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May Tangen Christmas Letters, 1975-1982
1980-04-15 May Tangen to Joetta and John Stanley Page 1
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East Friendship Haven, Fort Dodge, Iowa 50501 April 14 at last Dear neglected Jo and John Since you got no Christmas or New Year's letter it is High Time to write you! Why no Christmas letter? I have too many friends for the time I have, that's why. And a very large family beside. And then I have one particular friend, Clarice Campbell. who needed the kind of help a Scrooge like me can give when he (I) won't celebrate Christmas in usual festive ways and who also likes to write and to be with her in her need for someone to bear her burden of persuading the legislators in Mississippi to Repeal the Sales Tax on Food. So off I flew to Holly Springs on the morning of Dec. 24 and got there in time to write an article or two that day. On Christmas Day and subsequent days we wrote flyers, letters to editors, articles, radio scripts, interviews. I went with her on her speaking trips and meetings, working every day until I cam back to Iowa Jan. 5, hoping for a leisurely month thereafter, only to be plunged into church work. On the 12th I hosted our Circle (church) in Friendship Haven's nice chapel and adjoining kitchen. I don't do these things easily or with any joy, except the joy to have it over. Free in Feb.? Uh no, then I was in charge of the program for the same Circle and spent time worrying until it was done. I dusted my hands and went into a tizzy writing letters to my family again to ask for suggestions as to where the Tangens shall have their Reunion this year . Then -- March on ! Here I am in charge of the Unit meeting Women of our church and that took even more finesse as it meant getting others to work with me -- and oh! I hate to ask people to work. It's on Korean Christians. When I grumbled to my family, Harry's wife sent me pictures of her son's adopted Korean children for show and tell. And I added letters and pictures from my Foster-parent child, Kong Yoon Suk, from the 1960's. If that doesn't sound busy to you, it's ok. I know that I am so slow that I can't walk and chew gum at the same time, and how time can be consumed worrying and frittering. And I'd be classed as busy even if I didn't do these things. Just living here is busyness enough. I attend all reading circles -- 3 per week; attend the library in this building (received 3 bequests of books left us when people closed their homes, kept me busy cataloging); listen to music with Ruth Goodrich, learning much; play cards with 3 darlings in their late 80's; go up the hill to visit a friendless, familyless, humorless friend in our nursing home, which is called our Health Center; spend Monday afternoons reading to a young blind lawyer at the Legal Services Office, learning much but being convicted of being a very poor reader, stuttering sleepily over difficult legal material, reading into a tape recorder when he's off on cases; attend classes on Aging in a course the National Council on Aging sent us, reading its lessons and enjoying the wonderful fellowship of classmates; go to two BIble studies, one for ourselves on Fridays here at East Fr. Haven, one at church in adult class. And so I have enough to do, even if I weren't an avid fiction reader -- all my days I promised myself I could do that when I retire. (I just finished Mary Stewart's " Last Enchantment", the 3rd in a series on Merlin and King Arthur. I heartily recommend it -- if you like Kind Arthur and like history of ancient England. Then too, because nights aren't long enough, I'm always napping and pegging away at millions of extraneous things that must be read and responded to. Two activities in the offing: In late March I meet with the black youth at their church to tell them about life in Mississippi, at the request of one of our nurses aides ( we have an aide always on duty), the only black person I know in Fort Dodge. In May (11-19) I have signed up to go to William Fenn College in Oskaloosa, Iowa, to my 4th session of Elderhostel, which gives college courses in the most interesting subjects to us elderly. Looking forward to that ! Trying to find another, and will quickly make up my mind if I hear that one of my friends -- you?--will be there too. Love May
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East Friendship Haven, Fort Dodge, Iowa 50501 April 14 at last Dear neglected Jo and John Since you got no Christmas or New Year's letter it is High Time to write you! Why no Christmas letter? I have too many friends for the time I have, that's why. And a very large family beside. And then I have one particular friend, Clarice Campbell. who needed the kind of help a Scrooge like me can give when he (I) won't celebrate Christmas in usual festive ways and who also likes to write and to be with her in her need for someone to bear her burden of persuading the legislators in Mississippi to Repeal the Sales Tax on Food. So off I flew to Holly Springs on the morning of Dec. 24 and got there in time to write an article or two that day. On Christmas Day and subsequent days we wrote flyers, letters to editors, articles, radio scripts, interviews. I went with her on her speaking trips and meetings, working every day until I cam back to Iowa Jan. 5, hoping for a leisurely month thereafter, only to be plunged into church work. On the 12th I hosted our Circle (church) in Friendship Haven's nice chapel and adjoining kitchen. I don't do these things easily or with any joy, except the joy to have it over. Free in Feb.? Uh no, then I was in charge of the program for the same Circle and spent time worrying until it was done. I dusted my hands and went into a tizzy writing letters to my family again to ask for suggestions as to where the Tangens shall have their Reunion this year . Then -- March on ! Here I am in charge of the Unit meeting Women of our church and that took even more finesse as it meant getting others to work with me -- and oh! I hate to ask people to work. It's on Korean Christians. When I grumbled to my family, Harry's wife sent me pictures of her son's adopted Korean children for show and tell. And I added letters and pictures from my Foster-parent child, Kong Yoon Suk, from the 1960's. If that doesn't sound busy to you, it's ok. I know that I am so slow that I can't walk and chew gum at the same time, and how time can be consumed worrying and frittering. And I'd be classed as busy even if I didn't do these things. Just living here is busyness enough. I attend all reading circles -- 3 per week; attend the library in this building (received 3 bequests of books left us when people closed their homes, kept me busy cataloging); listen to music with Ruth Goodrich, learning much; play cards with 3 darlings in their late 80's; go up the hill to visit a friendless, familyless, humorless friend in our nursing home, which is called our Health Center; spend Monday afternoons reading to a young blind lawyer at the Legal Services Office, learning much but being convicted of being a very poor reader, stuttering sleepily over difficult legal material, reading into a tape recorder when he's off on cases; attend classes on Aging in a course the National Council on Aging sent us, reading its lessons and enjoying the wonderful fellowship of classmates; go to two BIble studies, one for ourselves on Fridays here at East Fr. Haven, one at church in adult class. And so I have enough to do, even if I weren't an avid fiction reader -- all my days I promised myself I could do that when I retire. (I just finished Mary Stewart's " Last Enchantment", the 3rd in a series on Merlin and King Arthur. I heartily recommend it -- if you like Kind Arthur and like history of ancient England. Then too, because nights aren't long enough, I'm always napping and pegging away at millions of extraneous things that must be read and responded to. Two activities in the offing: In late March I meet with the black youth at their church to tell them about life in Mississippi, at the request of one of our nurses aides ( we have an aide always on duty), the only black person I know in Fort Dodge. In May (11-19) I have signed up to go to William Fenn College in Oskaloosa, Iowa, to my 4th session of Elderhostel, which gives college courses in the most interesting subjects to us elderly. Looking forward to that ! Trying to find another, and will quickly make up my mind if I hear that one of my friends -- you?--will be there too. Love May
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