Jacqueline Jackson

Nellie Kedzie Jones My dad occasionally used to sing  five notes with the words “Nellie Kedzie  Jones” I never asked about it but in recent  years I’ve remembered those notes and  wondered what was the name, and why.  Just now I’ve found a condolence letter to  Grandma on the death of Grandpa from – guess […]

I spent a college summer as a counselor at a nearby camp – the director said I could bring my goat who proved very popular with the campers. We couldn’t supervise her though when we were all in the mess hall; she bleated plaintively outside awaiting us.  One visitors’ day I hurried out to find an […]

Punishment On the dock in the little lake in Wisconsin where we went as kids   we discovered if we took a small  scrape off a wet bar of soap, rolled it  into a ball about the size of a BB and  dropped it in the water a little fish swimming under the dock quickly  […]

I once spotted Carl Sagan’s son: he’d just left the country home of mutual friends in Vermont whom I was coming to see; it was moonlit: he’d left his car to wander in a field. I was thrilled – I thought he was out looking at the stars, this grown kid of that famous heaven-watching […]

When we lived in Kent Gillian was a small girl: we had a visit from a distant professor friend who said to Jilly, “Would you like to hear a secret?” She climbed up into his lap, her face glowing with anticipation – who doesn’t love a shared secret? He whispered in her ear, “You are […]

Snow Spell Years ago, my kids and I emerged from our evening swim to discover an April snowstorm coming down in huge fat wet flakes. I stood under a lamppost to see the snow better; and found I wasn’t aware of the ground or anything around me. I underwent an eerie sensation; the flakes were […]

In early days a milk route man would help milk, take a route out, go to the milkhouse on the farm – put in a full day’s work: pitch hay, detassel corn, saw wood, spud potatoes. My dad hired Seventh Day Adventists who would work on Sunday without complaint. One reminisces: “As I think back, […]

Idle Thoughts on Endless Things I don’t know who wrote this; maybe I did? “An eternity precedes me that goes backwards  in time FOREVER. During all that time I didn’t know anything about anything nor miss my non-being. Now there’s a brief span of “me” then  time will go on forever, for time is limitless […]

Farmer poem (This is from a 1956 letter from my retired U of Michigan writing professor and small farm owner, Roy Cowden, who taught me so much of what I know about writing and living.) I shall never go through another  lambing season without living on the place. I drove back and forth twice a […]

I grew up on a farm in Turtle Township Often we played with kids downtown on the Beloit College campus. One day during hide-and-seek I wandered to a seldom traveled bluff beyond the observatory overlooking Rock River noticed the grass made a large low mound saw the mound had grassy mound feet, a head, a […]