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I was a bit nervous, and had dreamed the night before that I fell asleep during my presentation.
But once I got rolling, all was good and my presentation on feature writing to a group of 120 fourth graders at Davis Elementary in Grinnell on Monday, April 17 went off without a hitch. And I made it through without falling asleep at the wheel. The presentation came about after I wrote an article in this publication on a food drive that a group of third and fourth graders at Davis held earlier this year. The students set a goal to collect 500 food items and ended up collecting more than 1,800 food items. That’s news worth printing! One of the teachers at Davis, April Gosselink-Lemke, reached out to me to ask if I might be interested in talking with the students about feature writing. Original plans were to do it by zoom, but being a people person, I offered to come to the school and share in person. Debbie put together a power point to make my presentation go smoother. I typically talk off the cuff, so having a power point helped keep me on track during the 30-minute presentation. A number of students asked me questions or made general comments. Some said they knew me from the Poweshiek County Fair. One young fellow asked if his 102-year-old great-grandfather would make a great feature story. “That would be a great feature,” I told the young man. I’ve worked with young people and 4-H’ers for years helping them improve their photography skills, but to be able to share what I know and have learned about writing features was like icing on cake. It’s also a testament to the goodness of God. I’ve mentioned in the past in this column that I barley passed high school English. For me to return to college in my early 30s and attend and graduate from one of the top journalism programs in the world at the University of Missouri-Columbia is a miracle. It took me three tries to pass the 100-question grammar test. I had to score 80 or better to pass. Thanks to hours of tutoring, studying and believing in myself, I passed with an 82, and on my 36th birthday. I did not have the grades to get into journalism school. I needed at least a 3.0 GPA and I had a 2.5 GPA So, I wrote a letter to the School of Journalism Dean, pleading my case. I shared how I was a returning non-traditional student and that I was working my way through college. At the time, I was working nights as a custodian on the MU campus. I asked an advisor in the Ag Journalism program at MU to help me with my letter. I didn’t have a lap top, so I would walk to one of the computer labs, sign in and work on my letter. After printing out a copy, I checked out and then walked back to the ag school to talk about my letter with the advisor. This went on several times before finalizing the letter, which I hand delivered to the School of Journalism Dean’s Office. A few days later, I received a phone call that I had been accepted into the journalism school. What an open door of opportunity. Prior to journalism school, I was required to take extensive writing course in the History of American Journalism, which was a challenge in itself. I was also required to complete a news writing course, which I did in the summer of 1995. I was so nervous at the start of the course, but I kept going and didn’t give up. I was required to get a “C” in the course. I believe I received a “B-.” I was told early on that if you get a “C” in journalism school, you were doing great. I actually did a little better than that. I’m looking forward to more opportunities to share my God-given talents to encourage and help others, both young and old. No matter your background, your experiences, who your family is, how much money you have, what others think and a host of other roadblocks, if you believe, apply yourself, don’t give up, anything is possible. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day and always.
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We have a number of animals at our country home northwest of Montezuma and enjoy each one of them.
There’s Rex, our dog, and Harmony, Gazer and Sophie, our three mini horses. We also have a host of kitties, including Oscar, our outdoor Tom, who keeps the mice at bay. And inside we have Smokey, our beloved long-time kitty that arrived as a stray in December 2007. Smokey was a gift from God. In June of 2007, Debbie had lost her beloved cat, Squirty, who passed while we were on vacation with my folks in Branson for their 50th wedding anniversary. God filled the void when Smokey showed up at our door. By day two, we were feeding him leftovers and by day three, he was inside the garage and the next day, inside the house. And he’s been here ever since. He’s such a precious kitty and loves to take afternoon naps on my lap while I take an afternoon snooze. He enjoys his toy bananas with nip and sleeping at the foot of our bed. Then there’s Gizmo, a Siamese kitty, also a stray, who we took in after she showed up at our door in December 2013. Gizmo loves being petted and given belly rubs. Smokey arrived fixed and we had Gizmo fixed. We decided to take the stitches out ourselves. I held Gizmo upside down on my lap while Debbie carefully cut and removed the stitches. That made for a few tense moments. And I can’t forget about Sooner, our wild child kitty who drives Debbie crazy when she goes behind our television and crawls around the top of the kitchen cabinets and gets into other mischief. She and Smokey sometimes chases Gizmo around the house. Gizmo typically doesn’t back down and that can mean some tense moments Sooner was abandoned by her momma and Debbie bottled fed her until she was able to eat on her own. We’ve had our three horses since August 2016. We learned about them from a friend who saw them for sale on Facebook. We bought them from a family near Van Horne who had 24 mini horses for sale. We picked out the three that we wanted. Gazer, the only male mini, was once a show horse. He has the prettiest mane. Harmony is the biggest of the three minis and could probably qualify as pony. Sophie is loveable as are the other two horses. When Debbie opens the gate to let the minis graze on our small pasture, it’s fun to watch them run and jump about. And she has them trained well. When they are in the pasture, all Debbie has to do is shake the food container and yell their names and they come running. We don’t show the horses, just enjoy them. Debbie checks them and makes sure they have hay and food to eat. We feed them square bales because our mini horses love to eat, so you can’t put a big bale out or they would eat so much they would get foundered. And Rex, our chocolate lab, has been a part of our lives since November 2010. We bought Rex through a silent auction from a local family at Montezuma Schools that year. Rex is a good boy and loves being petted and having water sprayed on him on hot summer days. We have a Rubbermaid tub filled with water for him to take a dip in on occasion. Debbie does 99 percent of the work when comes to taking care of our animals. She’s really good with the animals and loves and cares for each of them. I call our hay guy when the supply gets low and pick up feed or other supplies when needed. I need to be better about going out and petting Rex and checking out the horses and giving Oscar a rubdown. He loves a good rubdown. Everyone needs an animal of some kind and we are blessed with some loveable ones. They are all precious and gifts from God. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day and always. With storms brewing in late March and early April, the biggest concern in the Parker house was parking our van in the garage.
The garage is big enough, but instead of the van, there is stuff - lots of stuff. This makes parking the van inside next to impossible. I’m big on recycling cardboard boxes and sometimes I let them pile up in the garage before taking them to the recycle center. In addition to owning a cardboard factory, there are a number of other plastic tubs, boxes of stuff, tools, yard equipment, yard decorations and more stuff taking up a majority of the garage. If you have stuff, you might be a packrat. When the first round of storms rolled through Poweshiek County on Friday, March 31, Debbie, who was not feeling the best at the time, become concerned when the weather folks started talking about hail – big hail. “I think we should try and get the van in the garage,” she said. I agreed, but was also a bit under the weather and cleaning the garage in the next 15-minutes while a steam train of tornados and hail were on the horizon was not at the top of my to-do list. Debbie made an attempt, but cleaning can be an overwhelming task. I do appreciate her concern and efforts. Thankfully the storms passed with only a minor bout of pea size hail. Well, then comes Tuesday, April 4. I had been napping while Mother Nature was working outside to send round two of nasty weather our way. Again, Debbie, who by this time was feeling better, asked about parking the van in the garage when reports of hail and high winds were forecast for our area. Like Debbie, I was feeling better, so I said, “Let’s check it out.” We both dug in and 15-minutes later, we had the piles neatly arranged in bigger piles, opening a spot for the van. I pulled the van in the garage and was about 6-inches short of closing the door. There wasn’t much more I could do, so I hit the gas and pushed the wall of boxes, tubs and trashcans forward enough to get inside the garage. I had to walk outside around the van before closing the garage door. That is close, folks. Task accomplished and we did it together. We didn’t throw anything away, we just arranged how it was stacked. Of course, the storm, at least in Montezuma, didn’t do anything and we are thankful for that. When I headed out on Wednesday for work, a pile boxes had collapsed on the van. One was even stuck to the hood. Cleaning is a never ending project. There’s always something that needs cleaning from the toilet to well, the entire house. Our goal this summer is to clean the garage and the house. We hope to hold at least one, if not two, garage sales. We have lots of stuff and a great garage sale in the works. I’m hoping people will visit our garage sale and buy some of our stuff. Then I will be able to get the van in the garage – or fill it up with more stuff. Life is full of storms, challenges and more. My advice is to find the positive, work together to find a solution, put your hand to the plow and keep moving forward. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day and always. It’s early Spring, my face is sunburned and I have aches and pains from being seated on a bleacher for more than eight hours. But, it was time well spent as Debbie and I enjoyed watching the Iowa State Cyclones play the number #1 OU Sooners in softball in Ames, March 24 - 25.
The Sooners visit Ames every other year and Debbie and I have attended at least two games of the three game set each of the last four times the Sooners were in Iowa. We arrived in Ames around 2 p.m. on Friday and headed straight for the stadium. There was no time to check into our hotel as we might not get a seat. We were surprised to find that the two big gates in front of the stadium were shut. After witnessing a fan open one of the gates and go through, we decided to follow and head into the stadium, too. The stadium quickly filled up within 30-minutes of our arrival. Most of the crowd was OU fans that came from all across Iowa and neighboring states. I talked with several fans and they thought nothing of driving several hours so their little girl or team could watch the back-to-back national champions play ball. There was group of parents and their children, all from Western Iowa, who were seated in front of us. Many of the young girls, around age 8, had made signs proclaiming their love for the Oklahoma players and the team. One sign read, “I play now for my team so someday I can play for OU.” Another sign read, “I am Jayda Coleman’s biggest fan.” Around the fifth inning, the young girl excitedly ran back to her parents and exclaimed, that Jayda, an outfielder for the Sooners, read her sign and waved at her. All the girls carried softballs with Sharpie pins hoping to get autographs from the players and coaches after the game. The Sooners struggled a bit on Friday, winning game one, 3-0, in seven innings. We heard later that evening that it was the second biggest crowd in stadium history. After arriving at our hotel, Debbie looked out our room window to discover that the Sooners were staying in the hotel across the road. On Saturday morning, after watching the Sooners prepare to the load the bus for game day, we decided it was time to head to the stadium. Even though we arrived two hours before the game set to start at 1 p.m., we found a long line waiting to get into the stadium. There were also several tailgaters sporting OU flags, grills, lawn chairs and yard games in the parking lot. I spoke with one of the tailgaters and they hailed from Iowa, but love the Sooners. We quickly parked and got in line. By the time the gates opened 45-minutes later, the line had more than doubled and stretched all the way across the street from the stadium. When the gates opened, Debbie took off carrying our OU blanket we use for a cushion to grab a seat. I couldn’t keep up with her as people in line behind me passed as I moved my legs as fast as they would carry me. We could not believe the crowd as fans quickly filled the stadium to standing room only capacity, breaking Friday’s record and shattering the all-time stadium attendance record. There was an estimated 1,715 fans at Saturday’s games. That doesn’t count the fans outside the stadium. People were standing in the stadium aisles while others found a seat in the upper deck walkways or on top of the concrete dugouts and wherever they could. After waiting about an hour, it was game time. It was a beautiful day for a couple softball games – warm and sunny with a nice breeze. Iowa State went up early, 2-0, in game two before the Sooners got the bats cracking, scoring a grand slam and several single homeruns, winning the game, 13-3, in five-inning run-rule fashion. And not to leave Iowa State out of the mix, the Cyclones Lea Nelson come in to pinch hit in the bottom of the fourth inning and hit her first collegiate home run off of Sooner pitcher, Nicole May. It’s a memory she will never forget. The Cyclones also made several double plays and big catches in the outfield while playing tough in all three games, in spite of being unable to score many points. On the flip side, every time the Sooners scored a homerun, the team would look into the stands and yell, “Boomer,” at which the fans would yell back, “Sooner.” This was repeated two more times. At the end of game one, I made my way to the concession stand only to wait more than 30-minutes in a long line to buy two hot dogs and a couple cold drinks, arriving back at my seat just in time for game two. The second game of the double header Saturday was much of what happened in game one as the Sooners went up 8-0 in the top the first inning. OU sophomore pitcher, Jordy Bahl, a Nebraska native, kept the Cyclones scoreless with the Sooners winning, 10-0, in five-innings to take all three games to none. We saw Chris Plank, the voice of Sooner softball at the games. We thought about asking him for a photo with us, but didn’t get the chance. When listening to OU games on the radio, Debbie often tweets our names and we sometimes hear Chris read on air - “Debbie and J.O. Parker are listening in from Montezuma, Iowa.” Afterwards, we waited in the grassy area outside the stadium and watched as the players and coaches signed autographs and had pictures taken with the fans. It was there that we discovered that the large group seated behind us was the parents and family of OU’s Alex Storako of Frankfort, Ill. Alex played softball at Michigan for four years before transferring to Oklahoma for her super senior season. She crossed the barrier set up at the stadium to give her mom a hug and have photos taken with family and friends. We topped off the day with a stop at Culvers in Newton before heading home to Montezuma. The best part of the trip was spending time with Debbie enjoying something we love together. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day and always. I was invited earlier this year to judge at my first 4-H fair in 2023.
I’m headed southeast to Keokuk County to judge photography at the 2023 Keokuk County Expo in Sigourney on July 10. This will be my third time judging at that fair. The first time was in 2019, when I judged photos and creative arts. I returned in 2020, this time judging entries without the 4-H’ers due to Covid-19. I enjoy judging 4-H photography and hope to have the chance to judge at one or two more fairs this year. I have judged 4-H photography in 11 different counties including Linn (Central City), Johnson (Iowa City), Washington (Washington), Keokuk County (Sigourney), Mahaska (Oskaloosa), Davis (Bloomfield), Poweshiek (Grinnell), Iowa (Marengo), Benton (Vinton), Warren (Indianola) and Marion (Knoxville) counties. I started judging in 2012 thanks to the encouragement of Cathy Lents at the Poweshiek County Extension Office. I took a judging course through Iowa State University Extension in November 2011. I have judged at county fairs every year outside of 2014. I judged at the Iowa State Fair in 2019. That was a different experience. At county fairs, I get to talk with the 4-H’ers. At the state fair, it is just me and the photo. That is a bit more challenging as I had to write down my thoughts on a forum given back to the 4-H’er. I would much rather talk with the 4-H’er in person. I have also held several 4-H photography workshops and also offered photo editing to help young people get ready for the county fair. I am always willing to help young people with their photography and 4-H projects. I don’t know it all, but I am willing to share what do know. Send me a message on Facebook and I will try and help. I have also judged open class photos at Poweshiek County for about 8 years and also in Iowa County a couple times. The Missouri Photo Workshop In 2003, I was able to participate in the Missouri Photo Workshop in Louisiana, Mo. The workshop, which is sponsored by the University of Missouri-Columbia, brings upwards to 40 photographers with all skill levels to a small Missouri town each year. The goal for each photographer is to find a subject and then a vehicle (subject) to tell the story. The workshop was founded in 1949 by the now late Clifton C. Edom, who taught photography at the MU School of Journalism. Edom was inspired by the gritty, content-rich photographs of the documentary photo unit of the pre-WWII Farm Security Administration (FSA). FSA director Roy Stryker and photographer Russell Lee worked closely with Edom in the creation of the workshop and served as faculty members during its early years. The workshop features judges from the National Geographic to major newspapers and magazines across the nation. I had two judges. One was with Sunset magazine in Oregon and the other judge was a long-time photographer and editor with the Louisville Courier newspapers in Kentucky. My focus was on community service and my subject was one of the Louisiana Police Department officers whose beat was the public schools. I rode in the police cruiser and took photos in the schools as the officer dealt with issues needing the attention of a law official. I got to know the officer quite well in the process. My photo story won the Spirit of the Workshop Award. At the end of the week, town residents are invited to a community showing of all the photographer’s work. It was a great experience and was made possible thanks to scholarship. If you would like to learn more about the workshop, visit https://missouriphotoworkshop.org. No matter what your talent or skill level is, I want to encourage you to get involved and help make life better for others. Sometimes the small things you do in life make the biggest difference. And if there is something you want to do or participate in, take a step and apply. Doors of opportunity are always swinging open. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day and always. |
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