A Wedding Toast

Those of us blessed with being asked to be maids or matrons of honor are also plagued by the fact that at some point during the wedding reception you are going to have to speak into a microphone in front of a large number of people. For pretty much everyone on the face of the planet, this is terrifying. Thoughts about what one should say are difficult to formulate into coherent paragraphs, much less statements. And for us female folk, there is also the knowledge that at some point during your speech you are most likely going to start crying.

My dilemma was not so much that I was going to be speaking in front of nearly 300 people (Thank you, youth ministry job, for teaching me many lessons regarding speeches in front of large audiences with whom you are unfamiliar!) My dilemma was simply that I was at a loss for what to say that would translate well in a room where I only really know half the people. Also, there were some still hurt feelings on my part that were nagging at me from my own wedding when a speech intended to be humorous did not exactly come across as planned, which at first made me less than enthused to give my own speech. At least my prior knowledge gave me a good starting point.

From an internet search for tips on how to give a decent wedding toast, I formulated an outline from multiple sites that proved to be very helpful and would recommend to others:

1. Introduce yourself (Not everyone is going to know who you are, of course.)
2. Provide a funny story or memory about the bride, groom, or couple.
3. Give some thoughts about love and marriage.
4. Articulate a wish, blessing, or toast for the bride and groom.

As always, the key to good speech-giving is to keep it short and sweet, otherwise known as get to the point. The more one rambles, the more likely it is that something could go amiss. Also, while I had gone over a basic speech in my head numerous times in the weeks before the wedding, I knew how extremely important it was to write it down. The moment the speech begins is usually the moment when your brain goes blank, so it is handy to have some notes close at hand.

Unfortunately, I did not find the time to write my thoughts down until the morning of the wedding. While we sat in the hair salon, I scribbled and re-scribbled my speech. I would recommend completing this earlier, but as a first-year teacher at a school, I do not exactly have a lot of free time these days. I had the foresight to bring note cards along since I knew I would have some down time that morning. I did not have the foresight that writing my speech was going to involve tearing up, which wreaked havoc on the false eyelashes the makeup artist had just applied. Oops.

Mom and I are trying to get a snap closed on the back of my sister's dress.

When it came time for me to speak, I opened with telling guests if anyone wanted to make money, they should pull out cell phones, start timing, and take bets on how long it was going to take until I started crying. It did get a good laugh, which helped break the ice for me a bit, and it helped to make me not feel so nervous. It was a good start.

Now of course I did not follow the written script word for word, but going off-script does have its consequences. After introducing myself, I spoke about how I could go on about stories of all the shenanigans my sister and I participated in as children, like when we used Crayola markers on our eyelids to make it look as if we were wearing eye shadow. (Thank you, Barbie doll, for that inspiration.) I also briefly mentioned the time I pushed my sister off the bed [when we were jumping on it] and she cracked open her head. At the time we were quite young, and I thought she was going to die. Our older brother tried, unhelpfully, to console me and told me that everything would be okay because if Katie died we could just get a new sister. It was here I nearly lost composure, but I paused and asked who won the bet to give me time to stop crying. After I was ready to proceed, I explained how my sister always tells me I am a mother hen to her, so I was going to do just that that evening.

My written speech was as follows:

For those who do not know me, I am Katie's [older] sister Amanda, also known by Rosie just to confuse people. I can attest I am happy to be here on such a joyous occasion, and I would like to thank Mom and Dad, Carol and Paul for hosting today. It is always a delight to see the hard work of preparation and planning come to fruition.

Perhaps Katie and Chad have heard many jokes over the years about when were they going to get married, much to the consternation of my sister, but all things happen for a reason and in their own time. Katie and Chad, today is your time.

Not too long ago, Pope Francis was in the news for commenting about couples throwing plates at each other, which by all means if you feel the need to do, I highly encourage it. But the news stories forgot to mention the rest of his message. Pope Francis went on to say, "Love is stronger than the moments in which we argue, and I therefore always advise married couples never to let the day draw to an end without making peace. There is no need to call in the United Nation peacekeeper. A little gesture is enough: a caress, see you tomorrow, and tomorrow we start afresh. This is life, and we must face it in this way, with the courage of living it together. Marriage is beautiful."

Katie and Chad, while I cannot promise all of your days will be as blissful as today, I can promise you the Beatles were correct when they sang, "Love is all you need." But they did miss a few other important things for a good marriage. Since I'm a teacher, we're going to review a few important phrases every couple needs to know, so pay attention because there'll be a quiz later. Repeat after me:

Proszę. Bitte. Please.

Dziękuję. Danke schön. Thank you.

Przykro mi. Es tut mir leid. I'm sorry.

Keep those sayings in your marriage toolbox, and they'll fix almost anything.

Walt Whitman once wrote, "The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung." Katie and Chad may you find many sweet songs to sing together in the years ahead, and may God bless you as you begin this new adventure in life together. To Katie and Chad!

Lamentably, the brief crying incident made me extremely nervous whereas before I had felt rather composed. Because of this, I skipped over a few sentences here and there, and I was definitely shaking more the longer I spoke. I guess that is why they call it the jitters! Thankfully, I was collected enough to ad-lib a few additional things, like how Pope Francis had my back on my suggestion that the Beatles missed a few items or explaining I had to include Polish and German into the key phrases to repeat since our family comes from those traditions.

On the bright side, the only thing I really regret is that I forgot to tell the guests to raise their glasses for the toast. I remembered it at the very last, but it felt so anti-climatic to me. You are your own worst critic, though. So, advice I would give to any future speech giver is to jot notes down about when to prompt guests to raise their glasses, just in case.

My beautiful sister the bride and me at the wedding reception.

At the same time, it was great to see my sister and now brother-in-law full of such joy that evening. That should always be the focus of celebrating a marriage. I do not know what it is about weddings, but they certainly display the best of what humanity has to offer. The bride in particular is so radiant. In general, a smile is plastered across her face from dawn until well past dusk, and it makes her glow all the more. It was a gaiety to sit back and watch my sister because I do not think I have ever seen her as joyful or beautiful as she appeared on her wedding day.

Family Celebrations

My family is a large family, and I love that there are so many of us. It makes family gatherings quite entertaining because there are so many people to catch up with, and we all have such distinct personalities. We can easily fill a room, and the noise level, depending on the side of the family, can make it difficult to hear oneself think. I would not change any of this.

That being said, I found my family bridal shower to be awkward and intimidating, not because of who was in the room but because of how many were in the room. Counting aunts, cousins, and cousins-once-removed to invite to bridal showers easily adds up to about 75 people. While it is rare to have every one of these ladies able to be at an event like a family bridal shower, it is not uncommon to have about 30 to 40 able to attend. As someone who is uncomfortable in most social situations, I found being the center of all this attention rather nerve-wracking.

I am not sure if my sister felt the same way back in September when I threw her a bridal shower to celebrate her future nuptials with our family, but she seemed to have more composure than I did. For that, I was slightly jealous.

I have been to quite a few bridal showers in which guests have to play games centered around how well one knows the bride. In a family as large as ours, it can be quite impossible to know a cousin or niece as well as the questions of those games ask. So, I asked myself why not flip that concept around?

Thus, a bridal shower theme developed around favorite things. I tried to pick out my sister's favorite foods to serve to our guests. I included a recipe card with the invitations for guests to fill out a favorite recipe to share with my sister, and I encouraged them to consider including a spice listed in the recipe as part of their bridal shower gift. I should not have been surprised, but it was amazing to see such a big response to this gesture.

When it came time for a few games, we played Guess the Age of the Bride. This seemed like a game that would have an equal playing field, and it certainly proved challenging for many. I picked out ten photos of my sister from birth on up, numbered them randomly, and had the women attendees write down my sister's age next to the corresponding photo number on a worksheet. Considering my sister was asked what grade she was going into a few months before her wedding, not many people guessed very many of the ages correctly. It was highly entertaining.

We ran out of good table space, but this cart worked out well for staging the first game.

The best game by far, though, had to have been Last Purse Standing. The whole purpose of this game was to reward the woman who had the most junk stuffed into her purse. My mother and I complied a lengthy list thinking we might need it, but we only got to about the fifteenth item on our list. It was a fitting game in honor of my sister as she nearly gave me a huge welt one time when we were in high school after she had whacked me with her purse. When I screamed out in agony and asked her what she had in her purse, she pulled out a padlock, a golf ball, and quite a few other very random items. For the game, ladies had to produce the item and hold it up for everyone to see. I have never seen so many women digging through purses so frantically before. It was amusing for me to administer, and judging from the laughter and smiles from our family and friends, it was an exhilarating game for them.

I was able to snap one picture at the beginning of the game Last Purse Standing before my camera died.

In keeping with a favorite theme, I gave out prizes to the winners of the games we played. Each of these gift bags was filled with either some of my sister's current favorite things or something she really liked as a child. There was a gift bag full of bath items that included my sister's favorite body cleanser, Neutrogena grapefruit scented body wash. Another gift bag included Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss beer with honey roasted peanuts, the only kind of peanut she would ever eat as a child. A third gift bag was filled with some Minnesota Twins drink-ware items.

The most expensive gift bag contained the movie Gone With the Wind along with some of her favorite candies like Reese's Pieces and Skittles. The Reese's Pieces was a current favorite, but the Skittles had a fun story from when she was small and constantly running around school during our brothers' basketball games with the rainbow colored candy. One of the priests at the Catholic school we attended always asked if she would share some Skittles with him when he stopped in to watch the games. Sometimes she would say yes, and sometimes she would say no. Then one time when our family brought the gifts up to the altar during Sunday mass, this same priest said to my sister, "Gee, Katie, I thought you were going to bring me some Skittles." Needless to say, everyone got a good chuckle out of that.

However, the most entertaining bag had to have been the one filled with coffee and powdered sugar mini-donuts. My sister refused to eat any other kind of doughnut as a kid after Sunday mass on fellowship days. My parents have stories about how she would bring the doughnuts, wrapped in napkins, home with her, and she would get powdered sugar everywhere in the car. I remember sometimes finding half-eaten doughnuts nearly a week later, still wrapped in its napkin somewhere around the house.

When it came time to open her gifts, my sister was certainly blessed by some very generous family members. I am always amazed at how giving people can be in our family. That is probably what makes families so great. We share joys and sorrows with each other, and we are a support network. Whether it is starting a new family or beginning a new marriage, families can be the best kind of encouragement.

A Bridal Shower Built for Two

I really cannot claim credit for this adorable couples shower some of my sister's friends threw, but I can say I offered assistance with the coordinating. The concept of a couples shower is something my husband would have really appreciated back when we were engaged. It would have been a great solution to the taunting he gave me after I came home from my bridal shower with some very generous gifts from my family.

"How come grooms don't get showers?" he often teased.

At the time, I told him there was nothing keeping him from having a shower, but he went on about how shower presents were all women's stuff anyway. (Who eats the meals made using said women's stuff, by the way?)

In reality, grooms can be a part of the pre-wedding celebrations just as much as the brides. This couples shower was simple and low-key, but it was also rather entertaining. A little food, a little music, a little alcohol and you have yourself a shindig. The ladies who did most of the planning came up with a great theme too: music.

Thank heavens for preschool teachers! They have tons of cute ideas, not to mention decorations.

My sister and her fiance first met when he was running karaoke at a nearby bar and grill. It was love at first song. Well, sort of. It took awhile before they actually started dating. Her fiance really loves music, though. So, the ladies thought it would be fun to make a bridal, err... couples shower, revolving around love songs.

Don't forget dessert!

A little music-themed Jeopardy, anyone?

The wall decorations were rather clever. Miss Heather had a few cute decor items she borrowed from her preschool classroom supplies. Miss Michelle helped cut out the music notes and hang them on the walls. The ladies made records to hang from black paper plates with a piece of construction paper made to look like an album label.

The records were actually used as labels for the food items. Each item had a designated song:

DYI Sandwich Station - "Any Way You Want It" by Journey

Cheese Tray - "Big Cheese" by Nirvana

Veggie Tray - "Vegetables" by The Beach Boys

Fruit Tray - "Strawberry Fields" by The Beatles

Fruit Tray - "Watermelon Crush" by Photo Jenny

Fruit Tray - "Blueberry Hill" by Fats Domino

Candy - "Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr.

Sweets - "How Sweet It Is to be Loved by You" by Marvin Gaye

Drinks - "Waterfalls" by TLC

Drinks - "Genie in a Bottle" by Christina Aguilera 

And of course, the sign for the bathroom was "Let It Go" from Disney's hit movie Frozen.

My sister and her soon-to-be husband.

The music trivia game was entertaining yet challenging, and then we ended the night at a bar and grill the couple frequents for some karaoke. Singing in a public venue like that is really not my cup of tea, but it was an entertaining time nonetheless. The most important part was that the couple had a great time.

The best part of this video clip has to be that our older brother can be heard singing louder than my sister for much of the song.

OMG, Shoes!

What woman does not love a new pair of shoes? While I have tried to keep my personal shoe collection to a bare minimum in recent years, I have had the desire to expand my 19th century shoe collection. One would think a pretty dress is enough when doing living history, but after the umpteenth time of being asked to show someone my shoes, I have realized it is probably time to bite the bullet and invest in some period footwear.

Since I spend most of my time in an 1880s village, I opted for a boot fashionable to that decade. I was fortunate enough to find a pair on clearance in my size, so I purchased them a whilr ago as a birthday present from me to me. When they arrived, my husband commented how they looked uncomfortable. I unlaced one to try it on, and much to my surprise, it actually did not feel all that torturous. Apparently there is something to be said for handmade craftsmanship, quality, and value.

My brand new 1880s style boots!

This made me interested in the history of footwear. Ever since people first began to use footwear, styles have been adapted and updated to meet the trend of the times, but I learned the overall process of making shoes has not changed much in all of those years. The first documented footwear can be traced back to 1495 B.C. Thebes, where pictures of sandal makers graced the walls of an Egyptian structure. Teutonic tribes in Northern Europe wore a leather protection on their legs below the knee. When the Romans came in contact with the barbarians of the north, they adapted their own sandals and shoes to have a similar leg covering.

Boots and shoes were worn throughout the middle ages, and I remember being amused in one of my college history classes when we learned the length of one's shoe was an indication of one's social status in medieval society. The more important you were, the longer your shoe was. While not worn by every person, this exaggerated shoe length can sometimes be found in artwork of the time. Also during the middle ages, cordwainers (shoe makers) and cobblers (shoe repairers) established an association to protect their craft, and it was officially recognized by King Henry III in 1272. This guild is one of the oldest in operation in London today.

The Romance of Tristan (1468)

The first European shoemakers to arrive in North America were Philip Kertland, who settled in Lynn, in 1635 along with Thomas Beard and Isaac Richerman, who settled in Salem, in 1691. This was a time when a shoemaker could be seen working while wearing a leather apron and using a lapstone, hammer, wooden pegs, handmade thread, and a boot tree last. Apprentices, most often young boys, would learn the trade from master shoemakers.

With a growing industry, regulation was soon to follow. Pennsylvania Province made it a crime in 1720 for a tanner to make shoes. The same act fixed the price of leather and placed a price ceiling on finished shoes for sale. Anything sold above the set rates would be subject to forfeiture. It was a tough trade, and the shoemaker often traveled from town to town in search of business. By the mid-eighteenth century, quite a few cobblers began opening shops and employing others, each tasked with one part of the shoe making process. Near the end of the 18th century, the fledgling shoe industry received a huge boost when the Tariff Act of 1789 was passed, taxing imported goods to raise funds for the newly established United States' federal government.

The 19th century brought about the Industrial Revolution, and while it took longer to gain steam in the United States than it did in Europe, the development of machine technology forever changed the shoe industry. A quick review of technology advancements that came about in the United States during the 19th century:

1815: A machine-made wooden peg began to be used for fastening soles to shoes. Before this time, the bottom of a shoe was most oftentimes merely sewn with heavy thread. (A pegging machine was subsequently developed in 1833 to replace the need of hand-driven pegs, but these machines were not widely used in shoe production until 1857.)

1845: A rolling machine was patented and began to be widely used in the industry. This machine replaced the manual labor of pounding sole leather with a hammer in order to make it firm. What was once a thirty minute process by hand could now be done in about a minute by machine.

1846: Elias Howe patented his first sewing machine, and it did not take long before others such as John Brooks Nichols, a shoemaker by trade, adapted sewing machines to sew with tough leather.

1858: Lyman R. Blake, a shoemaker, patented a machine that could sew the soles of shoes onto the uppers, and Gordon McKay, seeing an entrepreneurial opportunity, purchased those patent rights. McKay had a difficult time selling his machines to shoe factories, which were still doing much of the work by hand with organized teams and outsourced gangs, so he tried leasing the machines instead. McKay's success was probably largely due to the Civil War, since there was a high need for shoes in the country at the time but not enough shoemakers around to fill the demand. William Porter & Sons was the first factory to use the McKay sewing machine in the early 1860s. Part of the leasing agreement was that there would be a stamp on the heel of every shoe to indicate it was sewn by the McKay machine, for which McKay would receive royalties.

1862: A nailing machine was patented, eliminating the need for hand driven nails. Also, August DeStouy patented a machine with a curved needle for sewing turn shoes.

1871: Charles Goodyear received his first of two patents for a machine designed by employed engineers to sew the welt to the bottom of the shoe. This became known as the Goodyear welt machine.

1877: Edge-trimming and heel-trimming machines were patented, which led to some push back from factory workers. Whittlers had been doing this work by hand, and they were paid rather high wages. This was time consuming work as they had to trim the sole and welt of the shoe to a uniform distance around the upper leather; they also had to cut away surplus leather on the heel. The new machines boasted speed, uniformity of work, and savings to manufacturers.

1883: A lasting machine was introduced in factories, and workers organized in opposition to this machine in the workplace. Lasters were paid $20 to $30 per week to pull the leather over the wooden forms that were used to determine the size and shape of shoes and tack it in place to the soles. A hand worker could last about 50 pairs of shoes in a day, working the standard ten hour day that was common in the 1880s; a machine operator could last 300 to 700 pairs of shoes in a day.

There is a reason stories about children going shoe-less in the 19th century during warm weather months are so abundant prior to the late 19th century. In 1863 a pair of handmade shoes took a little over 18 hours to complete, and the cost of labor for shoes was $4.58 on average. Families could not always afford to constantly replace worn out shoes, and so sometimes footwear was reserved for church, other special occasions, and the winter months, when it was needed most. But by 1895 a pair of shoes produced by machine workers could be completed in about two and one-half hours, and the cost of labor for shoes was $0.60 on average. Needless to say the price of shoes declined dramatically by the end of the 19th century.

Thank you, Industrial Revolution along with a little American ingenuity and entrepreneurship! 21st century women who are obsessed with shoes are forever grateful.

Making Hay

This past weekend at the museum was hay making time, and I volunteered to help with it. I had a general idea of the type of manual labor for which I had enlisted, but since I am fairly active in athletics, I was not too concerned. (If I can hit a stand up triple by crushing a softball over the right fielder's head as her teammates yell for her to get back, I think I can pitch some hay.) My boss, on the other hand, seemed somewhat concerned. There is a lot that can be said about body language, and on that Saturday morning, I was reading quite a bit of doubt in regards to my abilities to pitch hay all day long.

I am a petite woman; I stand all of five foot five and a half inches, just like my German grandmother once was before she shrank in her old age. She weighed 99 pounds after having her third child. My weight tends to fluctuate between 110 and 115 pounds. Scrawniness is just part of my inherited genetics, but one should never judge a book by its cover. Germans and Poles are stubborn folk. :)

The bonnet was borrowed. It was slightly too large for my head, but it protected me from the sun, which is all I wanted.

Since the museum centers around living history, I had borrowed one of the only dresses from our costume shop that fit me. After dressing in all of the appropriate underpinnings, I realized the skirt band was about half an inch to an inch too tight, and the bodice was slightly too long for my torso. It would have to work, though. I even did my hair in an old-fashioned style popular from the 1830s to about the 1850s. At least I was going to look the part!

To be honest, I had never pitched hay in my life before this past weekend. It was going to be a completely new learning experience for me. I knew from last year that the end of June into the beginning of July was when nineteenth century farmers traditionally cut hay. I had watched last year as the men worked the field and pitched the hay up onto the horse-drawn wagon, and then they went to unload in the barn before they started the whole cycle all over again.

Why walk back out to the hay field when you can catch a ride?

For the record, hay is cut grass that has been dried in order to use as livestock feed over winter. Nineteenth century farmers depended on a good crop. In the 1850s in Minnesota, much of the cut hay was wild grasses growing in fields. By the 1880s, farmers were planting tame hay grasses to cut, but alfalfa, often associated with Minnesota, was not popularly planted until the 1910s. (Minnesota Historic Farms Study, 6.255)

For centuries farmers cut hay by hand with scythes, but by the mid-nineteenth century, various types of mowers began to be used instead. Thankfully, the museum's hay was cut by a sickle mower again this year like it was last year. After the field was cut, the hay needed time to dry, and it needed to be flipped over as well so as to dry the other side. Once air-dried, the men folk gathered the hay into small mounds in order to make the hay ready for pitching. Throughout this process, everything needed to be done after the morning dew evaporated, and everyone concerned prayed for no rain lest the hay crop be ruined.

There was no dew on the ground by the time our morning staff meeting was over, so we were able to get started right away on the day we pitched. I sought instruction on technique and then had to decipher for myself as to how I could best replicate the process. The wife of one of my co-workers and a female co-worker also helped with the pitching, which led to many jokes about a story concerning German women working in the fields pitching hay along side the men, much to the dismay some English-American folk in the nineteenth century. Sometimes it was easy to scoop up a large mound, and other times it was difficult. Sometimes only half to a third of the mound caught on the pitch fork. There was definitely a learning curve for me. There was a young boy to help stamp down the hay on the wagon as it was pitched so as to make room for even more hay each load full. Once we had a full wagon-load, the horses hauled it to the barn to be unloaded, pitched inside, and stacked into a hay mound.

Hay was pitched by lifting the mounds onto the wagon.

The men could grab an entire mound in one forkful. I needed a few tries, but I learned do that with smaller mounds.

We have an expert on staff when it comes to building hay mounds. I could probably listen to him spew his knowledge on any subject for hours, so it was entertaining to be instructed by him concerning how to start the mound and how to build up the support wall. He had us newbies walk the mound to feel for ourselves where the weak spots were so he could strengthen that part of the edge. Then, the edge needed to be raked for any loose hay strands, which were tossed back on top of the pile. After all of the hay was stacked, he salted that layer as an extra precaution against any spontaneous combustion later. Then, it was time to water up and head out in the field for another load.

After it was loaded onto the wagon in the field, the hay needed to be unloaded and stacked in the barn for storage.

The work was not too terrible, but it was tough enough that I was visibly perspiring. I learned that I should probably make a better petticoat and starch the heck out of it for future use. I also learned that when you often relegate yourself to the damsel in distress role (because intelligent women know decent men readily jump at the chance to help a lady in need), apparently it leads to an over-concern for one's well-being when hard work is afoot. As appreciative as I was for the fuss by the men folk involved, being asked multiple times in a matter of a few minutes was actually slightly aggravating.

My combative side came out soon after that when one of the men jokingly told me I pitched hay like a girl. Having grown up familiar with the movie The Sandlot, at first I took it as an insult and started rambling off excuses. After a minute or so, I more calmly pointed out that I was a girl. It was a good reminder that of course I am physically incapable of tossing hay mounds of equal size to that of the men, but that does not make the work someone my size is capable of doing any less valid. I may have needed to pitch a few more forkfuls, but eventually I would get the hay to where it needed to go.

Later in the afternoon, we were able to refresh on switchel, made by one of the ladies on staff. Sometimes called haymaker's punch, switchel is a drink concocted of water, vinegar, ginger, and a sweetener of some kind like honey, maple syrup, or molasses. It was the nineteenth century version of Gatorade, and it actually did help reinvigorate the body. Although, I learned the hard way that it is probably not a good idea to guzzle it down while wearing a corset. Oh well, I survived.

A full wagon load heading back to the barn for unloading with our young helper catching a ride atop the hay.

We worked from about 10 a.m. until about 4 p.m. that day, and I only felt my energy start to wain at the very end of the day. Thankfully, it only took one more wagon-load to store the rest of the hay from the field at that point. I was grateful to be done, but I actually had a lot of fun hanging out with the menfolk that day. (I have always felt more comfortable with the male gender than the female gender; it probably has something to do with spending so much time with my older brothers and their friends as a kid since there was no one my age in the neighborhood.) I may have come close to overheating at the tail end after we had finished, but had I a cotton dress instead of a wool dress, that probably would not have been an issue.

It was nice to prove my boss wrong about spindly ladies and manual labor. I was certainly sore the next day, and my injured shoulder from softball is still tender as I type this, but I have been in worse condition from playing in all-day softball and volleyball tournaments than from pitching hay. I guess it helps to be a physically active person. The museum will probably cut hay again close to Labor Day, and I say bring on the challenge. Hard work and honest sweat were valued in the nineteenth century, but having been raised by farm kids, it is something I have been taught to value as well.

(Photos published with consent of the photographer. Copyright © 2014 Lisa Meyers.)

10 Years

Milestones have meaning. Milestones cause us to pause and reflect. Ten years may seem so small for people who have graced the earth for so long like my ninety-five year old grandmother, but for someone my age, a decade is a big deal. This summer gives me the opportunity to recognize ten years since finishing undergraduate college. The great thing about my alma mater is that it schedules an alumni reunion weekend every summer. Class years celebrating special milestones organize a committee to plan extra reunion events to bring the cohort back to campus.

Even though the years between present day and college are ever increasing, I still talk about my experiences at college quite often. And since I am my mother's daughter, I have no idea how many times my husband has heard the same stories told over and over again. He has yet to complain, though. I asked him if he would like to go with me to my class reunion because I wanted him to be able to experience a little bit of that place so near and dear to my heart.

A lot can change in a decade, and while the campus of my alma mater may look somewhat different in some areas, it still feels like home. My husband's remarks about how small the campus seemed certainly gave me pause to stop and realize that it never felt that way while attending school. The walk through the main hall where classes were held and then peeking into one of the dormitories in which I lived was an entertaining trip down memory lane for me.

My husband was merely convinced all of the buildings were haunted, which to be fair, some of them do have stories. I usually win instant brownie points with middle and high school kids when I share with them that I lived in a haunted dorm in college. Honestly, I never truly believed in ghosts before my sophomore year in college. Entertained the possibility? Yes. Actual convictions? Not until fall semester 2001. While doing a quick walk sometime between midnight and 1 a.m. around Heffron Hall as the resident assistant on duty one night, I saw a shadowy figure on the third floor for which I have no explanation. I was so rattled that I actually skipped my last round of the night. My girlfriend, who also lived in the dorm that year, kindly reminded me this weekend of the night we tried to watch a movie. For some reason the VHS tape kept popping in and out of the VCR player on the television as the movie played. After some failed determination at getting it to work properly, and becoming increasingly spooked, we decided it was a good time to take a late-night walk around campus. Reunions are great for trips down memory lane because I had completely forgotten that incident. She and I would take a lot of midnight walks around campus that year and in the years that followed.

(For fans of ghost stories, there is an excellent series on the evolution of the Heffron ghost in the Winona Post written by a classmate's father, Patrick Marek: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 )

Coming back to see everyone again had a different feeling for me since I only had a roommate for one year. Working for the Office of Residence Life had its perks, but sometimes I wish I had had a few more roommates. That is, until I recall walking in on my freshman year roommate and her boyfriend getting frisky with each other. She apologized to me profusely, but I was never able to burn the vision of her boyfriend's butt cheeks from my retinas. So, no roommates can be a nice thing.

The years I spent in college really shaped me, but it was not always from positive experiences. There was a suicide in the dormitory my sophomore year, and I spent much of the next few months unable to shake a feeling of guilt for accepting my hall director's offer to check on a student, after having received a phone call from concerned friends, since I was just about to leave for the computer lab when my phone rang. It seems so silly now, but it was something I struggled with some months afterwards. I even had the displeasure of a good friend inexplicably stop talking to me senior year, to the point of not even saying hello back to me when we crossed paths in the plaza. While I never figured out what her motivation was and have not thought of it much since, explaining to my husband about with whom I socialized the most in college certainly brought back some less than pleasant memories. It was cute to see how he was ready to throw down the gauntlet in my honor after hearing about that for the first time.

My husband and I meandered into the history department to find a picture of another one of my history professors who passed away in 2011. It reminded me of some advice he gave me as I contemplated what to do after graduation. I was considering graduate school, but I had not decided on the program or the school yet. Dr. Gaut, who had attended the University of Minnesota graduate school, bluntly told me I would not fit in there. It irked me at first until I realized his implication was that I was not uppity enough the mesh with the attitudes of the people in that program. I am grateful he was so straightforward with me.

As a history undergraduate major at a small, Catholic university, there were a whopping five of us the year I graduated. For our senior thesis class, one of the five studied abroad fall semester. There was another classmate who only sometimes showed up for class. Needless to say, when there are only four students who should be there, the professor knows when you miss class. So, that meant we usually spent the first fifteen to twenty minutes talking baseball, since my professor was a huge New York Mets fan, as he waited to see if he would have three or four students for class that day. One does not find experiences like that at large universities.

After walking around the campus for a bit, my husband asked how we did not get bored. It is funny because, while I enjoyed my classes, most of my memories from college have to do with things outside of classes. We were always inventive with how we entertained ourselves. Perhaps that is part of the rite of passage into adulthood: learning to make one's own way in the world. As an underclassman, I was way too afraid to try things on my own without someone else there for moral support. As an upperclassman, I spent a lot of time eating on my own in dining halls while reading the newspaper or taking naps on some of the random couches around campus. I just no longer had that fear.

The education I received was certainly a good one. I was part of the Lasallian Honors Program as an undergraduate, which has helped shape how I teach by utilizing the Socratic method. As a sophomore, I spent time in the archives of the library translating an old book from German to English for a research paper on the 1410 battle of Grunwald. It was the first time I had encountered Fraktur print, so it took me quite some time as I had to decipher the old letter style. Needless to say, my professor had questions for me when I turned in a paper that included a book printed in German as a reference since German is not offered as a class at the university. I read Fraktur print on a regular basis now when researching 19th century education in Minnesota. My favorite class, though, was a public history class I took senior year taught by the director of the Winona County Historical Society. He took us on a walking tour of the city and went into great detail about some of the old buildings in town. As part of that class, we were required to volunteer time with WCHS. I helped out with the Victorian Fair that fall by teaching kids how to play marbles, which landed a girlfriend's and my picture on the front page of the Winona Daily News. I also worked the annual event Voices of the Past: Woodlawn Cemetery Walk, serving as a tour guide between the stations. Ten years later, I find myself starting my eighth summer season as a living history interpreter.

My path in life is not the same path as my classmates. That being said, it can be really difficult not to think the grass is greener on the other side when you hear about the accomplishments of so many. Some run their own businesses; others have earned doctorate degrees; while others yet have beautiful children of which they can be proud. Reunions can be fun to see where everyone has tread in life, but it can also certainly feed feelings of inadequacy for the things one still wants to accomplish in life. I have always been a late bloomer in life, though, so all in good time. Hopefully my husband was not completely bored out of his mind this weekend at our class gathering listening to me chat every now and then with people whom he does not know, but I am pleased that he got to see some of what shaped me into the person I was when he met me.

Palm Weaving

Palm Sunday always brings back childhood memories of watching my mother braiding palms taken home from church that day. I remember sitting near her so I could watch while she worked on this fascinating project. Sometimes it was a breeze for her to bend and manipulate the palms into the woven cone shape, but there were years in which the process of starting the weave escaped her memory, which led to some frustration on her part.

There is a universality that comes with being Roman Catholic, and around the world, the Catholic culture has familiarity to its congregants. At the end of my high school years, I spent a week doing service learning at the Red Lake Indian Reservation's Catholic mission. In the house of the religious sisters with whom we stayed, there were chalk markings above all of the door frames, put there to bless the house at the beginning of the year. This is a rather Catholic tradition, but whenever I see the markings elsewhere, it always brings me back to that house. After graduating high school, I spent about three weeks in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Despite my German language skills not being quite fluent enough to catch everything that was said in Mass, I was capable enough to pick up "Gott seid dank" (Thanks be to God) in the responses, among a few other phrases, because the Mass is the same in every language. My experiences in Germany, attending Mass once at a small chapel in the middle of a grove and once at the cathedral in Berlin, proved just how catholic (i.e. universal) the Roman church can be.

Keeping braided palms around the house is part of this Catholic culture, and I continue to practice it just as my parents and grandparents did. When I was younger, I tended to associate this tradition with yet another oddly rural thing my family still observed, but in reality it is not so much rural as it is a German and Polish Catholic tradition, which makes sense why my family did it. Sadly, it is starting to become a lost art. That is the thing with traditions; they are only continued if they are passed down to the next generation.

If palms are kept in the refrigerator after Palm Sunday, one will still be able to braid later in the week, but the longer one waits, the less malleable the palm fronds become. The tutorial here is for the square cone weave, the type of braid commonly found around my parents' and grandparents' homes when I was a child.

First things first, do not let cats eat the palms. Seriously, these are blessed. Also, they cannot digest them,
speaking from personal experience of cats getting into things they are not supposed to have.

Peel off the hard green edge of the palm fronds to have an easier time weaving.

For the cone weave, find four relatively similar sized palm fronds.

Secure the bottom ends somehow. I used tape this time; I have used a paper clip or a stapler other times.

Divide the palm fronds, pointing them in toward north, south, east, and west directions. Tip: my outside fronds
were my north and south palms.

Fold the south palm to the north. This will be the new north palm.

Fold the north palm to the south. This will be the new south palm.

Fold the east palm over the new north palm but under the new south palm.

Pull the east palm taught. This will be the new west palm.

Fold the west palm over the south palm but under the north palm. This will be the new east palm.

There should be a relatively loose weave starting to look something like this. Make sure to pull it taught
before continuing your braid.

Start with the east palm; fold it over to the west. Braid clockwise first.

Fold the south palm to the north.

Fold the west palm to the east.

To secure the weave, fold the north palm over the new east palm but under the new west palm.

Pull the weave taught. The first step of this braid is complete.

Start with the east palm again; fold it over to the west. Braid counterclockwise this time.

Fold the north palm to the south.

Fold the west palm to the east.

To secure the weave, fold the south palm over the new east palm but under the new west palm.

Pull the weave taught. The second step of the weave is complete.

Continue working clockwise then counterclockwise, always beginning with the east palm. After a few weaves,
the square cone shape will start to take form. 

When there is not much left to the palm fronds, stop the weave. Pull the palm fronds taught.

Gather the top ends together into a bunch.

Tie the loose ends off in a simple knot.

Ta da! The woven palm cone is complete. Place it anywhere around the home as a remembrance.

The easy thing about this weave is that it is really just repeating the same steps over again. The trickiest part is remembering how to start the weave by dividing the fronds into north, south, east, and west directions. The first folds can be difficult to hold together, but once the weave has a few secured braids completed, it is easy as pie. For other versions of palm weaving, there is a book published by the Franciscan Sisters, from near the area of Minnesota in which my father was raised. Palm Weaving by Sister Cecilia Schmitt, or a transcript of the book, is a good resource.

The Donkey

G. K. Chesterson

When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry

And ears like errant wings,

The devil's walking parody

On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,

I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

And palms before my feet.