Dizzy

"I'm so dizzy, my head is spinnin' ..."

It could be a dust-provoked headache generated by old newspaper clips and a basement storage room that hadn't seen the business end of a dust rag for quite some time. Or it could just be from the seemingly never-ending task of deep cleaning and purging.

For those of you who weren't fortunate enough to be around when Tommy Roe released his song, "Dizzy," in 1969 (insert slight sarcasm here), it's a line from that hit, which occupied the No. 1 slot for four weeks.

I liked the song well enough that I forked over some cash for the album of the same name. As I've been sorting and cleaning in the office, I found the album occupying some real estate among the predominantly Barry Manilow and Carpenters discs:

I'm so dizzy, my head is spinning

Like a whirlpool it never ends

And it's you, girl, makin' it spin.

You're makin' me dizzy. 

Of course, I have no turntable these days, so I had to pull it up on YouTube.

And the piles of paper (and other stuff) I've sorted and Randy has carried out of the house is "dizzying" in itself.

As I was going through yet more file cabinets and boxes crammed with dusty newspaper and newsletter clips, I texted my kids. In all honesty, I was feeling a little blue.

This is hard, I told them.

They didn't "know" me as a newspaper writer, and later, as an editor of the Focus (lifestyle) section, I told them. Brent was a baby when I quit the full-time commuting, and Jill was almost 3. I wrote a twice-a-month column, "At Home with Kim," for The News for several years when they were small. I also freelanced for a public relations firm in Hutchinson, writing copy for several quarterly newsletters. (These were in addition to the Stafford Main Street newsletter and The Messenger, the church newsletter which I am still doing when there's not a pandemic going on.)

But I hired a babysitter when I'd go for interviews for the newsletters, and I did most of my writing when the kids were in bed at naptime or the evening.

As I looked through story after story, I realized my kids just saw me as a Mom, and later, as a part-time school secretary and community volunteer.

I wouldn't change any of that. My most important job ever was being a Mom, and the other roles dovetailed nicely with that mission. But before I tossed all of the articles, I wanted them to know that I was pretty good at the newspaper/writing gig, too. I won plenty of state awards and even a few national awards for writing and editing.

Both of them acknowledged my difficulty in tossing things. (They both know I'm sentimental.) Here's what Jill had to say:

... Just because you're throwing away the physical reminders of your work at The News doesn't take away from the achievements you had and the hard work that went into it. ..."

Brent echoed:

... I agree that you should take pride in what you accomplished and the people and stories you amplified. It's good to know and remember. Throwing out a box of papers doesn't take away from that."

How'd they get so smart?

During one of our phone conversations, Brent asked me about what stories brought back the most memories.

One was from the first fire I was ever sent to. It's not because it was an award-winning story, but because it was my first venture into "hard" news. I had been hired as a lifestyle reporter. However, with a management change, all of us had to cover breaking news, community meetings, etc. It was one of the first times I had a front-page byline back when I was still Kim Moore. But I would have gladly given that up to skip covering the fire. The homeowner escaped, but her two dogs perished in the fire. I went to the car afterwards and cried.

Another front page article was a sidebar to a national story when the Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. With the afternoon paper still to go to press, I remember watching the TV and can still feel the intensity as the whole newsroom scrambled to write stories. The Hutchinson News was in a unique position because of the Cosmosphere, a museum on the Kansas Plains - an unlikely place for a Smithsonian-affiliated space museum.

I interviewed a Goddard science teacher who had been in the running for the Teacher in Space job that eventually went to Christa McAuliffe. I talked to both he and his wife by telephone about their impressions of McAuliffe during the workshops and pre-flight receptions. Even that day, he was ready to apply to be in the next teacher in space.

I uncovered a series of stories I did on the Amish and Mennonites in the area. I was invited into several of their homes and discovered a world much different from my own.

There were hundreds of colorful food pages and other food-related stories like Cook of the Week. I wrote the stories, but The News had a talented graphic designer at the time named Karen Scott. As the Focus editor, I enjoyed working with her to brainstorm ideas and produce quality pages every Wednesday.

For one of those food pages, I earned a runner-up finish in the national Golden Carnation Awards Program for nutrition writing. My managing editor told me I should go to the awards ceremony during the International Food Media Conference in New York City. I stayed in the hotel at the World Trade Center back in 1987, long before 9-11. It was quite an experience for a small-town girl from Kansas, and I later wrote about it for a column.

 

I met First Lady Nancy Reagan (and I have the picture to prove it) when I attended a American Press Institute seminar in Reston, Virginia, for lifestyle editors, shortly being named the Focus editor. (The managing editor at the time told me he wanted to move me from hourly as a reporter to salary as an editor so he didn't have to pay me overtime any longer. This was before kids, and I was still working on a work-life balance, I suppose.)

After I "retired" from The News, I did some freelance writing for a public relations firm in Hutchinson. I wrote the copy for Wesley Towers, a retirement community in Hutchinson from 1988 to 2014. (I remember Randy had to go with me to the first set of interviews because I was still breastfeeding, so I had to take some timeouts in the schedule. TMI?)

My favorite series for Wesley Towers was interviewing World War II veterans for a story that ended up spanning several issues. It required numerous interviews with our nation's heroes, as well as a lot of reading and research. I then wrote a series of stories, which became a living history lesson for me. So was a story about residents who had celebrated their 100th birthdays and a series about residents with Hutchinson businesses whose children had carried on the legacy and were still operating on Main Street and other storefronts in the community.

I wrote the Newton Medical Center Connection newsletter from 1989 to 1996 and for United Methodist Youthville's Crossroads from 1992-98, plus other articles assigned infrequently by the PR firm for AgTrax, the Kansas Area United Methodist Foundation, Training and Evaluation Center of Hutchinson and others.

As I was going through my piles of clips I'd entered in the Kansas Press Women contest through the years, I ran across this artwork:

So, yes, at the heart of it all, I was still a mom at the core.

And you know what? My kids are both pretty good writers, too.

(This post is more for me, so that there's some record - somewhere - of my writing career ... since I threw away most of this stuff - SIGH!) Maybe the soundtrack should have been "Memories" - not "Dizzy.")

We've lost count of all the trips to the trash pit, and I also sorted through some other tubs and boxes in the basement, plus did a long-overdue closet purge. Randy and I had dental hygiene appointments before harvest, and we ended up taking both the car and pickup to Hutchinson so that we could leave the car at the shop.

We filled both vehicles with goodies for Goodwill. I texted my family:

"Is it bad that my treasures filled up all the bins at Goodwill?"

I guess it was bad for the car in line behind me, but it's good for my basement storage area, and my kids are thrilled that I've gotten rid of some stuff. Thanks Covid-19? Hmmm ... I'm not sure I will go that far!

True confessions: I haven't done much (any?) sorting since harvest. Maybe posting this is my motivation to get started again.

Marie Kondo Would Not Approve

Marie Kondo would not approve.

"Tidy your space; 
transform your life," she promises.

But I'm a pack rat.
There: I said it.
I've also lived in the same house for nearly 35 years now.
It's a recipe for an overwhelming task.
Only a pandemic could have forced my hand.
Well, that's one good thing, I suppose.

The casual visitor wouldn't necessarily uncover this particular character flaw.
On the surface, there may be a little extra dust from time to time.
For the most part, my house is presentable ... at least, at surface level.
But I sure didn't want anyone opening a closet or drawer.

And even though I've been slowly chipping away - a cabinet or closet at a time - I still am not ready for a visit from the white-glove lady.

Kondo - the organizational guru - says you should get rid of "stuff" that doesn't "Spark Joy." OK, but some of it does spark joy - or at the very least - it sparks memories. (I am guessing Kondo is happy enough that some people bought her book. She must be betting that her missive is worth the real estate it takes on the book shelf. Something to ponder, right?!)

Anyway, I've thrown away a bunch of stuff.
We've donated some other stuff.

I couldn't bring myself to throw away some of the cards or letters my kids sent, so those went into a little storage box. I guess they'll get to throw them away some day.

I uncovered a stack of thank you notes from people from back in my days as a writer at The Hutchinson News. Among the stacks of letters I'd saved, I counted five from people who had a bone to pick with a story I wrote. Two of them were connected to a story in which I quoted someone saying that the Kansas Author's Club members were "a bunch of old ladies in hats."

First of all, I didn't say it.
I shared an accurate quote from someone I interviewed.
Their opinion, not mine.
Upon further reflection, perhaps I should have left that quote out. I was young.

A couple more were from the grammar police.
I usually do a better-than-average job with grammar.
But I'm certainly not infallible. One lady enumerated my many faults in a multi-page missive.

Isn't it curious that I've spent a whole lot more time thinking about the criticisms than the largely-positive "thank yous" and "so well done" remarks?" I suppose it's a lesson in human nature as much as it is grammar.

Long, long ago, the Class Prophecy for Skyline High School's Class of 1975 predicted I'd be a writer at The New York Times. Since I'm a small-town girl through and through, I never bought into the vision some creative classmate penned 45 years ago. At the time, I suppose we all envisioned that success was measured far, far away from the plains of Kansas.

I'd forgotten a letter from an opera singer I'd interviewed. It said, in part:

My friends here in New York have decided that you should be on the staff of Opera News or at least The New York Times. I agree. You captured the essence of "me" on paper.

A Lindsborg native sent me a letter from Germany by "Air Mail" after I interviewed her for a feature story. 

I found notes from two of my elementary-school teachers. My college advisor and instructor sent a note after I won some national writing and page design awards.

Two other letters were addressed to Kim Moore and Pete Souza. At the time, Pete was a staff photographer for The News.

Pete Souza went on to serve as White House photographer for both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. (Well, at least one of us moved on to bigger things.)

I read all of the letters again and then reluctantly tossed them. And, in truth, I didn't specifically remember three-fourths of the articles they mentioned. 

In an evaluation I uncovered, a former editor called my feature work "exceptional." He had a lot of nice things to say, but he also pegged my shortcomings rather well.

1) While her reporting is - as always - thorough, it tends to be lengthy ...

2) She often gets very involved in the stories she's doing, and while so far that has actually been a benefit by giving her greater insight, caution must be exercised to see that it doesn't foul her ability to still look at the issue with the detachment necessary to provide balanced reporting.

Guilty as charged to both counts. This blog post certainly qualifies.

I feel really old after finding some thank you notes from Mrs. Leavelle's 2nd grade class at Stafford Elementary. They were sent to me following their field trip to The News. Some of those "second graders" are now friends on Facebook and have their own families.

I may have a harder time throwing away the actual clippings. I'm still in the sorting phase of that particular Kondo-inspired project. It's slow going.

 

I have a whole legal-sized file folder filled with the love of Herman. (No, I haven't been two-timing Randy. Herman was a sourdough starter whose appeal grew as exponentially as his dough.) Ironically, during this pandemic, there's been a resurgence in bread baking and also an interest in sourdough. I just haven't heard anyone call it "Herman" yet. See? Maybe I'm not ready to get rid of that file quite yet.

I'm having similar withdrawal pangs about tossing:

• Mountains of newspaper clips, some of which I had entered in state and national competitions;
• Foothill-sized mounds of newsletter publications for Wesley Towers, Newton Medical Center, Youthville and others for whom I wrote as a freelancer after "retiring" from The News;
• Vocal solo accompaniment tapes, even though I don't have a working cassette player any longer and the church audio system can no longer play them;
• 4-H foods and photography leader files. This represents another huge investment of time and effort through my kids' growing-up years.

I did toss a stack of newspaper clips crammed inside 5- by 7-inch manila envelopes. How research has changed! Back in the pre-Google days, we filed articles so we could reference them again. For example, if I was going to write another article about the Cosmosphere, I could pull my handy-dandy manila envelope for background material.

Also destined for the trash pile are file cabinets full of clips from other magazines, newspapers, etc., that might serve as a springboards for story ideas. They range from asparagus to zucchini in the food article realm to files on miscarriage, adoption and more. As long as my helper's back holds out, I'll keep weeding out those file folders and having him tote them by laundry-basket-full out of the basement.

Isn't Google miraculous when you think about it?

I was amused by a file I found labeled "computers." An article in Kansas Farmer from 1989 had this headline: To Computer Or Not to Computer" with the subtitle: That is the question. A computer for your farm isn't necessary. Be aware of how much time it's going to take if you do decide to buy a computer."

My, how times have changed, right?

Another article in the computer file was from Family Fun magazine: "So You'd Like to Buy A Computer: What every family in search of a computer needs to know to get the biggest bang for the buck."

I guess that article ended up with the most pull, since there's also a receipt for the first home computer I purchased in that file folder.

Another publication made me kind of sad. When I worked at The Hutchinson News, it was the flagship paper in the Harris Group. The community newspaper is on its deathbed, I fear, as large media conglomerates have swallowed up papers and slashed local staff.

My old proportion wheel reflects a time when page design required more brainpower than a computer.

I know my old Junior Parent notebook is obsolete, but serving as chair or co-chair of those efforts for both Jill's and Brent's classes also represents a lot of time and effort. Same goes for the kids' scholarship notebooks. And no way am I getting rid of the 3-ring wedding binder yet. 

I don't even want to think about the tubs of photos and my kids' school mementos that need to be sorted and organized. But I have plenty to do before I get to that seemingly insurmountable task. I sure wish that digital photography had arrived a little sooner.

You can't expect miracles, Marie Kondo. I'm trying ... I really am.

To Infinity and Beyond: The Moon, 50 Years Later

I was a Lost in Space addict as a kid. When I was 9, I tried to convince my parents we should name my new baby brother Don. They opted for Kent instead.

At the time, I just couldn't figure it out. Why wouldn't they want to name this newest member of our family after the dreamy Major Don West on my favorite TV show?
Well, I couldn't figure it out until I was in college and saw reruns of Lost in Space. Somehow this cherished TV series got a little cheesier in the ensuing years. It was definitely "B" movie material.

For those of you too young to remember, Lost in Space was a 60-minute, sci-fi series broadcast on CBS every Wednesday night. It was about the Robinson Family, Major Don West and their faithful robot who left Earth on the Jupiter II spacecraft. They were on a five-year mission to explore a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system. Unfortunately, Dr. Zachary Smith sabotaged the ship, throwing it off course and leaving the entire crew Lost in Space. Gasp! Each week, they traveled from planet to planet, searching for a way back to Earth.

They found plenty of aliens and danger along the way. You would have thought the object of my preadolescent crush would have been Will Robinson, the precocious 9-year-old in the series.
He and his friend the robot were always in the thick of the action, hence the often repeated phrase: "Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!"

I had just turned 12 when the real-life astronauts landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. I remember sitting on the floor in front of the bulky television console and watching as Neil Armstrong left the lunar module and walked on the moon, with Walter Cronkite narrating his every step. For one, it was after my bedtime, so that was a big deal. But even as a young tween, I felt the significance of America's achievement of being the first on the moon.

Evidently, it made a big impression on my late mother-in-law as well. By default, our basement became the repository for tubs of family photos and memorabilia when we cleaned out their house.

In the midst of the family photos, Marie had saved The Hutchinson News from July 21, 1969, the day after Armstrong made "a small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Ironically, I worked for nine years for that very newspaper after I graduated from Kansas State University. And we are still among the few who hold on to their subscription in these days of shrinking newspaper circulation.

It is huge! It measures 16.5 by 22.75 inches. Today's paper is 11 by 22.5 inches. And the moon landing was a huge story in July 1969. Hundreds of millions of people had tuned into radios or watched the grainy black-and-white images on television as the astronauts set foot on the moon. It was haled as one of humanity's most glorious technological achievements. Police around the world reported crime came to a near halt that midsummer Sunday night. 

And even though most people had been glued to their TV sets during the historic walk, I'm sure they poured over every word in their daily newspaper the next day, hoping to discover a new tidbit. 

In an anniversary article published in The Hutchinson News this week, astronaut Michael Collins,
who orbited the moon alone in the mother ship while his capsule-mates strode on the lunar surface,  was struck by the banding together of Earth’s inhabitants.

"How often can you get people around our globe to agree on anything? Hardly ever. And yet briefly at the time of the first landing on the moon, people were united. They felt they were participants. It was a wonderful achievement in the sense that people everywhere around the planet applauded it: north, south, east, west, rich, poor, Communist, whatever."

---Astronaut Michael Collins, now age 88, in an Associated Press interview

Of the 24 astronauts who flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972, only 12 are still alive. Of the 12 who walked on the moon, four survive. A vast majority of Earth’s 7.7 billion inhabitants were born after Apollo ended, including NASA’s current administrator, 44-year-old Jim Bridenstine, who is overseeing the effort to send humans back to the moon by 2024.

One of the unique features of The News is the Intercepted Letter, which is found on each edition's front page. For awhile, new publishers did away with the folksy snippet. But it's back in 2019.

 

On that day in July 1969, the editors wrote:

NEIL ARMSTRONG
Space Center
Houston, Tex. 
(Hold for Arrival)
Dear Neil,
With so many people jumping for joy down here, it's a good thing the earth does have a heavy gravitational pull.

Yours,

Hutch 

One of the stories was headlined, "They prayed for the astronauts." I'd be surprised to see a headline like that in a newspaper today.

"I've been watching the simulated mock-ups all day. We went to church, but we have switched around to all the channels to listen to the commentary."

Allan Buckwalter

 It's more sensational than the Lindberg flight.

Mrs. Abby Burnett

A poem made it onto the front page, Voyage to the Moon by Archibald MacLeish. It reads, in part:

Presence among us

wandered in our skies.

Dazzle of silver in our leaves

and on our waters silver,

silver evasion in our farthest thought ...

"the visiting moon" ... 

"the glimpses of the moon" ...

and we have touched you!

From the first of time

before the first of time,

before the first men tested time,

we thought of you.

You were a wonder to us,

unattainable, a longing,

 a light beyond our light ...

Now our hands have touched you

in your depth of night. ...

Just like these days, when new parents give celebrity names to their newborns, The News told of a little boy named Apollo, the 11th child born to a family in Lebanon on the day of the Apollo 11 moonshot.

 It's interesting to see what the weather was at this time 50 years ago, too.

It was fun to look through the articles and the ads. A bank used a space theme that day in its display ad for banking hours.

The television schedule shows that I Dream of Jeanie (another one of my childhood favorites) was on the television that night. That show featured Larry Hagman as an astronaut besotted with the 2,000-year-old genie/Jeanie, so it was appropriate TV fare for the evening. So were Mayberry, Here's Lucy, Gunsmoke and Family Affair.

The Fox Theater in Hutchinson wanted to advertise their air-conditioning it appears, with ice on their logo. They were playing a movie called The Longest Day and suggested seeing it during the 25th anniversary of D-Day.

A Wichita theater advertised the "Frenchy" musical, Can Can.

I couldn't believe the bargain price on wedding sets or the bedspreads available for less than $15 each. 

The prices on the grocery store ads created a little shell shock for this consumer of today.

There were patterns for doll clothing and a woman's dress alongside an ad for a $169.95 automatic electric washer and a box of serving trays for $7.50 or $10, depending on the diameter, at the downtown department store.

A Calhoun's ad shows what the well-dressed woman of the era was wearing.

But my favorite ad was the one for a dry cleaners and laundry. It definitely reflects the times when women were beginning to join the work force in greater numbers and were no longer fulfilling the June Cleaver stereotype of wearing pearls while doing housework.

I know that downsizing is the recommended way to live life these days. And, after living 34 years in the same house, I can verify that a good purging would be a good idea. But, then, every so often, it pays to be a packrat.

Photo taken at the Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, KS

Sometimes glimpses of our history show us just how far we've traveled.

It's Clouds' Illusions, I Recall

The clouds haven't brought much rain this summer. But they have brought back some memories. Brent was my cloud watcher. From the backseat, he was always discovering some shape in the marshmallow fluff of clouds floating by.

Back when the kids were little, I "retired" from working full-time as a writer-editor at The Hutchinson News, but I wrote a column for them, At Home with Kim, for several years. Here an excerpt of what I wrote when Brent was in kindergarten: 

It was one of those days when it looks like the angels are using the clouds for tumbling mats. Brent and I were driving home, and he started cloud-watching.

"Oh, look, Mommy! That one looks like a dinosaur. And that one looks like a puppy."

We found an eagle and a dragon and a cat among the whipped-cream clouds. I was thinking that even though our world changes, some things - like cloud watching - have been children's pastimes for years and years.

And then he said, "Oh, there a roller blade."

As a child, I saw dragons and rabbits, but not a single roller blade was suspended in my cotton-candy skies. 

Change is part of us - even daydreaming cloud watchers confirm that.

"Why can't I see the roller blade anymore? Where did the dinosaur go?" Brent asked as we sped down Highway 50. "Why don't the clouds follow us?"

It's moment like those when I remember an encyclopedia salesman's spiel at the Kansas State Fair when Jill was about 2.

"How will you know how to tell your children why the sky is blue if you don't buy this complete set of encyclopedias?"

After some convoluted explanation about how were were traveling down the highway at a different speed than the clouds were moving, Brent quit worrying about the things he'd lost and began finding other treasures in the sky. Kids change as fast as the clouds.

The same column mentioned the Mother's Day Tea in the kindergarten classroom, so here was my cloud watcher in action at that big event.He was one of the "violets" whose job it was to pass out mints.

Last week, I was the one doing the cloud watching as I delivered Randy from one field to the next. I was the one finding treasures in the clouds, mostly in the form of memories. (And, by the way, how smart do I look that I didn't buy that set of encyclopedias? Who could have predicted I could use a computer, type in "Why is the sky blue?" and have hundreds of explanations at my fingertips? Pretty amazing, isn't it?)

If I momentarily forget how quickly life - and kids - change, I get a Facebook reminder that a certain girl was 7 months old yesterday.

Time shifts as quickly as floating clouds, doesn't it?

I can't look at clouds without thinking about a song my sisters and I sang for a long-ago 4-H Club Day, "Both Sides Now."  Now you, too, can get it stuck in your head, if you choose.

It's OK to have your head in the clouds, I think. Imagination and memories: They are good things.