Dan and Joel's School

Here are the inscriptions over the doors at Dan and Joel's elementary school. You can click on them to make them bigger. The north door says
"Education is Paramount to Good Citizenship"
and the south door says
"An Education is the Birthright of Every Child".

Learning new things (becoming educated) is fun and also important. Sometimes you need to work hard to learn them. The north door gives a good reason to get an education. You need to learn a lot in order to make good decisions. This is true if you are a child who will one day vote for the president and is also true for the president him or herself. To become a good citizen you need to get an education.

The south door says that every child has the right to get an education. No matter who your parents are, what your race or your religion, how much money you have, or whether you are a girl or a boy, you have the right to go to school.

Dan and Joel's train

When Dan and Joel were little boys, they had a little train with tracks. It is still in Grandma and Grandpa's house. Theo played with it when he was here visiting and he and Tessa and Delia will be able to play with it again when they come to visit me and Grandpa. I put it together today and here are some pictures.

A funny statue in Columbia Missouri

On our way home, we spent a night in Columbia, MO. We took a little walk downtown and saw this statue. We thought it was very good. It complements the statue of the fish on a bicycle that we saw the next day in University City.

Summer 2007

Here are a few pictures from our summer with the grandchildren.

Where I grew up--pictures

This week we visited University City and I took these pictures. The first one is a picture of the pond in Lewis Park, just up the street from our house. The statue wasn't there when I was little. Sometimes Arny and other neighborhood children would fish in the pond. In the winter we would sometimes ice-skate there. The statue is called "Fish on a Bicycle".
The other pictures are of the house I lived in. You can see the front porch very well. The grass and landscaping are nicer than when I lived there. But the house looks almost the same. It is in a very beautiful neighborhood. We were lucky to take a walk there on a pleasant summer day--usually St. Louis is very hot in summer.

Second Grade Story

I hated second grade. My teacher, Miss Pemberton, was very unpleasant. I don't think teachers are allowed to be that unpleasant any more. I think they would lose their jobs. She didn't like children, or at least that's the way it seemed to me. She scared me so much that I got a stomach ache on many days and had to go to the nurse's office or go home from school.
One time she went into the principal's office and listened to the class on the public address system. When she thought we were being too noisy, she yelled at us through the microphone! We were very surprised and very scared.
Another time she threatened to keep me after school unless I learned how to subtract with borrowing or something like that. I was trying very hard and didn't understand what I was doing. But--surprise--when I was very afraid, I actually learned how to do it and didn't have to stay after school.
Here is the meanest thing Miss Pemberton did:
A girl in my class named wet her pants in school. Most second graders don't do that, but she must have had a problem (or been scared of Miss Pemberton). Miss Pemberton told her "If you do that one more time I'm going to throw you out of the window onto the top of the Castlereach Hotel". I don't think she did it again. Above is a picture of the Castlereach that I took this week--it is still standing across from the school and there aren't any little girls on top.

Old Friends and New

Here are pictures of Grandma and Grandpa with their old friends David and Charlotte, and pictures of Charlotte with the babies. I will post more pictures and stories from our summer vacation later.