Getting new school supplies is a ritual most children look forward to as the lazy days of summer wind down and the August calendar brings a new year of study and schedules. Pencils finely sharpened, new boxes of brilliant-colored crayons, bottles of school glue, and those large pink Pearl Erasers ...
Read More »Trust the Potter
Remember opening a new can of Play-Doh? The first thing most of us remember about the childhood delight is its smell. It was a can of colorful fun, a rite of passage for our little hands–and noses! The soft, unusually-scented, brightly colored doughs were fun to form into shapes using ...
Read More »With the Drop of a Hat
Who knew that the drop of a hat would lead the way to the creation of America’s favorite chocolate bar? At age 14, Milton Hershey had left school for good and was working as a printer’s apprentice. He was quite bored with the position, as most young boys of his ...
Read More »God’s True Love
Bessie Pease Gutmann’s illustrations graced the covers of many of America’s early magazines such as McCall’s and Woman’s Home Companion. Bessie painted lovely images of babies and young children, capturing their innocence and purity in soft shades of blue and pink. Her own dear children, Alice, Lucille, and John, were ...
Read More »Don’t Ration Your Gratitude!
My dad really saved things—old gas receipts from 1960, the bill for my sister’s birth in 1968 ($160), his yearbook from 1947, and a war ration booklet from 1942 that belonged to my grandfather. Ration booklets held stamps that Americans had to shop with to purchase rationed items such as ...
Read More »