Sue Milner Strong

Class of 1955

Just Sit Down and Write

Thursday, Feb 12, 2009

How often I've read to force yourself to put your words down, write something everyday. That's difficult for me to do, as I often feel intimidated when I feel I haven't accomplished anything worth writing, or sharing the chaos in my brain with another person. Will they laugh at me or think my thoughts are crazy? Will my family remember me when I'm gone? Will they be proud of me? Will there be things and times I failed to share with them and others? I finally decided, maybe I actually should write a journal and annotate all those vintage pictures so they can share them with their children and grandkids.

Approximately 15 years ago I filled numerous matching, beautiful library style albums by location/years of our travels, i.e.; Louisiana, Newfoundland, Montana, New Mexico, California and Ohio, etc. Just recently when Sherry wanted me to share some old pictures for her Minden Memories site, I discovered they were stuck to the plastic binders. It never dawned on me when putting our pictures in those wonderful library albums to use archival, anti acid plastic to preserve those great moments of our lives. I hope the yellow pages will provide local businesses that might offer restoration services for my blunder.

Since I couldn't retrieve some of the "oldies," I sent her some of our more recent pictures from the computer, which we started storing there a couple of years ago. She emailed back stating her site program wouldn't accept the four pictures I sent of our antique/flea market with .tif format. She needed .jpg/jpeg format. My husband and I subsequently spent hours with our various software programs trying to format the ones in .tif to .jpg format. I haven't given up yet and will hopefully master this task. I have "pushed" every help button for each task. I think it sounds simple enough, but not for me. If all else fails, our young husband and wife neighbors across the street seem to be computer savvy. I'll relinquish my pride and ask Heidi or Todd for help.

Luckily, the three pictures I emailed Sherry of our homestead, "Maplebrook," were already in .jpg format. She emailed back stating she had loaded one of them under Minden Memories Biographies and I would "do a bio." My original agreement was to only send some pictures with annotations underneath. However, I did go to the site and read some great biographies of Jerry Frasier, James McCabe, James Lynn Ford and several others. They have had such interesting careers and lives. They were all astounding, but novice that I am, I can't envision gathering my thoughts into comprehensible English that could be called an intelligent biography. I've always been an avid learner. My mind meditatively muses, often inconclusively, that just maybe I could transcribe/narrate my life's history. Perhaps I will eventually be able to turn my writing passions into pages.

Maplebrook Homestead Front Door

Our Maplebrook Homestead 2008

Front of the house.  The window to the right of the bay window is where our dog,

Booger, would sit and watch the squirrels in the maple tree.

Booth 2  (Left Side)  - David & Wathen Strong, our son and daughter-in-law

Booth 1 - (Right Side) Rob, David and Sue Milner Strong at the antique mall where they

sell their antique's.

Booth 1  (left side)