Staying the Course - Checking for Gravel in your shoe

Excerpts taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman"  April 7, 1949, The Collinsville News. 

" . . . . .   one needs a change occasionally-needs to stand off and look at what he has from afar off, then he can see,  if he is too discouraged, .   . .  that it isn't the hill he is trying to climb that is too difficult, but the gravel in his shoe, that makes the climbing unbearable.

We need to sit down, shake out our shoes occasionally,  take  a fresh start.. . . . "

Note:  Isn't this too true?  It's not the big stuff that gets you down. . .  it's the small irritant that really gets to you.  So, Mrs. Morrow was right, sit down, shake out your "gravel" and you will be able tackle the big tasks with renewed vigor and much less irritation.  How long has it been since you sat down and shook out your shoe?




 

 

The Spring Equinox

Except taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman" by Lucile Ellingwood Morrow,  published March 24, 1949 in The Collinsville News. 

Sunday was the first day of Spring --the Equinox.

"Spring has came and winter has went and it wasn't did by accident," as the child's poem so well says. 

 If Autumn means a time of resting fields, fulfillment and understanding, then Spring is a season of hustle, hope and the word is spelled with four letters: WORK.

Beginning with the first green bud in spring one learns lessons in patience, too. Altho we can go out in February, here in the Southwest, break off branches of forsythia and buds of jonquils and force them into early bloom in the warmth of our houses; even tho we can plant seeds in hotbeds and indoor flats and set them outside at the earliest safe time, still we must learn to wait for Nature 

to waken her own buds in her own good time. We see the brown tree buds begin to swell and change color; we may await eagerly the snowdrift of wild plums or the pink cloud of pink cloud of red bud or apple and peach blossoms, but we must be patient.  We may plant our small wrinkled seeds and pat them into the mellow, mealy earth as one puts a small child down and pats it to sleep, but we must not go digging among the seeds to see if they are going to grow if we want a good "stand."  People who live in the country learn patience from working with Mother Earth who does all things in due time.

Note:  One of my grandmother's favorite Bible verses to was Ecclesiastes 3:1  "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. . . "  I have heard her say or read that verse from the Bible many, many times.  - Dr. Kathleen Morrow

 

 

 

 

"The Cruise of the Erma" - Families escaping the tyranny of Russia

Excerpt taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman"  February 27, 1947 by Lucile Ellingwood Morrow: 

"On the night of December 15, 1945, a battered 37-foot sloop nosed its way through a heavy snow storm off Cape Henry, Va, and dropped anchor in the harbor of Little Creek.
On board were 16 Estonian men, women, and children. The tiny craft had left Sweden 128 days earlier and had sailed over 8,000 miles."
The story of these brave people who would rather have been drowned in the cold, stormy Atlantic than return to Russia is told by a member of the crew in "THE CRUISE OF ERMA".

The hardships of this small band are akin to those of our Puritan and Pilgrim fathers who also felt that death and any sort of suffering were preferable to the tyrannies of a despot government and fled to America seeking freedom. I was moved to tears when I read that, finally, nearly starved and frozen, they were sighted by a U. S. Navy auxiliary transport which came alongside with food and wraps the day before they made port.

And when they first sighted America, "No one spoke, but I knew that we were all thinking of the same thing, "It was all behind us now, the storms, the hunger, the danger of the sea and, above all, the fear and the despair of the country that was once our home. Of all of Europe's homeless, wandering millions, we of the 'Erma' were perhaps the most fortunate.  In this new land we would begin another life." 

President Truman intervened with immigration authorities for these refugees and they were allowed to enter America. 

 

I heard them tell their story later over the radio of their voyage." 

 

Note:  For additional original research on these very courageous and resourceful families, go to:

http://www.ihrc.umn.edu/research/vitrage/all/em/EAU/pers/v/ihrc3601.html

 

Resources - Leaving things better than we found it

Excepts taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman"  by Lucile Ellingwood Morrow   January 8, 1948

 

 'The Man With The Hoe' Is The Hope of The World" is the title of a cartoon

showing a father leaning against his tractor, pointing out across a landscape of hills and valleys, and saying to his small son upon the tractor seat: "Son, these fields and forests my father gave me to care for and protect. Some day they will be yours. For those to come, we must leave it all better than we found it."

Note:  This cartoon must have been taken from "The Man With the Hoe" by French painter Millet.  I could not find the cartoon, but the painting and resulting poem by Edwin Markham are well known.  They both graphically illustrate the difficult life of a farmer.  Having a tractor would certainly have lighten "the man's" burden. 

My Birthday - "Little Sister Snow"

Excerpts taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman" by Lucile Ellingwood Morrow, Feburary 7th, 1946

Lucile Ellingwood Morrow was born on February 18, 1891, in Rocky Ford, Colorado.

"February has an unusual number of days of peculiar interest, most of them birthdays; Lincoln, Washington, Dickens. and the poets Lowell and Longfellow were born in February;  then there is St. Valentine's Day, though not a birthday, it was named for a Catholic saint and is given over to that kind of sentiment that we all enjoy but which must not be taken all too seriously.

I, too, am happy to find my birthday falls within such illustrious company of notables; My Mother used to call me "Little Sister Snow" because I was born in a blizzard." 


Note:   From Lucile's book, "Father was .snowbound in a sheep camp in the mountains of Colorado shortly after I was born, when he came across a magazine article about the opening of the University of Chicago, its creed of freedom from 'barriers of race, religion or sex, founded upon the theory that scholarship should be based not upon "Who are you?" but rather "What can you do?"  And he vowed that every child he had should attend that school." 
The story goes that Lucile's father had taken extra seasonal work as a sheepherder in the spring after his teaching job was comptlete.  The men were stranded in the mountains of Colorado with the sheep and spent days in a camp waiting for the blizzard to pass.  The mountain camp walls were lined/papered with all kinds of paper - magazines, newspapers, etc.   Mr. Ellingwood, not being one to sit idle, read every "wall" or "newspaper" in the camphouse. 
During that time, he read an article about a new university founded by John D. Rockefeller that promised to provide an equal education for "all." 
Only two of his children survived to adulthood, but both Ellingwood children were enrolled at The University of Chicago and Lucile graduated from the famous institution in 1917 - a class made up of three men and three women - true equality in those days.