Abraham Lincoln Radio Show Features Erwin Thompson’s Stories & Music
Sinta Seiber-Lane interviewed Daddy for an WUIS radio program on Lincoln. Guests besides my father Erwin A. Thompson included Chris Vallillo and Todd Cranson..
Class Lessons from Childhood Shape Me Today
My feeling about class are complicated. I grew up in an ambiguous class environment. All three of us kids were raised to work…and work hard…on our big gardens…on wide-flung family construction projects…on our music, and homework. My respite was walking in the woods and reading. We got good grades. My sister became a world class…
Village Wisdom: Anchors: “Melville Neighbors,”by Erwin A. Thompson
In our family collection of books I found an old Bible, with the inscription: “Frank Riehl, Superintendent of the Melville Sunday School.” One time my Uncle Ed Riehl and Aunt Amelia (Mim) Riehl were to play a violin duet for the church program. Aunt Mim was very shy, and not used to playing in public….
Village Wisdom: Anchors, E. A. Riehl…by Erwin A. Thompson
Evergreen Heights, the place founded by E. A. Riehl and our homeplace still…where he communed with nature and forged paths to become one of the 8 premiere horticulturalist in the world at that time. E. A. Riehl was a pillar of the community, though known not to suffer fools gladly. The lane which ends in…
Pop’s Come Back at Home
It’s been no time at all since Pop’s return from the hospital. We can say two things for certain: First, he’s still his indomitable self, blessing the world a little longer with his presence: playing music, finding the true game in hide-and-seek with his 8 year-old great grand daughter (namely…pretend not to find, while clearly…
Pop Home from Hospital! Halleluyah!
In the hospital Pop received callers–visitors and staff–as if he were a host in an elegant drawing room clad in a dressing gown instead of hospital regulation. But, the last night before he left after a 5 1/2 day stay, he didn’t sleep until 4 p.m. “It’s the strain of it all,” he told me….
Inspiring Day at the Hospital with Pop and His Court
I spent yesterday at the hospital with my father (who experienced a small heart attack early Sunday morning) and my niece, Diane, who holds his medical records with meticulous care and kindness. We have a division of family labor in creating a team to support my father’s ability to live alone. The medical portfolio belongs…
Blog Action Day: Poverty in the Great Depression. “The Kind of People that We Are”—a poem by Erwin A. Thompson
Blog Action Day is today, with a focus on Poverty. Currently 9,394 Sites with an audience with more than 10,612,112 readers are registered in Blog Action Day 2008. Last year, I participated when bloggers focused on the Environment. Read my post on how it’s “Easy to be green at the Carelton Hotel in San Francisco.”…
Alton Sesquicenntenial. We’re playing, folks!
Pop and I were musicians in public this weekend. We played both days at the Alton Sesquicenntenial. Just so you don’t have to look it up, that’s 150 years, the anniversary of the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates in Alton. Click here for a schedule of the weekend and more information on the Alton Sesquicenntenial. On Saturday…
Birthday Brother, 62 years of happiness and helpingness: Gary Arthur Thompson
Gary and Patty Thompson Happy birthday, Gary, as you celebrate 62 years of your happiness genius dedicated to being a good solid citizen, a good father and now grandfather and uncle and great-uncle and brother and son and husband, a good teacher, a good fix-it man (is hard to find)…a good human being. Today my…