* I am going to brag again about my niece Jenny. She was commissioned to paint a large mural in the new elephant exhibit at the Kansas City Zoo. Pretty cool!

Biographies are generally not my favorite genre to read. In fact, I could probably count on one hand the biographies I have read; I just don’t go to that aisle of the library. But there was something about the stories I heard when Donald Stratton died that made me want to learn more about him. Just to remind you, Donald G. Stratton was the USS Arizona Survivor who died on February 15, 2020 at the age of 97. A motor cade in his honor came through Stockton the evening of February 27, carrying him to his final resting place at Red Cloud, Nebraska, where he grew up.

I am writing in regards to Lynn McKinnis Shinohara’s inquiry (May 7th issue) of the 1900’s flu epidemic.

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mind·ful·ness

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Howdy:

Here’s a True Confession of a Stockton Housewife: I am a clipper and a saver, a stasher and a filer. I’ve got notebooks and files and shoeboxes and storage boxes and plastic totes full of stuff that I’ve saved over the years from every place we’ve lived, every job we’ve worked at, every life we’ve had. And yes, every once in a while I actually go through some of that stuff with the idea of purging and pitching, but very little gets tossed because, well, it’s just a part of our life story. Besides, I want to make sure my sons have plenty of entertainment when they clean up after I’m gone.

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The news every day is often so sorrowful and worrisome that most days, I just avoid it. But I love hearing or reading a happy story, especially when it’s about a dog. There’s just something about a good dog story that warms my heart. I guess it’s because many of us have dogs who take care of us more than we take care of them.