By Loretta Humble

I love my little place in the country. It is especially great to be near to nature in the spring, planting flowers and watching little animals.

But this week nature has not been very nice to me. First, I got hassled by a wild calico pig. Really. He first showed up at my granddaughter Shanna’s place, where he tried to climb up on her front porch. When he headed my way, she called to warn me. That gave me time to call the puppies in and lock the doggie door before he arrived, which didn’t take long. He was big and he was calico colored, just like a calico cat. He poked around the house, nosing in my compost bucket, acting like he owned the place. He tried to come up on my porch too, but Gus, a neighbor’s giant cocker spaniel, tried to run him off. I don’t know whether the hog scared him or hurt him, but he let out a big yelp. I wanted to bring him in to safety, but my dogs kept trying to get out when I opened the door. Finally the pig ambled off. When

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By Loretta Humble

I got a thank you card from JoAnn Surls this week. It was beautifully written in her fine flowing longhand, in a lovely card with a picture that looks sort of like it could have been. This is not the first thank you card I’ve received from her. JoAnn knows and observes all the fine social graces, some of which I just fail to observe, and some of which I never learned. But I really think

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This wonderful rain we’ve been having is a mixed blessing for some of us. The big flat roof at Cedar Lake Nursing Services is leaking. We’ve been fixing at it for several years now. We’ll get the leak stopped for a while, then it starts again. Now when we leave we cover one desk with a tarp, and have a bunch of buckets sitting around where we know it leaks. We’ve finally given up on half measures and are going to have to get something like a big swimming pool fitted over the whole top of the building. But it takes time to find the right person to do it, and then for the weather to get just right. Or we just work around our tarps and buckets.

Also, that same rain is washing out some culverts in the road on the way to the back of my place. Billy Quinn came down this morning and took a look at the situation.

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People don’t need nearly as much stuff as they think they do. I finally figured that out, and I’m trying to cut down on my own extra stuff. A lot of us have been talking about this on a Facebook page called Friends encouraging Friends. I’ve been passing on some stuff lately, and it’s been a lot of fun. Maybe this will sound like bragging, but, hey, it’s Monday night and I’ve got to fill a column with something.

One thing I gave away was Pam Jenkins’ drapes. Actually, I guess they were Cedar Lake Nursing Home’s drapes, since Pam gave them

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By Loretta Humble

Did you ever make a quilt? Did you ever think you would someday? Did you maybe save up pretty scraps of fabric, thinking someday things would slow down and you would really make one?

OK, if you are a guy, you probably haven’t given quilts must thought, and maybe not all younger women have, but I’ll bet if you are a little old lady like me, you’ve either made a bunch of them, or at least meant to when you got around to it.

(READ MORE IN THIS WEEK’S PRINT EDITION OF THE MALAKOFF NEWS, ON STANDS NOW.)

By Loretta Humble

I’m going to write this quick because I am busy, and I am tired. I am tired because I am working hard on something good I can’t tell you about yet. It is one of a number of wonderful things that are happening in this town right now. It is fun to think about them.

The latest of these is the sculpture garden JoAnn Surls and James Surls are creating to honor their husband and father, Joe Surls. You can read the details on the front page of this paper. Believe me, this is very big news. James is a Malakoff boy who went off and made it as big as you can make in the art world. JoAnn already had created a magic place where James grew up, and where

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This is how I blundered into making new friends and coming up with a new project in Kerens last week.

First, if some of you don’t know, I used to be in the online bookselling business. It just kind of happened. I sold a few extra books on Amazon.com, and it worked out so well, I got some more and sold them. It was great fun looking for a book that might have some value. But sometimes I found whole libraries that were for sale at bargain prices, so I would buy them all to get the valuable ones. I filled one storage room, and then bought a storage building and filled it. It was fun until I got so many listed online that sometimes

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(Note to my readers who don’t do Internet and don’t intend to: I’m sorry about this little detour of mine. I promise to shut up about anything Internet for a week or two. I don’t promise, however, to stop talking about de-owning.)

If you have kept up with this column through the years you know once I get on a tear, it is hard for me to shut up about it. My latest one is the whole subject of de-cluttering, de-owning, and simplifying my life. Combine that with my next-to-the-latest obsession, which is social media, and it’s really got me going.

I didn’t like Facebook until I needed it in order to do what I want to do, which is communicate

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I’ve been mostly staying home, kicking back for the last couple of weeks. I cooked goodies for Christmas and fresh turnip greens with turnips and black-eyed peas for New Years, and I’ve planted a lot of daffodils, but mostly I’ve just goofed off. I watched some television shows I’d never seen before. Spellbound, I watched a whole evening of Oddities, where really strange people buy and sell really strange stuff, and Pickers, where a couple of guys travel the country looking in old garages for oddball stuff they can buy and sell and another of Storage Wars, where teams of professional scroungers

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By Loretta Humble

Last Saturday’s Parade Day in Malakoff was an unqualified success. If you were there, you already know that. If you weren’t, you missed something really good. You’ll see some pictures in this paper, I’m sure, and that will give you a little hint of it. Look at those faces. Malakoff was having a real party, and enjoying every minute of it. Whether you were there or not, I hope you will go online and look at the pictures. Even if you are not a computer person, you know somebody that is. Get them to show you. You need

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