Postcard: Prescott

I did not see one mobile PC while shopping in Prescott (say, Press Cut as locals pronounce the area name) this morning. The TV series 24 included Tablet PCs as a prop again last night. The new high school administrators are advertising for new students. Each will receive a new Mac notebook. The school received a $600,000 grant from the Gates Foundation. Bernice Ende and her dog Claire made the front page of The Daily Courier. (That’s the same paper that featured Elizabeth, Sarah and Kim of NeekTalk.) Ende traveled from Montana on Honor, her 8-year-old thoroughbread mare. I spotted the 3 of them on Iron Springs Rd. as she was leaving the tack store. “To be outside all the time, you notice things more,” she said. They stay where they are at the end of each day, just as long riders have for centuries. I’m reading Davide Brinkley’s Everyone’s Entitled to My Opinion. It’s amazing how today’s political editorial themes on TV match his in the 1980s. Bought for $1 at a thrift shop a book of interviews and stories about participants from both sides in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Also saw a framed certificate dated 1984 awarded to Ina Morris Reading in celebration of her golden anniversary of graduating from Purdue University. That means she was one of the less than eight percent of women enrolled in higher education in 1934. In addition, there was a framed certificate awarded from the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirming her appointment to an expert position in 1950. Both available for the price of each frame: $2.00. Ironic how values change, I thought as I noticed numerous beautiful people old enough to have been her off-spring talking about retirement incomes, their doctors’ appointments, medication reactions, and aching muscles. What is a personal legacy worth, I wondered. Joan said it’s only worth what each of us want it to be worth for ourselves. Others will downsize that legacy to fit their interests. Do you think that principle holds for teachers also: others will fit our efforts to their interests? Time to pick up a grand daughter for her tennis lesson. More later.