Category Archives: Observe & Ponder

At 70

Observe & Ponder


[My self-portrait with the help of AI]

From birth to age 12, my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were my heroes. In my teens through 21, my heroes were my friends. Then came the boss heroes who guided me through the corporate ladder climb. Once I reached my 40s, my husband morphed into my hero. And in my 50s, I looked for the hero in my kids. Then I went heroless for a while.

And now, at 70, I see that the hero I spent a lifetime searching for was inside me the whole time.

Here are my notes to self on the arrival of my 70th birthday:

At 70…

I am not too old.

I will plant another butterfly bush, so more will come.

I can spend the time I have left in any way I choose.

The clock is of no import to me now.

I’m still a work in progress.

Endings might just be more beautiful than beginnings.

I can finally focus on what I want to do and not what I need to do.

The most tragic and regretful goodbye is the one that was never said.

Money is not the answer to everything, but it helps.

The family I have isn’t all the family I need, but I have hope.

I’m not at peace. But I’m working on it.

I now know that to exist is to survive.

Friends come and go, but some surprise you and stay forever.

For the first time in my life, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want.

I am more than the sum of my Bridgeport parts, but I will never forget where I came from.

The adage “You get what you give” is not always true.

I don’t want anything I don’t already have.

Sometimes goodbye, not sorry, is the hardest word.

My hard work actually did pay off.

I will say his name. But not yet.

It is never too late.

Betty Crocker and My Grandmother Mammy

Observe & Ponder

Weird as it might sound, Betty Crocker and my grandmother Mammy (MayMe) are inextricably connected.

And I would go so far as to say that Betty Crocker taught my English-illiterate grandmother how to read.

Whenever I pull out my Betty Crocker Cookbook (like today) or bake a Betty Crocker brownie or cake mix, I’m reminded of Mammy. Maybe it’s because, in my mind’s eye, Mammy was the quintessential Betty Crocker.

Let me try to connect the Betty/Mammy dots for you.

On October 21st, 1921, a cooking icon was born, conjured up by Samuel Gale, the head of the advertising department at Washburn-Crosby, and the company that owned Gold Medal Flour.

Mr. Gale and his all-male advertising and marketing staff were responsible for handling incoming mail from women seeking cooking guidance. Mr. Gale never signed his name to any advice he dispensed, knowing full well that no woman would ever trust a man’s cooking tips. Someone needed to sign the letters, so who could it be?

Gale’s recommendation to the higher-ups (all men), based on feedback from the lower-level kitchen staff working at Washburn-Crosby (all women), was to invent a female advice expert.

The last name given to this fictitious cooking expert was in honor of a retired and revered marketing director, William Crocker.

Betty, in all likelihood, was chosen because it was a wholesome, fashionable, all-American name and was one of the most popular names given to female babies at the time.

Gale then asked the company’s female employees to submit signatures they thought befitting of Betty. A secretary by the name of Florence Lindberg won the winning signature — and Gale added it to the closing of every letter that ever went out.

In 1924, when Washburn-Crosby began airing a cooking radio show out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, they needed a voice for Betty. They ultimately chose a Washburn-Crosby staffer Marjorie Child Husted, a field representative in their home economics division, who became the writer and host of the local WCCO radio show. The show became one of the longest-running radio shows in history.

In 1936 a portrait of Betty Crocker was painted by a successful female illustrator and portrait painter Neysa McMein and was used to depict her persona for over twenty years.

In 1941, Betty Crocker’s first grocery item — noodle soup mix — landed on store shelves across America.

It wasn’t until 1945 that fake Betty was outed.

That year, Fortune magazine named Betty Crocker the second most famous woman in America, followed by Eleanor Roosevelt. The Fortune article also exposed Betty as an invention conjured up by advertising men looking to sell flour.

But by that time, her cooking advice was invaluable to millions of women across America, so nobody cared that Betty was a fraud.

In 1947, her first cake mix — the Ginger cake — debuted in almost every supermarket in the United States, followed by the bestselling Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook, published in 1950.

My first memory of cooking with Mammy was in the 50s, and I can vividly recall her struggling through the pages of her treasured Betty Crocker cookbook. Mammy couldn’t read or write English, so following a written recipe was difficult for her.

I would watch in fascination as she would match the words on the pages to the names of the packaged ingredients, like flour, butter, milk, and sugar, and then figure out the measurements by comparing the numbers on her measuring devices to those in her tattered cookbook.

As I got older and able to read the recipes for myself, I once corrected her use of applesauce (homemade, of course) instead of sugar, only for her to wag her finger at me and say, “trop sucré” (too sweet). That’s when I first learned the art of healthy cooking substitutions.

And because Mammy was English illiterate, if the list of ingredients were too long, she passed on the recipe. To this day, if there are more than ten ingredients in a recipe, my eyes tend to glaze over, and more often than not, I search for a simpler alternative.

In 1973, when I moved into my first apartment, Mammy bought me my very own Betty Crocker cookbook — the edition with a pie divided into six equal triangles of yummy-looking food photos in the middle of a red cover.

Mammy’s 49-year-old housewarming gift is still my go-to cookbook, albeit coverless and chock full of food stains.

SSGT James Champion: You Are Not Forgotten

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In 1968, when I was just fifteen years old, I can still recall with chills that at the end of the news every night, an unending list of names of those lost in Vietnam that day would silently scroll on the television screen.

The scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. It’s still seared in my memory.

On Veteran’s Day, November 11, 1970, a student group based in California called Voices in Vital America (VIVA) launched a POW/MIA bracelet campaign. The intention was to sell the bracelets and use the money to increase public awareness of the thousands of missing U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and never forget them.

Each bracelet was engraved with a soldier’s name and the date of his capture. Between 1970 and 1976, VIVA sold over five million bracelets.

Back in the early 1970s—at least in my circle of friends—we felt it was our civic duty to honor the missing by wearing their bracelets.

In 1971, a friend gave me a bracelet for Christmas in honor of U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant James A. Champion from Houston, Texas, who went missing on April 24, 1971. I vowed to wear my treasured bracelet until James or his remains came home.

According to reports, on April 23, 1971, Private First Class (PFC) James Albert Champion was a rifleman assigned to a six-man radio relay team on a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) inserted into the infamous A Shau Valley. After receiving intense enemy ground fire at their primary landing zone (LZ), the team was moved and inserted near the village of A Luoi.

The LZ was two miles northwest of a river and six miles away from the South Vietnamese/Lao border. This border road was no more than a path cut through the jungle-covered mountains and used by the Communists to transport troops, weapons, and supplies, from North Vietnam into South Vietnam. U.S. forces used all assets available to them to stop this flow of men and supplies from moving south into the war zone.

After disembarking from his helicopter at 1500 hours, Champion’s radio relay team leader was severely wounded by enemy fire. The alternate team leader took command of the patrol, but he was hit by enemy fire and killed. A helicopter trying to rescue the wounded and dead soldiers was shot down, and the 4-man aircrew found themselves on the ground with the LRRP team fighting for their lives. Shortly after that, a second helicopter attempted to rescue the embattled Americans but was also shot down by enemy ground fire.

On April 24, the Americans on the ground were still engaged in vicious combat with the North Vietnamese Army forces.

On April 25, at approximately 1500 hours, PFC Champion, armed with an M-16 rifle and in good shape, left the team’s defensive perimeter next to one of the downed helicopters to look for water, but the Ranger never returned.

One of the helicopter pilots reported he heard shots coming from the direction PFC Champion headed but could not provide any additional information about his fate. A helicopter successfully rescued the survivors and the dead later that day.

Ground and aerial searches were conducted for Champion from April 25 through April 30 without success. On April 30, the formal search was terminated, and James Champion was listed Missing in Action. After the incident, the Army promoted PFC Champion to the rank of Staff Sergeant.

On June 16, 1973, I went with some friends to Shea Stadium, where 152 released war prisoners were honored in a pre-game ceremony before the New York Mets played the San Diego Padres. Staff Sergeant James Champion was sadly not one of them.

I wept as the former POWs marched onto the field as the band played “This Land Is Your Land.” The over 25,000 fans gave them a standing ovation, their fists pumping in the air, roaring and screaming non-stop, “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.,” for well over five minutes.

Many of the fans, the POWs, the Mets, and the Padres were all crying.

In 1976, VIVA closed its doors because Americans wanted to forget about Vietnam.

But I will never forget our soldiers left behind, especially Sergeant James Albert Champion.

As of February 26, 2020, there are still 1,585 Americans missing and unaccounted for in Vietnam—many of them airmen.

Since the Vietnam War ended, our government has received over 21,000 reports about POW/MIA. There is mounting evidence that hundreds of soldiers may still be alive and captive, waiting for their country to save them.

James Champion may be one of them.

My Commonplace Life

Observe & Ponder, ,

“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at them.” ~ David Brinkley

The quote above, discovered over thirty years ago, struck me as so profound that I immediately wrote it down and referred to it in all my times of trouble. It also resulted in the birth of commonplacing my life.

I cataloged my commonplace life in files marked “Mortar” and “Bricks.” The file folders aren’t organized in any particular order, but to read through them is to know all of me. Some of my commonplace collection is so searingly revealing that I hope they’re discovered and dissected long after I’m gone.

Call them the ghost of me.

I use the “Mortar” as my commonplace life cement, in the hopes that it hardens enough to bind and secure the “Bricks” that others throw at me.

In so doing, I am masterfully adept at sealing and securing the irregular and uneven gaps—brick by brick—to recalibrate the enormous weight of them in the hopes of creating a safe and stable fortress.

I regularly use the “Mortar” files to soften and equally distribute the crushing pressure from the vile files of “Bricks.”

Commonplace books were popular as early as the Middle Ages and used by writers and scholars as a way of cataloging and memorializing the knowledge they amassed from their life experiences— their loves, their peers, their mentors, their books, and their loss.

Commonplace books, also referred to as commonplacing, are similar to scrapbooks, but they aren’t journals and have no chronological patterns.

Every commonplace system is unique to its creator and serves as a window into who they are, their beliefs, their fears, and their passions. Commonplacing is, more often than not, a lifelong collection of revealing inspirations—the deep caverns of a mind laid bare.

Like so many others who have commonplaced for centuries before me, I have collected thousands of compiled gems.

And I often peruse them when I am questioning life, love, and loss. It is during my darkest hours that I comb through my treasured collection of musings.

My files of “Mortar” and “Bricks” have expanded over the years to include hundreds of Word docs, my blog The Teri Tome, my author website TeriSchure.com, my Instagram account AllDollhousedUp, and reams of hanging Pendaflex folders.

I would love to see my commonplacing passed down to later generations, to memorialize forever the breadth and depth of who I was.

“To all the bullies, abusers,
and brick throwers I have known:
It took a lifetime to realize
that I am a giant when compared
to your tiny ruthless selves.
People like you hide their insecurities
by bullying and abusing people like me.
You’re not powerful enough to
extinguish my light.
You don’t even know it,
but the evil you have sown is your curse.
Your sickness will undo you.
No one heals themselves
by wounding another.
You have no power over me.
The power is mine, all mine.”
~ Teri Schure