By Nancy Whitaker

BLACK, CREAM, SUGAR?

Can you believe what is happening with our good old plain strong black coffee? There are so many kinds of different coffee that I don’t even know how many kinds do exist and how in the world did we get such a variety of brews?

Now, I admit, I am a coffee lover and I probably had coffee in my baby bottle. Yes, I have been a coffee drinker almost all of my life. Some people jokingly tell me that is why I am so short.

I remember my Grandma used a coffee which was called Eight O’Clock. She had a coffee pot which sat on top of her old cook stove and was always ready to drink. I was allowed to drink coffee in the mornings, a practice I still do today. I mean, I cannot function without my morning coffee.

By Joe Shouse

Christmas birthday party

First of all, let me wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. There I said it, Merry Christmas! Not Happy Holidays and not Seasons Greetings. Actually it’s rather simple. The true meaning of Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. So, I guess more importantly than saying Happy Holidays or Seasons Greetings would be to say Happy Birthday, I mean, after all, we are talking about the birthday of the Savior of the World.

At our house or at our church, during the celebration of Christmas, it is the tradition to have a birthday party. A birthday party for the King of kings. There is something about having cake and ice cream and singing happy birthday to the one who gives us the reason for celebrating Christmas. To be honest, I like that more than celebrating my birthday that reminds me I am a year older.

By Mary Beth Weisenberger

Holiday hallucinations

It’s that time of year again. The fall décor gets pushed aside by all things red and green, the holiday music kicks in over PA systems everywhere, and the gift catalogs jam the mailboxes. And I, as I do every season, get overtaken by a rush of sentimentality and initiate grandiose plans to create lovely and personal gifts for everyone on my Christmas list.

Let’s see. Will I make some aromatic homemade candles this year? Yes! I’ll buy some scented oil and wax tomorrow. What about the pretty layered brownie mixes in quart jars, all tied with ribbon and a hand-stenciled recipe card? They’ll be great gifts for the teachers. And as soon as I can, I need to cut and dry the perennials from my flowerbeds, so I can make beautiful wreaths and pressed flower arrangements for my sisters.

By Kylee Baumle

Flowers are blooming at Our Little Acre again! My first amaryllis of the season broke bud just last week and marks the beginning of a winter full of color in containers inside the house.

My love affair with amaryllis began about eight years ago, around the time I came down with gardening fever and I’ve amassed quite a collection of them.

I’d been looking through the many seed and plant catalogs that started arriving around Thanksgiving, when a striped wonder caught my eye. I was smitten by its unusual blooms, not having seen anything like it before. That wasn’t really saying much, since I’d been too busy working and raising kids to pay a whole lot of attention to flowers up to that point. But that flower was something special.

By Nancy Whitaker

KICKED OUT OF CHURCH?

I admit it. I can be judgmental if I let myself. So many times we may see a weird haircut or weird clothes on someone and we immediately recoil and wonder if that person is crazy. We may look at piercings in strange places and tattoos on a person and think, “Why do they like looking like that?”

Then we speculate and and wonder if they are normal. However, what is normal?

Judging someone on their appearance is just one way we stand in judgment of others. The other way is being judgmental on the actions and lifestyles of others.

For example, I have watched two people dining in a restaurant with one dinner and two plates. I watch and I wonder if they are poor.

It was a moment that Continental varsity basketball player Brandon Schmidt will never forget, and neither will most of the fans, players and coaching staffs attending Paulding’s boys basketball visit to Continental on Friday evening.

And, it was all thanks to the good heart of Paulding head coach Shawn Brewer.

But, then it happened to a very special person, Brandon Schmidt, a Down’s Syndrome young man, who has spent his life watching his beloved Continental Pirates from the bench.

Included in those teams have been two older brothers who started earlier on the varsity squad.

By Bill Sherry

The Hot Stove League

We did not call it the “Hot Stove League” when I was a boy, but there were eight to 10 older men that gathered at my Grandfather Sherry’s grocery store almost every week night who taught me a lot of life lessons. They came with a list of groceries to take home, but ended up sitting around the old Warm Morning wood and coal stove, sometimes for several hours, talking about important things while I listened.

I was about 10 years old when my Grandmother Sherry passed away. She and Grandpa had operated a grocery store before she died and without her, Grandpa needed some help. So, I got off the school bus at my grandpa’s store and was able to help one or two nights a week.

By Kylee Baumle

Last week, I was the messenger you wanted to shoo away, because the message was so depressing. Sharing the list of the “Dirty Dozen” fresh fruits and vegetables that are the most contaminated by pesticides isn’t exactly the news you want to read during the season of merry and bright. But, I’m going to make it up to you this week, just as I promised.

The Environmental Work Group also puts out a list called the “Clean Fifteen,” which consists of fifteen fresh fruits and vegetables that are the least tainted by pesticides.

This doesn’t mean that they aren’t contaminated at all; it just means that these are considered to be somewhat safer to eat than those other ones, when buying non-organic produce, because they were found to have low levels of residual pesticides on or in them.

By Nancy Whitaker

THE PLIGHT OF THE ONION

“Give me a big slab of onion on it, please,” is something you may say when you order a sandwich in a restaurant.

However, many people even though they might like the taste of onions, don’t like the foul mouth odor they get after consuming one. This is especially true if they are going to be smooching on someone.

One belief is that if both parties eat onions, they will not notice any bad mouth odor when getting close to one another. Does anyone know if this is true?

I like onions. I love their taste and I love to cook with them. To me making a pot of chili without onions, just doesn’t seem right.

By Jim Langham

Add another special Thanksgiving to memories I eluded to in last week’s column. It was spent in Chicago with our daughter, Sandi. Our other daughter, Julie, took the train out of Waterloo and joined us on Thanksgiving morning. Then Sunday, we joined up with son, Jason, and granddaughter, Kirsten.

Thankful? What more can you say when you hear those 22-month-old feet come running across the floor and that little voice yelling, “Papa, moo moo?”

But there was another special moment that was an integral part of this Thanksgiving. It was a young man who was a high school junior born with spina bifida. He has spent his entire life either riding in a wheelchair or, on rare occasion, walking with crutches.