Welcome To My Website!
Grab a cup of coffee and join me for a chat. We can get caught up on old times or share a favorite story or memory. Social media has descended upon us with a vengeance and the pandemic has ended our coffees together. Topics of interest we may have in common are being a parent or grandparent, teaching and schools, senior living, writing poetry, Amana, Iowa, C.H. Wendel and Letter Press printing.
Over the last almost 50 years as an educator, I taught at Weeks Junior High, was an administrator at Brody Junior High, Des Moines Technical High School., Central Campus and Adult Education. I taught for nearly 10 years for various colleges and universities including Drake, William Penn, and Des Moines Area Community College.
If you are a friend, colleague, classmate, letterpress printer or one of my thousands of students, I am sure we will have lots to chat about. I am retired from traditional teaching but still have lots to share and the urge to keep teaching and learning. I want to learn about you and what you have been doing since we last were together.
I have been doing quite a bit of creative writing and would like to share with you some of my poetry and future publications. I am working on the story of my life with Chuck Wendel and serving as his caretaker for most of our time together after his stroke. I have looked back at all those unfinished stories and creations of my past and am working on several you might like to see. Being alone now gives me time to learn more about new technology and use it to reach out to former students and friends.
I am glad we found each other again.
Parenting
1-800-CALL MOM
1-800 CALL MOM
Show me a working mother who has never had a frantic phone call from a child when she is at work, and you will show me a very lucky woman. There have been several
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Kitchen Table Poetry
Kitchen Table 2021
At The Kitchen Table Again
The years have passed, so quick they fly.
Some I loved have said goodbye..
Alone I sit; no longer cry
Because of my sweet memories.
If poem or random thought descends,
I use my time to now attend
The call of
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Teachers and Teaching
Why I Teach
Chapter One: I never planned to be a teacher.
A summary of my life story is well captured in this quote by John Lennon: Life is what happenswhen you are busy making other plans.
I was born in
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Coffee Chats
For Caregivers
When the One You Cared for Dies
Its has been nearly three years since my spouse. Chuck Wendel died. We had only a year of our 9-year marriage before his second stroke made him basically a quadriplegic.
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The Good Ole Days
On Behalf of All Seniors-My Plastic Rant with Apologies to Lewis Black
Our fingers are not as agile, and our strength is not so hot. But as time passes there no stopping this process of wrapping absolutely everything in PLASTIC. Not only that, those cute little, theft- free packages
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Just for Laughs
Just For Laugh:Life Alert 2.0
New Post: Laughter the Best Medicine
The “lifeline” saga continues. If you read my first post in the category, you learned the story of my false alarm on my “fall protection” device. While at the time, as it is
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Coming Publications
Amana Days
Amana Days
I have continued to think and rethink how to tell the story of my life with Chuck Wendel. He was a remarkable man, and though he became severely disabled less than a year after we
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Letter Press
My Love Affair With Letter Press
My Love Affair with Letter Press and Chuck Wendel
Chuck has been gone for nearly two years and as time passes it becomes easier to recall and write about our time together. As I try to write
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