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WHAT A WEEK! COOKIES, LUNCHEON, THEATER

6/4/2016

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Indiana Bicentennial Commission members E. Rene Stanley, legacy project creator Patricia McDaniel and commission member Valeri Beamer, preparing to judge cookies representing every era in Indiana history. (photo for The Courier-Times)
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What caught my eye about this plate of cookies in the competition was the little Indiana-shaped sugar cookie with the capital and Dublin marked as the only decorations. Perfect! (photo for The Courier-Times)
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There were so many lovely aspects to Thursday's Hinsey-Brown luncheon that I don't know where to start but one was certainly artist Marilyn Witt (left) bringing the framed original painting of my cover, "That Sweet Place: At Home in the Heartland." It was the first time I saw the actual painting. Until now, and all through the publishing process, we worked only via email with jpeg photo attachments of the art. Also, a shout to my friend and one of the book's three editors, Debbie McCray, who drove over from Ohio. We enjoyed a catch-up session at Cafe Royal after the luncheon.
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The CHURCHILL playbill from Friday night, next to my fancy little purse that went to the theater last night. Photos during the performance are prohibited. Shucks! It was great.
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Actor, writer and producer Ron Keaton, who portrays Winston Churchill, left, with his mentor and high-school teacher, Dick Willis, who taught for many years at New Castle High School. Not many students over age 60 can have their school-days teachers watch them work! And Dick still teaches, now at the Indiana Academy in Muncie. I know this was a special moment for both men.
 After last weekend's leisure, my calendar exploded, but in a good way. I could certainly devote individual posts to everything that happened, but will go with a summary, mainly letting the camera do the talking.

TUESDAY I ventured to Lewisville to meet up with Rep. Tom Saunders and wife Sue who have turned their basically lifelong love of antiquing into a shop, Flatrock Mercantile, in back of their home.

The story and photos will be out in Sunday's Courier-Times. But in the meantime, make it a point to drop by and see what they've got.

Sue promises a changing inventory and offers both antiques and uniques. Sweet shop, just a chigger off U.S. 40 at the stoplight.

I was back down that way on WEDNESDAY as I headed to Dublin (as in Indiana, folks, on the far western side of Wayne County on U.S. 40).

Antiques proprietor and co-founder of the 824-mile Historic National Road Yard Sale, Patricia McDaniel, asked me to help judge a historic cookie contest, along with two members of the Indiana Bicentennial Commission.

The contest, and cookie cookbook, are part of her Bicentennial Legacy Project. Sesame seed cookies from 1830-1940 were the winners. Proceeds from the project go to several different Wayne County charities in support of pets, children and seniors.

I enjoyed visiting with the commission members and hearing about other statewide projects, along with enjoying the cookies. And, of course I did a story for the paper.

Cookbooks remain available at Old Storefront Antiques in Dublin.

Patricia is an interesting woman. Goes to show you never know what stories people have to tell. You might see some of the antiques she collects to resell on the big screen.

She sells all kinds of antiques and props to HOLLYWOOD for movie sets and staging. You might see her on Indy TV stations, too, as she promotes the annual sale and I've even seen her on Indy Style cooking recipes from some of her National Road cookbooks.

That brings us to THURSDAY and I'm still coming down from that high! Hinsey-Brown Funeral Service, and specifically owner Kevin Brown and aftercare coordinator and my friend Wanda Jones had me in for a community book-signing luncheon. So many wonderful friends attended and I am humbled and blessed by the experience.

Saying thank you is too small. It felt like the official launch to this little Hoosier book tour I'll be working on for a season of life.

On FRIDAY I headed to the pool for the first time this summer. Each year I love and look forward to the morning water exercise classes and I'm disappointed that this summer's schedule doesn't fit so well with mine.

I think I'll hit the open swims, though, and get my fill of water time under the summer sun.  With kids returning to school in August, the summer pool season is incredibly short here.

Maybe the water will actually warm up by then! I got in yesterday and initially thought it was too cold to take. But I endured and the old bod adjusted.

But then, it was home to get ready for the theater! New Castle native and graduate Ron Keaton, also a subject of a recent feature story I did, brought his one-man show, CHURCHILL, to Indy. I hitched a ride with my friend Mary Malone and two of her friends and we had a great time watching a great show.

I was delighted to see some 30 or so New Castle teachers, friends and classmates of Ron's that showed up to watch the delightful performance.

Bravo! I'm saving back the best pictures of the bunch from the after-show meet-and-greet with Ron for the paper, but here's a little preview, left.




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INDIANA'S STATE FLOWER: IN PRAISE OF PEONIES

5/20/2016

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I’m glad that peonies are Indiana’s state flower. That’s why I had Marilyn Witt paint them for the cover of the new book, one of several nods to Indiana's Bicentennial.

In reality though, unless there is some secret tip or clever remedy that I am yet to learn (do share!), peonies are not a great indoor vase flower. They tend to contain ants. Big black ones!

Nonetheless, I am unfazed in my love for peonies. They are big and beautiful, showy and zero  maintenance. They have sturdy stems and they come in pretty shades of pink and white. I don't know of an outdoor flower that's any prettier, nor one as loyal as a perennial.

I’m most familiar with white ones, as we had a couple of white peony bushes at home when I was growing up. I'm sure they are still out there on the farm because these bushes seem to last forever no matter what attention you don’t give them and really, does anyone ever give a peony bush maintenance attention of any kind?

They always bloom, without fail, at one of the happiest, if not THE happiest time of the year, around Memorial Day. It’s when Indiana is at its greenest, things are blooming, school is newly out for the summer and when I was a girl, it also meant that my nieces Lisa and Marlene were staying with us for the weekend while their family went to the Indianapolis 500.

It was always great weekend! We created our own variety shows where we sang tunes such as "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" or "Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man." And since Lisa and Marlene were Dixon Dancers, they reprised their recital programs. We cranked up the music on the record player that was part of our massive TV console in the living room, which served as our "sound system." We also hosted, along with the show, a Miss Lisa-Donna Queen Pageant.

The queen candidates were some combination of Barbara, Patsy and Susan Earl, Marlene and Lisa Jobe. The audience consisted of my mom, along with the younger Earl girls. I wanted to be queen, would have loved to have been queen, but I was too busy producing the spectacle to compete for the tiara, which Lisa and I crafted out of tinfoil.

I associate peonies with those shows and those weekends. I’m sure I created corsages with peonies. I loved corsages about as much as I loved tiaras. And who am I kidding? I still love them both.

I think corsages, the traditional kind, the ones you wear pinned high on your blouse and can smell all day long when you brush your chin up against the delicate petals, are wonderful. Peonies were always blooming, and blooming and blooming, in our yard, and in the cemeteries where we went to decorate graves on Memorial Day. Mom and I would do our decorating after Lisa and Marlene left on Monday.

In my book, the character Joy looks forward to May. She’s going through a hard time when she arrives at Sweetland, and the thought of May cheers her throughout the book because some of her goals will be achieved by then, and there is the potential for life to improve and, improve rapidly once that date hits her calendar.

The book cover is set in the month of May when peonies are in full bloom and summer is on the horizon.

When Marilyn and I discussed cover concepts for That Sweet Place: At Home in the Heartland, we considered many ideas. At first, I thought maybe it could be a Christmas theme since the book begins and ends at Christmastime. But while Marilyn would have created something beautiful and Christmas-card-like, I thought it might sell the book well around Christmas – but not so much the rest of the year.

Then I thought about a winter cover. Maybe place a whimsical snowman in the foreground and the inn in the background. Reggie could tug on the snowman’s scarf. But the problem with that cover was that it might suddenly look more like a children’s book than one targeted at women.

I kept coming back to a kitchen scene and that resulted in the buttery yellow walls (which Samantha dreamed Roger was painting in the first book) and the checked floor. The sugar cream pie and peonies were added for their strong Hoosier symbolism and both are in the story, as is the dog, Reggie. And from there, Marilyn took the idea and ran with it. I am in awe of how she pulled everything together and painted the scene with such harmony of color and subject. I couldn’t be happier with Marilyn’s cover painting.

And there’s something I don’t have to worry about regarding the cover: There are no ants in those peonies. Blaise's delicious pie is safe.

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