Author Archives: Marcie

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About Marcie

Writer and Editor

Farley’s Music Hall

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Farley's Music Hall was built in 1885.

I love the old dance halls and am always thrilled to discover such places still standing, usually in small towns, where the community still gathers to dance and make music together. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the village dance hall was the place where young people could mingle and where friends and neighbors could relax. Most dance halls at that time were single-story buildings with a wooden floor, benches along the sides, and a small stage at one end for the musicians. These community halls offered entertainment, refreshment, and opportunities to socialize after a hard week of work. In many communities, dance halls were built by ethnic groups, fraternal organizations, or individual social clubs. The dance halls tended to be family friendly, while the roadhouses and taxi-dance halls were often located beyond the jurisdiction of town and tended to draw a wilder crowd.

Inside Farley's Music Hall.

Farley’s Music Hall in Elsah, Illinois, was built by Dr. Farley in 1885 and served as the center of village activity for many years. In addition to dances and musical events, numerous other gatherings were held in the hall, including travelling medicine shows, literary club meetings, church socials, and school plays. In the early part of the twentieth century, the Knights of Pythias bought the hall and added a second floor. After the building was severely damaged in the flood of 1993, Historic Elsah Foundation purchased the hall and began the difficult process of renovation.

Today Farley’s Music Hall once again serves as a gathering place for residents of the village and visitors from around the region. On the calendar for November and December are two community dances, a lecture, and a Christmas hymn sing. The village of Elsah is not a historical museum, although it feels that way; people actually live in the charming stone houses and other nineteenth-century buildings. There is no commerce in the village, since the one restaurant closed, although there are a couple B&Bs–the Green Tree Inn and the Maple Leaf Cottage Inn. Many of the residents of the village are retired; others work at Principia College up on the limestone bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. Some villagers commute to nearby St. Louis, MO, or Alton, IL, for work; others telecommute.

We have had the good fortune of dancing at Farley’s on two separate occasions so far–once in May for a graduation party for a young friend of ours, and this past Saturday, for one of Elsah’s regular community dances. (One of the bonuses of being married to a dance caller is that you get to dance in all kinds of places you might never have found on your own, and you get to dance with people you might otherwise not have met.) The community dances were started about eight years ago by residents of the village to give their children a place to play music and socialize. Both dances were charming. The first time we went to Elsah, I knew I was going to love the place, as soon as we turned off the river road onto the narrow village street and saw the warm glow through the windows and heard the fiddle music through the open door. It felt like walking into a story book, where the dancing was in full swing by the time we arrived.

Last Saturday we went earlier in the day and had dinner at the home of the dance organizers, then walked down the street together to open up the hall for the dance. The hall is intimate enough that the band can play acoustic, so we only needed one speaker and a microphone for the caller. Our hosts had made snacks for the break, which they set up on a table in the small foyer, along with a cooler of water. The chairs were already set up around the perimeter of the hall, so after we got everything ready, we began the somewhat anxious wait for people to show up.

Class members from the Folk School of St. Louis provided the music for the contra dance in Elsah, Illinois.

The band (members of a group music class at the Folk School of St. Louis) began to arrive around 6:30, but the dancers were slow to arrive, and we were beginning to wonder whether the band would outnumber the dancers. Jim, the caller for the evening, began sorting his dance cards into ones we could do with as few as six dancers, squares if we got eight dancers, or “as many as will” if we got enough dancers to fill the hall. Shortly after 7:00, however, our anxieties were relieved, when several students from Principia arrived, and before long the hall was filled with music and dance. It was an altogether satisfactory evening.

Dancers lined up for a contra dance at Farley's Music Hall.

Way to Block That Writing!

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Apparently, I always equated writer’s block with fear of facing a blank page, so I thought I was immune to the malady that afflicts many writers. After all, I have more ideas jotted down in my notebook than I will ever be able to write about, and I generally look forward to the blank page. But the last few days I have encountered real blocks to my writing, which stopped me in my tracks as effectively as a line of stalled cars on the Interstate, with no exit in sight.

The first block was at least somewhat familiar–more a detour than a block, I thought. We had overbooked our weekend, as we often do, so I knew I would have difficulty meeting my challenge to myself of writing every day. But I still thought I could do it, and I believed the extra activities would give me new things to write about, even though the time to write would be severely limited.

The next block was a physical limitation that I had not experienced before to this extent. After a week of cutting and pasting literally hundreds of files at work for a special project we were working on, which is too boring to even talk about, my wrist and index finger became so sore that I could hardly use the keyboard. I tried typing with an ice pack velcroed around my wrist, but that wasn’t very satisfactory.

Next, my built-in mouse on the Netbook I like to write on went haywire. At first, it seemed as though the buttons somehow got switched; then they would hardly work at all. I couldn’t click to open files or browse to my blog or do anything, without extreme aggravation and pain. Eventually I was able to get into the control panel and find out that the buttons were not, in fact, switched. So I got disgusted and went to bed early. The next day the buttons started working again, just for spite.

And now, I’m facing the most difficult block of all–that inner voice that says, in a sneering tone, “Well, well, looks like you might as well give up now. You missed writing for three whole days, so you lose. I knew you couldn’t write every single day!”

But I say to all of these clever blocks, “You’ll have to try harder than that! Get out of my way.  I’m coming through.”

We’re Big in Lupus, Missouri!

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Lupus is a tiny river town located in Moniteau County, Missouri, with a population of 28 or so. The original riverside trading post was named Wolfe’s Point, but when the residents discovered that the name was already taken, they changed it to Lupus, which of course is Latin for wolf. A boomtown in the early 1900s when the railroad came through, with hotels and saw mills and banks and a city hall, the town is now a shadow of its former self. Yet there is a spirit in Lupus that defies reason, especially on a cool November night when the wind is high and the moon is full. Add in the dogs roaming freely down main street and the mighty Missouri River and trains moving past in the dark, and you have a song worth singing at the Lupus General Store.

photo of Lupus General Store at night

Lupus General Store all lit up for a concert, November 11, 2011

To get to Lupus from Columbia, Missouri, you head west on I-70, then take the Wooldrige Overton exit and follow state road 179 south for a ways, then take county road P for another 4 miles or so. Before you cross the railroad tracks and drive straight into the Missouri river, stop. You are in Lupus. The general store and the city hall building will be on your left.

Most of the houses in Lupus are elevated on stilts about 10 feet high to reduce damage from floodwaters. The story is that after the 1993 flood, FEMA offered residents money either to move out of the floodplain or raise their houses up on stilts. Most went with the stilts, which also had the advantage of providing additional storage space below the living areas.

The town is best known for its chili festival each October, which has been going on for thirty-some years. When I first moved to Missouri, I had never heard of the town of Lupus, so I mistakenly assumed that the chili fest was held to raise money to fight the disease. I have since learned that the festival started out as a fundraiser to help pay the electric bill for the city hall and the four street lights in town.

Doug Elly, mayor of Lupus for fifteen years, is credited with bringing musicians to the chili fest. He and Meredith Ludwig also sponsor the concert series in the Lupus General Store, which has brought in hundreds of folk musicians and bluegrass musicians to play for small but enthusiastic audiences over the years. The concert on November 11 by Bill Poss and the Useful Tools was reportedly the eighty-seventh of these concerts. Posters from previous concerts line line the walls and fill a flip book of plastic sleeves on the counter by the old cash register.

The musicians come from all over the world. Bill Poss (vocals and guitar) grew up in Detroit and now lives in Texas; the Useful Tools (Justine Fischer on bass, Kori Heppner on drums, and Matty Simpson on banjo) are from Canada. We once attended a screening at the General Store of a documentary on American roots music that was made by Dutch film makers. The joke among performers at the General Store is expressed in a bumper sticker displayed near the old cash register, “We’re Big in Lupus.”

The cinder-block building was built in 1926 to replace an earlier wooden building. The store is no longer a business, but the building is chock-full of merchandise that never sold and memorabilia from years of river life.

photo of front counter at the old general store in Lupus, Missouri

The old general store is filled with merchandise that never sold, many items still with their original price tags.

We were among the first to arrive, but everything was all set up for the concert, with several electric guitars, a banjo, a bass, and a drum set toward one end of the room next to the wood stove, and rows of couches and old chairs facing the stage. A large tapestry depicting a howling wolf hangs behind the stage. We let ourselves in and charged ourselves $7 for admission, then wandered around looking at the shelves and walls filled with old merchandise, while a small black cat ran under our feet and rubbed up against our legs. The room glowed warmly from the light of candles and lanterns; strings of twinkling white fairy lights and red hot peppers hung from the walls and ceiling. The coffee was percolating in the back room, and the hot water was ready for tea. Shortly before 7:00 Doug Elley showed up with the band members. Doug was carrying a big bowl of potato soup for the break.

interior of the Lupus, Missouri, General Store set up for a concert

Waiting for the concert to start at the Lupus General Store.

By the time the concert started, most chairs were filled with all the usual suspects, including young children, as well as men and women in their eighties. Several local folk musicians were also in the audience, including the legendary Lee Ruth and his amazing beard.

The musicians would undoubtedly be staying long after the concert ended for a song swap and music jam. We weren’t sure what to expect when we saw the drum set on stage (a first for the General Store, as far as I know), but when the band stepped up and began singing, “Hay for Sale,” we knew we were in the right place.

More about the band and the town can be found here:

  • Video of Bill Poss and the Useful Tools singing “Hay for Sale” in Bloomington, Indiana on October 31, 2011
  • Video of spinning fire hoop at the 29th annual chili fest in October 2010
  • Road Essay about Lupus, Missouri, by Dana & Susan Robinson, who performed at Lupus General Store in October 2010:
  • Lupus General Store Blog, including an essay written by a local singer/songwriter who grew up in Lupus.

When I’m Sitting I’m Knitting

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I’ve done it again–started a major project that will take me years to finish. This time I am knitting an afghan for my son and his wife. It was originally going to be a wedding present, but they have already been married for over a year now, and the afghan is only about 25% completed. Fortunately, they are very good natured and don’t seem to care how long it takes me. With luck, they will get it long before their tenth anniversary, at least.

I always like a challenge, and I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again, so I decided to make an Aran sampler afghan. The blocks I have made so far have been everything I hoped for–interesting and challenging, but not so difficult that I get frustrated and give up. The problem with samplers, though, is that by the time you figure out exactly how the pattern goes, it is time to move on to the next one. I am knitting with100% washable wool from Peru, in a brilliant blue yarn that I got at the Yarn Barn in Lawrence, Kansas, one weekend when we were in town for a dance.

There are several knitters who attend the dances in Kansas, and we like to compare projects when we see each other. One woman is making a gorgeous lace shawl. It’s a good way to keep motivated, knowing that people will expect to see progress the next time you show up at a dance. I used to knit while watching TV, but now that I no longer watch television, I mostly knit in the car while criss-crossing the state to various contra dances and square dances.

The pattern I am knitting is from a booklet called The Great American Aran Afghan, which consists of 24 original designs by 24 knitters (20 blocks for the afghan itself and 4 more to make a couple accent pillows). I am currently working on a block by a woman named Judy Sumner, whose square (which she calls kisses and hugs; spiders and bugs) was inspired by a birthday card from her twin grandaughters. I am having a great time knitting this square, making the bobbles that form the body of the spider, and watching the leafy vine emerge along the left-hand side of the square.

Here are the squares I have made so far.

This Aran square designed by Hanna Burns combines two DNA strand-like patterns with the Trinity Sticth to represent the Holy Trinity in Christianity.

Barbara Selesnick designed this square to remind her of the treasures people carry inside lockets and the stories they inspire.

Ann Strong got her inspiration for this square from pomegranates. She used the Seed Wishbone pattern and the Double Texture Cable to illustrate the contrast between the smooth exteriors and the seedy, bumpy insides of the pomegranate.

This tree by Ada Fenick was incredibly fun to knit. It represents the Tree of Life shared by many cultures. The cables were taken from the wedding invitation of a good friend from college.

My Three “Only” Children

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I can’t believe I haven’t written about my children yet. They are without a doubt my favorite topic of conversation and my main claim to fame. I have never been particularly ambitious and still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I always knew I wanted to have children. And I definitely got some good ones. They are extremely intelligent, funny, compassionate individuals. They are also hard-working, independent, moral beings, who hold high standards and care about the common good. Even if they weren’t related to me, I would like and admire these people. Together they have taught me many of the important things I know.

My older son, Matthew, is a captain in the Army and the most serious of the three, but he has a wicked sense of humor and a way of looking at the world that shines a bright light on absurdity and hypocrisy. He enjoys collecting photos of signs that are just “wrong” and sharing them on Facebook. Recently, he asked me, “Am I the only one that sees these things?” The fact that he has maintained any sense of humor at all is rather miraculous, after three deployments to war zones in the past ten years (twice to Iraq and once to Afghanistan). He was in college in New York when the Trade Center towers came down, and he enlisted immediately under a deferred enlistment plan, determined to do something in response. He reported for duty the day after he graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology. Over the years he has taught me much about perseverance and indomitable spirit.

Melissa is a nurse and the mother of a three-year-old son Ian. Technically, Melissa is not my child, but she lived with us for several months when she and Matthew were both thirteen, so I claim her anyway. For years she has called me Aunt Mom (and now her son calls me Aunt Grandma). Her husband thinks that makes us all sound like a bunch of hicks, but I love it. These days, she is doing an amazing job balancing her work as a nurse with raising an energetic three-year-old and maintaining a house. This week she posted on Facebook that the plumber was coming “to save her basement from the poop fountain.” Melissa has taught me that even when life really sucks, you can still maintain your positive outlook and sense of humor. She is one of the most open, generous, and kindhearted people I know.

Isaac, the youngest, is a PhD student in molecular biology, currently spending his second season in Antarctica doing research, but he has never let hard work get in the way of a good time. He makes friends everywhere he goes and has never run short of ideas for fun things to do. Many of the photos I have seen from McMurdo Station in blogs and on Facebook show him playing guitar or dressed up in a fish costume at the Halloween party or standing out in the snow for an Occupy Antarctica photo shoot. Isaac enjoys life and has always just assumed things would go his way. More often than not, they do. When he was in middle school, he once asked if he could have money for a field trip. When I asked how much money and where they were going, he said nonchalantly, “$1000. France.” His wife is meeting him in Sydney, Australia, in December, when he comes off the Ice. From him I have learned that friends are important, and it “never hurts to ask for what you want.”

I am so thankful that these wonderful young people are part of my life. The world is a better place because they are in it.

Plays Well With Others

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I finally did it: bought myself a portable electric keyboard that I can carry with me to jam sessions. I love playing music with friends, but since my main instrument is a piano, not having my own keyboard puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to where I can play. I obviously can’t lug my spinet everywhere I go. Most halls have either removed their pianos or don’t keep them in tune. (The hall in Ashland at one time even had the cover nailed down it was so horribly out of tune.) For a while I thought maybe I could teach myself to play fiddle, which would be a whole lot easier to carry around  than a piano, but as it turns out, the fiddle is HARD (and I already know how to play the piano).

Occasionally, if I’m lucky, one of the other keyboard players will bring their keyboard along and let others play a few tunes. Musial Wolfe is a great one for sharing, but since his wife died, he doesn’t come to the old-time jams or square dances as often as he used to. He is coming up on the first anniversary of her death, and it’s just hard for him to get out sometimes.

Several other piano players I know switched to accordions for jam sessions, but you really only need so many accordions! Besides, I don’t know how to play the “lap piano,” as they call it. The buttons are just confusing, and the whole thing with the bellows makes me feel completely uncoordinated and awkward.

Lately the members of the Two Cents String Band have been coming to my house to play music on Tuesday evenings, which has been great fun.

photo of old-time musicians playing banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and piano in the living room

Photo by Cliff White on his fancy pants new iPhone.

But when the weather turns nice again, they are going to want to go back outside to play on the patio at the Ragtag CinemaCafe/Uprise Bakery. They also play once a month at a local pub, 44 Stone Public House (supposedly named in honor of the combined weight of the owners), and the pub does not have a piano. And tonight a whole bunch of people are heading to Jefferson City for Cliff’s fortieth birthday party, and they are sure to bring instruments along.

The only thing that had held me back from getting a keyboard was the price. I knew I wanted one with weighted keys, which I assumed would cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000, at least. I have played Rolands, which are awesome, but those are out of my price range for now. I am not interested in all the fancy rhythms and built-in sounds and demo loops, but I had resigned myself to having to accept at least some of those in any electronic keyboard.

I already had a small Casio that has all the features that I don’t want and none of the features that I do, but it is decent and I thought maybe it would sound okay for a birthday-party jam. So yesterday during a break from work, I decided to walk a block to Crazy Music and at least buy a keyboard stand and a bench (sort of as a down-payment, a promise to myself that before winter was out, I was going to get a better keyboard).

Of course, once I got there and said what I was looking for, I was shown a Korg keyboard, which had everything I was looking for and at a price I could afford—$450 for the floor model! I tried it out and liked what I heard and liked the way the keys felt. I said I would think about it, but I knew that after work I would be back to pick it up. Now I need to save up for the rolling padded case!

Carrying on the Tradition

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“Tomorrow shall be my dancing day.”

On days when we get to dance, this traditional carol plays in my head, and I feel happy deep inside. This was definitely a dancing weekend. Friday night was our regular contra dance, with one of my favorite bands, River Ridge String Band, and out-of-town callers from Cape Girardeau, John and Kathy Coffman, who called some interesting dances that John had written. They are also beekeepers, so several of the dances had bee themes. We had a good crowd of people, including several newcomers, which is always fun. They seemed to enjoy themselves. After the dance, about a dozen people went to Flatbranch Brewery for socializing.

Saturday night Jim drove north of town to Centralia with a couple members of the Nine Mile Band (another favorite) to play for a community dance at a church. I stayed home and fooled around the house.

Sunday we both attended a children’s dance at Lee Expressive Arts School, which I enjoyed a great deal, partly because it brought back such good memories of when my older son went to school there in first and second grade. In fact, his second-grade teacher was at the school yesterday and asked about him. It is a strange thought that the little boy I can picture so clearly walking beside me on the way to and from school, talking to me about what happened in class that day, getting angry about some injustice on the playground, is now a captain in the Army.

Photo of children's traditional circle dance.

Traditional Circle Dance at Lee School

The school was not a magnet school back then, but it did have a large number of international students. Since the school was in the University district, most families did not have much money, but they did value education and had great ambition for themselves and their children. Many of the parents were studying engineering or medicine at the time and would some day make a lot of money, but in those days, their children were on reduced-price lunches.

Now that the school is dedicated to expressive arts, the halls are filled with amazing works of art. As you walk in the school, there are two large trees made of paper, and near the entrance is a display of amazing storyteller dolls that the children made out of clay and painted.

photo of clay storyteller dolls made by schoolchildren

Storyteller Dolls Created by Students at Lee School

One of the kindergarten teachers started hosting the dances a couple years ago. Since then the physical education teacher has also gotten interested in traditional dance and has taught a few dances to the children during regular PE classes. The dances are usually held three or four times during the school year, on Sunday afternoons and are open to the public. This was the second dance this year, and the dances were geared toward second and third graders this time, though other ages were welcome.

Our friend Krishna, who is just learning to call dances, did a great job selecting the dances and then teaching them to the children and calling them as they danced. Originally she had asked Jim to be her back-up caller, in case she didn’t feel comfortable calling for the whole dance (from 2:00 to 3:30), but she did fine. That left Jim free to play banjo on stage with the band.

Krishna started out with a dance that I thought would be too hard for the children—the Patty-Cake Polka—but they caught on right away. She called about six dances altogether, including some circle formations and some longways sets. One of the longways sets was called The Grumpy March, which was very cute. The children start out standing across from each other in longways sets. Then the caller has them grump across to the other side of the set, as though they are mad at their partners and just had a fight. Then when they get to the other side of the set, they march away from each other, some going up the hall and some going down the hall. Then they turn and come skipping back along the lines, until they see their partners, and do a two-hand swing, smiling and happy to see each other again. Then the dance starts over with grumping across to the other side.

All the dances were a big success, and the children and their teachers and parents had a great time. Krishna also called one play-party game, Can’t Jump Josie, during which the band did not play; she thought it would be good for the children to have a dance that they could do on their own, with just their voices for music, when they get home with their friends.

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than making music and singing and dancing with children.

Donating to Charity or Who Should Get My $10 This Month?

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My 85-year-old aunt has recently started talking about her “legacy” and thinking hard about what she wants to leave behind when she dies. She has no living children, and her husband died suddenly years ago. She was not a career woman; rather, she devoted her time and energy to her husband’s career and to the arts. She taught college-level courses in history or English or art from time to time. She is a talented artist. She is extremely well read and has a long memory for people and events. She prefers reading nonfiction, especially lengthy biographies and books about history and politics.

She talks about how her memory is at times a burden, knowing that she is the only one who remembers certain events and feeling responsible for getting things right. Lately people have been trying to pick her brain about the history of the college where her husband taught for over fifty years. Mostly she doesn’t volunteer information that might not be 100% accurate, not wanting her potentially faulty memories to end up in the official records. She has lived frugally over the years and managed her money well, so now she is in the enviable position of being able to support causes she believes in and to think about ways her influence can live on after she dies.

I had never thought about a legacy in quite the same terms, but my aunt has been a true inspiration for me. Not only is she thinking about which organizations should receive her property, but she is thinking about what her gift will represent for future generations and where it can do the most good. Apparently, she is not alone. In 2009, individuals donated $227 billion to charitable organizations.

I was surprised to see how small the percentage of donations by corporations compared with individuals.

On a much, much smaller scale, I go through similar thought processes every time I receive a request for money from a charitable organization. With so many worthy causes out there, where would my small donations do the most good? Should I divide what I can afford to donate and send $5 or $10 to several organizations I care about or send one slightly bigger donation to one organization? Should I use the unsolicited address labels and greeting cards and calenders they send, even if I don’t send any money in return? How can I be sure that my donation won’t just go to print more address labels and mail more requests to other people to donate money? If I agree to send them money, will they stop wasting so much paper on mailings?

Knowing I can’t send money to every worthy cause, how do I choose which ones to support? Every day I get some new plea for help, with glossy photos of people or animals who need my support and sad stories of what they are up against. In case I’m not convinced by their need, I am offered gifts of tote bags, water bottles, cute stuffed animals, note cards, umbrellas, magazines, gardener’s totes, and other enticements to give. Some days I get overwhelmed by all the need in the world and wonder how my limited donations can possibly help. Other days I decide I have to at least try, even if that means I only send $10 or $20 to one or more organizations.

Then begins the hard part, choosing between worthy causes:

  • Should I help the children and families in Africa whose water sources have dried up and crops are shriveled?
  • Or should I donate to the local food bank and help feed children in my own community?
  • Should I continue to send money every month to Child Fund for my sponsored child, Patrick, even though he is now 19 years old? Should I ask to transfer my sponsorship to a different child?
  • Or should I donate to the Rainbow House, which provides emergency shelter for abused children in my town?
  • What about sending money to the Land Institute, which is conducting research into the daunting problem of how the world will feed itself in the foreseeable future?
  • Or maybe I should donate to the local Center for Urban Agriculture, which is working to educate the public on production methods and support the local foodshed.
  • Should I “adopt” an endangered animal from the World Wildlife Fund in support of their conservation efforts. If so, which region of the world and which animal do I care most about? Should I adopt a fox or sea otter or lynx in the Arctic, or a meerkat in Namibia, or frogs in the Amazon, or Monarch butterflies in the Chichuahuan desert, or tigers anywhere?
  • Should I join the Sierra Club or the Audubon Society or the Nature Conservancy or the Jane Goodall Institute?
  • Perhaps it would be better to donate to one of the groups that fights politicians and corporations that pollute the environment and threaten species’ habitat. But would that be the Environmental Defense Fund or the Natural Resources Defense Council or Earth Justice? How do these organizations differ, if at all?
  • Along that line, is it acceptable to sign the petitions to the Secretary of State or to members of Congress about various issues without enclosing a donation?
  • Should I continue my automatic donations each month to MOPIRG‘s efforts to stand up to powerful interests?
  • Maybe it would be better to donate to organizations that fight for human rights, such as Amnesty International or Southern Poverty Law Center?
  • Should I send money to the national democratic party and/or to individual politicians running in races against Tea Partiers?
  • Or would it be better to support MoveOn.org or other progressive groups?
  • What about Toys for Tots? Does a Christmas present make up for not having enough to eat the rest of the year?
  • Should I send money to the Smile Train to repair a child’s cleft palate?
  • How about Heiffer International, which provides families in need with an opportunity to support and feed themselves.
  • Maybe I should make a donation to Women for Women or some other organization that helps women survivors of war, or to the microfinance organization Finca, which provides Village Banking loans to poor working women.
  • What about Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health, an international health organization?
  • Or I could give to Humane Farming Association, which strives to protect farm animals, or the local Humane Society, which provides a safe a caring environment to animals that have been abused or neglected.
  • Maybe I should instead donate to the local Arts Council or Ragtag Cinemacafe or the University Museum of Art and Archaeology or other groups in support of the arts.
  • Education has been an important part of my life. Perhaps I should answer those phone calls from the alumni associations that want my money.
  • Maybe I should donate to one or both of my local public radio stations or to Free Press.net, whose mission is to reform media and transform democracy.
  • I could donate to the Lloyd Shaw Foundation or Country Dance and Song Society, which promote traditional dance and music.
  • I should find out where the money I have taken out of my check each month for United Way actually goes.
  • I wonder which child will be receiving books every month from birth to kindergarten as part of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library that I donated to?

And these are just the requests that have arrived in my mailbox this month. There are many, many other organizations worth supporting and many causes worth fighting for. This doesn’t even count other needs that arise throughout the year, such as the campaigns to raise money for the tornado victims in Joplin, Missouri, this spring, or the victims of earthquakes and tsunamis and flooding and wildfires and wars that occur from time to time worldwide.

According to the American Institute of Philanthropy, there are nearly 1.9 million nonprofit organizations, and the competition for funds has become intense. No wonder I feel overwhelmed. But maybe I can at least use their ratings and tips for giving to help me decide where to send my small donations this month.

Time to Make Plans for the Holidays

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I’m thinking about the holidays again and wondering what we should do for Christmas this year (where to go and what to buy for my family). It might be simpler if we had at least some well-established traditions, but it seems that every year we do something different. Some years we stay home and just take off work Christmas day and New Year’s day, saving our vacation days for later. Some years we travel to visit family out of state. Some years we go to Christmas dinner at a friend’s house in town. Some years we dance all week at Christmas Country Dance School in Berea, Kentucky. Depending on what we decide to do each year, we might put up a tree and lights, or we might not.

My family is so spread out that we have a difficult time getting everyone together—me in Missouri, mom in Kentucky, dad in South Carolina, brother in Florida, niece in Pennsylvania, grandchildren in Colorado, one son in Georgia, and another son in Antarctica (until he returns home to Oregon). The last time we all managed to coordinate our schedules and meet at my mother’s house for Christmas was 2008. Even then, two of the grandchildren couldn’t make it because they were with their father. We have never all made it to my father’s place at the same time.

Time to put our heads together and come up with some plans for Christmas.

We also lack solid traditions concerning gift giving. Our family enjoys exchanging gifts, but we don’t like to shop, and we worry about the commercialism and waste that are rampant this time of year. We tend to be fiscally conservative, and we don’t need a lot of stuff to make us happy. Consequently, the gift exchange can be rather random. You never know what you might get (or what you might end up giving). But you can make some reasonable guesses. Books are a favorite, as are calendars, and hand-made journals. Consumable items (fancy teas or fair-trade coffees or other food items) are common. Anything recyclable or environmentally friendly. Often we give donations to favorite charities in each other’s names. We sometimes make things for each other or re-gift family heirlooms or valued objects. We buy from local authors and get them to sign personalized copies for each other. We purchase hand-crafted jewelry or pottery or fiber from local artisans.

You will almost certainly never get trendy new appliances or electronics from any of us. Our family’s gifts will never make the “top ten” list of hot new items. If you want a Kindle or a Wii or an iGrill or an iPad or an Angry Bird, you’ll have to buy it yourself, not necessarily because we disapprove of such gifts but because we prefer to give surprises. Of course, not everyone enjoys receiving surprises. They prefer to know exactly what they are getting. I’m thinking of my older son, who once asked why we spend money on things that others might not even like. Why not skip the whole gift-giving thing, or just give everyone permission to buy ourselves what we really want? Interesting point. We do occasionally give gift cards, especially to grandchildren, or in years when we are completely overwhelmed and incapable of coming up with a more thoughtful gift.

My ideal presents are based on memories of Christmas as a child. We did not have a lot of money, but we had more than some people, and my parents did what they could to make Christmas special. The best gifts were both beautiful and useful. I don’t remember getting a lot of toys, although I probably did. I do remember getting a new doll every year and some kind of game or toy that I had never seen before, that was a surprise to me, one I hadn’t asked for but was delighted to have. I also remember getting gifts such as pajamas or house shoes or a new outfit that, despite their practical nature, were special in some way, if only because they were not hand-me-downs or home-made, like many of our everyday clothes. Then after the excitement of opening presents and stockings had passed, the gifts that I returned to, the ones that lasted, were the books or the paint-by-number sets or the craft items.

The year I got a Chatty Cathy doll and my brother got a Caspar doll for Christmas

In 2008, the year we all decided to meet at mom’s (the first Christmas after her stroke), we did actually skip the traditional gift-giving portion of the Christmas celebration. Since most of us had to spend quite a lot on travel, and since it had been a stressful year in other ways, we decided to “cancel Christmas,” as mom put it, and just focus on being together as a family. Although it felt strange at first, it did take a lot of pressure off, during a hectic time of year. However, since we couldn’t completely let go of the idea of buying presents for each other, we compromised by drawing names and setting a limit of $20 on each gift. (Of course, some people are more fun to buy for than others.)

We also did a white elephant gift exchange, which confused some people but turned out to be a lot of fun. The hot item was a roll of aluminum foil, which my younger son’s girlfriend (now wife) quickly and miraculously formed into a crown, a sceptor, and a sword, impressing us all with her creativity and spirit of fun. My mom said, “Good thing Sandra got the aluminum foil and not me. I would have just cooked with it.”

All I want for Christmas is a roll of aluminum foil.

Top Ten Reasons to Contra Dance

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  1. It’s good aerobic exercise.
  2. The live music lifts your spirits.
  3. People look you directly in the eye and smile.
  4. You get to wear twirly skirts (yes, men too, if they choose).
  5. You don’t have to come with a partner.
  6. Newcomers are always welcome.
  7. The two parts of each dance align perfectly with the two parts of each tune.
  8. You get to spin around until you’re dizzy, like when you were a kid.
  9. You might meet your future spouse (I did).
  10. Even if you arrive feeling tired and run down at the end of a long week, you feel better after the first dance.

What do you think? What do you enjoy most about contra dancing?