The "Mini" Mission

Dear Uncle  George, May 15, 1907: Crooked River.  It is true to name.  Mr. Thompson carrying the instrument part of the time.  Mr. Ray McCollough is name of the boy, I talked to him about smoking.  Only seventeen years old and has an old pipe between his lips often. Sent my instruments to Far West, with Mr. Ruben Sloan.  Passed some places with fat stock, sheep that had just been shorn, hogs, goats. Val May 15, 2013: Got to the Crooked River in Ray County.  Forgot my camera. Had to go home, 75 miles out of my way, to get it.  Feel cranky.  May or may not have cussed. If I had a Sherpa like you did, I bet he would have remembered to bring my camera to the PHOTO shoot. I have met a Sherpa in real life.  His name is Pem.  He is so amazing that Glamour Magazine would say he is "bad ass." He has climbed Mt. Everest.  Twice.  Without oxygen. The second time he did it, his fiance and a friend climbed with him....

Dear Uncle George, George May 10, 1907: I rose early and found directions to Edwin Whitmer, son of John C. Whitmer. Anxious to get through, so went to without breakfast.  Mr. Whitmer said he could not give me information I desired.  He did not believe things that were taught by the Whitmerite Church, so he had not taken an interest in them.  Met Mrs. Miller who was popping corn and preparing to entertain some children in the evening. Val May 10, 2013: Had some yummy Life cereal, with a side of fiber.  Fixed the vacuum.  Check on dead fish. Good lemonade, although not hard.  Lunch at a saloon.  Found some $1 store pregnancy tests (ekk!).  Graves made of cement tree trunks.  Matt broke up a fist fight at the Wendy's in Grandview.  Stopped at the jail site that is now a thrift store and bought cheap pearls for the Great Gatsby party.  This is the cemetery that Bob Ford is buried in, who shot Jesse James, otherwise known as the co...

Written by Uncle George:  May 9th, 1907 Rose before 5:35 am.  Bath.  Breakfast.  Twenty-one meals for $3 and it was good food.  Out about five miles east of Kansas City and made a view of the Big Blue.  Very muddy and sluggish.   Val:  May 9th, 2013 Accidentally ruined The Boy's Boy Scout shirt.  Ate some chocolate fiber.   Listened to Adam Levine.  Felt sorry for the folks in North Dakota. The day started out pretty annoying.  Seth was about two minutes from finally finishing that blasted Eagle Scout Boy Scout program.  So it made sense (not) that I should ruin his very expensive uniform and every single patch on it in the wash. Nice. It didn't have this much bling, but when you have to buy news patches and sew each patch on by hand AND the patches are about as thick as the walls of ancient Troy, you feel irritated.  And when you pull back your hands from your work, your fingers worn to the nub from shovi...

Dear Uncle George, I have decided a state is my nemesis. I don't know Anne Proulx.  Candidly, she sounds kinda of nutty but we should have a conversation.  We seriously have something big in common:  we can't stand Wyoming. Here she is.  We practically look like twins. She writes fictional wild-west tales that include Satan in Wyoming.  You know the one, where the Prince of Darkness is moonlighting as an interior designer, brainstorming the look of eternal damnation. I know what he has gone with...a winter motif.  Lavished in bright red velvet (a given), snow and wind.  Lots of wind. Having been to Wyoming three disastrous times (not including that one visit to an old boyfriend) I can totally believe it. And if by chance, you want to visit Hell on earth, I know the port of entry: Casper (aka The Great Terrible). The answer is Casper, Alex, for $100. My last letter to you included the news that I was going to go back to Casper in...

Dear Uncle George, Hey. My name is Valerie and I am your great grand niece.  It is true.  We have met before a couple years back, but you know, you are dead.  I don't know if time is really an issue for you dead folks, but here in the land of the living, it is a commodity.  I am guessing that being dead really isn't too hard or time consuming, so it may be that too much time on your hands is hard for you.  As hard as it is for the band, Styx. Blogging seems to be pretty much a dead activity (no pun intended) nowadays.  With Facebook, the king of two sentence comments and stupid memes, nobody has the attention span to write, little lone read, anything of length.  If it doesn't have some picture of flying horses or poorly dressed folks at Walmart, ain't nobody got time for that. But cat memes?  That is another story. As a matter of fact, blogs are so old school that the only ones who seem to be doing it are radical Al-Qaeda extremists. ...