The Reindeer Keeper

  The other day I stopped at an Amish farm I’d driven by many times. It had nothing to do with their roadside stand. It was because an Amish woman at another roadside stand told me that one of the three Amish men on their local school board lived there. She told me this after I voiced my curiosity about Amish schools. I explained I liked to write stories. Some for children. Some for adults. I told her I had an idea for a new storyline which included an Amish community. A particular character was the Amish teacher. I asked her if it would be possible for me to visit an Amish school. That’s when she told me about that Amish farm where that Amish man on the school board lived. I never did tell her I had been wanting to visit an Amish school for years. New storyline or not. So, the other day when I finally stopped at that Amish farm, the Amish man on the school board was home. He was more than kind. A half hour later I was parking my car off the road, in front of the Amish school I had per

  For at least ten years now these two handmade friends have been getting together in anticipation of and to celebrate Halloween. In a way, they are related. The decorated gourd maker is the daughter of the brown paper bag pumpkin maker. The brown paper bag pumpkin maker was in kindergarten when he created his paper bag pumpkin. Whatever the handmade decorations made by little ones at home or at school happen to be, they weave their way back on to shelves or Christmas trees or tabletops when the appropriate season calls them out of wherever they were put to rest up for their particular season or holiday to come around again. After all, they have a very important responsibility. They just don't sit on a shelf or inside an old crock as reminders of a holiday. They sit there as reminders of the little hands that made them; a young imagination on full speed, using little scissors and glue if necessary and crayons and pencils; possibly glitter and cotton balls, even pipe cleaners when n

  I've written so much about growing up in the country in one of the four houses in a row full of family, and the old chicken coop converted to a clubhouse where I'd play with cousins, day after day after day, using our imaginations, using the books and chalkboards and desks the adults bought from an abandoned schoolhouse, bringing them home and putting them in our converted chicken coop for us to enjoy. And that is just what we did. Sometimes, I'd bring a book I was reading to the clubhouse. So would a certain cousin. We made time in our busy schedule to read our books. Those books might have been Nancy Drew titles or books written by Louisa May Alcott. One thing for sure, many of those books were from 'The Little House on the Prairie Book Series,' books more often than not bought by our grandmother and given to us with love as gifts for Christmas. IF MY GRANDMOTHER ONLY KNEW that very book series, she bought for us as gifts is now on the most recent list of Banned