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I know I haven’t posted for quite some time. I was in Texas for a while to hang out with Abby and Jackson, including celebrating Jackson’s sixth birthday. While there, Jackson told his mom, Aunt Katie and Uncle Joe, and Bill and me the name of the first person to walk on the moon: Marvel Brainstorm.
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(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
The explanations and photos in this post about tillage and corn planting aren’t all that advanced, but they got me thinking and learning.
On April 25, 26 and 27, 2012, I was in northwest Iowa to experience tillage and corn planting in Sections 13 and 24 of Roosevelt Township, Pocahontas County, Iowa. My dad was born in Section 24; I was raised in Section 13.
I had a blast spending part of the time with Roger Allen as he tilled, and part of the time with Dan Allen as he planted. They add color commentary to remedial (due to my having so much to learn) explanations about farming. My resident consultant does the same.
The photos aren’t crystal clear. But…most of them were taken through a tractor cab window and during a bumpy (but still, pretty smooth for a tractor) ride.
To see the photos in slideshow view, click on the first thumbnail image. The captions are somewhat sequential. Depending upon the size of your device/monitor, in slideshow view the captions might get truncated. If so, return to the thumbnail view to read the captions in their entirety.
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Information about row cleaners is here and here.
(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
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To enlarge this spring robin image, click on it once or twice. It’s not completely in focus, but … I like it!
(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
Tonight Jackson introduced me to the game of Farkel. He beat me by thousands of points, including rolling a straight good for 1,500 points. While a game of luck, Farkel also includes strategy, at which Jackson is pretty sharp.
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Tonight five-year-old grandson Jackson introduced me to the game of Six-Dice Farkel: The Classic Game of Guts and Luck. Where have I been that I didn’t know about this game?! We had a ball. Jackson practiced strategizing and his math skills while he beat me 10,750 to 6,700. (“Nanna, that means I won by 4,000 points. No, I mean more than 4,000 points.”) I strategized, too, but apparently not as well as Jackson did!
Before starting to play, Jackson and I watched parts of four or five YouTube videos, each explaining the rules of the game. As silly as this YouTube video (below) is, it is the one that best illustrated the rules for us, including in a dialect/accent we understood.
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(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
Norine Reigelsberger tossing candy during the Rolfe, Iowa, July 2009 Greater Rolfe Days parade. Joe, her husband, is on the tailgate with her. (Click on photo to enlarge.)
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I still just cannot believe it. Norine Reigelsberger passed away on March 9, 2012. When I was growing up, Norine, her husband Joe, and their sons Greg and Mick lived a short-1/4 mile down the gravel road from my family. In my mind, they’ll be there forever.
Anyone who knew Norine knows that she was always so full of life…and FUN! Along with that fun she certainly worked hard, both physically, creatively and in a community spirit of volunteerism, including so many acts of kindness for her family and friends. I’ll always remember Norine’s laughter, her proactive efforts in maintaining good health, and her willingness to “be there,” including for my mom and dad. Oh, and anything that came out of Norine’s kitchen, was mouth-watering, especially her cinnamon rolls!
The photo immediately below is of the local (to the Rolfe, Iowa, area) Couples Club bridge group. The group was founded in 1947-48; Norine and Joe were members from 1959-60 until the group disbanded in 1989-90. This photo was taken sometime between 1970 and 1975. My mom’s (Marion Gunderson) handwriting on the negative sleeve says “Islea [Graeber, who is in the photo below] has original.”
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Couples Club couples L to R: Ruth* and Lou* Feldman, Berniece and Al* Sedlacek, Islea and Jerry Graeber, Janet and Bob* Dixon, Norine* and Joe Reigelsberger, and Marion* and Deane* Gunderson (my mom and dad). (Click on photo to enlarge.)
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Norine’s mid-laughter smile in this Couples Club photo is how I will always remember her.
Norine’s biography is here. Her visitation is tonight. Her funeral service is tomorrow, Monday, March 12, 2012, at 10:30 AM at Resurrection Catholic Church, Pocahontas, Iowa.
On the following August 20, 1953, newspaper page is the wedding announcement of Joe and Norine. This page, as well as the archives of 101 years of Rolfe newspapers, is available at this searchable database. http://sites.advantage-preservation.com:8983/rolfe
Click twice on this newspaper image to magnify the text.
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*These Couples Club members are deceased as of March 9, 2012.
(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
On Sunday I posted about the online accessibility of Rolfe, Iowa, newspapers. As a result, Kim Webb Toth-Tevel offered the following helpful tip for searching the archives online. She also included a “mundane” search result from 1897, and a “dramatic” search result from 1925, both bringing her ancestors more to life.
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Search Tip and Comments from Kim Webb Toth-Tevel
(Kim is a great-granddaughter of C.M. Webb.)
Thanks Louise. I have been having a ball with this and my family has learned many things about our ancestors we never knew. Very cool. A tip for using them is to 1) go to “Advanced Search.” 2) Type in your family name and 3) limit the time period to one year. Then you can have fun reading what comes up. You can save the newspaper page to your computer or copy and paste the part about your family into another document to collect them. The newspaper was like the Facebook of its day–social networking.
You will find the mundane:
June 17, 1897
Wednesday evening while little Ruth Webb had her head through a window, the sash fell across her neck. The window had recently been painted and did not fall with its usual velocity, but Ruth sustained a slight injury on the forehead.
To the dramatic!
1/1/1925
C. M. WEBB STRICKEN
Chas M. Webb, our popular and widely known druggist, suffered a slight stroke of paralysis Monday afternoon. He was about the store most of the day, but feeling something unusual was working on him, took the Ford and drove home. Shortly after entering the house he was stricken and floored. While the stroke is what doctors call “slight,” the left side is helpless and it is problematical just how things will come out, but we are all hoping Charley will soon shake it off and be himself again.The son, Morris, who is home from Chicago on a visit, will remain and look after the business while Mr Webb takes a complete rest. Mr. Webb has been driving himself like a dynamo in a business way for the past f ew months, forgetting that age was creeping on him, and something snapped. We are hoping that rest and care will restore him to health.
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The newspaper archives are at this site. (The URL will change in a month or two.) However, to avoid potential frustration with the site (since it is not yet in its final form), please read Sunday’s explanatory post.
(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
UPDATE March 2, 2012: The URL for the newspaper site has been updated. The current (as of today) URL is given below. The URL will be updated a final time (to something easier to memorize) around April 1st. At that time, I’ll post the final updated URL here.
The main gist of this post is that the Rolfe, Iowa, newspapers are online and that over the next approximately two months, modifications will be made to the web site. There may be periods of inaccessibility. If/when there are, feel free to email me* to let me know, or you may contact the company directly. It will not be until a few weeks after the host company has its new servers in place that everything runs smoothly all the time. So…patience is in order. In the meantime please read the information below and…enjoy! P.S.: Thank you to those of you who contributed financially to this project. If you did not contribute (or even if you did!), but like the access to these papers and want to contribute to help meet other library financial obligations, you may do so through the Rolfe [Iowa] Public Library Trust. The phone number for the library is 712-848-3413. The email address is rplib@ncn.net. Or, you may simply write out a check to “Rolfe Public Library Trust” and mail it to Rolfe Public Library, 319 Garfield St., Rolfe, Iowa, 50581.
Remember…if there are technical difficulties searching the site, either wait a day to see if it works, or contact me or the company. In a couple of months everything should be smooth sailing.
URL: http://sites.advantage-preservation.com:8983/rolfe
Time Span of Newspapers: 1888-1989 (In 1989, The Rolfe Arrow, Rolfe’s local newspaper, was absorbed by the Pocahontas Record-Democrat newspaper.)
Additional Publication: The online collection also includes Rolfe’s 90-page centennial book titled Centennial History, Rolfe, Iowa, 1863-1963.
Web Site Tweaking: In March or April, the web site will undergo minor modifications. This will include the provision of additional search features and a change in the URL to one that is more easily memorized.
Periods of Inaccessibility: If the web site is inaccessible for short periods of time, it may be due to site maintenance.
Help*: Until further notice, questions regarding the newspaper site may be directed to Louise Gunderson Shimon at mariongundersonart@gmail.com.
Funding: The Rolfe Public Library Trust is funding this project through private donations and the sales of donated prints of Marion Gunderson’s watercolors. “Marion the Librarian” worked at the Rolfe Public Library for thirty-five years, from 1963 to 1998.
Search Tip from Kim Webb Toth-Tevel (a great-granddaughter of C.M. Webb): I have been having a ball with this [the archives] and my family has learned many things about our ancestors we never knew. Very cool. A tip for using them is to 1) go to “Advanced Search.” 2) Type in your family name and 3) limit the time period to one year. Then you can have fun reading what comes up. You can save the newspaper page to your computer or copy and paste the part about your family inot another document to collect them. The newspaper was like the Facebook of it’s day–social networking.
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As of January 2012, the contents of 101 years of Rolfe, Iowa, newspapers are available online. For another month or two, the site will undergo tweaking by the web hosting company.
It is important to note that optical character recognition (OCR) software used to scan and convert hard-copy text to a searchable electronic format cannot accurately recognize every text character. For example, if a font utilized in a newspaper is not standard but instead is rather stylized (e.g., a non-standard swirly font), it likely will not be recognized by the software. Likewise, if an area of a page is smudged or otherwise damaged, the character recognition software will not recognize words in that poor quality area of a page. In such cases, a search will not return a result for a term in which such a character was not correctly recognized.
To explain this further, take, for example, a patron searching the site using the search term “Webb.” If the word “Webb” was included on a particular newspaper page, but the type of text (font) was not standard (e.g., the non-standard swirly font), it may not be recognized by the character recognition software. Therefore, it will not show up in the list of hits resulting from the search term “Webb.”
Similarly,” if “Webb” appears in a smudged area of a newspaper page, the OCR software will not recognize it, and the page will not show up in the list of hits resulting from the search term “Webb.”
As of February 26, 2012, the capability to limit a search to a particular time frame is not an option. However, the plan is that, before the end of April, it will become an option.
The Rolfe Public Library is sponsoring this archive project.
Help*: As yet, there is no “help” available at the URL cited above. Over time, that “help” link will become active.
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I found this January 19, 1928, Rolfe Arrow article by searching the terms "Rolfe library" and the timeframe of 1927 through 1929. I chose this timeframe because I knew that in 1928 the Rolfe Public Library began its service to Rolfe-area patrons. (Click once or twice on image to enlarge it. Twice to magnify even further.)
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(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
This photo was taken at the west edge of Rolfe in January 2010. (Click once or twice on photo to enlarge.)
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(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
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Yesterday I walked past this school sign. Is the same question popping into your mind as popped into mine?
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(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
…Continued from Part I.
At first I thought it was a no-brainer to just read the speech provided by the campaign. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to write my own speech. Yes, I did a lot of copying and pasting from material Newt’s campaign sent out, from what Steve Deace (conservative radio show host) and others said, and also a few points of emphasis from Bill (my Constitution-proponent husband).
I combined all of that with my gut.
Late Tuesday after the caucus, a friend emailed asking me which candidate got my vote. I replied saying I had voted for Newt. I also said, “I can’t regurgitate what he says or defend very eloquently my defense* of him if someone pounds me for details, but I know that every time I hear him speak, I have absolutely no doubt that he is absolutely remarkable for our country.”
Monday and Tuesday were pretty much t-shirt-and-sweatpants days as I developed my speech. The morning of the caucus, on the news I heard that speakers would have about three-to-five minutes to speak. My speech was 3 minutes 45 seconds. I practiced it maybe fifteen times, speaking loudly, giving lots of eye contact to the walls of various rooms in our home, and giving it in different brightnesses of lighting so that I would, hopefully, be prepared for whatever kind of setting I might be in when reading aloud at the caucus.
In hindsight, I’m so thankful for my 1970s high school art-teacher-speech-coach Carla Jones. Even though Betty Knoll was the official speech sponsor, Mrs. Jones was the teacher who offered constructive criticism, during her art classes, to my readings of interpretive prose in the weeks prior to speech contests.
Back to Tuesday night. I was nervous. Approximately 241 Republicans and a few Democrats showed up at the caucus in Perry. (This included four precincts that met together for the candidate preference vote.) About 10 minutes into the caucus, those who wanted to speak were invited to stand in line in the front of the room and wait our turn. Up we went. Then we were told that we’d have two minutes to speak.
Uh-oh. Two minutes meant I needed to cut out quite a bit of my speech. What to cut out? Everything in my speech was important. It had already been cut way back from my original draft. I’d already cut out some points that I thought were next-to-vital.
I was in the middle of the pack of speakers. I imagine there were about 15 speakers. There was one pro-Gingrich speaker before me, and two after me. The one before me touched on some of Gingrich’s successes as Speaker of the House. So, I pretty much omitted those aspects from my speech. I read a bit from my speech, and ad-libbed the rest. One of the things I ad-libbed about was the following. A gentleman from the Texas Railroad Commission was in line before me. He said he represented Rick Perry and told the crowd that, sure, Rick Perry doesn’t have the greatest debating skills. He went on to say that Barack Obama does have good debating skills, but that they haven’t gotten him anywhere in the White House, and therefore strong debating skills in a candidate/future President aren’t important. (Remember, this was the Rick Perry supporter talking.)
In response, when it was my turn, I said about half of what I originally intended to say. In addition, I kind of repeated what the Texas guy said (in the previous paragraph). Then I said we can say all we want that debating skills aren’t important, but that the eventual GOP nominee has to be able to debate successfully in order to get TO the White House. (I.e., since the GOP doesn’t currently have anyone in the White House, we don’t really have the luxury to say that debating skills, once in the White House, make no difference.)
Anyway, I was kind of proud of myself for thinking on my toes on that aspect. And, I was proud of myself for sifting through my speech WHILE I was speaking to determine what I should include, leave out, and paraphrase. That is so unlike me.
Out of the approximately 240 people in attendance, Rick Santorum came out a strong-finishing first. Then Ron Paul. Then Mitt Romney a third with Gingrich close behind at 4th. Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann received few votes.
I knew the negative ads had likely hurt Newt’s campaign quite a bit, although I was hoping people would respond to substance. Anyway, while I was hoping that Newt would fare better, fourth was better than fifth or sixth. (When I got to the caucus, the Ron Paul people were so seemingly obvious with their t-shirts, talking with people while carrying tablets and forms around, etc., that I thought maybe Ron Paul might walk away with first place.)
This photo was taken in Des Moines at about 10:00 PM, January 3, the night of the caucus. I'm (Louise) pictured with Newt and Callista in the background while Newt is giving his serious and positive post-caucus speech. (Cllick on photo to enlarge.)
Before we went to the caucus, Bill and I said that immediately after the caucus we’d decide if we wanted to go to Des Moines for Newt’s caucus party.
After the caucus, a friend of mine from Ankeny called to compare notes about her caucus and the one I attended. I told her that Bill and I were thinking about going to Newt’s party in Des Moines and would she pretty-please meet us there (even though she had voted for another candidate…although she wasn’t necessarily 100% sold on who she voted for).
Meet in Des Moines we did and we had a ball brushing shoulders with other Newt enthusiasts. The wife of a higher-in-the-food-chain supporter of Newt was able to get Newt to autograph a copy of my speech. I was thrilled, but not as thrilled as I was to once again listen to Newt talk with fire in his belly about the future of our country as tied to the Constitution, and sharing that moment with Bill and my Ankeny friend.
Newt, Callista and their crew needed to leave the building soon to (at ~11:55 PM, I later learned) fly out of Des Moines on their way to campaign in New Hampshire for that state’s primary in just a week. Sigh. I figure I’ll either never get to come close to meeting Newt again if he becomes President, or else maybe I will have a chance if he doesn’t make it that far and I get to meet him at another of his book signings.
For those of you who have yet to see Newt on the campaign trail in your state, if you have a chance, please go listen to him speak, if only for what he has to offer of historical value. What he has to offer is fascinating. Also, he seems as genuine to me as they come. He’s a little bit like me. I say it how it is and it sometimes gets me in trouble. Also, I don’t come across very “nice” when I’m backed into a corner and have to defend myself. I don’t like the trouble into which either scenario gets me, but I do like that I’m true to myself and that I don’t wimp out. I think when people do the contrary, progress can be inhibited.
Ok, so, yesterday Bill and I were wondering if pretty much everyone at the Perry caucus (and likely other places) had their minds made up before they entered the caucus.
Today I was at the local Subway. There I saw a recently-retired well-respected community-minded gentleman whom I knew had attended the caucus. He is someone with whom I have never really brushed shoulders. I think I’ve even been a little intimidated around him because I figured he was Mr. Community and in comparison I felt timid. This example shows how wrong perceptions can be. This gentleman went out of his way today to say to me about my speech, “You did a REALLY NICE JOB with your speech the other night.” Then he paused and more quietly said, “Your speech made me change my vote.”
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If you’d like for me to send to you a digital copy of my speech, autographed on caucus night by Speaker Gingrich, you may email me and request a copy. MGundersonArt@gmail.com
*I intentionally said “defend” and “defense” in the same sentence.
Click here to go to the home page of Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.
