SPELLING BEE

BY BEA WESTERBERG

It’s time for month number three

March is known to a lot of people as the “lion and the lamb” month. There is always discussion which one will bring in the month and then which one will go out with it. I think this year I will do a double bet on the lion. With the winds we are having already, it’s probably a winning bet.

Once upon a time, long ago in my childhood school time, the teachers (a total of 3 of them) had an ongoing contest to see who could come up with the best bulletin board of the month outside their classrooms. The crepe paper, scissors, colored paper, tacks, and glue were all called in to create these masterpieces. . One of the teachers came up with an idea on how to create in a different way. This teacher would have all her students do their very best drawing and or coloring on the main object of the month. For example in March they did the lions and the lambs in great color varieties and the teacher would put them in paper frames with the students names written on it. Of course this served a few purposes including a class activity, a month’s worth of display objects that the teacher did not have to make herself and then the kids could take them home for their home library of school projects. The other teachers decided to do the same! By the end of the school year the bulletin boards got to look almost all alike. For the September bulletin board, the “innovative” teacher asked the students to bring one of their school pictures to be put on the bulletin board. After a week or so, all kinds of “creative work” had been added to the bulletin board by lots of little hands. Parents were not happy with the words, markings or pins applied to their loved ones pictures. There must have been some sort of teacher agreement as the bulletin boards began to return to the “normal” look done with all teacher power after that dust up.

Just think if our young childhood minds would have realized what was going on with the adults. Yes, we can say those were the “good old days”. Would now be a good time to tell you that my Dad got kicked out of school in the 4th grade for helping his classmates tie up the teacher too much? Note: Not just tying up the teacher, but TOO MUCH. Yep, the “good old days”.

Are some of us getting a little bogged down with the feeling that spring is forgetting to come? Are we thinking warmer days are few and the colder days many? The Anglo-Saxons shared those feeling as way back then they called March the “stormy month” or the “rugged month”.

To block those negative feeling out we probably can do some reviewing of good things that happen in March. Of course you can place your bets on that lion and lamb weather thing and see how that works out for you. The Irish like to call March the Green Month because of St. Pat’s Day. Maybe to get it all right and proper they have to start practicing before and reviewing after so that takes up time. The first day of SPRING always comes in March. It has been known to be one of the coldest days of March at times so don’t make a firm plan to suntan on that day. Every year, March and June end on the same day of the month. Tuck that one away for the next Trivia game. March birthday people have the daffodil as their flower of the birth month. They also have 2 birthstones. Aquamarine and Bloodstone which symbolize courage. Daughter Nissa’s birthday is in March. I do recall that she was born on a extremely cold day for almost the end of March.

Thank you again to all my loyal readers, friends and family who have offered support to me after Husband Larry’s passing. Yes, I deeply miss him but I think I am coming along to have more and more “better days”. Please include my Sister Shelly in your prayers. Her husband Mike passed away several weeks ago. She was one of my “rocks” at Larry’s passing.