What a great day of entertainment I had yesterday. I spent the day working with other people involved in Habitat for Humanity. We didn’t get quite to the stage of “raising the roof,” but we sure had a lot of fun despite the cool, rain-threatening weather. After we had finished signing all kinds of waivers dealing with the legal questions, we squished our way, very cautiously, up the muddy, clay-slimy path to the beginning of a house that is destined to be occupied by a single mother with ...

My mother taught her large family of ten offspring by her example more than by specific instructions. She may not have known all the finer points of what it meant to be a Christian, but she obviously looked beyond her own abilities to raise her family responsibly. I will always remember her as a woman of prayer. She was very conscious of God’s presence in her heart. To me she reflected calmness, a freedom, and a peace that came from her trust in God’s goodness. I can still remember the d...

Soon after we passed the little village of Wild Rice, ND, Father pointed out St. Benedict’s Catholic Boarding School and the adjacent church. I gasped as I saw the large gloomy, gray buildings surrounded by a high wire enclosure. My heart jumped to my throat at the thought of being fenced in this strange place. My disconcerted mind began to whirl with harsh images of doom and gloom. Then I had a revelation. I knew better than that! Through many summers I had enjoyed my classes with the...

After a long night filled with jumbled dreams of home, my mother trying to scold me in strange French terms, meals made up of mysterious ingredients, being exposed naked before a roomful of taunting boys and nuns threatening to sent me home, I awoke to the gonging of an unfamiliar bell. Sister Agnes, who slept in a tiny room at the end of the dorm, emerged from it ,fully dressed. She called out, “Blessed be God for ever.” All the girls responded, “Let us arise to do His Holy Will.” I thought ...

Usually, I worked in the kitchen with two awe-inspiring, very French nuns, Sister Marcella and Sister Martina. What was so marvelous about Sister Marcella? Word had it, that at one time, Sister Marcella had seen a real ghost. Whenever I was around her, I wanted to ask her about that grapevine gossip, but I never got the nerve. She was always very quiet, hard working, a heavily built, muscular woman. She did the outside work, kept the furnace going, planted and cared for the gardens and milked...

As the years went on, my older brothers and sisters left home, one by one, to earn a living. Finally there were left only the five youngest. I was second youngest. Every summer from the age of ten, I earned a little money by hiring out to baby-sit or help some farm family. I helped cook, clean the house, wash the cream separator, feed the calves, weed the garden, iron clothes and do anything else I was asked to do. I stayed with the family during the week, earning a high wage of one dolla...

As the first days at boarding school rolled by, I began to adjust. Life was different, very different than the life I had lived at my home. True, my teachers were very European in their ideas of discipline, food, work, values and spirituality, but they were gentle people, not lost in a world of mystic abstraction. They were nothing like some much later perverts who would bring scandal to the Church because they entrusted the supervision of the lives of young people to deeply troubled cleric...

The need for an unrestricted contact with my teenaged beau was prompted not because we had planned to write love letters steaming with lewd desires, (We wouldn’t have even know how to write such letters) but simply from aspiring for freedom of expression without the nuns nitpicking our every word. Even as I began to plot my rebellion, following the Katzenjammer paradigm, nostalgic thoughts of home and hearth suspended my attempts to form a clear strategy. This time my memories didn...

Just a short note to tell those interested that my SO and I are on a trip hither and yon, visiting relatives, sight seeing and loving the wonderful scenes along the way. We have such a beautiful country. Heading for TX to see if we can catch a glimpse of greywar before heading back to MN. Take care all and thanks for your interest. I will continue my saga around mid-Sept.

In the summer of ‘44, I went to help my oldest sister Aggie who lived in Minneapolis. I was thrilled to be going to the big city and to be with my sister whom I barely knew. During my stay with my sister in Minneapolis, my horizons widened just a bit. I met new people and took in some activities that I would not have experienced in Verona. Aggie’s sons were 3 1/2 and 1 1/2 years old. Harley, her husband, was off to war. Aggie had to work to make ends met. I had lots of experience baby-sit...

My life started during a difficult period in America history in 1929. Since I was born right at this time in history, I was known as a "Depression Baby" in my family. Maybe this title came from the name of the era in which I was born, but there may have been other reasons. Was my mother happy with my birth? I was her ninth child. Does this fact say it all? No, added to this sad state of affairs, another emotional blow came to Mom and her family. Her mother, Elizabeth Mary Connell No...

I vacillated but then an event helped me to make up my mind to go back to boarding school rather than stay at home. Mrs. Lux from our parish decided she would send two of her oldest to boarding school. She told my mother that I was welcome to ride with them when they took their daughter, Almira and their son, Richard, to enroll at St. Benedict School. Almira was going to be a sophomore like I was and Richard was entering his junior year. They told mother that they would bring me home wit...

All points bulletin: Where is Greywar? He does not answer his e-mail. His phone is on the blink the last I heard. I am suffering from withdrawal. Help!

Today I received word that a dear friend of the family has gone to his reward. Stan Gallus and his wife, Lorraine, were long standing friends of the new family that my son and I gained when I remarried three years after the death of my first husband. My thoughts are with Stan’s family today as I plan to attend his funeral on Friday in St. Cloud. There are so many good memories of the good times we had together when we all lived in the St. Cloud area. Stan and his wife lived on the out...

There are many great memories from those days spent in Oakes. The people were so great. They always supported the teachers in dealing with the children. To this day I still have many of those students who keep in touch with me on a regular basis. Of the many good people I remember, one little fellow, Billy, holds a spot in my heart.. He was small for his age but he had a huge heart and brain. He absorbed learning like a super dried-up sponge. I remember he volunteered to memorize a very lo...