V: Value

A: All the

L: Loving

E: Energies

N: Needed

T: To be

I: Invested in

N: Newly

E: Every

S: Special

D: Day.

A: Again?

Y: Yes!

Perhaps this is not the best poetic verse you’ve ever seen. I’ll agree, but please keep in mind I never was very good at poetry. My favorite Aunty R could rattle off yards of tasteful verses in opposition to the incessant gobble-de-gook I shared with her. I still favor a tendency to espouse the same old stuff today.

So…in continuum of what I have just revealed I will move on to other historically dated facts.

In the last few weeks, while my previously considered regular column was idling, I forced myself to rip open a suitcase in the basement filled with copies of more than

65 years of journals, beginning as diaries in smaller forms starting about 1960, and cataloged them as best I could. In the process I found there were dates missing of which I’m not sure what happened. To my belief the journals were complete, but they are not. No problem? Right. Close enough. I have been, over the years, claiming I can remember large portions of my lifetime and will continue to do just that, but I do often double check my facts, if I can, by going back to see what I have registered in the journals.

As I’ve said, I am usually right on, but like to check. I also check with the Historical Events column that is printed every week in The News. It kind of scares me when occasionally I come across a bit of dated information that informs me of something and I think, “Oh my gosh, I was there,” and then I have to realize it was a very long time ago, but I was there.

One of the stories was about a moose being suspected of wandering well out of its usual Minnesota territory and being sighted by locals in the Wellman area. It just happened I looked out my living room window, and there it was, across the road headed east. The article mentioned my calling in that information. Goodness sakes!

Another event was even more shaking when I was reminded of a story, a good one for this Valentine’s Day celebration time.

At that time, let’s say eons ago, I went to a country school where a young gentleman of my interest was also enrolled in a grade ahead of me.

For Valentine’s Day we kids were to give cards to each other, putting them in a box that was opened that day. One of the “really pretty” Valentines to me was from that young man who for some reason could not attend school that day. That evening, at the general story where I was with my parents, he was seated back behind on a sack of feed, looking just fine.

My parents moved away not long after that and I never saw him again. Imagine my surprise dozens of years later when I saw in the Cedar Rapids Gazette he was being elected as mayor of the city. Well, well, how about that? Some things just go a different way. I still have the card. I learned later it was chosen by his mother because she liked me.