The Murdock Muse - January, 2011
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: YEAR 2010 IN REVIEW (Bob Murdock) Click SUMMARY FROM KIRKSVILLE (Charlie Frost) Click CELEBRATING MY 79th (Nancy A. Murdock) Click UPGRADED CURRICULUM (Valerie Davidson) Click CHRISTMAS 2010 (Nancy A. Murdock) Click DECORATED QUILT (Jean Ogawa) Click GREETINGS FROM OREGON (Mary Cosgrove) Click Part 2 THE CLEANING (Priscilla Januskiewicz) Click REASONS TO STAY (Nancy A. Murdock) Click NOTE FROM COLLEEN (Colleen McKay) Click ICICLE ADVENTURE (Nancy A. Murdock) Click BIRTHDAYS ARE FUN (Gene Murdock) Click NEWS FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE (Polly Joubert) Click WHAT'S AHEAD FOR 2011 (Bob Murdock) Click |
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Charlie Frost It’s been an active year of work and travel for us. Although Janice was on a sabbatical for the 2009-2010 academic year, she was busier than ever on the Truman State University campus, developing her gecKoMath website, submitting applications for grants, presenting training institutes for Missouri elementary math teachers, and mentoring graduate students. We made a trip east in June, stopping first in Chicago so that Janice could visit colleagues at DePaul University. We stayed near Evanston to photograph my home as an infant, the carriage house appendage of a solid brick dwelling just off the lake at the edge of the Northwestern University campus. The house has the marks of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School style but has lost architectural integrity in renovation. Stayed a few days in southern Maine with Derek and Rosalind, and had a wonderful visit with them. Then Janice, Pamela, and I took a three-day trip "down east" to Passamaquoddy Bay to visit my ancestral places. Jan particularly wanted to see Frost Cove and Frost Head. The big thrill was walking into a roadside cafe in the little town of Perry and finding paper placemats printed with the story of the founding of the town "… founded by John Frost in l758..." , the story surrounded, of course, by local ads. We gathered some driftwood at Frost Cove for souvenirs. We rose early at the B&B in Eastport to catch the tide on the Bay at the right time to see the whirlpool. However, the bay was too calm that morning for the whirlpool to form. Pam heard a whale blow, and we watched it breach and dive several times in the flood tide. While in the Bay area we saw the West Quoddy Lighthouse, the easternmost point in the USA, and crossed over the international bridge at Lubec to visit the Roosevelt summer home on Campobello Island. After our return we, of course, went to the video store to rent Sunrise at Campobello. The highway along the Maine coast was picturesque. Each cove and harbor was different, beautiful, and the architecture of the houses impressive. Camden was especially authentic. Pamela loved the four-masted schooner that she watched cruising the harbor in early evening as we drove up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. (If you look closely at the Maine quarter-dollar you will see an image of that kind of schooner.) Homeward bound on the PA Turnpike we encountered a blinding rain shower as we approached the turnoff for I-70. I missed the exit, so we went on to Pittsburgh, where Jan savored more modern architecture. Correcting, we headed to Weirton, WV, and drove along the Ohio River to Wheeling. We discovered Oglebay Park, the 400-acre estate that a Great Lakes shipping magnate donated to the city in 1928 and walked over a mile on its many paths. We spent several weeks in Hawaii in July and August, taking advantage of the temperate climate for walking and water aerobic exercises. We were joined by Chuck and Jennie Maienza and their two children. What a joy to be with that family! Those two kids are so lucky to have loving, supportive but strict parents! Paul is a kick! He is a really neat little boy, as Cat is turning into a sophisticated teen! Their conversation and interaction with each other and with adults is just amazing! Taught my usual criminal intelligence analysis course at Truman during the spring semester and international relations at the community college this fall. Unexpectedly, a course in American national government was added to my fall load. The mid-term Congressional election and Supreme Court cases made that course especially meaningful for all of us. The members of the Adair County Historical Society elected this expatriate Mainer its president this year. We started right away with an essay contest involving the three high schools in the county. We also ran the first ever scavenger hunt connecting to local historical sites. Local papers, radio and TV stations were very supportive of that project. The Society is now planning family history classes in collaboration with the county public library. |
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Nancy A. Murdock January 15, 2011 - Yesterday was a great day for me! Maybe I could have preferred a little less snow to navigate, but we’ve been up here long enough to know what to do. Darrel and Mary came here for dinner last Sunday, and they brought a big German Chocolate cake with “7" and “9" candles for it. They also provided Edy’s Double Fudge Brownie ice cream for dessert. BOB’S GIFTS TO ME One gift from Bob was a unique fully illustrated Spanish-English dictionary, bought at Book World in Ironwood. For Christmas, Bob had given me a Kindle E-book reader, which he bought from Amazon.com. (Darrel gave Mary one, too.) With all the other things to keep track of, we held off on Bob’s training of me to use the Kindle. I am, as usual, a little behind in the knowledge and use of a new digital device. Yesterday seemed like the perfect time to get going on it, so we sat at the dining table and gave it a try. It’s really easy, once we got past the initial instructions. Since I am a certified lifetime reader, the language was a piece of cake. We were reading the latest Baltimore Sun newspaper, which Bob had downloaded for 49 cents, and the characters were quite easy to manage. We didn’t spend a really long time at it, as we had made a plan to eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant. AT THE CHINESE RESTAURANT As some of you may know, I learned the joys of a Chinese restaurant when my Aunt Elsie and Uncle Gerald hosted me for two to four weeks each summer. Since they lived near Boston, we made sure to go to our favorite restaurant each year. After Bob and I were married and living in that area for a while, we trotted up there several times. The restaurant in the hotel in Gardner MA served Chinese food, but it wasn’t nearly as good. We already knew before last night how good “ours” is, at the Golden Dragon in Ironwood. When we arrived, I mentioned that we would be having a complete meal, as we were celebrating my birthday. I mentioned that the last time we had been there for dinner, we had been celebrating our 60 years of marriage. They said they remembered that! Someone asked what number birthday this was, so I told them “79.” Several people said I didn’t look that old, bless their hearts. We ordered soup, spring rolls, and a full dinner, plus tea for me and Coke for Bob. Not that I felt superior or anything (ahem!) , but I did feel that tea was the proper beverage with Chinese food. The food was as good as we recalled. I ordered Kung Foo with peanuts, and Bob had Vegetarian Egg Foo Young. And there was enough to bring home to feed us again, probably tonight. I’m already looking forward to it! All of the food was lovely. And as we were about finished with eating, they asked if I preferred raspberry or mocha for the frosting on the little cake they had told me they would be giving me. I was truly pleased with the mocha, and Bob said the raspberry was delicious. By then, we noticed the bags and plastic “dishes” to carry home the rest. Bob went up to pay the tab, but the ladies said it had already been taken care of. That was kind of puzzling, as we were alone and hadn’t paid out any money yet. One of the ladies said, “A customer paid it.” We looked around and saw no one with eyes on us. Wow! What an interesting evening!! When we went out to the car, it was covered with lots of snow and some small ice dots. I grabbed the window brush and started scraping off the snow and ice, when a young woman got out of her car and came over to ours. She took Bob’s long scraper-brush and said to both of us “Hop into the car. I will take care of this.” She did a fine job of sweeping and scraping off all the snow and ice, then tossed the brush into our car and said, “Happy Birthday” and drove off. Have you ever had a birthday like that one? It will remain in my heart for a long time! Hope your next birthday is very satisfying. I can recommend a great place to eat!! I could hardly wait for dinner the next night! And it was every bit as terrific as I had hoped! |
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Valerie Davidson I am redesigning my curriculum for 6th grade for next year. My course will be called "Life Skills" and will include modules like a unit on bullying, and "service learning" projects in which they connect with the community for project-based learning. I won't be teaching typing anymore, which is increasingly the responsibility of elementary schools. However, I will still keep my computer lab classroom, and will continue to train students in Word and PowerPoint, and other key technical skills. The difference will be that this training will be within the context of specific curriculum, rather than being an end in itself. This, too, fits the national trends. Also, we just got all kinds of state-of-the-art technical "toys" installed in our classrooms, as an odd bit of windfall from a tax measure which passed before the economy tanked. I am looking forward to giving a whole new look to my teaching, using something called an interactive whiteboard. |
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Nancy A. Murdock Dec. 23, 2010: PLANNING After our complete planning for Thanksgiving, we were pleased to have completed most of what our vision had been. So we figured it would be easy to use our same structure to prepare for and complete our Christmas preparations. Well, you have probably heard the saying that “the best-laid plans of mice and men oft times go astray.” I think our plans must have walked right out the door at first. After having planned to set up the creche on a nice-sized table, we never located the table that would be needed for this dream plan. As of Christmas Eve, it was still only a nice idea. We did locate our creche items upstairs in a box in the freezing “Cold Closet,” but they were still carefully packed in the box, even after the box moved to the living room. Today we talked about going to a woodworking shop that might sell nice small tables, but all we managed to accomplish was my doctor’s appointment this AM and Bob’s this PM. I should back up now and mention that we did get quite a few Christmas cards sent this week. It was not the smooth flow of our dream scheme, but the aftermath is reasonably accurate. I even finished two small quilted wallhangings and sent them on their way. I had to switch to two very nicely made wallhangings I had bought at quilt guild shows, in order to have some nice quilts for two other people. I’m trying to make myself commit to better planning for next December, but if all goes in the same pattern as this year, I’d better start sewing right now. We still look back on our Thanksgiving dinner as a big success, even though we had only four of us on the big day. My favorite story, food-wise, is the pumpkin pie. It was truly amazing to find it was delicious after it was ruined by putting it beside some hot dishes in the fridge. It was obviously a lost cause because it was leaking wherever I set it. Many thanks to Mary for her instructions to freeze the pie and then bake it in the oven. It was delicious! We also followed her instructions to be sure to buy a ready-made pie that was wrapped in a certain way, for the next attempt. It’s sitting in the fridge, looking very successful. We have several Thanksgiving items available for Christmas, but we do need to buy some more white Tofurkey. We have the brown Tofurkey Bratwursts, but not everyone can eat those. I look forward to making another very tasty soup to equal November’s success. And we still have quite a bit of the small, soft croutons for stuffing, which turned out just right in November. Back to the non-food plans. We had fairly good success with the lighted houses. Those were a big success last year, and possibly one other year. So Mer had asked me to be sure to get them again for this year. Wrapping them for mailing was somewhat difficult, but fortunately we had quite a bit of bubble wrap on hand from our moving. We bought Post Office boxes to mail them in. We took them to the place where we mailed them last year, only to find they no longer do shipping. Fortunately, we were able to get around in the snow that day, and the P.O. was quite helpful. A couple of days later, Mer announced that they had arrived for her and Ian, and they were excited. Hopefully, all have now reached the addresses on the boxes and been found acceptable by the new owners. Meanwhile, we still have many more cards to send, we need to get daring enough to put our creche etc. together, and I owe a couple of Christmas quilts but can’t find the patterns I made many years ago, so they haven’t even been started. One good thing is that Darrel and Mary accepted our invitation for Christmas dinner, so we expect to have a happy day. We’ve bought another package of Pot of Gold chocolates, and some ice cream. So there is still plenty of life in our plans. Meanwhile, last evening Bob and I turned on the TV and watched the Christmas presentation at Flint, MI. We enjoyed it a lot. Then Bob found our two copies of the church hymnal, and we took turns choosing which Christmas hymns to sing together. I had been singing along with the professionals earlier, including the Hallelujah chorus, so we had a great time singing. If our other plans work out, this could be a big success. Dec. 24, 2010: PUTTING IT TOGETHER Since we didn’t have quite what we would have liked to have for a full manger scene, it became clear to me that, as the person who had brought down the box of important stuff from the “Cold Closet,” it was up to me to make the best of it. I prayed that God would bless our attempts, based on our sincerity. The first task was to find and set up a table large enough to hold the items that make up the scene. We had not gotten to a furniture store, so it was time to use what we did have. A couple of months ago, Bob had bought a wooden folding table with a top slightly larger than the creche itself. It was clearly time for me to stop sneering at what we did have and figure out how to make good use of it. Okay, it was time to remove the very thick, heavy plastic covering that was stapled in several places and had strong plastic tape in others. What could I use to get down to the real item? I chose a knife to start out. Then I used one of our scissors that look like kindergarten tools. Once I had made one slit, it went better, because I could see how it could work out. All of the manger scene pieces were carefully wrapped individually in heavy paper towelling and packed carefully in the box. As I unwrapped them, I realized how fortunate I was to have all the items clean and with no breakage. On some other Christmases, we had much more disappointing results. I felt that God was watching over us today. As the task progressed, I found that we still have pieces that tell the whole story of Jesus’s birth. We have shepherds, several different animals (including sheep, an ox, and an ass), a rustic building, angels, wise men dressed differently from the locals, the young mother Mary, the very important baby, and one that I think is the caring husband and father, Joseph. Some items may not be from the same era, but if we had a list, we could find all the elements of this exciting story. One of the animals is a flat pig ornament that must have been a gift last year. It still showed the price on a tag hanging from a string. What to do with it? I decided to think of it as one of the animals in the area, maybe wandering into the barn. Next I unwrapped the lighted house that was planned to be ours. (We had already mailed to everyone else for whom we had purchased the lighted houses, which have become a Christmas tradition for us all.) Bob will need to insert some batteries, but he’s good at that, so it should all work out. We are very pleased with our finds and will sing some of the carols as we get together this week around the creche. CHRISTMAS EVE Peace and love to all who read this. You may think of us as at church this evening and also tomorrow morning. Blessings to all of you! Our Christmas Eve service was very traditional, but some non-traditional things did occur. 1. The young man behind me tapped me on the shoulder and told me that part of the lighted poinsettia plant in front of the altar was burning in the wrong place. Some of it was harmlessly in the correct spot, but other blazes had crept out to where there should be no fire. I couldn’t see the problem from my pew, but when I walked up to the lighted plant, I saw that it did indeed need help. Some wood was involved, and I didn’t want to leave anything that might catch onto the building itself, or drop onto the carpet, for example. I alerted Priscilla, who is in her 90s and has a lot of experience with taking care of the church, and asked her where to find a watering container to put out the extra fire. She pointed me to a nice watering pot, which I filled. She assured me it wouldn’t matter where I poured it. I walked out to the fire and saw that it really would be better if I didn’t get too generous with the spraying. So I was very pleased to see the renegade flames go down when I drowned them a little. I‘m not sure why I was chosen to be the official fireman, but I’m always ready to volunteer as needed. 2. The two sitting behind me (a man and his college-age son) asked for prayers because the wife and mother of the family had tried very hard to commit suicide the day before. She had taken about two months’ worth of her medication (which was supposed to keep her calm). She is getting good care now, but what an awful thing to happen, especially on Christmas Eve! 3. They would have liked a ride from us, but we couldn’t do it. They could guide us to the house, but then we get lost in that area, and after two experiences with running around trying to find our way back out of there on other occasions - in the daylight - I knew better than to try to be the ones to help this time. I suggested they ask one of the local middle-aged men to help, this time. My back and hip were definitely in serious pain, so I saved my energy for clearing our car windows of the hardened-on icy little dots so we could see to drive home. I told them that God knew they had done a good job of trying to help her, but now they need to pray even harder for her. With all that has gone on in their home recently (such as having their car smashed to nothing a day or two ago, in the street in front of their house), it seemed prudent to preserve enough energy to keep their household in decent shape. 4. Since this service was the Nativity of Jesus Christ, we sang a lot of Nativity hymns during the service. This went right along with our plans at home. I’m glad we are keeping in touch with the appropriate music, along with other items. So far, I think we are doing a good job of preparing for Christmas jn our home. We’re pretty excited about it! Dec. 25, 2010: CHRISTMAS DAY We were fortunate to have both Darrel and Mary with us for Christmas Day. We enjoyed exchanging gifts. They seemed quite interested in the lighted house, which worked perfectly after Bob had installed the batteries in the correct place. I hope all the relatives who received these houses were able to make theirs work as well. I’m eager to get started with my herb garden (from Mary and Dar), as soon as the weather improves. Bob gave me a fine gift from Amazon, the Kindle E-book reader. As I understand it, we will be able to request a digital book and read it on-screen. We’ve just gone forward about a hundred years, I think. Our main entertainment, outside of eating the different flavors of ice cream from the fridge, was the gingerbread house I had bought around the time of the Thanksgiving /Christmas shopping, This was a first for all of us, and I learned a lot in the process of putting it together. I could see why Ironwood had a Gingerbread House contest a month or so ago. Next year I may see if I can go watch it in process. Meanwhile, we eagerly opened the box and read the instructions for putting the gingerbread house together. It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination easy , but it was a lot of fun, once we all got together and figured out how to make the pieces stop sliding after we’d glued them with white frosting. The kit came with lots of different-sized candy balls, gum drops, and flat lozenges, besides a huge tube of frosting. It took a while, but we continued to work on it until it was done. I think the experience Darrel and Mary had recently with remodeling their house in Ironwood Township was a big plus in getting this gingerbread house together in a way that allowed it to stand on its own feet! Today its roof is NOT sliding down into the trough. And all of the decor seems to be holding its own. Dec. 26, 2010: SUNDAY Today we’re pretty well finished with the Christmas preparations and the trials with a variety of fun things. I’m still singing Christmas carols inside my head, and I hope never to lose the ability to sing carols. Today’s big event was that, for the first time in three years, I drove to church and back all by myself. (Bob was under the weather.) I admit that I made two errors, but they were easily corrected. Bob, bless his kind heart, had typed me a nice set of directions to and from the church, including landmarks to navigate by. I did make two errors, but I was able to get straightened around with no big difficulty. It’s something to build on, and I hope to be able to report progress next year. I do want to say one more thing about gingerbread houses. I grew up in MA, where gingerbread was soft and cake-like. It was anywhere from one inch to three and a half inches thick. We usually ate it with whipped cream. It’s been a real shift to work with gingerbread that feels and looks like thick, stiff cookies. I don’t know if anyone will eat it, but it’s a new event for Decembers in the future. It’s good to try new things! I just want to be sure I still have my teeth after any try to bite our local “gingerbread” for the first time. |
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Jean Ogawa Dear Nancy and Bob, Are you enjoying Ironwood at Christmas time? I believe you have a lot of snow...it's white Christmas, isn't it? Again this year we decorated the Christmas quilt you gave me. I enclose the picture of it hanging in our hallway. I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Love, Jean |
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Mary Cosgrove December 13, 2010 - At the quiet hour of 4:00 a.m., I downloaded the 2010 Winter issue of the Muse. Thanks again to the talented editors! Happy 60th anniversary to Bob and Nancy! What a great get together in your honor. I enjoyed the associated photos as well as the summaries. The reality stories of all the power outages and how everyone braved so many days was very commendable and encouraging. After much physical work since March on the home exterior repairs and finally painting brought me to the interior catch-up of cleaning and organizing. The Christmas decorations are in place and I can now complete the plans for an Italian holiday dinner including my second try at homemade pasta. We are expecting my former sister-in-law and husband who moved from Hawaii to Corvallis, OR about 5 years ago. I was thrilled to finally re-unite about a month ago as they live only 40 minutes south from us. We are waiting to hear if my Italian gal friend and her husband will also be able to join us. We enjoyed their company here yesterday for the afternoon and baked apples in puff pastry. The holidays bring mixed emotions as we are too far away geographically from our families, including sisters, brother, and our children to enjoy their presence. Love is capable of traveling long distances and the ever-presence of e-mail does help. My son and family were transferred to North Carolina (from Dallas, OR where we live) about two years ago. My daughter and children are in CA. Wishing everyone a blessed 2010 Christmas and a happy, healthy and safe new year. Love from Mary and Bob Cosgrove |
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