One more Christmas is in the books for Jim and me. It was a good day filled with lots of love, good food and with seven of our great-grandkiddles, ages 2½ to 7 years, in attendance. There was lots of joy and excitement as we counted our blessings and honored the season. Gloria’s traditional prime rib still rates as the best I’ve had, and we ate too much of everything.
We are now preparing to say goodbye to 2022 and welcome a much kinder 2023 – we hope. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions usually … they are much too easy to break … but Jim and I probably should give thanks for making it through one more year.
I do have a wish list for the new year, however. Besides kindness, it is my wish that we all strive to offer each other things like acceptance, respect, patience and honesty. We need to trade selfishness for generosity and “attitude” for the ability and willingness to listen and communicate respectfully, even if opinions differ. Most of us already do this, but, sadly, too many of us don’t.
With that said, I’ll move on to the plans I’ve formulated for my 2023 … I plan to begin another book project that will be a compilation of my newspaper and newsletter columns, letters-to-the-editor, and articles on Lorane and its people spanning the past 50 years or so.
I will include stories and photos that were used in my “Pat’s People” 4-H newsletter written in the 1970s, in The Lorane Historian newspaper that I wrote and produced in the mid-1990s, and my past weekly newspaper columns for the Fern Ridge Review (later, Fern Ridge-Tribune News) and The Creswell Chronicle (now The Chronicle) that I have been writing since 2010.
I am also asking those of you who have photos, memories of special times and events in Lorane’s recent past to share them with me for possible inclusion in the book. I’d love to get additional photos and memories of the 1987 Lorane Centennial or other activities involving the Lorane Elementary School, Lorane Grange, Lorane I.O.O.F./Rebekah Lodge/Theta Rho, Lorane Christian Church, Lorane Fire Department, Lorane 4-H, as well as the wineries, businesses, farms, longtime families that are residing in a photo album or a box of memorabilia that has been stored away and all but forgotten.
The Lorane Historian included articles on local families called “Family Portraits” and “New Kids on the Block.” Businesses, farms and activities were also featured and some of the actual issues were dedicated to a single theme or subject, including the Lorane wineries, profiles of Lorane veterans who served our country, or long-married couples who shared their wedding stories with us.
My newspaper columns have included the heartbreak we all felt at the closing of the Lorane Elementary School, the fear we felt during the 2015 Lorane wildfire, the goodbyes we said at the passing of some of our beloved neighbors, and other memorable events and happenings each week for the past 12 years.
If you have a connection to Lorane and if you get a chance to go through some of your photos, newspaper clippings and written memories and find things that you would like to share, please send copies of them to me at [email protected]. Photos should be scanned at 300 dpi (minimum). This project will take some time on my part, but I’d like to have all outside material in hand by February 15, 2023, if at all possible.
Happy New Year to All! May 2023 be good to each of you.
Online: allthingslorane.com
