J&M's Newsletter - 12/2008 Volume 22.1

Florida Marcia visited her sisters and Mum in January. Lest you think this was a relaxing vacation, Marcia spent a lot of time cleaning Mum's cupboards and refrigerator. Some time was allocated to cards and Scrabble, although Marcia had all vowels too often.

Mum didn't feel up to visiting WI, so Marcia flew down again for Thanksgiving. This inspired Dennis to do the same. Charlene always visits then, and Ken had moved there, so all the siblings were there except Bob. Phyllis' daughter Becky also came. This was fortunate because Phyllis was sick on Thanksgiving, so Becky and Marcia did the cooking. Dennis learned how to make cranberry sauce, plus peeled the apples for pie after Marcia yelled at her siblings for not helping.

Colsmiths become Power Couple In March Jim applied for and was selected to serve on the Raymond Planning Commission. One week later Marcia was elected to the board of her alma mater, Union Grove High School. After 9 meetings in the first month (okay, one of them was a hike) Jim got his first pay check in 8 years, $61. Marcia has one meeting a month normally, and gets paid more than Jim, plus they feed her a lot.

This year Marcia had a larger amount of campaign contributions and volunteers. Even Beth, Lisa, and Erich went door to door. Many teachers, including her HS history/government teacher, joined in. Note that almost immediately upon Marcia taking office the hotly debated teachers' 2007-09 contract was finally settled.

Marcia called every house in Raymond in the online phone book. Raymond voters alone got her in despite being less than a third of the district population. Marcia had 1100 votes to the 900 the long time president of the board got. The guy she knocked off the board only got 400 votes. The board promptly hired him as a consultant, which was annoying and seemed crooked. In a jubilant moment Marcia rashly told the reporter on election night that she had “kicked their butts.” The reporter put that in the paper two months in a row, just to be sure the board would be mad at her about it.

Girl Scouts Marcia became a troop leader in Feb. She has low income girls in Racine who love to go places, do crafts, use computers, and eat snacks. We had a day in the country at our house, with a nature scavenger hunt, bonfire, and cooking in the fire (hot dogs and Smores). The attendees “really enjoyed the field trip.” So remember, if you are low on money, our house is now a vacation destination. Everyone we know should plan to buy Girl Scout cookies soon.

Wood stove We continue to spend a lot of time finding, hauling, cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood. An older lady named Mary (an aunt to Marcia's old friend Kathy) who lives less than two miles away now calls us whenever a tree falls over in her yard. The most recent time the tree actually fell on her house, so she was grateful that we removed it.

Snow We had the second most snow every recorded in the area last winter. We got very tired of shoveling. Putting Marcia's campaign signs up was hard because there were huge snowbanks and frozen ground.

Rain In June it rained almost continuously for 3 days. A raging river developed in our yard. Jim the Planning Commissioner drove around town to check out the flooding. You know it is bad when you turn on the TV and there is your street, showing some idiot being rescued by divers after they drove their mini-van into 4 feet of water. None of the through roads went through in the whole township, they all had flooded sections.

Jim Injures Himself Jim is often hurting his back (he is OLD now) and suffering from terrible allergies.

Summerfest We attended Summerfest together only 5 days this year, mainly because we both came down with some long lingering flu-like illness. Marcia went one evening by herself to see Zappa plays Zappa. The best groups this year were Three Dog Night, the BoDeans, CCR (R=Revisited), and Blondie.

Gardening We had a very good crop of tomatoes again, and a huge crop of eggplants from just 3 plants in our largest raised lasagna (sheet compost) bed. There was a fourth control plant grown in ordinary soil and it had one small eggplant only. We ate a lot of what we call eggplant schnitzel this summer, very delicious.

We measured (via 5 gal. buckets) how much compost we made this year. It was over 200 gallons. We had “extra compost” (almost unheard of) so filled a small plastic pool with it. Of course as things came along that needed planting, in they went. From just one potato sprouting in the basement that we took pity on we got 7 gigantic potatoes, 3 medium ones, and a few dozen small ones (observe the quarters for relative size). We are planning to grow heirloom potatoes in compost next year.

Canning   We found out that pickled asparagus sells for $15/quart at the grocery store. Jim now feels slightly guilty when he eats $3 worth of asparagus as a snack. We also canned a lot of organic tomato sauce and roasted salsa, which is very tasty. We cut back on the canning we did this year, since we had plenty from last year. We continue to give away and compost large quantities of produce we get free from the 7 Mile Fair.

Ken Ken decided to give up his expensive apartment in Santa Barbara. First Phyllis and then Marcia flew out there to help him catalog his thousands of books and help him get ready to move. We also took a lot of long walks on the beach. That sounds nice, but Marcia alternated between getting salt water in her shoes and getting tar deposits on her bare feet. Ken moved in with Mum, but many of his books live with Phyllis.

Dennis & Beth They went to Las Vegas where Dennis was receiving a realtor Lifetime Achievement Award. The person in charge of Erich and Lisa didn't work out, and since Marcia has previously volunteered to watch over them, she was called in. She spent 3 nights there and drove them to school, dance, and basketball, and made their breakfasts. It was a nice (first) opportunity with the kids, but Dennis and Beth are getting divorced.

Cheese Days We celebrated Marcia's birthday weekend at Cheese Days in Monroe, WI. Marcia and our friend Pat stayed with Karla, and Jim stayed with Joachim, her sort of ex-husband (long story). We bought a LOT of cheese, plus Marcia won a free pound of cheese for having her birthday then. We ate so many free cheese samples that when Joachim offered to share his cheese snacks with us the last day we all declined. We had a great party at Joachim's house with his neighbors, including a short but entertaining felon with a dent in his head (another long story).

Obama Marcia, initially for Hillary, campaigned long and hard for Obama. She canvassed all the adjacent blocks on her bike, plus nearby Wind Lake, and made a lot of phone calls and recruited others to do the same. Democrats in the area were pleased to meet her, but others said some ugly, racist things. Later both Colsmiths campaigned in Racine. We also passed out literature for Obama and a local candidate in 3 huge wards in Caledonia. These were the only Caledonia wards where they both won, so we really felt like we accomplished something.

Relatives Niece Becky got married in March to her long time honey Jeff. (Mum would want us to add that he's a lawyer.) Marcia's uncle Art Fritsche passed away this year while Marcia was in California. We will miss him. Jim was sick, so his brother drove him to the funeral, where he represented all the Vlachs. Marcia missed the Hein reunion while in CA also.

We saw many of the Vlach clan at Shelley Vlach's wedding. We wandered into the wrong party after someone told us it was the Vlach reception. We were sure we were in the right place because we recognized other wedding guests plus the bridesmaid dresses. Jim told me to talk to the bride. I looked and said, “That isn't my bride.” Who knew that floor length strapless bruise colored dresses were all the rage this year? Then Marcia helped cousin Ruth dig out 3 envelopes that had gone into the box for the wrong wedding couple. No one questioned us, so we could have made a real haul stealing wedding $$.

Tina's Children We adore Kate and Linnea and played and babysat frequently this year. Kate always liked Marcia most, so to balance that Linnea likes Jim the most. She even wakes up from naps asking about him, and has Tina phone him up so she can hear his voice. Once when Linnea was saying she loved Mommy, Tina asked her if she loved Marcia. She said NO. When questioned further, she said she loved Jim. Kate, feeling sorry for Marcia, proclaimed that SHE loves Marcia.

Kate recently wrote MARCIA on a piece of paper. Tina says we weren't adequately excited, but we didn't realize at first that it was the first word she ever wrote on her own. The second word was MOM and the third was JIM. So we aren't imagining that they love us a lot. Jim is pictured here with Kate.

If you can, please email us at jmcolsmith@att.net Visit our web page at http://jmcolsmith.home.att.net to see more pictures and info than we can fit on this paper.

Write to the Colsmiths at jmcolsmith@worldnet.att.net as we like to hear from our friends and family.   Happy Holidays!

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last changed Dec 17, 2008