Big Old Family Hug

It’s late August. New York school boards are scrambling to define re-opening plans for this Fall. Parents’ nails are bitten to the quick. But it’s the weekend, after all, and I hope to spend it nibbling fresh CORN instead.

Below you have a picture of a corn cutting machine from 1913. This may have allowed my great-grandfather to harvest corn without having to cut the stalks by hand. One foot planted in a position of ownership, he seems pleased with the purchase, at any rate.

I tried to find out more by looking up “corn cutting machine” or “corn cutter” in old newspapers. I didn’t come up with many mechanical details but – wow! I found a plethora of gruesome headlines with arms and fingers “mutilated by” or “torn in”.

One part of this picture that I appreciate are the children sitting patiently in the background. Clara and Ferris sit, looking bored, with baby Marjorie – a vision in white – perched high on her carriage. Working from home necessarily means children around. My ancestors understood this!

I hope you have a lovely weekend. Do yourself a good turn and pick up some corn if you can – this is prime corn season in New York. I’ll leave you with the opening stanzas of a poem that always comes to mind when I think of eating corn.

How pleasant the yellow butter
melting on white kernels, the meniscus
of red wine that coats the inside of our goblets

where we sit with sturdy friends as old as we are
after shucking the garden’s last Silver Queen
and setting husks and stalks aside for the horses…

from the poem “Jack” by Maxine Kumin

“Fooling around in the papers my grandparents, especially my grandmother, left behind, I get glimpses of lives close to mine, related to mine in ways I recognize but don’t completely comprehend. I’d like to live in their clothes a while, if only so I don’t have to live in my own.”

Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner

Hello from 1913! In real time we must force ourselves through the long slog of pandemic life. We don masks and gloves. Follow graphs and charts. Pace the house with ever-increasing desperation. On this site, though, we can escape to a happier time. For the past two posts, I’ve written about the Ohio cousins who – in the summer of 1913 – came to visit my grandmother’s family.

Smith Gardner Dunning (“Uncle Smith”) was the son of Horace, younger brother of Louise and Horace Henry (“Uncle H”) and older brother to Kate and Merritt (my grandmother’s father, who was the baby of the family). He was the only sibling of the farming family to leave the town of Wallkill, for Princeton University, no less.

Uncle Smith entered Princeton together with his cousin Harry Slawson Dunning and graduated with the class of 1892. Woodrow Wilson became a professor there in 1890 so it’s possible that the two crossed paths. At the time of these pictures, Wilson had just become the 28th president of the United States.

From 1892-1895, Uncle Smith attended the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Newspaper snippets like the following show that he spent summers preparing for a life in the ministry.

Smith Gardner Dunning, son of Mr. Horace Dunning, of near this city, who the past year has been studying for the ministry in McCormick Seminary, Chicago, is spending the summer months in Nebraska, engaged in Sunday School mission work and preaching. He is present at Table Rock, Pawnee County.

Middletown NY Daily News 1892 Dec. – Aug. 1893

His time there coincided with one of the worst economic depressions that the U.S. has ever faced – the “Panic of 1983”. In Chicago, where Uncle Smith was studying, June 1893 saw a run on banks. The gold reserves managed by the treasury had fallen so much (from $190 million to $100 million) that people were worried that the U.S. would stop the convertibility with their ‘paper’ money.

With tens of thousands of farms going under, Uncle Smith must have felt that he had chosen the right profession. He would have been a uniquely qualified minister to tend to a flock of broken farmers. And did I mention the weather hazards?

Plenty Near for Comfort

Rev. Smith G. Dunning, of the town of Wallkill, who is preaching in Minnesota this summer, finds cyclones to be quite numerous in that county.

Last summer while organizing Sabbath schools in Nebraska, one passed within 6 miles of where he was, and now a few days ago, one passed within a mile of him, doing great damage and destroying a number of lives.

Middletown NY Daily News 1894 Apr. – Nov. 1894

After Seminary, Uncle Smith spent two years under the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in Western Africa. It seems like there was a Scottish woman, Margaret MacClean, who funded Presbyterians to do missionary work in Africa. The following newspaper article about his appointment shows how far the mindset of the Presbyterian Church USA has come since 100 years ago.

The “dwarfs”, according to what I researched, seem to refer to the Baka People (formerly called “pygmies”) in Cameroon and Gabon.

Will Work in Foreign Lands

In connection with the latest direct information about the Dwarfs in Africa, it is with thankfulness that we announce an effort, the first of the kind, to send them the Gospel. Solely through the benevolence of a lady in Scotland, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions is enabled to inaugurate the attempt.

Rev. Smith Gardner Dunning, a Princeton and McCormick graduate, is under appointment for this service, and the Board is seeking another man to accompany him.

Our societies do not need urging to pray that a self-denying man may be found, the attempt may succeed and that, before the century closes, many poor Dwarfs may learn what their riches are in Christ Jesus.

Middletown NY Daily Press 1896 Oct – June 1897: Women’s Work for Women

After two years, Uncle Smith returned from Gabon. As per the newspaper article announcing his return, the journey was not a short one. “He left the American Mission at Libreville, Gaboon[sic], West Africa, Sept. 8th, and was two months on the way”. (Two months!)

Once home, he married Agnes Rose Powers and proceeded to have Norma (1901), Ranald (1902) and Ruth (1905). I’ve written about Norma and Ruth in previous posts and promise to get to Ranald…he has his own picture later in the album.

In the meantime, I want to introduce you to Aunt Louise, a Civil War baby, born in 1863. My grandmother had titled this one “Weesie eyeing potatoes”.

Unlike Uncle Smith, there was precious little to find about her in the newspapers. I found this sad notice, where she was listed as an entrant to a baking competition that she didn’t win:

There were fifteen competitors for the three prizes offered by McMonagie & Rogers for the best angel cake displayed at the fair flavored with their premium extract vanilla

(M. Louise Dunning, of Mechanicstown)

1898 Jan – Sept. 1898

She didn’t give up though, because I found a later article in 1898 where she won first place for Fig Cake and Breakfast Rolls, and then got the “Bread and Cake” amateur award. Two years later, in 1900, she switched gears and won first prize on her “13-year-old palm” in the Flowers – Amateur category.

Does anyone care that great Aunt Louise knew how to make a great fig cake? It’s funny, but that’s just the kind of detail that makes all this ancestor research worth it. In fact, now that I’m stuck at home, perhaps baking a fig cake would be just the thing.

In the summer of 1913, Aunt Agnes, Uncle Smith along with first cousins Norma, Ruth and Ronald visited my 6-month-old grandmother, Marjorie. In the last post, I delved into Norma’s illustrious career as a doctor in Kolhapur, India. Today, I’ll introduce you to Ruth, she who looks unhappy with her enormous bow.

Ruth was born on March 15, 1905 in Osborn, Ohio. Her father, Smith G., was a Presbyterian minister who – at that point – changed churches with some frequency. In 1905, it looks like he was pastor at a church in Pisgah, OH. In September 1910, he left a position at a church in Camden, Ohio for one in Logan, Ohio. By 1915, he was working at St. Mary’s which confused me to no end until I realized – aha! – St. Mary’s was the name of the city, not the church.

In 1922, Ruth followed in her sister Norma’s footsteps by entering Western College in Oxford. (In fact, Norma graduated from there in 1922). She graduated four years later, in June 1926, and traveled to Cameroon, in Central Africa where she headed a school for missionaries’ children for three years.

Thirty years earlier (in 1896) her father, Smith, spent a few years under the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in Cameroon. Clearly, his experiences in Africa made a great impression on his daughters. Women only got the right to vote in August, 1920, remember. I’d say the fact that Norma and Ruth went to college and then worked in India and Africa (respectively) shows their parents to be quite forward-thinking for that era.

When Ruth returned from Africa, in 1929, her father had just accepted a call to the Beulah Presbyterian Church in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. He settled down there, serving as pastor until 1941. Ruth, too, ended up settling down shortly after, by marrying a Princeton alum and Presbyterian minister, like her father. The groom, Reverend Charles Woodbridge was, at that time, a pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Flushing, New York. Her father married them at the Beulah Manse.

From 1930 onward, I can only assume that Ruth’s life was filled with the many responsibilities of a pastor’s wife and mother. Four children were born between 1931 and 1941, all in different states (one in West Africa!) Charles J. Woodbridge ended up being a very well-known minister and professor, and part of the evangelical movement in the Presbyterian church. You can read about that on this Wikipedia page. (!)

Ruth passed away at the age of 57, only two years after the above picture was taken. This came from the visa that Brazil granted her for a trip to Rio de Janeiro with her husband. I think my parents will be amazed by the family resemblance when they see this!

What sticks with me in researching Ruth for this post is the importance of family role models. Her older sister graduated from the Western College for Women. Her father traveled as a missionary to Cameroon and her mother raised a family while following her traveling pastor husband. At some point, Ruth must have thought to herself, “I can do those things, too”.

It made me think about how family inheritance involves so much more than genes and property. Each generation looks at the one before and – if they’re lucky – has a vision of how to create a good life. Every time I work on one of these posts, I realize how lucky I am to have been born with easy access to good advice, insight and first-hand knowledge of the larger world.

And the dance moves. Gotta pass those down as well. Happy Independence Day to you all!

107 years ago, my great-grandfather Merritt and wife, Eleanor had the pleasure of a family visit. Merritt’s brother, the Reverend Smith Gardner, his wife, Agnes Rose, together with their three children came to meet the new baby, Marjorie. Born on New Year’s Day, my grandmother Marjorie would have been around six months old.

Uncle Smith was a fascinating and accomplished man but I’ll save his story for the picture of he and Aunt Agnes! As it is, his three children each prove so fascinating and accomplished in their own rights that I don’t have enough space to tell all their stories in one post.

For today, I’ll begin with the eldest, Norma Pennoyer Dunning. She was born on April 26, 1901 in Thornton, Ohio where her father was serving as pastor. She graduated from St. Mary’s School, a Catholic school in St. Mary, Ohio (founded in 1884 and still there!) From there, she attended the Western College for Women, graduating in 1922. Next, she pursued medical training at the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia, with a residency at Passavant hospital in Pittsburgh (also still there).

This excerpt from her obituary gives a wonderful description of the life that followed:

Norma had decided to dedicate her life to mission work and after a few years as resident physician for Winthrop College in Winthrop, South Carolina, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian sent her to Mary Wanless Hospital in Kolhapur, India in 1930. While directing that hospital she went on to study surgery and became board certified in the United States and the United Kingdom.

She was a member of the International Board of Surgeons and a Fellow of the International College of Surgeons. Dr. Farmer continued at Mary Wanless for 35 years, greatly expanding the capacity and the outreach of the hospital. She was a vivacious and dynamic speaker and, when on furloughs in the United States, she spent time talking to church and civic groups soliciting support for her mission work.

She had a rule never to use notes when speaking. They confused her because she could not read her own writing which was, after all, a doctors’ handwriting. She was also keenly aware of fashion vowing that a missionary need not look dowdy or drab. Her beauty and sense of fashion led the young women of Winthrop College to label their youthful Dr. Dunning, Dr. Stunning.

In 1942, a British Civil Servant, Sidney John Farmer, enlisted her help in caring for members of his staff who had escaped to India from Burma. He, too, noticed that she was a stunning woman and they were married on October 23, 1943.

Upon her marriage, the Board of Presbyterian Missions wrongly assumed that Dr. Farmer no longer wished to serve in her missionary capacity, and they discontinued her salary. Typically undeterred, Norma continued her full duties at Mary Wanless throughout a lengthy period of uncertainty, until her support from the Board was finally resumed.

2004 obituary, Farmington, MO

As befits such a remarkable woman, in 2003, the Missouri House of Representatives created Resolution No. 1922 to celebrate Norma’s achievements. I’d encourage you to read it in its entirety but wanted to highlight some phrases from it that I loved:

"..she has done her utmost to better the world by meeting the needs of people one individual at a time"

"studiously applied herself to the academic rigors and practical experiences necessary in order to enter the healing arts as a skilled and
knowledgeable physician"

"an avid reader while her sight was keen and she could find the
time from her busy schedule for one of life's true pleasures"

A detail I left out was that after marrying at 41 years old, Norma inherited a 14-year old step-son, Prof. John N. Farmer. John’s history is extremely interesting too, and can be found here. A touching detail from that piece is that John introduced his parents to each other:

“He had told his Dad that the doctor he had seen at the American hospital in town was a woman and beautiful. His dad checked her out. In 1943 S.J. married Dr. Norma Dunning, the Director of the Presbyterian Mary Wanless Mission Hospital and she became John’s loving and ambitious mother.” 

This has been a very trying time across the U.S. and across the globe. I hope the story of this remarkable ancestor helps fill your heart with happiness and inspiration as it has mine.

Hello, friends! I hope this post finds you safe and well, as you are likely under quarantine or at least practicing ‘social distancing’ at the moment. How are you adjusting? Our family has had to dip into our reserve of patience numerous times this week. We’ve come to find that this reserve is rather small…kind of like the current canned goods selection at our grocery store. You just can’t restock it fast enough!

My three-year old has had the hardest adjustment since her playmates and hands-on preschool activities have no virtual replacement. She has been doing puzzles, watching her favorite show on TV and saying positive things like this:

“The bank is closed, the museum is closed, the park is closed, my school is closed but our house is open!”

“Mommy, today we can say hello to daddy and sissy!”

(taking my face in her hands) “What’s on your forehead?”
“Oh, I have wrinkles.”
“That’s OK, I still love you.”

Today’s picture from the album is from Easter Day 1913. (The holiday fell extremely early that year, on March 23rd). The front page headlines from that date make for some interesting reading. I’ll share a few with you:

GIVE EASTER HATS TO POOR

Philadelphia Women’s Relief Fund Adopts New Charity

A new form of philanthropy was begun here to-day when the Women’s City Relief Fund distributed more than 100 Easter hats to poor women.

A mirror was hung on the stand where the organization provides food for the destitute every week. Poor women tried on hats and glancing into the mirror selected those which suited them best. The relief workers had gathered the hats from all quarters and found that the headgear brought more joy than the usual baskets of food.

Philadelphia, March 22nd, 1913

Hopefully the hats were in addition to the usual baskets of food?

WOMEN JURORS FREE PRISONER

Verdict in Twenty Minutes for Good Looking Man

Ugo Diando, charged with horse stealing, was acquitted at Redwood City to-day by a jury composed of two women and ten men. It was admitted by all present that Diando is a very good looking man.

The foreman of the jury was Mrs. Alma A. Monroe. Mrs. Violet I. Pine of Daly City was the other woman member. Notwithstanding that Diando’s testimony at his preliminary hearing, in which he admitted stealing the horse, was introduced the jury after being cut twenty minutes returned a verdict of not guilty.

All the men originally voted to convict, but they were induced by the women to change their minds.

San Fransisco, March 22, 1913

Sending a big hug to all.

I have reached a page of my grandmother’s album which consists, almost entirely, of cows. This makes sense since they lived on a dairy farm but I’m afraid I don’t have much to add…

John Cieslewitz (not Saslavigde) was a farmer who lived nearby. In the Middletown, NY directory from 1925 he’s listed as living ” far off Scotchtown Rd, RD 3″, which I guess was about as specific as you needed to get at that time. I’m not sure who took to calling him “Germany” but records suggest that he immigrated from Poland.

So how about another poem instead? Not a masterpiece but a bovine ditty to break up your other, more stressful, reading.

 Cows

1,000 pounds of mass
Emitting methane, saying moo
Tongues that grab at stems and grass
Mouths that chew (and chew and chew)

Stomachs turning grass to milk 
All four chambers working hard  
‘Ruminating’ like their ilk
While they lie down in the yard

What is black and white all over
And has panoramic sight
Must not eat sweet moldy clover?
Said “A Holstein?” Yes, you’re right!

You can ride ‘em like a horsie
And then when the day is through
Call “Come Bossie! Bossie! Bossie!” 
For to bring them home to you.

-Martha Gonzalez

Big hug to you all.

Until recently, you may not have given much thought to droplets in the air you’re breathing. Now that the Coronavirus has taken over every facet of your life, it’s likely top of your mind. (I have now received cautionary communications from our school, our pediatrician, my work, my primary care doctor and our church).

Back in 1913, infectious disease was part of life because vaccines either didn’t exist or hadn’t reached the general population yet. Now that we all enjoy looking at disease numbers so much, I thought it might be fun to review a chart from 1913. I just parsed numbers from New York City, where the population in July 1913 (as per this report) stood at 5,198,888.

For reference, fatality rate for Coronavirus currently stands at fewer than 1 per 100 cases.

[table id=1 /]

I should mention that the U.S. Bureau of the Census only began to publish annual reports on mortality starting in 1900. In this age of big data, it may be hard to conceive that there was a time – not so far back – that it was not even collected.

I first looked up all this infections disease information because the album picture I chose for today shows Mr. Wilkinson, milk tester. I assumed the “testing” was for pathogens in the milk. In fact, it’s much more likely that he tested for the quality of the milk for sale (Grade A, Grade B, etc.)

Remember that in the Progressive Era, the thrust was improving things for the general good. It was the Food and Drug Act in particular (passed on June 30, 1906) that allowed the Department of Health to have a say in the production of safe, clean milk. Even still, most people drank raw milk because the pasteurized was often boiled and caused a “cooked milk” taste.

In January 1912, the Board of Health in New York City created three classes of milk: Grade A, Grade B and Grade C. Grades A and B were pasteurized while Grade C was not. In fact, it would not be until 1926 that pasteurization of all milk sold in New York City was strictly enforced.

Consumers paid two cents more for Grade A over Grade B milk. The milk dealers then gave a premium to farmers for the extra cost of producing the better quality milk depending on the bacteria colonies in the milk.

Now, I could tell you about the centrifugal cream separator and the development of the Babcock Test to test for the adulteration of milk but I fear I might lose you. I confess that it didn’t take long in my research to get lost in the science of it.

So here’s a poem instead. It stemmed from the warning that you can’t tell whether surfaces have the COVID-19 on it or not by looking at them. It just seemed like such an apt statement for this day in age. (“Don’t touch!”)

I gave up at the end but I know you as a forgiving bunch. 🙂

 On the Surface

 On the surface 
 We
 Are closer, see

 On FaceTime 
 More 
 connected, sure

 On chatrooms
 Now
 Conversing, how

 On earth
 This
 Non-togetherness

 With links
 It stinks methinks.

-Martha Gonzalez
 

Today is Ash Wednesday for people of Christian faith – a day when we’re asked to think about our mortality and the need to reconcile with God. Big stuff, in other words. Big, upsetting stuff for anyone who generally pushes those kinds of thoughts away.

I did a fine job of ignoring the question of mortality (probably every day except Ash Wednesday) until I started writing this blog. But there’s no getting around it now. If I’m not posting pictures of the deceased, I’m searching through old newspapers to get their bio from an obituary…death has become part of my every day life.

And with that, I’ve necessarily begun to think deeper about what makes a good life. What makes a life that’s worthy? At the end, will any of us be able to say, “right, so it’s all reconciled then.”

In fact, I fretted about this point back in graduate school when I was knee-deep in my thesis and full of doubts. I remember being out to dinner at a cozy restaurant in Buenos Aires with a group of international kids from the program (all in our 20’s at the time).

I can’t even remember how we got into it but I recall talking about the privilege of our experience there and the – maybe – misplaced idealism that our study of public policy would actually make anything better. I remember looking out across the candles on the table and asking, sort of desperately, “do you think I’ll be forgiven?”

And how Constantine – the German boy across from me smiled with sympathy and said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things…”I’m kidding. I don’t remember what he said, just that whatever he said – and the way he smiled at me – relieved my guilt tremendously and made me feel that I would be alright.

Constantine – a very tall guy, incredibly warm and easy-going…I found out that he passed away a year or so, ago, of cancer. ‘We are dust and to dust we shall return’. When I heard the news my mind went right back to that short scene from the restaurant – to the look on his face and the certainty he had. It still brings me peace.

Today’s photo from the album is of Merritt (my grandmother’s father) with Burr Copley. As per a newspaper from July, 1915 “Burr C. Copley, a graduate of the Cornell class of Agriculture of 1913…whose home is at Unadilla, has been teaching at Monticello the past year”.

I suspect they became friends for a short time, either through agriculture or the church or maybe both. Burr would have been 24 in 1913. After a time, he settled in Canton, Mass. with wife Marion. They had Helen May, Burr Copley Jr., James Wesley and John R. Tragically, Burr Jr. died at football practice in October 1937, only a senior in High School. Burr Sr. lived to 87 years old and knew multiple grandchildren and great-grandchildren…no doubt there are great-great-grandchildren by now.

So now I am very excited to share a poem with you that I managed to snap right off a subway train in 2018. (It was placed there by Poetry in Motion, an arts program launched by the MTA together with the Poetry Society of America). I can tell you it was with great self-consciousness that I took this picture, right before the doors closed on me, heading to work.

I can’t think of a better poem for the NYC subway where plenty of captains (or at least majors and colonels) of industry ride around thinking themselves uniquely invincible. I also can’t think of a more appropriate poem for the first day of Lent. Enjoy and a hug to you all.

Happy Valentine’s Day! I never really liked this holiday, to be honest. Love is such a deeply personal thing to me and Valentine’s Day seems so brash. BE MINE. KISS ME. I choose YOU. I always fell into the camp of those who wanted to rebel against the saccharine nature of it.

The holiday comes across much nicer, I think, in this phrase from an old newspaper:

February 14 is Valentine’s Day – a day in which love missives are exchanged between friends and between loved ones. The custom is founded and sustained by a sentiment which is as natural as it is beautiful.

The Brooklyn Citizen, 1913, Feb 09

Love. It’s way too big and complicated a topic for this post so I’ll politely remove love of God, love of neighbor, and romantic love from the discussion. In fact, I’d like to restrict today’s topic to “love of home”, in connection with the photo of the house where my grandmother and father grew up.

Not everyone experiences a “love of home” thinking about the place from which they came. Plenty of people had horrific upbringings or moved too much to feel that there was one established place to call home. Others see it as real estate, pure and simple.

I have the tendency to personify things so loving what is essentially bricks and mortar still makes complete sense to me. Whenever I read Howards End I feel a real sympathy for Mrs. Wilcox who loved her country house (and all its surroundings) so dearly. In the following passage, the narrator explains how Mrs. Wilcox wanted to bequeath the things she loved to someone who would appreciate them:

To them Howards End was a house; they could not know that to her it had been a spirit, for which she sought a spiritual heir…Is it credible that the possessions of the spirit can be bequeathed at all? Has the soul offspring? A wych-elm tree, a vine, a wisp of hay with dew on it—can passion for such things be transmitted where there is no bond of blood?

E.M. Forster, Howards End

In fact, Mrs. Wilcox’s feelings for her estate turned out to originate from E.M. Forster’s deep love for the house in which he grew up, called Rooksnest. “I took it to my heart and hoped…that I would live and die there”, he wrote. Like the character he created in Mrs. Wilcox, Forster understood how a lifetime of gathered sentiment could give life to a house:

Much more than just a house, for Forster, Rooksnest came to represent English country values—a connection to place, a respect for individuality, and a commitment to the contemplative life—that were increasingly threatened by the urbanization and industrialization sweeping Edwardian England.

Penguin Reading Guide for Howards End

Not having lived in my grandmother’s house, I can’t say I have too much of an attachment. Yet when I look at the photograph there’s a twinge of wistfulness. The farm in Howard’s End stood as a symbol of “the economic and social foundation of England, the centre of moral and social stability, of habit and custom”.

The same could be said of farm homes like my grandmother’s, in the U.S. It’s not that life was easier or better then (certainly not for most people) but that it had weight to it missing from the Age of Information. Work, leisure, family and friends weren’t spread over the physical and digital universe but within miles of that one plot of land:

In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole, group in one vision its transitoriness and its eternal youth, connect – connect without bitterness until all men are brothers

E.M. Forster, Howards End

Connect – connect without bitterness. For me that means coming to terms with the fact that – yes – something has been lost. When my parents recently sold the house that I grew up in, my family lost the sights, sounds and smells that had been familiar to us for decades. But in that loss, we’re connected with everyone else because it’s such a universal experience.

No one says this better than Elizabeth Bishop in her poem “One Art”.

So that’s my act of rebellion for this Valentine’s Day. Instead of selfishness (BE MINE, KISS ME) I’m going to think about losing. If I know that everything I love will necessarily be lost, I can focus harder on the act of loving – and connecting – in the present. So sayeth Buddha.

Now here is a love poem for you lovely readers. I had written a version of this ages ago and just realized, digging around frantically, that it must have gotten lost somewhere. Here’s to hoping that *sometimes* what comes after may be an improvement upon what was lost!

 Ode to my Blankie
  
 They say I am too old for you
 That childish things be put away
 But to your yellow threads I cling
 Upon you, my head wants to lay
  
 Your days of tug-of-war are through
 But threadbare cloth does still endear
 I’ll wear you as a veil no more
 But ‘til death promise you my ear
  
 O holey, holey thou art holey
 You whom time cannot replace
 When I sleep it’s you who solely
 leave your mark upon my face 

- Martha Gonzalez