I’ve been thinking about my Lenten plan for a while now. I want to be in peace with my surroundings and myself, meditate more, give more and love more.
I like this set of readings, on this day before Lent is to begin, because they challenge us to stretch ourselves beyond what we think we can do.
In our first reading, Sirach tells us to do works of charity, refrain from doing evil, do not even think to appear before the Lord, empty handed, and in all you do, live in a spirit of great gratitude. These are great words in preparation for Lent.
In our Gospel, Peter says, “Lord, we have given up everything and followed you.” Jesus responds “Whoever has given up all these things for me, for the sake of the Gospel will receive a hundred more times now in the present age.” Peter had given up a lot, but it was just beginning, he would learn to do so much more. The…
News from Fallasburg Historical Village. Visit with us this spring for a self-guided tour or visit our one-room schoolhouse that will open in May with Spring into the Past Tour.
Fallasburg, MI -The Fallasburg Historical Society (FHS) is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from the Grand Rapids Community Foundation to replace the badly worn Fallas House roof. The award came just in the nick of time, as critters had struck again, opening a large hole in the roof. The oldest home still standing in Vergennes Township will be weather-tight and critter-free very soon thanks to the grant.
The Fallas House
Calvin College intern to catalogue Fallasburg artifacts for “The Past Online”
For the second year in the running, the Calvin College history department arranged for student Brianne Lynn to assist the FHS in the digital cataloging of Fallasburg artifacts, documents, and pictures.
This information will be used in “The Past Online” website developed by the Lowell Area Historical Museum (LAHM). Ms…
And the real winner is the movie ‘ Moonlight’ An EW “moonlight” special By Emma Palova In an awesome Hollywood showdown in the style of Miss Universe, we found out that th…
In an awesome Hollywood showdown in the style of Miss Universe, we found out that the real winner was the picture “Moonlight” not the wrongfully announced La La Land.
Presenter Warren Beatty said he wasn’t joking.
In a bizarre altogether Oscar Night, the end was more stunning than the styles of the dresses, predictions or the creators.
As the saying goes, life itself is a story.
Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel
Thank you Hollywood and Jimmy Kimmel for a night to remember.
The fairy tale night had a happy ending for all the previous complainers, and for some strangers on a Hollywood tour just passing through the Oscar night ceremony, and bumping into amused stars. Some of them appeared to be scared for life.
Jennifer Aniston involuntarily gave up her cool shades for a tourist lady.
Wow, how dare you Jimmy, take my shades.
Denzel Washington gave his blessings to a pair to be wed in July.
And of course the wrong announcement of the Best Picture 2017. Well, it all worked out to the immense happiness of the stage called the “world.”
Lowell, MI- We’re heading into the Mardi Gras weekend with Fat Tuesday coming up on Feb. 28, which is better late than never.
“Everything is going to be late and screwed up,” said my forever pessimistic husband Ludek.
He was most likely referring to the late onset of the much coveted gardening and yard season in Midwest USA.
Fasching Fenn Valley winery 1998
The Lenten resolutions, fasting and such
Tuesday is the last day when you can be a glutton, which is one of the seven deadly sins, as I have learned in a recent therapeutic meeting and from Brad Pitt’s movie, “Se7en.” That is if you are a catholic. And even if you are not, the start of Lent on March 1st, known as Ash Wednesday, can become your six-week diet program, depending on the interpretation of Lent.
That way, you can fit into that nice spring white or green Easter dress.
The newspaper take on Lent, what do you give up?
“What are you going to give up for Lent?” was the standby question at the newspapers and out on the streets with the feature, “Man on the Street” before the multi-media journalism take-over.
Whoever was assigned to do this, would usually stand by the US Post Office to catch innocent users and fry them with the question of the week, and a mandatory head shot.
“Oh, I hate my photo taken,” was the common reply, and after a while. “Oh,oh. I usually give up coffee.”
And that was a standard lie, one of the seven deadly sins.
The social media have made this obnoxious “Man on the Street” feature obsolete, and substituted it with voluntary selfies and profile pics. Now, you can freely render your opinion on any platform from twitter to reddit, all the way to the new planetary system of Trappist 1.
“Hey, I love Mardi Gras, I can finally be myself,” posted XOXOX with the profile pic of a cat.
At one point, I modified the newspaper question along with some other fine writers to, “What are we going to take on that we haven’t done before?”
The Paczki take on Mardi Gras
My American outtake on Mardi Gras is that I go either to the local Meijer store or to the Honey Creek Grist Mill and buy me some greasy Paczki (Polish donuts) and forget about all my diets and resolutions.
I could also go to the Franciscan Sisters Life Process Center and learn how to bake the paczkis, in case I want to impress.
What I would really like to do is go to a true Fashing Karnival without having to go to Germany or to Brazil for Mardi Gras drag queens.
Mardi Gras in Lowell, ha,ha,ha
Years ago, my Lowell Ledger editor Jeanne B. laughed at me, when I asked if Lowell was doing anything for Mardi Gras.
“Are you crazy?” she laughed. “Go and ask Liz.”
Liz is the ever populist Lowell chamber director and she can be a lot of fun. Just ask the merchants during the annual Girls Night Out (GNO) events in the spring and fall. But, no fun for Mardi Gras.
“Are you out of your mind, here in Lowell?” Liz gasped for some fresh air.
Well, the Fenn Valley winery of German origin didn’t seem to think that putting on a Fashink Karnival was all that crazy. Although, they did it only twice, and something probably happened in between.
Fenn Valley winery Fashink 1998
Ludek and I were lucky enough to hit the Fasching Karnival at Fenn Valley in 1998. That was the year when the movie Titanic directed by James Cameron was bigger than the sunken ship itself in 1912.
Check out the 2014 story when Ludek and I dressed up for the only Fasching Karnival we’ve attended so far. We dressed up as Chicagoland gangsters, only to run into more like us at the winery party.
We just didn’t have the violin case. Next time. We’re still looking for a great Mardi Gras aka Carnival or Fasching party, that is something before Halloween.
Halloween seems to consume Mardi Gras masks and costumes for whatever reason.
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.
Try something different today, and everyday. Do not be afraid to stir the pot or the still waters of indifference. See my post below “Rhythmic fears of violence.”
Lowell, MI- It’s 5:53 a.m. EST on a regular Thursday morning. Husband Ludek just left for work coughing, and I am recovering from a bout of cold that kept me inside yesterday. It’s still dark outside, and I light some candles, so I can meditate before writing with a cup of coffee, and a cup of nettle tea.
But, something else kept me indoors yesterday, as well as in my own shell. I was dealing with a red fury, called anger that topped off with an apple that my husband didn’t take to work with him. I always get an apple ready for him thinking about his health in the morning.
Rhythmic changes of nature withour our contribution, a sunset in South Haven, Michigan.
When the apple was still there yesterday, I thought he was angry at me.
I felt the anger building up in me since Monday, as I watched the disturbing evening NBC newscast on “Tonight at 7.”
“I’ll never forget this one,” I said disgusted to Ludek. “I won’t sleep again.”
It was a slew of everything from my 1970s teen idol David Cassidy’s announcement of dementia, to the one year anniversary of the Uber shooting in Kalamazoo, Michigan, that left six dead and two wounded.
“We don’t want Kalamazoo to be remembered for this,” said the speaker at the Monday night vigil held at the K-Wings Stadium teary eyed.
The newscast showed Laurie Smith, wife and a mother, who’s loved ones where shot on that dreadful night at a car dealership, shopping for a truck. The daughter was supposed to go too. She didn’t. That saved her life.
Laurie held little urns with ashes as dreadful charms tied to a necklace in her fingers, crying.
“I carry their ashes around my neck,” she sobbed.
How can you not remember this? I would have to be a piece of stone.
All the colored beads representing different emotions.
Kalamazoo is home to one of the best universities in the country, the Western University Michigan (WMU). Other than being the home of the Broncos, it is the alma mater of many and an intellectual oasis in Midwest America.
My son Jake went to Western. He graduated in winter of 2010 in an auditorium decked out with red and white Poinsettia plants in pots with glittery wrap around Christmas time.
Surreal.
Early on when we settled down in the Grand Rapids area in the 1990s, I took online classes in psychology from WMU. I love the entire university environment along with the culture, the libraries, the ethnic restaurants, the university cafeterias and the sports. My parents worked at Ferris State University in Big Rapids until retirement in the 2000s. I studied at the Technical University of Brno, my dauther Doc Em studied at Charles University in Prague.
We have university blood circling in our veins.
I celebrated one of my birthdays at the WMU Performance Arts Center with the longest standing performance of all times, the “Phantom of the Opera” in 2007.
“Can you imagine those actors doing it over and over again?” said my friend Sue, when I complained to her that every day at the newspaper office was the same.
Many years later, as I think about all these moments, like grains of sand, sifting through time in an hour glass. The little sand grains that represent anger, fear, terror, joy, love and hope in a cyclical rhythm.
Grains of time sift through the hour glass rhythmically. To the right: my parents Ella & Vaclav Konecny with grandpa Joseph Drabek in 1987 during grandpa’s only visit to the USA.
Below is a photo essay representing the victory of joy & hope over rhythmic violence: left 1001 Days of Blogging Annie Conboy of UK who blogs for the future of her daughter Erin. Right top: son Jake Pala who teaches Josephine Marie Palova, 3, the Czech language to preserve our origins. Below right in the small frame, French granddaughter Ella, 6, on summer break in Parnell to learn English. Pictured in the bottom frame is Mrs. Irma Richmond, teacher from the one-room schoolhouse at Fallasburg in the 1960s. Today, kids from Murray Lake Elementary and on the http://www.fallasburgtoday.org come to visit the school thanks to the advancement of technology. Mrs. Richmond says hi to all.
Follow Mrs. Richmond’s and Annie’s stories into the future.
Fallasburg one-room schoolhouse teacher Mrs. Irma Richmond, 1927-28, 1944-45. Today students from the Murray Lake Elementary visit the 1867 Fallasburg School located in Vergennes Township.
Before that lovely opera performance, we enjoyed a meal at Rasa Ria, a Malaysian restaurant with my parents Ella and Vaclav in downtown Kazoo.
It was one of my best birthday celebrations, ever. And it was in Kalamazoo, in the university city of intellect and terror.
And now this additional piece of terror, that will always stay in our minds, and in those charms with ashes around Laurie’s neck.
I can still recall the actual coverage of the Uber shooting one year ago, when the police contained the rampage in 4 hours and 42 minutes. The footage showed cars chasing the suspect, finding the victims at innocent places like Cracker Barrel and at the Seeley dealership in Kalamazoo.
“Why did he do it?” Ludek kept asking me.
The news report mentioned that the Uber driver said that the devil told him which people to shoot through the phone app.
“Crazy?” I ask.
One year later, crime perpetrator, Jason Brian Dalton, 45, still hasn’t been convicted. A hearing is set for March 9. If convicted, he faces a life in jail, according to news reports.
As I watched the vigil for the victims, my memory flashed back to a trip to France in 2016 with our granddaughter Ella. We were waiting for a Uber driver to take us from Charles De Gaulle (CDG) Airport to Gare du Nord train station in Paris.
“Emma, are you sure this is safe, you know about that shooting in Kalamazoo?” I asked my liberal daughter Doc Emma, who permanently resides in the wine village of Fixin, in Burgundy France.
“Oh, it can’t happen here,” she said, “only in America.”
“Really?” I asked.
I thought about all the violence of the past two years in France as it flashed through my mind; from attacks in Paris, Nice and Belgium.
Now, back again to the current reality as of Feb. 23, 2017. The two Uber shooting survivors, Addie Kopf, 15, and Tiana Carruthers, 26, continue to fight forward.
After undergoing several surgeries, Kopf has difficulty speaking and remembering, in spite of overall improvements. Carruthers, who shielded children from the gunfire, is now walking without a cane, according to news reports.
I glanced at the comments following some of the broadcasts of the one-year anniversary of the Uber shooting that occurred in Kalamazoo on Feb. 20, 2016.
robandhan1 day ago
Huh… another white guy with a gun…
jime4441 day ago
@robandhan and how many die in chicongo each day? not many white people, either………libturd.
charlie251 day ago
Does anyone remember this??? There have been so many weirdos killing people in the past year to remember this one.
Late artist Janet Y. Johnson,86, was an icon embedded in the greater Lowell area. She passed away on Feb. 20.
Services for Mrs. Johnson will be held this Saturday, March 4 at the Lowell Congregational Church. Visitation from 12 to 1 p.m., with service at 1 p.m., luncheon to follow. Burial at Lowell cemetery approximately 3 :15 p.m.
“Such a wonderful life, so many friends, ” said Brooke Johnson about his mother.
Memorial contributions may be made to the church or to Lowell Arts at https://www.lowellartsmi.org/donate.
Mrs. Johnson with more than five decades of watercolor and acrylic painting has left a legacy both in the real arts world, as well as in the digital arts sphere on the WordPress platform.
At the age of 86, Mrs. Johnson has entered the digital sphere with the story IW Inspiring Women on Feb. 3, 2017. She contacted me for a story on the EW journal one week prior to the Champagne & Chocolates Event at the Flat River Gallery in downtown Lowell, held on Feb. 11. Mrs. Johnson passed away on Feb. 20.
The rest is history. Rest in peace dear Mrs. Janet Y. Johnson.
Thank you for your vision, and never ending inspiration.
FHS president Ken Tamke 
The Fallas House 
authoremmapalova 