I have continued to hang my artwork, paint, and organize in our little house, each day. I painted another Discus Fish on canvas and pasted it on the bathroom wall by the sink. I painted a portrait of our friend, Tony, and hung it in the sewing room. I finished painting our cat Skittles’ eyes, and hung the painting in our bedroom. I also hung the rest of the icons in the sewing room.
On the 10th, I painted two more Discus Fish and mounted them on the bathroom wall. I actually finished painting them today, after I realized I had forgotten to paint their side fins. No big thing. It was just a few strokes with a fine brush using three colors of paint. Then I hung my 6″ x 6″ painting from Day 13 of last year’s Fun-A-Day on the wall next to the toilet. It is of a yellow Butterfly Fish. The title of the painting is Hope #13 Biodiversity. 
I also arranged more of my paintings in the back entry room, over the freezer and on the outside of the furnace room. I hung most of them using Velcro Command Strips, since this is how I hang them at art and craft shows.
During my nearly 20 years in the Antiochian Orthodox Church I became an iconologist and helped a few iconographers install icons in several churches. I also edited photos of icons, printed them and installed them in an iconostasis for a mission church. I learned how to apply to and remove painted canvasses from walls. I, in turn, instructed several other iconographers how to do this. By now, you are wondering what this has to do with Fun-A-Day.
On the first two days, I installed painted canvasses that I had originally painted for and installed on doors in our former, rental house. Yesterday and today, I painted and mounted a Discus Fish on our bathroom wall. I intend to paint several of these in various colors to mount on the walls of the bathroom. The first one took a good bit of time, with the research, sketching and painting. The rest should go more quickly.
All of the paintings on canvas were pasted to the wall with clay based paste. They will lay flat and tight to the wall until I want to remove them using warm water, a sponge and some rags. They will leave the paint unharmed.
I started participating in Fun-A-Day two years ago in the Lansdale Fun-A-Day and started the Perkasie Fun-A-Day last year. For each of those, I painted a separate piece each day. They were rather ambitious undertakings. This year, I started with the idea that I was going to work on a single painting every day during the month of January. I decided I didn’t like the painting that I started and changed my project. If it isn’t fun, what’s the point? The project I landed on is actually something I had been doing every day during the month. I just needed to document it. So, here goes.
I am sprucing up the rented house we moved into on December 15, 2018. This may involve painting original artwork.It has already included painting two doors.
1/1/19 and 1/2/19: I mounted my Three Stooges portrayal on canvas of our grandsons on the bathroom door on the 1st. I mounted the life-sized canvas I painted two years ago of our granddaughters on the wall between the bathroom and sewing room doors on the 2nd.
1/3/19:
I arranged the icons for the prayer corner in our bedroom and hung photos and mirror/shelf.
I also hung paintings on the bedroom door using Velcro Command strips.
1/4/19: 
On Friday, I painted the dough box “Brazilian Tan” to match the kitchen backsplash. I also painted both sides of the front door. It had never been painted. It was still Slumlord Gray. 
1/5/19: On Saturday, I painted the remaining, tired, yellow wall in the bedroom white and hung family pictures there. 
I also hung a shelf I made and painted the day before, in the sewing room, hung pictures around it, and elsewhere in the room.
I hung my self-portraits and other creations in the hallway and back entry room.
Then I arranged more family photos and my art in the living room. Bethann sewed Velcro ‘hooks’ on the quilted valance that our daughter, Rosalie, made for our bedroom on 5th St. I mounted it on our headboard with adhesive Velcro fuzz
.
1/6/19: On Sunday, I spent time unpacking the back entry, while the paint on the desk chair was drying. I also put the first coat on the soffit above the cupboards. 
1/7/19: Today, I cleaned the first, original painting we ever owned, a horse race, and repainted the frame, and hung it in the back entry.
This project is fun and creative, and even beautiful.
Dear Friends,
We moved on December 15, so didn’t get any Christmas cards out. We only put a couple of Christmas decorations up. The Christmas over the door swag has lain on various places on the front deck, since we could find no place to hang it. We had to move out of our tiny house on 5th and Spruce, Perkasie, in a hurry. In late October, black mold bloomed all over the house. It was making us sick. The roof leaked and it was damp. The landlord had never told us there was a dehumidifier in the utility room under the house. It had turned off, due to a clogged drain hose. We had never seen the utility room. At any rate, we moved to a slightly larger place seven blocks north, still in Perkasie. It was the only place we looked at. It was the only place in our price range. A bunch of friends and family helped us move, including two strong, very polite young men, whom we had never met before. They even used their pickup truck to help. We are not completely unpacked, but Cranford spent the last few days of 2018 painting the living room, kitchen, hallway and bathroom. We have spent the first few days of 2019 hanging photos, paintings, needlework and icons. We miss having our granddaughters and Lydia and Vincent living across the street. They had already moved to Souderton in October.
Last summer was a joy! On just about every sunny day, the girls walked across the street to ask us to go to the pool with them, and to the new zip line in the park, or to the library. These were all within two blocks south. On most Saturday mornings, we would walk with Lydia, Isabella and Brigitta to the Perkasie Farmers’ Market, two blocks north. Cranford spent most of the summer (June 1 – August 24) painting a 100’ long mural on the retaining wall between our yard and Dave & Tammy Opalkas’ yard. There are photos, etc., at www.perkbirds.com.
Bethann has been learning patchwork quilting from Rosalie. Bethann took early “retirement” from Social Security, so she doesn’t need to work full-time. She took a half-time teller position with QNB bank, that comes with benefits. She continues to sew beautiful clothing for our granddaughters and fun pajamas for our grandsons.
Last January, Cranford painted every day for Perkasie Fun-A-Day, which he started. He is in the throes of it again, this January. Last year he tried to paint a “hope” everyday. Two of those pieces, plus another have since been shipped to a patron on the west coast of Ireland. This January, he is working every day on a single painting of a winter sunrise through the windows of our new digs. You can view his progress on the Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2019 event page on Facebook.
Healthwise, we are doing OK for people of our age and condition. We had no major health crises last year.
We hope that you and yours have a healthy and happy 2019. Thank you for your friendship. Feel free to stop by our new digs. We now actually have room for a few more people at the table.
Peace & love,
Cranford & Bethann Coulter
400 Ridge Ave.
Perkasie, PA 18944-1143
Bethann’s cell: 267-497-0267
Cranford’s cell: 267-497-0268
We are moving this weekend. We reached out on Facebook to ask for people to help us move and to come with their pickup trucks. We do not have a problem doing this, because through the years we have helped countless people move (including several who were moving off of the street into apartments). I have helped roof friends’ houses, parents of friends’ houses, and friends of friends’ houses. I have done wiring, installed phones (back when that was a thing) and painted for friends, relatives and friends of relatives. I have helped build decks, additions patios and driveways. I have even helped build and install a few docks in my misspent youth. I am not saying this to boast. This is just what one did in the culture I grew up in. It was a culture of sharing and mutual care. Implicitly I knew that if I ever needed help, people would be there to help. And just like me, they would not expect pay or even a commitment to help them specifically at any time. They, like me, just knew that in a culture of paying it forward and mutual care, no one is in it alone.
We never considered whether or not someone who asked for help were handicapped or economically disadvantaged or prosperous. If someone asked for help and we were able to help, that was enough reason to say yes. It was unthinkable to say no. These work parties were almost always memorable, fun and joyous happenings. We made new friends, learned new skills and had a great sense of accomplishment. We may have been tired and dirty when we were done, but it was a satisfied tired and dirty.
I know that some of you who will read this will think that it is just fond reminiscences of another old man talking about the “good old days”. However, the response we have received to our call for moving help indicates that this aspect of our culture is still alive. We are so grateful!
I have been asked on several occasions to share my migraine prevention and treatment regimen, so I decided a blog post would be the simplest way to do it. This way I can share it whenever it is needed without having to retype it each time.
The summer of 2011, I had no more than eight days without debilitating migraines. They causes three strokes that summer and multiple trips to the ER and three hospital stays. My summer culminated with being transferred to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in August for a cerebral angiogram. The heart surgeon was about to cut my chest open at Grand View, when another doctor intervened and said, “Let’s check one more thing.” I got an ambulance ride to HUP in Phila. The next day they did the angiogram. It was a grueling procedure. They saw something in my brain that they had never seen before. My adult arteries had never grown to feed my right occipital, parietal and temporal lobes. I have a single fetal artery from my spinal artery with three tiny branches off of it, one to feed each of those lobes.
I met with Dr. Scott Kasner, one of the top stroke specialists on the East Coast. He gave me a regimen to aggressively prevent migraines, since my developmental brain defect is inoperable. This regimen was developed by the Headache Center at Jefferson University Hospital, also in Philadelphia. We have made some changes since the original prescription, eventually eliminating any blood pressure medicine, as well as the Topamax (Topiramate), and adding 5mg/ daily of Atorvastatin. Where we started in 2011:
We learned that gluten and other inflammatories can increase the incidence of migraine. Also, a low carb diet can lead to a healthier brain, and help prevent migraine. After all, your brain is fat. I had an allergic reaction to Lisinopril, so we eliminated that. After more than five years on Topiramate, I weaned myself off of that, with little increase in incidence of migraines. I take 2 ginger capsules at the onset of a migraine, followed by one every half-hour until the migraine is gone.
I also take homemade green tea capsules, morning and evening. These are not green tea extract. I believe herbs are more often best whole. I also take cinnamon morning and evening. Green tea and cinnamon fight inflammation and help regulate blood sugar. I also take turmeric with black pepper capsules. The black pepper helps activate turmeric , which is a powerful anti-inflammatory. I no longer take to Atorvastatin. I am back on Topiramate, although at a lower dose, after several TIAs this winter. I am now on 325mg aspirin due to my aortic valve replacement in June 2016.
Popovers (The Brits call them Yorkshire Pudding.) are a simple, wonderful treat to upgrade any meal, or all by themselves for a snack. I have enjoyed them all of my life. It was only recently that I learned how simple they are to make. Most recipes are for one or two dozen. There are only two of us, now, so that would be far too many. They are best served fresh and hot, so we would either end up wasting food or having to wait for a special occasion with a larger gathering. So this recipe is for six popovers, which is just the right number for two. The recipe is so simple that I have made them to go with breakfast, lunch or dinner.
It is important to follow the recipe and to pay attention to temperatures in order for them to turn out right. Chemistry is involved.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Start the oven heating to 450° F. (If you forgot to leave the eggs out of the refrigerator to warm while you were taking your shower, you may want to set them on the back of the stove top to let the venting oven warm them a bit.)
Get your muffin tin out and oil 6 of the cups. I spray my tin. Refillable pump bottles are available which are more environmentally friendly than the aerosol type. Just be sure to give all of the cups you are going to use a generous coating. Then place it in the oven to preheat.
In a small mixing bowl or pan, whisk the eggs and salt until they are just mixed and a uniform yellow. Don’t overdo it. Add the milk and whisk together with the eggs and salt. Then mix in the flour until the batter is smooth with few to no lumps.
Once the oven comes to temperature, use hot pads to remove the muffin tin from the oven. The oil may look scorched. This is normal. Carefully pour the batter into 6 cups, trying to distribute it evenly. The cups should be slightly more than half full. There should be enough oil in the cups for it to climb up the sides of the tin enough for you to see it.
Place the tin in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. At 15 minutes, reduce the oven temp to 325° F. Look at the popovers, which are now puffed up tall. Decide how dark and crispy you want them to be and set your timer accordingly. My mom, B.J., made popovers that were dark and crunchy on the outside. We prefer ours golden brown and a bit softer. For softer, you make bake for as little as 5 additional minutes. For crunchy , bake for an additional 15 minutes.
After you make them a couple of times you will learn how your oven acts and what your preference is.
We serve them hot. We have our knives and butter ready! Most of the time they have holes in the bottom and we put a knifeful of butter in there , squeeze it a bit to help it melt, then munch it down. It’s good to have cloth napkins to clean up the flowing butter off of our faces and hands. These are a great side for bacon and eggs or next to a good soup or stew.
If you are having a party or have a larger family, just multiply the recipe for as many as you need.
Enjoy!
I have already mentioned one neighbor. Aunt Helen didn’t have any children; at least none that we children knew of. The families who really formed the neighborhood were the ones like ours: with kids! The mother-lode was across the street, on the shore of Crystal Lake. Immediately across the street were the Ericsons with Carol, Jane, Molly & David. Then the Hostermans with Gretchen and Charlie. Then there were the DeLays with Jimmy and his older sisters. After that, it was Dr. and Grandma Hosterman’s place. He was a hoot! He had been a dentist. He was also on the local school board. He and his wife always had an open door to young people. As Robbinsdale Independent School District #281 expanded and the suburbs were populated with new developments to house all of us Baby Boomers, new schools had to be built. My dad served on the building committee for the new Robbinsdale High School that was finished in 1958, allowing the old high school to become Robbinsdale Junior High. I went to kindergarten at RHS, then returned for 10th through 12th grades. They tucked in a couple of kindergarten classes in buildings all over the district wherever they could for a couple of years. It was an emergency situation, after all. Going to kindergarten in the high school had definite advantages. The high school students were very entertaining. They dressed up in costumes, like the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus, or Pilgrims and Indians, and came around the corner of the building three floors below outside of our windows. They did dramatic and art presentations in our classroom. It was great.
Dr. Hosterman was one of two people whom two new junior highs in the district were named after. The other was Carl Sandburg. I was at the dedication of both. I had the honor of meeting Mr. Sandburg at the dedication in 1959. He shook my hand firmly and looked me in the eye. He did not pat my head as so many adults did to four year olds wearing suits and ties in those days. He told me to take my reading seriously. How unusual that a junior high would be named for a living socialist in the 1950s in the heart of a solidly GOP district in the McCarthy era. Hosterman Junior High was dedicated in 1962. Our family attended with the guest of honor and his extended family. I still remember the talent show that the faculty put on as part of the evening’s program. I was seven. In September 1967, I would begin junior high at Sandburg. That year, it was the largest junior high on one floor in the nation with 2200 students on one floor. It had been built for 1800. The next year half of my friends would be transferred to the newly opened Plymouth Junior High further out in the suburbs; one of the pitfalls of being born at the crest of the Baby Boom. Hosterman Junior High succumbed to the wrecking ball in 2010, during the tenure of Gretchen Hosterman as CAO of the school district. Sandburg has been used for administration, adult education, vo-tech, etc. RHS has been rented out to the Shriners; been used as a senior center, as a Spanish immersion school, etc. Several of the elementary schools are now old age and convalescent homes. So they have come full circle. Yes, and the Robbinsdale Branch of the Mpls. Public Library that I used to haunt is now the Robbinsdale Historical Society.
I should get back to the neighborhood now.
We all played together. It was expected that the older ones would hold the hands of the younger ones when we crossed the street. We would let our moms know if we were going to the other end of the block, I guess, but not every time, just that we would be going back and forth. There were no “helicopter parents”. There also was no air conditioning, no stereo or loud radio, no daytime TV. So, moms could hear if something were to go wrong.
When we played cowboys and Indians, David Ericson liked to get killed just outside his back door. He would lay down dead. Then he would scramble into the kitchen to get some ketchup to put on his face, just for added realism. He then had to also grab a few potato chips, because, you know, you don’t waste good ketchup.
On the 4th of July, the whole neighborhood (plus some) spread out blankets on Ericsons’ front lawn to watch the fireworks over the lake. They were beautiful, reflecting on the surface of the water. The front lawn was a pretty steep hill down to the lake. It should be noted that the front doors of houses on lakes or rivers or any body of water is the door facing the water. Ericson’s house had screened porches on both the first and second floors facing the lake. Dick and Jane Schirmacher still live in that house to this day. They bought the house from Jane’s parents after her brother David died in a plane crash on Christmas Eve, 1971, in Peru, while serving a gap year mission assignment with Wickliffe Bible Translators. That so tore up his dad, Les, that he retired from Pillsbury Flour. They spent 3 months with their daughter, Carol, and her husband, Jim Daggett, at Wickliffe’s mission base in Peru. Les engineered and installed refrigeration for the medical compound. They sold the house to Dick and Jane and moved to a small farm in rural Minnesota.
I loved the Ericsons’ house. Many times, when my mom was working for the 1960 census, she let me stay with Lois. My sisters and brother and all the Ericon kids were in school. I remember playing with David’s Lincoln Logs on the floor of their living room while Lois was baking in the kitchen. Their house was one of the few places I felt safe as a child.
Jim DeLay was in the grade between David’s and mine. David graduated RHS in 1971, with my sister Sue Ann. Jim was in the class of 1972 and I was in the class of 1973. Jim was always a friendly and expressive kid. He got into acting in our high school, starring or playing supporting roles in several school plays. We had a fantastic theater program there. By high school, Jim was pretty flamboyant and made no attempt to hide the fact that he was gay. His strict, Catholic father had beat Jim his whole life. On several occasions in our teen years, Dr. Hosterman could hear Jim and his dad fighting in their house next door. He would call my dad, even though we had moved to Golden Valley in 1961, to come over to intervene. At least once, Mr. DeLay’s service revolver was brandished by one of them. My dad could talk Jim’s dad down. Jim was among the first wave of AIDS related deaths in Minnesota, in the 1980s. His dad died in 2016 or 2017. His obituary did not even list his son, Jim.
My sister Sue Ann committed suicide on Nov. 30, 2000, at age 47, leaving behind three children and her husband. After being sober from alcohol for several years, she had succumbed to a gambling addiction. When her boss discovered she had embezzled a large sum of money from him, she took a drug cocktail, leaving her note as the final entry of her diary.
So, in our little neighborhood, after what looked like a fun, balanced, playful childhood, we have had our share of tragedy.
I have already relayed the fact that I was named for both of my grandfathers. What I haven’t mentioned yet is that I did not learn what my name was until after my 6th birthday.
When I was born at Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis, on June 14, 1955, my parents, B.J. and Charlie, had not yet agreed on a boy’s name. So the discussion continued. My mom, B.J., wanted to name me after her father, Cranford. Now Cranford Williams Ingham had never used his full first name. It was always shortened to “Cran”. Interestingly, his middle name was the last name of the doctor who delivered him, who was one of the few women doctors in Wisconsin in 1900. Charlie couldn’t stand the name Cran, so he said, “No son of mine is going to be named Cranford!” He wanted to name me Joseph, after his father. As I mentioned before, Joseph never used his name, either, except for perhaps as a child. People called him “Free” or “Freeman”, because he was a “free thinker” or atheist. He died two years before I was born of a heart attack. B.J.’s response to Joseph was, “Joe’s Bar, Joe’s Hardware, Joe’s Diner! It’s too common!” They kept arguing for three days after I was born. This is when I remind the readers that my parents met in law school. The hospital had to fill out the birth certificate before we were discharged. They told B.J. and Charlie that if they could not agree, they would just fill it out as “Baby Boy Coulter” and that would be my legal name until I was 16, the minimum age to legally change a name in Minnesota. (That wouldn’t have damaged me a bit.)
My folks arrived at the compromise and I was named “Cranford Joseph Coulter” with the agreement that I would be called “Ford”. The name Cranford was never spoken in our household. My sister, Sue Ann, who was almost 27 months old when I was born, got her F’s and S’s mixed up, so she called me “Sord”. Everyone thought that was cute, so they all called me Sord as well. It took a concerted effort to correct everybody, including me, to pronounce my name correctly as Ford, before I started kindergarten at Robbinsdale High School on Tuesday, September 6, 1960. That’s me (above) in my kindergarten picture wearing my Nixon-Lodge button on my wool tweed sport coat, like a proper little WASP.
During the summer of 1961, we moved out of the small, Dutch colonial on Shoreline Drive, Robbinsdale, and into the spacious, four bedroom colonial that my dad “built” at 4845 Lowry Terrace, Golden Valley. Charlie had acted as his own contractor, using the plans he had purchased from American Home magazine. It had won the prize for “Best Home for the Midwest”. It was the first home featured in a magazine to have a family room. It was a great house to entertain in. It had a formal living room and dining room, two fireplaces: one in the family room, and one in the basement. It had a master bath, a kids bath with two sinks, and a powder room just inside the back door and by the doors to the garage and the basement. My brother, Tic, and I each got our own bedrooms, since we were six years apart. Our sisters, Alison and Sue Ann, were just two years apart, so they still had to share a room until Tic went to college.
It was the last week of August, 1961, when B.J. took me to register for 1st grade at Noble Avenue Elementary School. We were standing just inside the doors at the end of a long hallway. A woman was sitting at a card table with notebooks with all of the pupils’ names and information in them. When it was our turn, the lady at the card table asked my mom for her child’s name. My mom said, “Coulter, Cranford.” I pulled on my mom’s arm and said, “My name isn’t Cranford.” She turned to the woman at the card table and said it again, “Coulter, Cranford.” This time, I hid behind my mom’s skirt and tugged on her arm, and exclaimed through tears, “MY NAME ISN’T CRANFORD!” She turned to me and said, “Your name is Cranford. Your nickname is Ford.” Then she turned to the lady at the card table and said, “His name is Cranford. His nickname is Ford. Mark his file.”
That’s how I learned that my name was Cranford. That evening, at dinner, my dad told me not to worry. As soon as I turned 16, we could legally change my name to Ford. All through grade school, none of the other students found out my real name. None of the teachers ever called roll with anything but “Ford Coulter” or “Coulter, Ford”.
On September 5, 1967, I started 7th grade at Carl Sandburg Junior High, Golden Valley, across the street from the Honeywell factory, where they manufactured the MIRV devices for nuclear warheads. Because of that factory, we were told, Golden Valley was the #16 priority target for a nuclear attack by the U.S.S.R. We were told a lot of things. Some of them were true.
Sue Ann had warned me that I had better talk to my teachers before they took attendance if I wanted to keep “Cranford” secret. I made sure to dash to every class on the first day of every semester in junior high to notify my teachers to mark their files with my name as “Ford”. None of them ever called “Cranford” out loud in my three years there. One leak did happen, however, at the beginning of second quarter in 7th grade. To be more efficient, homeroom was incorporated into 1st period. In my case, that was Mr. Nordstrom’s “Project Social” Sociology class. I was in the “Enriched Program” for Science, Math, Social Studies and English. The rule was that if one did test to qualify for all four subjects ‘enriched’, one was only allowed to take three of them and had to opt out of one of the subjects. However, there were ten of us, out of a class of 750 who scored so high that they allowed us to take all four subjects enriched. Two of the other boys also took German and choir, as I did, so we ended up with identical schedules for three years. The school wanted me to skip 7th grade, but my mom wouldn’t let me.
Back to the story. One morning at the beginning of the 2nd quarter, before the beginning of homeroom, I heard someone say, “Who is this Cranford Jose’ character?”
Mr. Nordstrom had posted the computer printout of the class’s grade point averages for the first quarter. The printout didn’t have enough character space for my entire middle name, so now I was the British-Mexican foreign exchange student. A few of my guy friends called me Cranford Jose’ or just Jose’ from then on. Half of the students from that class ended up going to the new, Plymouth Junior High for 8th and 9th grades. I stayed in touch with several of them. When I was starting my second year of college, I went to visit a couple of my high school friends at the main campus of the University of Minnesota. I was about to enter the Coffman Memorial Union, when I hear someone holler “Cranford Jose’!” from across the commons. It was my old, Finnish friend from 7th grade, Tapani Temul Lahti!
When I got back to Robbinsdale High School for my sophomore year, I decided to drop out of the enriched program for everything except math. (Math had been accelerated by a year since 5th grade.) I also decided to stop ‘correcting’ my name with the teachers. So any students who met me for the first time were introduced to me as Cranford (the kids from Robbinsdale Junior High). So half the kids knew me as Cranford and half knew me as Ford. I would sometimes encounter a group of kids and someone would address me by name, and the light would go on with someone, “Oh no! This Cranford person and this Ford person are the same person!” I had reputations. When I turned 16 just after my sophomore year, Charlie was ready to take me down to the courthouse to change my name. I disappointed him by letting him know that I preferred Cranford and intended to keep it.
My wife’s middle name, given to her at birth was Williams, for the woman doctor who had helped her mother survive several miscarriages and a still birth after the birth of her older sister Susan and helped her mom finally come to term and deliver a healthy baby girl, ten years later. Bethann dropped that name and has used her maiden name, Reber, for her middle name, since we got married in 1975. When we went to North Memorial Medical Center to deliver our first child, our doctor was out of town, so his partner showed up to deliver April. His last name was Williams. April’s middle name is Marie.
