St. Luke Living Center
By SUE GUTSCH
St. Luke Living Center correspondent
April 20-26
A food and family raisin crunch cookie was experimented with Friday morning when the living center bakers added "unprescribed" walnuts and applesauce. Perhaps we could have mixed it sufficiently without the sauce, but it seemed necessary and resulted in a very good cookie, but not exactly crunchy.
The Saturday morning schedule included walks, rosary, and polka hour with Gene and "Elka." A check of our calendar suggests they are all done at the same time, 9:30. Using one's imagination, wouldn't that be interesting. Well, we're not quite that interesting and order does prevail.
In place of the scheduled minister Sunday, Bill Schimpf offered some readings and Shirley Bowers played hymns and sang with those gathered for the afternoon service.
Following pretty-up Monday morning, Irma, Amelia, and Olinda played pitch with Marie Navrat when she arrived shortly after lunch. Later we all were treated to the piano talent of Ellen Darrow.
We used mental muscle Tuesday morning in a roundtable discussion of environmental issues in observance of Earth Day. Then we cut blue streams, green trees, and white clouds from construction paper and colored two earth pictures to help create an attractive and informative corkboard display.
That afternoon, the book club group left the Ingalls family living in the mosquito bar windowed claim shanty near the Big Slough (the source of the insects) by the shores of Silver Lake and began reading "Farmer Boy." In the first chapter we walked to school with the Wilder children, Royal, Eliza Jane, Alice, Almanzo, and met their teacher, young Mr. Corse, who would live with the Wilder family for the first two weeks of the term.
Prayer group met Wednesday morning and we read the Marion County Record earlier than usual that afternoon. Olinda, Melivn, and the big, red corn popping machine had planned to accompany Khrista to St. Luke Hospital Auxiliary Shoppe downtown to participate in a thank you to the supportive community for a very successful first year. But, April began to shower again and we decided staying home would be the proper decision for us and the machine.
Following hymn sing with Shirley Bowers Thursday, six residents, Joann Fitzpatrick, Shirley, and the Bransons drove to The Big Scoop for lunch. Before coming back they did some Marion Reservoir sightseeing, but couldn't spend the whole afternoon as another group of residents was looking forward to a "reservoir outing" also.
