Category: Days of Yore

Monday, March 17, 2025 Grandpa Harry’s Buttons

~ Foodiness ~ 8 Comments

A recent visit from my cousin Mitch resulted in me having temporary access to several small boxes of pin-on buttons and other miscellaneous items that my Grandpa Harry had collected over the years.

Some of you may not know this, but I was made for the work of sorting. The good Lord put it into my nature to find sorting a very pleasant and interesting activity. I consider this to be a balancing feature to the fact that He has made other people who are able to work as EMT’s, a job I could not and would not do. I am probably the very last person you would want to have around in a crisis or an emergency. Thank God for the ways in which He distributes these different giftings. Maybe EMT’s hate to do sorting of any kind and are thanking God for people like me.

All that is to say, I spent a very pleasant half hour sorting through all those buttons and geegaws. Grandpa Harry was an executive in the Boy Scouts of America for much of his career, so it wasn’t a surprise to find lots of BSA buttons and paraphernalia.

There was also a collection of stars that had been put on little felt circles. I’m not sure what those were for. Was it Boy Scouts related?

I think he must have been a regular volunteer for what used to be called Community Chest, a fundraising entity that became The United Way.

He also had a few old buttons from political campaigns. Willkie & McNary ran in 1940 against FDR. I looked – the buttons aren’t worth very much in spite of them being nearly 90 years old.

Harry also had a small collection of buttons and pins from the University of Minnesota, dating back to 1917 and 1919 and later. Over 100 years old!!

Mitch told me that Grandpa Harry was involved in some sort of Mosquito Prevention effort which involved him wading around spraying stuff. It sounds like nasty work, but at least he got a nice pin out of the deal.

Lastly, I found a bunch of old cufflinks among his things as well. There’s something innately classy about cufflinks, in my opinion.

Even the old salt codfish box that some of the buttons were stored in was interesting!

I felt like I knew Grandpa Harry better after looking at the things he collected and valued. And now I know where I get my propensity to collect little things like that.

I’ll probably have to do some blog post prevention in the morning.

March 14, 2025 Boundary Waters Fever

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In honor of my dad’s birthday today (he would have been 98), I’d like to share a rewrite of the poem “Sea Fever” by John Masefield that he wrote to celebrate his own love of canoeing up in the Boundary Waters.

I must go back to the lakes again,
To the lonely lakes and the sky,
And all I ask is a sturdy canoe
And a compass to steer her by,
And the paddle’s kick and the wind’s song
And the white caps shaking,
And a gray mist on a quiet lake
And a bright dawn breaking.

I must go back to the lakes again,
For the call of the loon
Is a wild call and a clear call
That cannot be denied,
And all I ask is a windy day
With the white clouds flying,
And the Norway pines and the portage trails
And the sea gulls crying.

I must go back to the lakes again,
To the voyager’s gypsy life.
To the eagle’s way and the beaver’s way
When the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn
From a laughing fellow paddler,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream
When the long day is over.

I must go delete this post again…

Wednesday, March 12, 2025 Gingerbread Man and Other Watercolor Experiments

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When I was very young, my parents gave me a little soft gingerbread man which became Very Important for my sleeping routine. I called him “Gingie.” I had to have him in my arms in order to go to sleep. He was an uncomplicated fellow with two felt circles for eyes and a little felt circle for a nose and not much else in the way of expression. Still, he was a comfort to me. Here’s the surprise part: I still have him. He has long since lost his eyes and nose, which gives him a blank look, but it’s less creepy than you might think.

He was sitting around in my craft room waiting for new eyes (it’s been a long wait) and I thought, “Hey, I should do a watercolor painting of old Gingie! How hard could it be?” In truth, it wasn’t terribly difficult, but then I thought, “Hey, I should give him eyes, since he doesn’t have them anymore.” Done. “Hey, I should give him a nose!” Done. Perhaps I should have stopped there, but the train was running down the track by this time and I decided to insert a mouth where he never had one. Then little stitch marks all around the eyes and nose. Looking at those blank brown circles, I thought, “Hey, he really needs pupils in those eyes.” And just like that he went from sweet little gingerbread man to a creature that might give a child nightmares. Poor Gingie.

Here are another couple of watercolor experiments from this last week, ideas I found on Instagram and YouTube.

Original on left, obviously.
Original on left again.

Mistakes were made.

I’ll probably sit in a yellow chair while I delete this in the morning.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025 Psalm-A-Day

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We’re sorting through some old stuff and I came across the very first birthday gift that I gave to my husband after we were married.

What is it, you ask? Somehow I thought that what he most needed in life was a Japanese-style canister with verses from the Psalms in it, so he could pick out one per day to read and ponder. I decided to write out one verse from each Psalm (there are 150 Psalms), cut each one out and fold it. And I had to do it when he wasn’t around. As I recall, it took a long time, a true labor of love. In retrospect, it seems like an underwhelming gift, but he received it with gratitude and used it daily at least one time through all 150 verses. That was 40 years ago!

Quotes to Share

Confess all known sin; Get rid of everything doubtful; obey the Spirit immediately; proclaim Christ publicly.
Evan Roberts, in the 1904 Welsh Revival

Friendship is a sheltering tree.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Song can turn melancholy into joy,
and weakness to overwhelming power.
Peter Leithart in From Silence to Song

You say grace before meals. All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and the pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
and grace before sketching, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
G.K. Chesterton

And now I’ve got to figure out how the font changed. Very mysterious. I’ll probably delete this before I figure it out though.