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A store of happy memories from my childhood revolve around a place my father called “the old soldiers home”. The place was exactly that, it was built as a permanent home for Civil War Veterans who had suffered injuries. Officially named “The National Home for Disabled Veteran Soldiers”, its stated purpose was “to provide a home where subsistence quarters, clothing, religious instruction, employment when possible and amusements are provided by the Government of the United States…not a charity, but a reward to the brave and deserving.”

Milwaukee was one of the three original sites for these soldiers’ homes. The main building in Milwaukee’s complex was designed by Edward Townsend Mix in the Victorian style. The first veterans walked through the doors in 1869. Ward Memorial Hall was added in 1882 and included a theater, store, restaurant and train ticket office. A chapel and other buildings soon formed an entire complex which was set on 900 acres. Down through the decades, the Soldiers’ Home continued to house and heal veterans from America’s subsequent wars. 

Our family home was only a mile from the complex, and my  parents loved to take walks there on the many tree-lined paths. It was a green oasis in the heart of the city. I spent hours with them walking and skipping in that bucolic place. Plus, I was awed by the grandeur of those ornate Victorian buildings.

My most vivid memory, however, is of the Soldiers’ Home at night. Milwaukee has a grid pattern of streets. The shortest way for my folks to drive downtown was through the winding roads in the soldiers’ home. Whenever we came home from downtown at night, I always hoped the lights would be on at the Ward Theater. It had a gigantic stained glass window of U.S. Grant on his horse, and I thought it was incredibly beautiful. My father, on the other hand, had different thoughts. Every time we passed it, he would say, “Grant was a drunk, and it’s amazing he could stay on the horse.” Despite all the history classes I have taken since childhood, my father’s words are still entrenched in my brain. 

Those historic buildings were closed in 1989.  They soon fell into egregious disrepair and were scheduled for demolition. But, sometimes, miracles do happen. Preservation groups rallied and “Old Main” has been meticulously restored. And here is the real miracle: it was not turned into profitable luxury apartments. The building will continue to welcome veterans with its 80 apartments, a fitness center and offices for caseworkers. 

And one of these days, General Grant on his horse will also be fully restored, once again riding in glory. 

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It all began in Scotland in 2006. The Scottish Transport Ministry asked “wee” school children to come up with fanciful names for their snowplows. The idea was a huge success, and now every plow in the country has a moniker and all active plows (or gritters as they call them) are tracked on a wildly popular website.

The fun has now snowballed all around the world in locations that wear white for winter. If you live in a place that never needs a plow, it might be hard to understand why plow naming has become so popular. The answer is easy: you can’t survive a northern winter without a good sense of humor.

When I started looking up all the places that currently name plows and all the lists of names, I was amazed. There is a blizzard of names. From the hundreds and hundreds I found, I’ve edited it down to this list. It’s very punny.

• SCOTLAND
  • For Your Ice
  • Gritallica
  • Lord Coldemort
  • Gritney Spears
  • Gritter Thunberg
• CANADA
  • Sled Zeppelin
  • Flurrious George
  • School’s Not Cancelled
  • My Fair Bladey
  • Sleetwood Mac
• VERMONT (Vermont’s grade schools were all invited to submit names.)
  • William Scrap-speare
  • Blizzard Wizzard
  • Brr-ito
  • Snowasaurus
  • Snow-manator
• MICHIGAN
  • Aaron Brr
  • Yooper Scooper (For those not familiar with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Yooper is a nickname for its residents.)
  • Plowderpuff
  • Big LePlowski
  • Laker Scraper
• MINNESOTA 122,000 votes were cast by Minnesota residents in the 2021 inaugural Name the Snowplow contest.)
  • Plow Bunyan
  • F. Salt Fitzgerald
  • Duck, Duck Orange Truck
  • Snowbi Wan Kanobi
  • Darth Blader

Even though March has arrived, our plows will not be able to rest for a while yet. We are all getting weary of winter, but laughter and cleared roads will see us through.

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He was a poet, storyteller, children’s book author, artist, teacher, performer and puppeteer. But most of all, Ashley Bryan was an inspiration to every child and adult who knew him or his work. Mr. Bryan died last week at the age of 98. The joy he put into the world during his long life will endure for decades to come.

I had the amazing good luck to work with Ashley on two occasions called Poetry Concerts. The creation of the Milwaukee Public Library, these events consisted of a week of special poetry and art workshops in local grade schools culminating with a gala performance, or concert, featuring the week’s special guest and mentor, a nationally famous children’s book poet and writer. Without a doubt, Ashley Bryan was the most dynamic person I have ever met.

Ashley’s life was not without hardships, but he was a constant creator of joy. His parents left their sun-filled Caribbean island of Antigua for Harlem out of economic necessity. His father was a printer by trade, but could only find janitorial work when he and his future wife arrived in America. When he finally found a job as a greeting card printer, he moved his growing family to a walk-up railroad apartment in the Bronx. The family needed more room, there were six children, plus three cousins his parents adopted after their mother died.

Ashley’s description of life in that long, skinny tenement that only had windows at the front and back end tells much about the power of the human spirit. In his autobiography for children, Words To My Life’s Song, he relates how his mother loved flowers and put them wherever there was light in their apartment. And where there was no light, she and the children made crepe paper flowers to brighten up the gloom.

His father loved birds and lined the living room walls with shelves of birdcages for his beloved canaries, finches, warblers and parakeets. But those birds had competition. Ashley relates, “My mother sang from one end of the day to the other. When childhood friends visited, they would say, ‘Your mother sings!’ I thought all mothers sang.”

Ashley loved to draw from the time he was a small child, and his parents gave him his own desk to work on and good paper left over from printing orders at his father’s workplace. His childhood was filled with art including free classes provided at W.P.A. workshops.

Graduating from high school at sixteen, he needed a scholarship to go to college. When he initially submitted his portfolio, he was told that it was one of the best the interviewer had ever seen, but “it would be a waste to give a scholarship to a colored person.” He then presented his work to Cooper Union which judged the portfolios blind. He was admitted to the art school which was tuition-free.

After two years of college, he was drafted into the army to serve in World War II and was sent overseas where he took part in the invasion of Normandy. When the war ended, he continued to paint and draw, but switched his major to philosophy, feeling a compelling need for answers to the question, “Why does Man, knowing the overwhelming tragedies of war, choose war”?

But art and writing were to be his life work. In his long and award-filled career, Ashley Bryan wrote over fifty books for children. When he went to a library as a young boy, no children’s books depicted young people who looked like him. Ashley Bryan was one of the foremost artists who changed that situation.

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“Well that is certainly an omen that we are going to have a good day,” I said to my husband one morning last week. He had just gotten up, discovered two furballs on the bathroom floor and cleaned up the mess.

In case you think I was being sarcastic, I wasn’t in the least. Our house is 85% carpeted and soggy furballs plus half-digested stomach contents are a snap to clean up from a tiled bathroom floor. Since the statistical chance of those furballs being catapulted on the tile was very low, we had a stroke of good luck.

The cliche about the half empty or half full glass has some basis in fact. We do get to choose our viewpoints of events.

It would be extremely easy these days to slip into the glass half empty syndrome. Events completely beyond our individual control are hurtling at us from all directions. If you think this is hyperbole, just read the morning news.

But there is good news. We can still find small moments of grace and blessings in our personal lives. For example, my cousin recommended an author to me she thought I might enjoy. I subsequently got one of Alice Steinbach’s books, Educating Alice, and savored every page. I then had my library retrieve her other two books and was equally delighted with them.

And then there’s our furnace. It’s 26 years old and has chosen (thus far) not to break down this winter. Ditto for the dryer. The last time the Maytag repairman visited, he told us that this was the last miracle he could perform. The miracle seems to be having a long shelf life…there have been no screeching sounds coming from the laundry room.

The grocery store was good to me last week as well. I found every item on my list including the Brownberry Ovens Original Wheat Bread which is not delivered to my store in great quantities. I have been eating that bread since I’ve been seven years old and do not intend to stop now.

In summation, I’m booked, warm, dry, well fed and have a husband who will clean up furballs. I must say my glass overfloweth.

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Consider the heart. Such a sublime shape. Two lush, voluptuous curves tapering to a point. A decisive “V” shaped dip in the center. Hearts are bilaterally symmetrical perfection.

Now, consider how unromantic it would be if our universal symbol for love were a square. That would be enough to kill off all thoughts of romance.

Here we are at that delightful time of year when hearts are proliferating everywhere. Valentine’s Day is a heart lover’s heaven, and I’m a fan. From the time I folded that first piece of red construction paper in kindergarten and cut out a heart, I was hooked. I’ve been making them ever since.

The other day I decided to take inventory of all the hearts around our house. Then it seemed like a good idea to photograph them. That led to asking my technically gifted husband to make a video of the results. And what good is a video without music? Fortunately, our family diva extraordinaire, Ivy, agreed to do the vocal. Here is the result, a hearty family collaboration. Feel free to share it…there is no copyright on love.

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