Backpacks for a new school year
Book stores top my list of pleasant stores to visit. Office supply stores come in second. Yesterday I stopped into Office Depot to buy a medium spiral notebook, the size that fits in my purse. A helpful young man directed me to Aisle 13 where I found a 3-pack with red, blue, and black covers. Of course, I couldn’t check out yet. What if I’d forgotten something? Better to refresh my mind. So, I strolled other aisles, as I’m prone to do. Good thing. I soon recalled I hadn’t yet picked up my donations for Project 1649, Rock County’s organization that helps homeless youths. I kept roaming but with a new purpose. I wandered, analyzing, choosing. Backpacks, pens, pencils, highlighters.
From an early age I’ve loved school and office supplies. I guess it’s how I roll. In first grade I had a box of Jumbo Crayons. In those days, the eight colors came in a heavy, flat cardboard box with a lift-off lid. I recall placing the colors in a special order. Purple and orange were always in the center. They were the royalty, the king and queen. Brown and green were on each side, the courtiers. And on. Not sure why I did this, except for my enchantment with stories my mom read from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. As I arranged the vibrant colors, I’d think of the stories. A daydreamer.
Vintage ad for Nifty Notebook, 1963
The appearance of the Nifty Notebook in about 5th grade awed me. It had a such a cool, sleek look with it’s two top holes, and magnetic pencil box. A vintage ad from Newspapers.com shows it on sale for $.98 with filler paper at $.69. It was a bit pricey for a large family in the early 1960’s. I knew if I wanted such a cool notebook, I’d have to buy it myself with earned money. And I did. I saved and bought a lovely green version. Although I only used it for a year or so, I held on to it for ages, buried in my bottom dresser drawer, then in a box. Memories.
August is the month to hunt for and buy school supplies. Shopping for them, or even just strolling through the stores brings back the excitement of Back-to-School. Backpacks, three-ring binders with fresh packages of notebook paper, colorful pocket folders, pencils and pens, erasers, rulers, scissors, index cards, composition books. And who can forget the fragrant smell of a new box of crayons?
I recall shopping with my sons for their supplies when they were young. It was a fun time, bursting with anticipation for a new school year, a year to be filled with learning and creativity. Using their brand-new supplies, they learned printing, handwriting and telling stories. They painted and colored. They wrote spelling words and numbers. They made images from their growing minds.
I’ve been a student, a mom, a secretary, and a writer. In the wonder and joy of each profession I’ve needed these supplies. They’re the tools used to communicate and to create. Of course, I haven’t touched on the technology that first came in my sons’ middle years. The wonder of that is for a different post.
I smell sultry summer roses then, in a blink, I bask in the golden glory of autumn. I feel the heavy frost of winter approach. One season is scarcely born before nature grows pregnant with the next.
Droplets gather and fall. The acorns are plentiful this year, more than any other since we first planted the tree some 16 years ago. I don’t know if it’s because of the oak’s age, because it’s been a favorable summer, or if the acorn abundance is simply a harbinger of a tough winter ahead.
I want my stories to be bound into books, to be read and enjoyed. I believe I have it in me to succeed. Yet, like an actor who fears the stage, just when I’m close I step away. Is it fear? Fear of the bogeymen that hide in the forest of publishing? Am I afraid of the doorway I must enter?
My siblings and their families all live there and there my mother rests eternally on a hillside overlooking the town. I’ll visit her, of course, to whisper a prayer, and to place blue flowers on her grave. More than anything, to remember.
made there, and on the Yahoo! loops. At the annual conference, we listen to speakers, and pitch our books to agents and editors. And, as with family, we grow hoarse with late night talks about our writing, our stories, our lives.
This picture is a precious gift from one of them. She is the mother of my father’s father’s father – my great-great grandmother.
I attended a fascinating workshop given by 
not quite so far back as when this photo was taken, I signed up for a typing course. Not because I wanted to go into business but because, even then, I aspired to become a writer. Naive though I was, I knew writers had progressed beyond the quills of Jane Austen’s time. If I wanted to write, I knew I must learn to type. My typing teacher, Mr. P., taught me the needed skills to produce neat term papers, skills that would later help pay my bills.
well beyond a science-fiction writer’s imaginings. In less than a generation, we traveled from dial-up modems to WiFi. Now, in seconds, we fling our thoughts around the world.
English and history were always my passion. In Algebra, I wrote pages of poetry (still amazed I passed). Yet, somehow, I’ve set up and maintain three blogs. I buy and sell on e-Bay, am Linked-In, and visit YouTube. I have friends who use FaceBook and MySpace, and others who Twitter (though not me…not yet…tweet).
She had shot it a year or so earlier, most at a grandson’s birthday party. The last frames were from her granddaughter’s wedding. They were all priceless Kodak© moments, made doubly so by the circumstances of their discovery.
a volunteer from the American Cancer Society delivered bunches of daffodils for their annual fundraiser – 
His move has spurred a wave of spring de-cluttering in our house. He’s lived away since college but, like many, left rooms filled with remnants of his youth. We’ve been cleaning, sorting, making way for other remnants he’s accumulated and has now hauled home from his nearby apartment. Things he wants shipped once he’s established, or stored until…whenever. Surprisingly, it’s all given me a new energy. Energy to clean.
Stringing Beads 