IN CHARGE OF THEIR OWN BODIES</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>BLACK LIVES MATTER</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>DIVERSITY IS CELEBRATED,</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>SCIENCE IS REAL</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING</b></span></li>
<ul><ul><ul><ul><ul><ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>LOVE IS LOVE.</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b> </b> </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;">These pretty much sum up <a href="https://www.womensmarch.com/principles">the eight Unity Principles </a>of the national Women's March movement in an effort to "stand together in solidarity for protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families - recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I want to give a shout out to one of the many men supporting the women in their lives who displayed this thought in his signage : </span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">MEN OF QUALITY DON'T FEAR EQUALITY!</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yes, I'm feeling better today, thanks to the enormous strength of the voices I joined with yesterday. Yet, my friend and I returned home realizing how these are mere signs of hope in the grand march for human rights our nation must continue through the next four years. We can start with a call to the Washington DC Capitol building in support of these inalienable human rights. (202)224-3121. Even better, we can follow the plan of action through the next 100 days sanctioned by the Women's March organizers which can be <a href="https://www.womensmarch.com/100/">found here.</a> Their first action calls for each of us to write a postcard to our Senators about what matters to us most. Their site even offers us cards to download.</span><br />
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-61960026173139448582017-01-01T11:39:00.000-08:002017-01-02T04:23:28.584-08:00POP! GOES THE HOLIDAY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Tired as I felt, I’m certain I experienced one of those tiny miracles that sneak into our busy holidays, late Christmas night.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;">By seven in the evening my son and I arrived at the home of his fiancée’s family, the last of three visits that day. We had spent Christmas morning with my grandchildren; we had spent Christmas lunch with my brother, an hour east. I was afraid I'd be appearing exceptionally spent even before starting to spend the evening and next day with the in-laws-to-be, another hour south.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">A tall English woman greeted us with open arms, beside the girl of my son's dreams.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">“Come in, come in,” she said warmly. “We’re about to have dinner and crackers in the dining room.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Instead of an array of thin wheat crisps beside bits of Brie and cheddar I saw nine splendid table settings, each topped with a small tube-shaped present in colorful cellophane and ribbon. They looked like oversized pieces of wrapped candy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH-vP5Y_wIsoA29aqCySkkVW-CAWxXUIqOa2k8KEdvRrqFU7q__qz1iQKJ9BUKmZtKowizG6OQpTT7l4Ea5oz5cLAhAY7-TEl6iOAqJFDc63dE5F2PiOoxgC-z22tQvj-TkvYEyGUyx5OA/s1600/1024px-ChristmasCrackers_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #888888; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH-vP5Y_wIsoA29aqCySkkVW-CAWxXUIqOa2k8KEdvRrqFU7q__qz1iQKJ9BUKmZtKowizG6OQpTT7l4Ea5oz5cLAhAY7-TEl6iOAqJFDc63dE5F2PiOoxgC-z22tQvj-TkvYEyGUyx5OA/s400/1024px-ChristmasCrackers_2.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">“Do you know what crackers are?” my future daughter-in-law asked, the excitement apparent in her voice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">“I’ve seen them” I began as I picked up the party favor by my plate. “I think I have a box of them at home, “ I added, picturing the collection of unopened Christmas paraphernalia in my basement. “But I never . . .”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">“We’ll show you,” piped in every other adult in the room, sounding as giddy as my young grandchildren had, earlier in the day. In pairs, the adults each grabbed one end of a shared cracker – and pulled. Popping sounds and a very faint scent of something burning floated in the air. Laughter followed as a few busy hands shook the contents of the broken cylinder on to their plate. Only those left with the heavier side of the cracker got the loot. For these lucky ones who held the treat-filled chamber, out fell a tiny whistle or plastic toy (the content of crackers are not suitable for children ages three and under) and bits of paper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">“What did you get?” the prize-less adults asked. Then, with a visible sense of purpose, the winning half went on to unfold the tissue papers that had fallen out of the crackers. Each piece opened up into a thin tissue-paper crown, which the “unfolder” immediately placed on his or her head, giving each, from the diners in their thirties to the diner in his eighties, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">a look of childish delight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Five unpopped crackers remained (for, remember, it takes two people to pull a single cracker open). “Now it’s your turn with the rest of us,” the hostess said to my son and me. And within a few moments there ensued five more tiny explosions (similar to the sound and smell of a cap gun going off), five more tiny toys being examined, five more paper crowns to top the remaining undecorated heads, and at least five times more laughter than through the first round of crackers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Still, the fun wasn’t over, for each cracker had also released another piece of paper with a joke of sorts. Traditionally, a pretty cheesy one at that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> <i>Why was the turkey asked to join the band? (</i>Because he was the only one with a drumstick)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> What did Adam say the night before Christmas? (</i>It’s Christmas Eve)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> And my personal favorite: <i>I bought my friend Mary Berry's cookbook for Christmas. I tried to get Paul Hollywood's but he'd sold out. </i>(OK, I admit I found that one on the Internet!)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">After a very long day of visiting and traveling my son and I had been somehow revived by a gracious gift of hospitality which invited us to crown ourselves part of this wonderful family. What a special introduction to their traditions that would continue for us that night, in this out-of-town manger of sorts : the games, the puzzle-building, and the anticipation of a wedding in the New Year to come.</span></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-67274612746153706052016-11-16T12:32:00.001-08:002017-07-01T08:04:48.738-07:00Holidays Can Be a Challenge for Children Who Have Suffered Lost<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by Laura B. Hayden </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">reprinted from the <a href="http://sturbridgetimes.com/images/ST-1116.pdf">November, 2016 issue of </a><i><a href="http://sturbridgetimes.com/images/ST-1116.pdf">The Sturbridge Times</a>, pages 8 to 9.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: small;">The late
fall, chock full of feasts and festivities, can be the happiest time of the
year for most families – or the most depressing for families who have suffered
great loss. The holiday season, while an emotional challenge for grieving
adults, is even more isolating and distressing for grieving children caught in
the rough and tumble of sadness and celebration. That is why, this year, Children’s
Grief Awareness Day falls on November 17 - exactly one week before Thanksgiving
– in the hope of helping<span style="color: #333333;"> us all become more understanding
of the needs of grieving children and of the benefits they obtain through the
support of others. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9jLI1GLaLDNrecfOxTHPg6Dc2NuXMNpftUYZTO8-DATO5rwCWU8Mt6MyP8sSRRYSQvfJTUczi2UbqjYclBcFPkhHQgbbNMr94QP85PS2Wlip84FebbJbVgvELk7mlT68JrzEsj6oEffn8/s1600/cgadlogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9jLI1GLaLDNrecfOxTHPg6Dc2NuXMNpftUYZTO8-DATO5rwCWU8Mt6MyP8sSRRYSQvfJTUczi2UbqjYclBcFPkhHQgbbNMr94QP85PS2Wlip84FebbJbVgvELk7mlT68JrzEsj6oEffn8/s400/cgadlogo.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-size: small;">November 17, 2016</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"> “The onslaught of family holidays
and ritual can be very difficult, one holiday after the other,” says </span><span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;">Johanna D. Sagarin, PhD., program director of </span><span style="color: #333333;">The Carriage House,</span><span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;"> a grief support center for 3-to-18-years-olds
and their families in Worcester County. “Even preverbal (children) grieve,” says
Sagarin. They know by their sense of smell” that a parent is not there. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglYuuwjqAPfFQj3N_6sVusYgdtLdb8JNbEU9nmCdz3-L0f5CRPjmS3t1ilezHf6Huk3A3lSem505XVJfp_WX9ED2wGWMNv0g2GWA3gTPjLxfKtwStFjCjUiE88XulscPxYkt8fOTHLH4Os/s1600/cflogo2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;"> Sagarin recalls a teenager who
attended one of The Carriage Houses’ support groups whose parent died when she
was three. Over a decade later the teen still grieved, even though she had no
clear memories of her deceased parent. </span><span style="color: #333333;">Before they graduate from high school, one child out of every 20
children will have a parent die—and that number doesn't include those who
experience the death of a brother or sister, a close grandparent, an aunt or
uncle, or friend.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> I know only too well about the added
stress grieving children face during the holidays. Eighteen years ago my
husband underwent heart surgery the week before Thanksgiving. Two weeks later
he died from an unforeseen complication. My daughter and son (then 13 and 11)
and I faced his tragic passing in shock and with insurmountable sadness. Our
mail deliveries may best serve as a symbol for our emotional turmoil as we
received get-well cards, sympathy cards, and Christmas cards simultaneously,
through early December. No Thanksgiving to Christmas stretch has ever been the
same since, nor will be. But we survived and continue to survive. This would
not have been possible without the ongoing support of family, friends, and
programs like those offered by The Carriage House.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglYuuwjqAPfFQj3N_6sVusYgdtLdb8JNbEU9nmCdz3-L0f5CRPjmS3t1ilezHf6Huk3A3lSem505XVJfp_WX9ED2wGWMNv0g2GWA3gTPjLxfKtwStFjCjUiE88XulscPxYkt8fOTHLH4Os/s1600/cflogo2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglYuuwjqAPfFQj3N_6sVusYgdtLdb8JNbEU9nmCdz3-L0f5CRPjmS3t1ilezHf6Huk3A3lSem505XVJfp_WX9ED2wGWMNv0g2GWA3gTPjLxfKtwStFjCjUiE88XulscPxYkt8fOTHLH4Os/s320/cflogo2.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> Mackenzie Ryan found comfort in the
support group she attended there while a student at Wachusett Regional High
School in Holden, MA. She especially liked the monthly candle ceremony where she
lit a candle in memory of her father along with other children honoring their
loved one. “That had a big impact on me to know that I was not alone. I found
out it was okay to be different,” Mackenzie said in an article in <i>The Landmark </i>last year.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> A
subsidiary of Children’s Friend Inc., The Carriage House’s bi-weekly support
groups are held during the school year – at no cost – for area children who
have lost a parent, caregiver, or sibling. Staff and volunteers who have
received training in grief support for young people facilitate the sessions. I’m
proud to say my daughter Emily oversees the training.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> Director Sagarin says we can best help
grieving children year-round by expressing concern about how they feel and the
loss they suffered. She suggests that we convey the message to the child that
we can handle whatever the child needs to express about what he/she is going
through. We should not feel we have “to fix” their sadness, just
unconditionally support the child. Sagarin also suggests encouraging the child
to “set the tenor of the household,” during the holidays, whether it be
repeating past rituals or establishing new ones.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> For those of us who wish to do more,
The Carriage House trains volunteers to facilitate support groups for “littles”
(three to six-year-olds), “middles” (seven to twelve-year-olds) and “teens,” two
or three times a year. Volunteers commit 3 ½ hours, every- other week to the
program that runs September to June. </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;">For more information contact The Carriage House
by emailing </span></i><a href="mailto:info@childrensfriend.org"><i><span style="background: white;">info@childrensfriend.org</span></i></a><i><span style="background: white; color: #2e3138;"> or
phoning (508)753- 5425. The Carriage House, a subsidiary of Children’s Friend,
is located at 21 Cedar Street, Worcester, MA 01609.</span></i></span><i><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<!--EndFragment--></div>
Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-39031256893145999012016-07-02T08:49:00.001-07:002016-07-02T09:37:49.012-07:00When Less is More at a New Home Bakery<p class="s7" style="text-align: start; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjChyphenhyphen4fsz8VA-AfwXhi3sQLbQmjtgquFDkcpl2lgg9_KYj7P1MQpADRua_uxPXqw9-DKO83-WeWNWkm5N8mYqsdObhjOVRtJwxcIOIGs4DXQ_29Rtb8MKyL3QH9TRdrCKvuIZeT5K4udXLO/s640/blogger-image--5229469.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjChyphenhyphen4fsz8VA-AfwXhi3sQLbQmjtgquFDkcpl2lgg9_KYj7P1MQpADRua_uxPXqw9-DKO83-WeWNWkm5N8mYqsdObhjOVRtJwxcIOIGs4DXQ_29Rtb8MKyL3QH9TRdrCKvuIZeT5K4udXLO/s640/blogger-image--5229469.jpg"></a></div><p class="s8" style="text-align: start; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;">(Previously published in The Sturbridge Times Magazine, July 2016)</p><p class="s8" style="text-align: start; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><br></p><p class="s9" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Food has a way of bringing us closer together. Ethel </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Mertz </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">famously </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">shared </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">her </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">foodie secret with </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Lucy</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Ricardo w</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">hen she admitted, </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“I can’t </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">help myself. Eating is my hobby.</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">” </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Fiskdale resident Nicole Latch has a friend who inevitabl</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">y </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">asks, “Can I have a nibble of yours,” whenever </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">they dine out and </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">dessert arrives</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">.</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Through the years her </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">BFF </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">has requested </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">a </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">little taste so </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">frequently</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> that Nicol</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">e, an avid baker, would tell her</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“If I ever </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">have</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">a bakery I’m going to name it a</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">fter you.” </span></span></p><p class="s9" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Nicole recently made good on that promise when she </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">turned her small kitchen </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">on 251 Arnold Road </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">into a home bakery specializing in a variety of treats, breakfast and dessert platters, and cakes</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">J</span><span class="s10" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ust a Nibble Home Bakery has been serving the Sturbridge area in Central Massachusetts since</span><span class="s10" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> 2015, delivering </span><span class="s10" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">to</span><span class="s10" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Sturbridge, East & West Brookfield, Brookfield, Brimfield, and Holland. </span><span class="s11" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px; font-weight: bold;"> </span></span></p><p class="s9" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“We specialize</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> in</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> baked good</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">s</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> that </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">celebrate small things,” say</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">s</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Nicole. </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Small as in</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> brownies</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> and blondies</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> and </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">cinnamon rolls (her favorite) shaped like bunnies for Easter and men’s ties for Father’s Day. </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Her frosted chai spice sugar cookies have become a popular order since she introduced them </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">to her cookie menu </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">in M</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ay for Mother’s Day.</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> “</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> I thought of chai tea and cookies </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. . .</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I experimented a bit,” she says, referring to the cardamom that is sprinkled on </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> thinly rolled dough along with traditional spices. </span></span></p><p class="s12" style="text-indent: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> I got to sample one of thes</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">e – tangy,</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> sweet</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> and warm</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">– when</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> I visited </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Nicole</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> early one morning. </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> greeted me at the door clad in a full, ruffled peach and aqua apron</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, looking</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> a lot </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">like the </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">silhouette on the </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“Just A Nibble” </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">trademark</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> on her web page (</span><a href="http://www.just-a-nibble.com/"><span class="s6" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">www.just-a-nibble.com</span></a><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">). “I just love the Fifties,” she admitted, referring to th</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">is</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> iconi</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">c housewife</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> look.</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Very</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Lucylike.</span></span></p><p class="s12" style="text-indent: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Just a Nibble delivers to your door, a practice Nicole </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">began</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> long before she went into business. Melissa Beachemin, director of the Sturbridge Senior Center, </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">has </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">never tire</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">d</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">of seeing</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Nicole or her husband Rob</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, along with their three children ages three to eleven,</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">visit</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> the Center with </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">trays of goodies. The two women met at </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">a </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ServSafe </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">c</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">lass, a food safety course</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. “I love her</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She’s the most positive person</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,” says Melissa, recalling</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> the trays of Valentine cookies </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the Latch family </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">brought </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">to the Center this year and </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">a </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">small wedding cake </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Nichole baked </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">for </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the annual Not-So-Newlywed Game.</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span></span></p><p class="s12" style="text-indent: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> The home business</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> also specializes in traditional and custom chocolate and</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">vanilla cakes </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">frosted</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> with </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">a variety of fluffy</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> buttercream</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">s</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> (including peanut</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">butter) and toppings (</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">drizzles, </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">sprink</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">les, cookies, malted milk balls, </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">etc</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">.).</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Customers can</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> pair together any combination. “No judgment here,” the </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">website</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> assures.</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Lots of choices continue on</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">cookie</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> and brownie</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> menu</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">which also features the “brookie,” a chocolate brownie topped </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">with a </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">chocolate-chip cookie.</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span></span></p><p class="s12" style="text-indent: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Personally I have my eye on </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">a crunchy </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">brownie </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">layered on crushed pretzels and brown sugar. </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">But</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> then there’s </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">that chocolate-chip, </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">flower-</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">pot cookie </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">with a pretty sugar flower sprouting from a bit of crushed Oreo-cookie “dirt”, </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">featured this mont</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">h.</span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> I’ll </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">guess I’ll </span><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">just have to have a nibble of both. Join me at </span><a href="http://www.just-a-nibble.com/"><span class="s6" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">www.just-a-nibble.com</span></a><span class="s5" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span></span></p><p class="s12" style="text-indent: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></p><p class="s9" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a name="_GoBack"></a></span></p><p class="s2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></p>Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-88066943835311492162016-05-31T06:39:00.001-07:002017-03-22T05:53:09.008-07:00Going Around in Circles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">(Previously published in the June 2016 Issue of </span><i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">The Sturbridge Times Magazine). </i></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">One would think</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> my first </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">whirl</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> as</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> a grandmother would have prepared me for the second. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">So much for supposi</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ng.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Back</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> in </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">2012 I didn’t know what to expect. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">The</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> parents-turned-grandparents</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> circle around me </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">assured</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> me </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">upgrading</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> from mother to </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">grandmother</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> would </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">be more fun, less worrisome, more rewarding</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">and much</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">less tiring. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“The</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> kids go </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">home at the end of the day,” many echoed. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">What I wasn’t prepared </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">for was</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> that</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> even as I </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">anticipat</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ed </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">wonder </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">of </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">holding</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">my first grandchild</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> there awaited something </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">just </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">as</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">wonderful</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Something as precious as, a few days</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> later</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">feeling </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">intensity </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">with which </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">he’d</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">fix</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">his </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">wide-open eyes on me</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> as if to acknowledge </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Grammy </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">was a sight worth absorbing </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">to his very soul</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">What </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">became </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">just as special was</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">watching </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">my daughter morph from wife to mother. She e</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">xuded</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> a deeper joy than even </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">on </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">her wedding day, a greater seriousness of purpose than </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">her care</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> for </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">her students or </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the house pup</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">In the midst of this passage she also</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> seemed to </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">take</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">on the</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> added </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">worry</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> and tiredness I </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">have been</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> – to a degree – r</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">elieved of as my son and daughter set out paths of </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">lives</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> and loves</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> of their own. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Last month, </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I expected to </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">relive </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">similar wonders</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> as I awaited my second grandchild’s birth – this time, a girl. Yes there would be more pink, more bows and ruffles</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. But</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I had </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">been around the block with a grandchild already. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Nothing </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">much </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">would </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">surprise me</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> this time.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Nothing – except Grandchild Number One</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">A month or so before her birth I asked </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">my grandson</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, “Are you excited about having a </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">little sister</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">?’ </span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">H</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">e looked me straight in the eye </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">with – I swear –</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> the</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> same gaze-to-the-soul he shot m</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">y way</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> as a one-week-old</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">and </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">answered</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“Yes</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">no</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">yes</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">no</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">yes</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">no</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">yes</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">no</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">.</span></span><span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">” </span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Thus began the</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">unexpected </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">narrative </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">of Grandchild Number Two: </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Watching Grandchild Number One </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">take</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> on the mantle of</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Big Brother. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">He’d been rehearsing older-siblinghood since Christmas</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> wheel</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ing</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> a </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">little sister</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">”</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> doll </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">around the house </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">i</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">n a miniature umbrella stroller</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">.</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> He’d read his favorite book to </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the make-believe sibling</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, telling more his story than the one in print. Th</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">o</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">se were easy scenes </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">for him to play out </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">in</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> his </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">unfolding drama of family. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It became more difficult </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">for him </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">when</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, as his mom’s belly swelled,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> he had</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> to refrain from jumping on </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">her</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> lap</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. Even less cool</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">: </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">being </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">woken up after a nighttime car ride</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> because he was just too heavy for </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">his</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> very pregnant </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">mom </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">to carry from car </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">seat </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">to toddler bed. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Perhaps his </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“yes no” </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">answer</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">evolved</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> from </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">one sort of</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> moment here, a</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">nother sort of</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> moment there</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
When the Big Day arrived my grandson <span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">joined </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">me for </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">our first</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> trip to the hospital. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">His dad took</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">him</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">to meet the baby</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> first.</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> followed a few minutes later</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, walking in to find Little Si</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ster propped by pillows, cradled in Big Brother’s arms. “</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Meet Mallory Ann</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">," he announced</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, having just learned her name. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I’</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">d </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">never seen him sit </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">so</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> straight or smile </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">so</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> wide.</span></span><br />
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<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">The joyful exchange of three generations ensued </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">in </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">room </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">through the afternoon. At one point </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">my grandson </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">performed a</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Snoopy dance as he exclaimed, “</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Tonight</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> I get to sleep at Grammy’s.” </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">A</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">fter a round of </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">great </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">hugs and kisses, </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the two of us </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">headed down the hallway, ten steps or so, until he stopped in his tracks. Pointing his finger to his head, as if he had just discovered a solution to a problem, he said, “I forgot to tell Dad something.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“Then let’s go back and tell him,” I said. We retraced our steps to the room.</span></span></div>
<div class="s5" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Message conveyed</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> we</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> once again exchanged goodbye hugs</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. This </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">time</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">we</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">made it </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">as far as</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> the elevator</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> when I</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">felt</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> the </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">extra-</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">tight </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">grasp </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">of his hand </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">over mine. As we descended to the parking garage the tightness turned to tension</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Next, </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I perceived a lip quiver</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, then</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">a</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> sniffle</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> followed </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">by</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">tears. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“I don’t want to go</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">” </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">he cried softly.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">We can go</span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5737162630814362203" name="_GoBack"></a><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> back for a bit, ” I said</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, pressing the up button.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">After our </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">third visit </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Dad walked us to the car. Big Brother cried, louder this time, but fell asleep within minutes on the ride to Grammy’s</span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. He awoke refreshed, </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">recalling the visit with glee </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">and </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">eager to share the day’s news with my neighbors. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“My Little Sister was born today,” he said, </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">then </span></span><span class="s3" style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"><span class="bumpedFont15" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">turned to me to ask, “What was her name again?”</span></span></span></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-34746772915104373072015-10-22T20:07:00.001-07:002015-10-22T20:09:14.568-07:00Life-StoryingThis column first appeared on <div><a href="http://www.bloggingauthors.com/blogging_authors/2015/5/22/life-storying.html">http://www.bloggingauthors.com/blogging_authors/2015/5/22/life-storying.html</a></div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I’m writing a biography of a woman who has fascinated me since I first heard her name in the 1970s. I can’t give her name – yet. And you might not even recognize it when I do, for she died at age 65 in 1983. Time will tell. But if you are a writer and you are interested in trying your hand at biography, I do have some news you can use.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Writing biography is different from tackling a memoir, even though both are nonfiction, true accounts of true lives. Obvious difference: the memoir is about you, the biography is about someone else. But there is more to it than that. Readers and writers have been known to confuse biographical writing with historical writing. I like the distinction Virginia Woolf’s biographer, Hermione Lee, makes. She calls biographical writing “life-storying,” putting the emphasis on narrative and not just the verifiable facts of more academic histories. In addition, the biographer also wants to convey some sort of idea about the writer’s subject, which is why two biographies about the same person, let’s say John Fitzgerald Kennedy, can be so different, as with Kenneth O’Donnell’s <em>Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye </em>and Nigel Hamilton’s <em>JFK: Reckless Youth. </em></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I can tell you this because I’ve been studying the craft of biography the way I studied memoir when I was writing <em>Staying Alive: A Love Story, </em>my memoir of loss and recovery. I loved that book. Loved that it made my husband’s life present in his children’s and my life again and because it has become respected in the field of writing about loss, receiving a 2012 Reader Views memoir award, a 2013 award from the New York Book Festival, and a recommendation from the American Institute of Health Care Professionals. But I’m on to something else now and in its own way, being essentially about someone else lessens the emotional weight of the project.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span class="full-image-float-left ssNonEditable" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 8px 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img src="http://www.bloggingauthors.com/storage/Staying-Alive-Cover-.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1432318225514" alt="" style="border: 0px none; width: 150px;"></span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yes, in trying to write something non-autobiographical, I’ve tried fiction. But my heart wasn’t in it. The same way Truman Capote’s heart wasn’t in his fiction either. And yet, just by picking up the <em>New York Times</em> one morning in 1959, Capote knew in his gut he <em>had </em>to write a book-length investigation of the news of that day, the Clutter family’s murder. Thus, <em>In Cold Blood</em> was born, the nonfiction book that broke the mold of true reporting when it was published seven years later.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So, in getting serious about the biographical writing, I found that, unlike memoir, there’s very little advice about craft available. Google how to write a memoir and pages and pages of “how-to” books will pop up. Not so when you google how to write a biography. I’ve found only two, Hermione Lee’s <em>Biography</em> which is part of the Oxford <em>Very Short Introductions </em>series and Nigel Hamilton’s <em>How to do Biography: A Primer. </em>Both have been very helpful, along with reading critically praised biographies and profiles.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The same dearth of information goes for online or on ground workshops on biography. I found a single four-day workshop on writing biographies being offered at this summer’s Yale Writer’s Conference, but the cost was just under $1000, nonresidential, just over $1000, residential. Both more than I could afford.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Finally, I came across a surprising good podcast: How to Write a Biography by Carole Angier, available for free at <a href="http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/e/how-to-write-a-biography-carole-angier/" style="font-weight: bold;">http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/e/how-to-write-a-biography-carole-angier/</a>. It is also available on iTunesU. So, if your heart is in nonfiction and you are passionate about someone else’s life, take some advice “life-storying” advice from Lee, Hamilton, and Angier.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span class="full-image-float-left ssNonEditable" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 8px 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img src="http://www.bloggingauthors.com/storage/Hayden%20headshot.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1432317656382" alt="" style="border: 0px none; width: 150px;"></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Laura Hayden is the author of <em>Staying Alive: A Love Story (website: <a href="http://laurabhayden.com/" style="font-weight: bold;">http://laurabhayden.com</a>) </em>She teaches writing at Asnuntuck Community College and in the WCSU MFA in Creative and Professional Writing program, both in Connecticut.</span></p></div>Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-330629370659568662015-09-29T11:45:00.000-07:002015-09-29T11:45:47.256-07:00The Harper Lee Conundrum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
First published <a href="http://www.pooryorickjournal.com/the-harper-lee-conundrum/">at Poor Yorick Journal on September 25, 2015</a><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When, like me, you’ve taught <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To Kill a Mockingbird</em> to tenth graders for thirty years, you have a personal stake in Harper Lee’s only “other” novel, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Go Set a Watchman</em>, published a few months ago. For three decades, I’ve deconstructed Atticus’s airtight argument that proved Tom Robinson’s innocence beyond anyone’s (but a racist jury’s) doubt. I’ve introduced countless teens to the notion that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” Reading and rereading the classic so connected me to the text; I learned and loved something new every time. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s been as difficult for me to separate the truth from the gossip surrounding <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Watchman</em>, as it has always been to get students to appreciate the full monty of <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mockingbird</em>, the book, as compared to <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To Kill a Mockingbird</em>, the movie. The 1960s Oscar-winning film omits the Southern excesses of Atticus’s siblings: Aunt Alexandra and bachelor Uncle Jack, the doctor in the Finch family. Yet, sister and brother continue to impact Harper Lee’s fictional world in <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Watchman</em> in surprising and crafted ways.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Writers know, however, that crafted and well-crafted are two separate treatments, which leads me to the talking heads’ debate over <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Watchman</em>: is it merely the rejected original manuscript of <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mockingbird</em>, something that aged and, some say ailing and addled Lee got duped into publishing? Or has Lee reshaped <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Watchman</em> twice over her long life? First in the late 1950s, following her editor’s suggestion to turn the original manuscript’s clock back two decades—a rewrite that morphed into the Pulitzer Prize winning <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mockingbird</em>—and then again years later, trying to get the older Scout’s story right? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Even before <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Watchman</em>’s publication, airways buzzed about which came first, the Watchman chicken or the Mockingbird egg, as well as a striking difference in Atticus. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was all ears.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So when, on the way to a James Taylor concert a few weeks ago, my niece asked me, “Auntie Laura, where do you stand as an English teacher on this new Harper Lee book?” it was as if she had pressed my play button. “You know there’s all this controversy about if Lee wanted it published and if it is the rejected or the rewritten version, yadda-yadda-yadda I’m not sure I even want to read it, yadda-yadda-yadda, because I don’t want to be disappointed.“</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I felt confident about my know-it-all English teacher rant based on<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The New York Times</em> saying this and <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Guardian</em> saying that, etc., etc. That is, until the fellow I know so well, the one next to me at the JT fest, questioned me, not then, but the next evening, as straightforwardly and objectively as Atticus himself might have cross-examined. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How do you really know it’s not worth your time unless you read it?” His emphasis on really implied that I who have been connected to the hip of Lee’s body of work, including her legwork as researcher for Truman Capote’s <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In Cold Blood</em>—that I should know better. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Before the night was over, I downloaded Watchman onto my Kindle. And I read, delighted with the first chapter. At 3% (my Kindle doesn’t give page numbers), it appeared to be a love story between a grownup Scout, now exclusively called Jean Louise, and her childhood friend Henry, also known as Hank. But where did this Henry/Hank guy come from? Where were Jem and Dill? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Watchman</em> had me turning, I mean tapping, who-knows-what number page after page, until—at 6%—I lingered awhile on a single sentence that pegged Maycomb, the county Jean Louise left behind for NYC, as a place where “If you did not want much, there was plenty.” That perfectly wrought sentence was plenty enough for me to feel it was worth picking up—I mean downloading—the book.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That is until 5% later when Lee writes off Jean Louise’s brother in three words and goes on to throw out all the stops at 36%, as Jean Louise sneaks a peak of Atticus and Hank at The Citizens’ council meeting. Seated at a table alongside an influential racist who has just delivered a no-question-about-it hate speech, neither man says anything. Atticus’s silence betrays everything he has taught her. Hank’s everything she believes. She flees the scene and vomits.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If I weren’t reading this on a Kindle, I would have thrown the book across the room. I did put it down for a day or so. Still, my thoughts wouldn’t let go of the book and the buzz.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Watchman</em> was written before TKAM, then Atticus “the Saint” (as opposed to Atticus “the Segregationist”) wouldn’t exist until after a savvy editor told Lee to rethink and revise the matters of Maycomb by bringing the story back to Jean Louise’s childhood . . . so maybe, in the way all writers must sometimes kill off their darlings, maybe Lee killed off her anti-darlin’ by stuffing him in a drawer or safe deposit box where he couldn’t breathe, and so he died. And reincarnated Atticus #2 from the dead Lee scroll to inhabit the <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mockingbird</em> manuscript? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I recharged the Kindle and read through one-sided rantings about race, religion, and marriage at Aunt Alexandra’s tea and speechifying about history and politics via Uncle Jack. Jean Louise comes to blows with Atticus too but not in the way reviewers had led me to believe. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sure, I wish I could climb into Harper Lee’s skin to view this all from her point of view, but she declined an interview with Oprah and there is a guard at her assisted-living residence door. So, judging by what she wrote, I’ve formed my own opinion: <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Go Set a Watchman</em>is nothing more than the failed draft. I missed the polished style and grace that becomes the smooth storytelling of <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mockingbird</em> and the classic’s ideals. Yet, even if the new novel is really the old rejected novel, reading <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Go Set a Watchman </em>reminded me—as it did Jean Louise—how often the objects of our affection—our loves, our family, our friends, and even our favorite writers—can fall from grace, simply because they are human or think differently from us. Even recognizing the narrow-mindedness and rough edges of this literary milestone—flaws that may have been out of Lee’s control to keep under wraps – I still have the urge to embrace its creation. When it comes to Harper Lee and me, the love is so strong as to risk being 100% unconditional.</span></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737162630814362203.post-24762753295614069182015-08-04T13:39:00.001-07:002015-09-29T11:03:03.067-07:00Food for Thought<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I didn't have to think twice when </span>the ladies at the local library asked me to contribute a recipe to their fund-raising cookbook. I like company and I like to cook.
In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Staying-Alive-A-Love-Story/dp/1935991183">my memoir, Staying Alive A Love Story, </a>my immediate thought after running into an old friend is to get him
together with my brother for dinner. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“I could bake lasagna and fry an
eggplant, ” I said, and do so a few days later. Eggplant Parm has become my "go-to dish" whenever I "go to" family picnics and pot-lucks. My niece even asked for the recipe before she moved to San Diego last month.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Many favorite recipes come with a secret or two. Here are mine: Be sure to salt the eggplant before frying (see #1 below). It takes the bitterness out. My mother
taught me another trick that takes excess oil out of the fried slices before
baking the casserole: Fry the day before and store the slices in the fridge
overnight, layered between paper towels. It's a cinch to just have to
layer the slices, sauce, and cheese the next day. </span></span><br>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHppjkOqs0mb30MB9Isw9Hy9Dp-th3i39nnr228ARaG84qNfXp5iknpD9Q9fEoCviXs-e9SjZ4SU-YmUlyjLBc1BaMAAVhMr5NT8pBCwZH28aZ9TvlPL8hEN_woXBEOUTWb9BJAxvP-VRQ/s1600/The+Recipe+Library.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHppjkOqs0mb30MB9Isw9Hy9Dp-th3i39nnr228ARaG84qNfXp5iknpD9Q9fEoCviXs-e9SjZ4SU-YmUlyjLBc1BaMAAVhMr5NT8pBCwZH28aZ9TvlPL8hEN_woXBEOUTWb9BJAxvP-VRQ/s400/The+Recipe+Library.jpg" width="292"></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Eggplant Parmesan Casserole </span></b><br> </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1 large eggplant, peeled and cut into 1/3 inch slices</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2 eggs, beaten</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1 1/2 cups seasoned dry bread crumbs</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1/4 cup olive oil</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3 cups spaghetti sauce</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1/2 lb shredded mozzarella cheese</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Directions</span><span style="font-size: 18pt;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"> 1.<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <span style="font-size: small;">The</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>day
before the casserole is served, arrange a layer of eggplant slices in a
colander. Sprinkle generously with salt. Continue layering and salting all
eggplant slices. Let stand 30 minutes. Rinse and pat dry. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Dip each
eggplant slice in beaten egg, and dredge with breadcrumbs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Heat oil in
a heavy skillet. Over medium high heat fry eggplant in hot oil about 2 minutes
per side until golden. Drain on absorbent paper.</span></span></div>
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</span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Store the
cooled slices between new layers of absorbent paper in the fridge overnight.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Preheat oven
to temperature 350°F Arrange half the eggplant slices in the bottom of baking
dish sprayed lightly with nonstick spray. Spread half the sauce over top.
Sprinkle with half the mozzarella and half the Parmesan. Repeat layers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-synthesis: weight style; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bake 20-25
minutes or until mixture is bubbly</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>The Recipe Library</i>, a collection of favorite recipes from library
staff, volunteers, library club members, and local authors is now available for sale
at the <a href="http://www.windsorlockslibrary.org/">Windsor Locks Library</a> for $10.All proceeds from this fundraiser will be used to purchase new print and
electronic materials or to fund library programming of interest to the
public.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What's your "go-to" dish? </span></div>
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Laura B. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11707267303403391146noreply@blogger.com0