Category: family
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Remembering Susie
Obituary originally posted here. Photo slideshow: https://www.tributeslides.com/embed/CFSIFRAM/dem10727/11m61217470d60e0 Obituary May 14, 1946 ~ August 6, 2021 (age 75) Susie Elizabeth Duncan Sexton, 75, of Columbia City, IN, passed away unexpectedly Friday, August 6, 2021, at her home. Born on May 14, 1946, in Fort Wayne, she was the daughter of Roy and Edna (Lewis) Duncan, who, in her words,…
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In a Sense…a Broad!
As I consider myself nothing nor nobody more than Peter Sellers in Being There or at my liveliest as Inspector Clousseau, it is difficult to make “Susie” sound interesting? I am proudest of being the Mother of Roy, whom I consider the person I would most wish to be. I grew up in a very…
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Bringing texty back (with apologies to Justin Timberlake)
With my modem (“moe-DEM”) taking a powder and my computer consequently on the fritz, I have resorted to texting. Thought this exchange with my son was fairly amusing (typos preserved for artistic effect!)… Susie: Gee rebooted umpteen times still no go sometimes forty eight pop ups that send receive errors happened whaaaa Roy: I am…
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Authors’ Open Mic: “Marriage of Minds”
Authors’ Open Mic is a series of readings by Open Books authors. In this episode listen to Susie Duncan Sexton read “Marriage of Minds” from her memoir Secrets of an Old Typewriter: Stories from a Smart and Sassy Small Town Girl here…
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Lessons Learned in Kindergarten…Twice – published in InD’tale Magazine
My essay “Lessons Learned in Kindergarten…Twice” has been published in InD’tale Magazine This is really quite neat! You you can read it at the this link – the story starts on page 24 – you advance the pages through the arrows at the bottom of the screen after you click this link. You can also download a PDF or print.…
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good-bye our sweet Jack… (2014)
my heart is bleeding because my Jack is now gone. Zelda preceded him – you can read my tribute to her and their companionship here …so I am trying to make me feel better by helping people appreciate animals on my digital etch a sketch. god this hurts…. Jack died today…we saved him from euthanasia a dozen years ago — by five minutes…
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if we truly care about children…
I’ve loved animals since forever but just recently have gotten quite conscientious. I have gone where angels fear to tread and gotten some definite scars, so believe me when I say that support and encouragement mean everything to people who share this adoration and respect for all creatures great and small! This business can get…
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Sorry I missed the cut-off signals! Me and my son on The Kevin Storm Show
Thoroughly enjoyed conversing with Kevin Storm and his mom Susan and my son Roy on The Kevin Storm Show …such fun! Thanks for inviting us, Susan…very impressed with your questions. Sorry I missed the cut-off signals! View/listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icQnt… My son Roy Sexton wrote: “Please enjoy this video of my mother Susie Duncan Sexton and me on The Kevin Storm…
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and pineapple is an appropriate welcoming sign
awww, what the hell? two statuses at once! it is very difficult to type while wearing mittens! (that was the first!) and the second is that I finally made US some SUNSHINE PASTA SALAD, a recipe from 35 years ago…the last time I whipped that dish up was when I fulfilled my middle sister’s yearning…
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what is beautiful and essential in life … a good-bye to my sister Shirley
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson My daddy and my sister and of course a precious animal! What wonderful parenting we enjoyed. Love you, Daddy and Shirley…and your canine friend! Thanks for teaching us to appreciate what is…
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From Kat Kelly-Heinzelman: Families That We Make
To my friend/family Kat Kelly-Heinzelman: Tears welling in my eyes, a smile on my face at the same time? What a poignant and revelatory essay, Kat! Read “Families That We Make” here: https://lighthousekat.wordpress.com/2… Your paragraphs about Roy and me moved me beyond words at a time I sorely needed a kind nod my way…I love people…
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one weekend for a wedding
But what happened THIS immediate past weekend in Ann Arbor? Well, let me tell you … Took a tumble off some steps and directly into prickly shrubbery, rode in a limousine–my virgin ride, kept my hat on, lost my dress and my shoes, urged the Ann Arbor mayor to prevent deer culling, learned I am…
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How about you?
I do not fit into a demographic, and I wish the demographic-ists would stop pigeonholing all of us all the time. ‘Deed i do – how ’bout you? Hey, my dad could have bought the house next door for four grand back in the Forties. IF HE HAD, my husband could live there and so could my…
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Writer Types, Stereotypes, Daguerreotypes, and Archetypes
Feeble-minded knaves label writer types, Forcing free spirits their genres to declare. Novelist? Poet? Playwright? Stereotypes! Squeezing into one round hole a peg so square. Participles! Fear not. Feel free to dangle. Infinitives ought (surely) be…split in two. Preposition proposition? Not to mangle Grammar RULES! Still go wherever you want to! My mom’s at her…
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Susie, In a Sense…a Broad!
As I consider myself nothing nor nobody more than Peter Sellers in Being There or at my liveliest as Inspector Clousseau, it is difficult to make “Susie” sound interesting? I am proudest of being the Mother of Roy, whom I consider the person I would most wish to be. I grew up in a very…
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I WONDER
Once upon a time, small town newspaper editor Hester Adams published my positive yet refreshingly anticipatory teen-aged poem extolling the virtues of Christmas circa 1960. Annually, somewhat tediously, Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL, in myriad formats, reminds us to set aside bitterness and past injustices while reaching out to our fellow-men. Perry Como crooned, perkily…
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“THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS” — Navigating in a Sea of Zombies
“Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.” “The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it’s all in the story.” “It’s an honor putting art above politics. Politics can be seductive in terms of things reductive to the soul.” ~ Robert Redford Linked…
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TRANSITIONS–“Through the Decades”
Quite like a restless King Tut, I yearned to avoid a rut. Wide-eyed, toured a marketplace so Victorian Everything everywhere, yet no DeLorean! Repurposed bricks, mortar — transformed from Presbyterian church– Its irony hurled me into conflicted “museum” lurch. Realizing tombs, spires, stained glass, pyramids and kitty cats Cannot be “taken with you” unto the great hereafter–(RATS!)…
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A FEW APOLOGIES, SOME “SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS”, AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
We got married in…a… December Colder than we care to remember! (Apologies to Nancy Sinatra and Lee Greenwood and Johnny Cash and June Carter!) First, a brief backstory highlighting a “Happy 45th Anniversary to Don Sexton” — BTW –whom I married on December 28th, 1968. My mom hexed me with a spell that my own…
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“THE YEARS TEACH MUCH THE DAYS NEVER KNOW.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edgar Allan Poe has nothing on me. My severe depression I could maybe downgrade to but a “funk”; however just as the lead singer with Heavy Metal “Iron Maiden” recently penned a new book from the depths of despair forgoing the hunt and peck system and instead scrawling upon yellow legal pads, I likewise someday…
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GOODBYE, GOODBYE, MISTER MASSEY!
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” ~ Abraham Lincoln “Whoopsy daisy!” ~ Bill the Butcher “Strange things are happening!” ~ Red Buttons Attempting to pound out yet another nostalgia column–even when the future…
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WAIT! PRIOR TO TOSSING ME INTO A WEATHERED HATBOX…READ ME FIRST?
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” ~ Henry David Thoreau “Cousin, we should earnestly, nobly meet the highest expectations of our illegitimate great great great great grandfather President…
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THE SECRET OF CHANGE…
“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” ~ Abraham Lincoln And so the story goes: as a toddler, I left the party in the living room as I stumbled past all of the clinking cocktail glasses, above my determined gaze, and…
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RUB A DUB DUB…Pitfalls of a Nostalgic Mind-Set
Now, this may not be pretty, but the telling of it is a necessity. Set nowhere at all in California like some Raymond Chandler detective novel to be revived via an atmospheric beach-front film noir hard-boiled crime drama, this piece is happening in Columbia City, the Land-of-a-Very-Few-Choice-Lakes. I am not the first sort of writer…
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JONI, I HARDLY KNEW YE…Confessions of a Dormant Hippie!
www.youtube.com is my second home…my escape from the madness of life…a retrieval of song lyrics that inform while simultaneously lightening my soul. Interest is revived in continuing to endure the pitfalls of life. Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut swore that music all by itself proves the existence of heaven. Despite such photographic YouTube video-clipped time-warped evidence as…
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THIS IS THE LIFE: BLOGS & DOGS!
Attorney and former neighbor Earl Tison, whom I desired to adopt the moment I met him, exclaimed frequently, “Susie, if anybody should start a blog, it would be you!” Computer-less at that particular time, I had no concept of precisely what he might be suggesting, as a consequence of myriad moon-light porch chats at his…
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TWO FOR THE ROAD –a Pre-Submitted Dual Eulogy
“If you’re feeling fancy free, come wander through the world with me, and any place we chance to be, will be a rendezvous. Two for the road, we’ll travel down the years, collecting precious memories, selecting souvenirs, and living life the way we please. In the summertime the sun will shine, in winter we will…
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An Event Worth Celebrating!
What was I thinking on a hot summer day confined to a moving car headed toward the art capital of the Midwest, culture-cluster Ann Arbor in Michigan? “My hair is frizzy and my shorts are too tight and my feet are swelling and am I dressed up enough and will my dog Jack not peewee…
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Who Knew? Ricky Gervais and I on the Same Page!
“The creative adult is the child who has survived…” – Ursula K. Le Guin (borrowed from my Marshall Memorial Middle School Language Arts student circa 1968, Robin Zeigler Walker) “Hey, now you’re acting like…Jesus!” A younger than young feminine voice registered in the highest decibels from the backyard trampoline immediately on the other side of…
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BIG MAC & “LITTLE ME”!
My brother-in-law, a “Goodfellas” type from rugged Youngstown in Ohio, met my sister Sarah in 1958 at Indiana University in Bloomington where he played rugged football courtesy of an athletic scholarship just after serving as a rugged MP stationed with the rugged U.S. Army in rugged Alaska! Go Big Red! One of the foremost reasons…
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HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS!
Huge pink rollers in hair, barefoot, wiping my hands on a tired t-shirt, I responded to the door-bell. Son Roy stood shivering in the brisk November afternoon breeze with his duffel bag in one gloved hand and his laptop snuggled close to his chest. Within 20 minutes, both of us seated around the tidied up…
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Life Lessons from Best Friends
(“What important life lesson have you learned from your companion animal(s)?”) How do fortunate, appreciative Homo sapiens properly capture, in mere words, the loyalty, joie de vivre, serenity and adaptability and acceptance as well as general all-around heaven that “pets” demonstrate and provide? Aside from daily moment to moment co-bonding in both enjoyment and endurance…
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Thankful … to Think Outside the Holiday Box!
Christmas arrives but once a year — and years fly by too swiftly! We are manipulated and subliminally motivated by commercialism, expectations, obligations, traditions, and mounting hysteria—and then after an ulcer-producing build-up, the party’s over and next year zips forth toward a repeat performance. Senator Al Franken often spoke at collegiate commencements, as an adored…
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Marriage of Minds
“In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.” ~ William Makepeace Thackeray Abigail Adams served as the noteworthily supportive, possibly nagging partner whom John sorely needed in order to excel as THE quirky, feisty, successful John Adams and to lead America to greatness. She purportedly advised him to fly by the…
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MOTHERHOOD / DAUGHTERHOOD
To account for four missing decades, I record that a son got born onto an Earth spiraling downward. In spite of this world’s dullness, intermittent confusion and sometimes cluttered turmoil, Roy never failed to impress. Always smiling and polite and fascinated with any surroundings, he seemed to have appeared “out of the nowhere into here”,…
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Ode to Edna and Roy
Tiny Kodak photograph’s an inspiration, Nudging all toward joy and stifling frustration. Poised upon my perfectly round kitchen table — Crafted by Floyd Sullivan, Bob Hiss from maple! Scrambled eggs, grits, corn-bread, home-grown sliced tomatoes, Phone calls, door-bells, surprise visitors—friends and foes, Parties, consultations, band-aids, grand-children, pets, Jokes, laughter, tear-drops, card decks, cup and saucer…
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Jock Interrupted by Philo
Sure, sure, so Joanne Peabody Bates performed cartwheels alllllllll the way home after school. Her mom, Phyllis, would peer outside and then swing wide the screen door, judging that her freckle-faced, double-jointed grade school kid might land somewhere inside the kitchen shortly after her daughter’s sneakered feet sailed wildly past the window above the sink!…
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Ah, Sweet Mystery of a (Wonderful) Life
Sub-titled: My Funny Valentine! FEBRUARY—short, concise, often leaping, “Happy Birthday to Abraham and George,” we cheer. Ice storms interrupt “White Sales” of sheets for sleeping; Lucrative month for florists, thrown into high gear. Antony, Cleopatra, Angelina, Brad, Romeo, Juliet, Debbie, Eddie and Liz— Some romances too noteworthy—others quite sad. But Donald adored Daisy—her heart ever…
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LITTLE HOUSE ON…the Back Lot!
Tab Hunter, Lyle Bettger, Alec Guinness, Doris Day, Audie Murphy, Curt Jurgens, Sessue Hayakawa, James Whitmore and Gloria Grahame all lived in my back yard in the early fifties. So did Johnny Lillich, Craig Langohr, Jill Whiteleather, Steve More, Lester Gaff, Jane Ann Morsches, Mary Ann and Martha Squires. Still wishing that Bobby Morsches mighta…
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An Investigation into “Everlasting Gobstoppers”*
Beloved melodies and lyrics which touch this heart of mine Range from poignant to perky, yet quite often seem to align With life’s pattern which causes despair and despicable grief — “Waiting” hammered home – lingering — with no promise of relief. Critiquing Carly Simon who laments “Anticipation” Or ignoring “September Song” — a tune…
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Fiddle Dee Dee, I’m Thankful for Russell Crowe
My name might as well be “Maximus Decimus Meridius”, and I am here to explain myself and my family and how we classify as GLADiators. Sure, we count our blessings every November and then give mighty thanks for…stamina! Personally, I defend spider monkeys as I chastise NASA, who brought manKIND Tang, for daring to consider radiation experiments on those sentient darlings with the…
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Playing the Hand One’s Dealt
(“You play the hand you’re dealt. I think the game’s worthwhile.” ~ C.S. Lewis) Admittedly, personal discussions which focus upon politics, religion, finances, in-laws, the questionable necessity for either camouflaged Rambo-type hunting or Betty Crocker-ish canning and preserving, “Which arrived first, the chicken or the egg?” or “Is it acceptable to wear white after labor day?” all qualify as verboten. Where does…
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One Season Following Another, Laden with Happiness – and Tears (a lyric from FIDDLER ON THE ROOF)
October concluded with much pageantry in the early ’50s as “gypsies, tramps and…” pirates (sorry, Cher!) paraded around West Ward classrooms, often returning home through snowflakes. Meandering around yard signs advertising this guy and that guy running for political office, we diminutive students, suffocating beneath our masks, not only dressed up for Halloween back in the day but we also voted in mock elections. …
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Snow Globes, Grape Vines, and Hockey Pucks
“Susan Duncan, your mother’s on the telephone?” head-librarian Mrs. List half-questioned. One of the sweetest ladies in town, she slowly wandered throughout the entire square footage of Mr. Peabody’s namesake “bibliotheque”, ducking in and out of the aisles among towering shelves of books and artifacts. Juvenile fiction, biographies, autobiographies, novels, reference works, globes, ship replicas,…
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“…Summer of our discontent made glorious…” by a Father and his Daughter.
Defamation of Character? Not my idea of a fun summer! I descended from a long line of “characters” who could circle the globe 85 times and then extend all the way to heaven and back 16 more times. We know whom we are. We like whom we are. We are whom we are. Flood-gates burst…
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Sonnets from the Porch – and Geese
Midnight approached quickly. What an active 24 hours of advocacy on behalf of local wild-life, not found in taverns but rather the world of nature. Printer loaded, Talk of the Town’s account of Squawk Back activities entered into scan mode. Vtech phone jingled off the hook. Information from a dear friend, freshly home recuperating from…
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Yawns, Cuddles, and Dreams
Families happen all over the world. Gaggles of geese squawk with their goslings. Bucks, does, and fawns dance through fields. Horses nuzzle colts. Cats groom their kittens. Doggies cuddle with new-born pups. Daddy wears ties and rushes off to the office. Mommy vacuums and bakes cakes and writes stories for the newspaper. A brother and…
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At Home with Scofield, Remington, Victor Mature & Jack Benny
Chapter Two. Please be advised that if readers wish to clip out my monthly columns and then staple them all together one day, a pattern may be detected and possibly even a theme. I commence now where I departed, nearly in mid-sentence, on July 29, 2010. Travel at your own risk. Cliff-hanger formats tend to…
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Scofield, Remington, Victor Mature, Ben Hogan & Everything In Between
Neither controversy nor conflict are any fun whatsoever. Sunday School, Mother’s letter-writing, Daddy’s golfing foursome, double-feature movies, and a relatively stable family life strike me now as rich blessings, generally brimming over with love and merriment…and plenty of fun. Upon review–and throughout a lifetime of observation–I applaud those past years while approaching the conclusion of…
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A Dog Story and A Cautionary Tale
Winter of 1983 settled in, and my freshly dismal world crashed around me. Saddest season of my 37 years of living. Daddy, aged 37 the year I was born, died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage one month past, when October leaves turned orange, yellow, red. Surrounding, oppressive gloom weighed heavily as I slouched all nestled…
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Transitions: On the Road Again toward Nonconformity
Curmudgeonly poet Robert Frost’s “road less traveled by” transformed the rest of my life at the precise moment I devoured his verses which spoke directly to my soul forevermore. His collected works occupy an entire shelf in my personal library. Amidst the clutter, trivial turmoil and aftermath of that blast referred to as Holiday Season…
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Star-Struck Among the Notorious, the Rich, the Famous and the Legendary
Facebook’s “applications” run the gamut from Mafia Wars and Texas Hold ‘Em through responses to provocative quizzes resulting in “totally accurate” personal profiles all the way to exchanging of mixed drinks, pumping bling-blinged-up hearts, cuddly stuffed toy animals, smiles, hugs, or pearls of wisdom. In the wee hours of the morning, not one of us…
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Wedding Belles
While “big” sister Shirley busied her petite self raising three kids at her Thorncreek Township farm, “Aunt” Sarah and “Aunt” Susie remained at home in town lovingly clipping out paper dolls, replicas of Ava Gardner, Debbie Reynolds, Betty Grable, Liz Taylor, and a gigantic Esther Williams. The crinkly wardrobe of that Million Dollar Mermaid consisted…
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Sensations and Sensibilities of a Schoolyard Sissy
Time warp! Down memory lane without a net! Sequential account of the “stages of man” (or woman or, if preferred, “boys and girls”) rates as an assignment which is too tedious, too glorious, too horrifying. Must clump bodies of valuable information into categories of sights, sounds, smells and “socialization.” West Ward, the very sound of…
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Those Dear Hearts and Gentle People
Angie, beautiful and vibrant and enough younger than I that she could be my daughter, recently moved next door, with her husband and baby girl, into a house I have loved all of my life. I like her very much. Ralph Kramden depended upon Ed Norton. Dennis the Menace tormented Mr. Wilson. The Ricardos and…
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Once Upon A Time…A Slice of Corporate America Dined at Club 30
“Uncle” Walter Cronkite died this summer, thus childhood memories flooded my thoughts reminding me that I also referred to that wizard named Disney as “Uncle Walt”– Siamese twins to this mind, one of these giants quite sober and investigative, the other animated and magical. Delightful ghosts, whom I once actually could hug “hello” and “good-bye”,…
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Summers of Swans and Mermaids
Aiming for the Daughters of the American Revolution Very-Best-Junior-High-History-Student-Ever honors, I shot for the stars in 1960; although I had “aced” every test, I suffered and watched as somebody else strutted down the aisle and climbed onto the stage, at our Walnut Street (formerly West Ward-Columbia City High School combination) gym-a-torium, to receive that prestigious…
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“Come back to the corner of Van Buren & Main, Jimmy Dean! Jimmy Dean!”
Sometime during the summers of 1955 or ’56, my big sister Sarah and I engaged in our happy walk of a couple of blocks to attend a block-buster which our mother recommended. Edna, an avid reader, boasted often, “Hmmmm, this movie…not nearly as good as the book,” and the transplanted southerner usually wasn’t “just whistlin’…
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Indiana Yankees Going “Home Again” to Robert E. Lee’s Court: SNAP SHOTS!
October’s tears erupted from both joy and despair. Chauffeured to Dixie-land “Miss Daisy” style–not one care. Northern space aliens arrived, kissed cousins galore, Yet proved to themselves, “True, you can’t go home…anymore…” Marriott terraces encourage survey of lands Mountainous, splendid, degenerate–shaped by God’s hands. Crisp air. Hospitality. Southern dialects sparse. Wealth redistribution. Carpet-baggers returned. Farce!…
Misunderstood Gargoyles and Overrated Angels 