HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL, PAY ATTENTION!
The American capitalistic idea of making money off of everything (we polluted water so now we have to buy it) leads me to some over-looked but really needed entrepreneurial ideas. Millions of dollars are waiting to be made with one of these business plans.
Family Healing Rosaries: Every shriveled bead represents a family member in trouble or sick or in some way needing to be concerned about. If one says the whole rosary, it saves so much time on worry, phone calls and (worse yet) actual visits. The result is just the same... increased positive feelings of purpose and family togetherness. These rosaries could be rendered in copper and worn as bracelets to cure persistant aches and pains other than family. Bumper stickers might even declare, "You've been rosaried!" But then the downside is you might cause women to demonstrate with signs reading, "Keep your rosaries off our ovaries!"
Family Reunion Consciousness-Raising Workshops:
You know how you have wedding planners and this-or-that consultants or personal trainers....
Well, why not hire one for your family who can facilitate creative, healing, family-building exercises and interchange over walleye pike, coleslaw, jello salad and lemon bars or rhubarb pie.
Family Coaching and Event Business: You could guarantee fun and instant bonding, propped on a fender, discussing the price of gas, the change in weather, a local fishing contest or perhaps the church basement event. This could also serve to get one out of doing the dinner dishes, at least as long as mosquitoes hold off their own dinner, namely you.
Mom's Restaurant and Reaffirmation Diner: Not like the proverbial soccer mom at all, it promotes warm feelings of love and community and friendship, an environment where you have to say nice things about the people in the next booth. Where upmanship is not allowed and where everyone reaffirms each other. Rasberries, farts or other hilarious body activities would be highlighted on the restaurant's computer screens to relegate adolescent personalities to network TV reality shows. The breezy waitresses, all rather heavy-set mom types, say, "Eat! You need to keep up your strength and you're too thin anyway." They are full of homespun wisdom, good jokes and rich sexual lives. Menus consist of white food which is oblivious of carbs, but nonetheless results in positive feelings and political correctness. Group hugs are the standard tip and it's best to keep the ego in check.
Seems everyone I meet comes from a dysfunctional family so it's a safe bet that millions of dollars are waiting to be made and that We Are All Nuts!
— and that includes this Granny
"let words work the earth of her heart."
WORDS THAT
EVOKE MEMORIES:
Cedar Chest
Attic
Shoe Box
Laundry Basket
Garden Patch
Kitchen Pantry
Tongue 'n Groove
Summer Porch
Schoolhouse
Cottage
Porch Swing
Jam Jar
Medicine Cabinet
Casserole Dish
Wood Pile
Hay in the Barn
Quilt Frame
Water Bucket
Hat Box
Camomile Tea
Potato Bin
Cold Cellar
Smoke House
Dust Pan
Fly Paper
Foot of the Bed
Best Dishes
Pump House
Coin Purse
Oil Cloth
Jelly Glass
Front Room
Sunday Best
Quilt Pieces
Hope Chest
Smoke House
Dresser Drawer
Lemonade Pitcher
Boots and Mittens
Thinking Cap
Family Rosary
Granary
Memory is a way of creating one's identity.
— Maureen Murdock
August... the "sweet spot" in the year to make a biennial pilgrimage to my birthplace in Stearns County, Minnesota. Yes, this is Lake Wobegon territory. You are familiar with this locale if you are a listener of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. As one of the exiles, I know this is not the place to be caught in a snowstorm, by arriving before mid-June or by dawdling into September. In August, the temp or humidity, or both, is usually in the 90's but at least not life-threatening to someone accustomed to sunny and warm as I am.
My brother, patriarch of a good Catholic family of nine, now all grown, is having a birthday and it's time for us... my sister and me... "The Girls"... to make a pilgrimage to the home farm, the pre-ordained legacy of the only son. So we fly, synchronized in time, to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport from San Francisco and Austin, and meet at baggage claim (an oxymoron since no one returning for a family reunion ever claims their REAL baggage!) Then we head northwest about 90 miles up I-94 in our rental car as we catch up our lives, interrupted by the traditional booze stop in Monticello... Jamison, Diet Pepsi, a sixpack and wine coolers. Or maybe even a cute bottle of Gregio or Shiraz if the spirit moves us. After all, we are 45 years of lifestyle from way back when.
Our much-adored and ever-awe-inspiring sister-in-law and OLDER brother will meet us at the local watering hole that serves the long-anticipated, beer-battered walleye pike, coleslaw, salad bar and rhubarb pie. This is the required boot camp of therapeutic stomach-resizing for what is to come in the following days. We will see as many as possible of the nine who have stayed nearby, plus spouses and all their above-average children. Love it!
This visit will happily include breakfast with former convent classmates... But that's another webpage!
Happy 74th, Brother!!!
Family Rosary
a country girl trying to get along in a big city
Abruptly the poker of memory stirs
the ashes of recollection and uncovers a forgotten ember, still smoldering down there, still hot, still glowing, still red as red.
— William Manchester
Archives
