Cindy Lange-Kubick: Looking back on a summer, and part of a fall, of columns
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Catching up with a summer — and most of a fabulous fall — worth of columns.
* Two months ago, we wrote about Jorge Bendersky. The tattooed and self-described fabulous finalist from Animal Planet’s reality show “Groomer Has It” flew to the Ken-L on Old Cheney Road to award one lucky Lincoln dog a makeover.
The dog? A white toy poodle. Name? French Fry.
French Fry had a cut and style and apparently went home looking, well, fabulous.
* Oh, those Loises. Wrote a column this summer about the Lois Club. The name is self-explanatory. The purpose: to bond with other like-named women.
I received many inquires about the club. Most started with the words: “My name is Lois…”
One Lois from Pawnee City said she would like to have lunch with these Lincoln Loises.
“We’ve had three Loises die in the past few years. There’s one Lois left and she’s more tired than I am.”
FYI, Lois (and Lois and Lois): the club meets the fifth Tuesday of the month at Grandmother’s, 69th and A. Arrive between 11 a.m. and 11:30. You’ll spot them.
* Andrea Jantzen got a kidney from her mom last month. The 29-year-old barista and her massage therapist mother are doing swell. Thanks to all the coffee drinkers who called wanting to contribute to the transplant fund. (And to the Rough Riders motorcycle club, which made a generous donation as well.)
Say hi to Andrea at the downtown Mill on Friday (or Saturday) morning. She’s back.
* Remember Carolyn Tuttle, the woman who has sent hundreds of birthday and anniversary cards to strangers featured in the newspaper’s Celebrate! Nebraska section?
After a column about the 78-year-old’s anonymous card-sending habits (hundreds of cards, hundreds of stamps), Ms. Tuttle began receiving a few cards of her own.
And stamps.
And more cards.
And more stamps.
“Your article has really opened up a floodgate,” her daughter-in-law wrote. “One card even came from Kansas City. Carol is as giddy as a schoolgirl.”
* Felt all in tune with nature this fall so I wrote about the equinox. Heard from a man who said he fancied himself a “road scholar” and wanted me to know if a person drives east/west roads on the autumnal and vernal equinoxes she, or he, can watch the sunset in a wonderfully geometrical way.
“One year I watched it set directly on top of the triangular skywalk over O Street. Maybe someday people researching our culture will wonder if that skyway had any religious significance.”
Maybe. If we don’t tear it down for an arena.
* Then there was Bill and his Bear Cave. A late August column about the Lincoln man who died alone with a house stuffed with belongings — a dozen identical bird clocks still in their boxes? — brought lots of mail.
We identified Bill by last name only. But people recognized him and filled in blanks with photos and old stories (some sweet, some sad) of the man he was before his Boo Boo (wife Mary Kay) died.
“Bill and Mary Kay were the most gracious hosts...”
“Bill was a hoarder just like his father...”
“Bill was a real gentleman...”
* “Forever Young” was the headline for a column on obituaries — the young faces that sometimes stare out of the paper to commemorate a life 80 or 90 years long. I found stories behind some of those photos, but one was a mystery:
Betty Mae Andersen, who died in April at 87 with a photo of a pretty, dark-haired woman beside her name.
Her sister-in-law found me after the column ran.
Betty Mae worked as a clerk at Hovland Swanson when that photo was taken. She married, had a son who died in middle age, retired from Ameritas, lost her husband, got cancer.
“Every day I was with her at the hospice place,” her sister-in-law said. “I still miss her.”
* I wrote about empty cubicles (here, there, everywhere) after Journal Star layoffs in July. Then I got a nice letter from the chairman of All Makes Office Equipment. “I smile at how well you describe the neighborhoods we have created,” he wrote.
He went on to say he was forwarding my column “to the presidents of the manufacturing concerns we buy our cubes from … confident they will enjoy it as well.”
It’s nice to know I could, perhaps, find work marketing modular office furniture if the newspaper gig ever goes south.
* Finally, in early October, I wrote about a Midwest Airlines flight attendant. Paulina was serving warm chocolate chip cookies and tears on her next-to-last flight, one that I was on coming home from Washington D.C.
Her airline had been sold, she explained, flights subcontracted out. The new carrier was letting three of four flight attendants go – along with a host of pilots.
I’m flying to Boston on Paulina’s old airline this week. I hope they’re paying the new Paulinas — and the pilots — what they are worth. Somehow I doubt it.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
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