This and that

There is a stack of odds and ends on my desk. Occasionally, I poke through it to see if I can figure out why I kept this stuff in the first place.

There's the gardening catalog, for example.

Every year I dream of planting seeds and bulbs somewhere in our yard with results that look something like the photographs in the catalogs.

I am a dreamer.

My wife, whose green thumb is legendary, has met her nemesis in our yard. She believes our house was built on a toxic dump.

There is nothing that delights my wife more than things that bloom. We had a few years in a row of hydrangea euphoria. The hydrangea bushes are prominently visible from our family room and kitchen windows. When they are in full bloom, they take away the aches and pains. I swear they do.

But last year was a hydrangea bust. We heard from some of our friends that their hydrangeas sputtered too.

So why is it when we drive by abandoned houses where no one has tended the hydrangeas for who-knows-how-long that they are exploding with big balls of blossoms?

Our yard is mostly clay, like yours and everyone else's. Violets do well, but they take over and crowd everything else out. I have been waging war on violets for a couple of years now.

English ivy likes the clay soil. But when was the last time you saw ivy in full bloom?

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Sharon Sanders, the Southeast Missourian's librarian, is always on the lookout for historical goodies. She has a treasure trove of information in the newspapers clips, electronic files and photographs stored in the library.

(Newspaper libraries used to be called "the morgue." I prefer "library.")

Here in my stack is a copy of something Sharon found that was published in the Daily Republican a century ago.

It is an unsigned letter to the editor. I believe it may have been the very first Speak Out published in what was to become the Southeast Missourian.

I am a dreamer.

The headline: "This Woman for Women: She Would Like to See Women in the Council Doing Something." It is an appeal for women's suffrage, and the writer minces no words.

"If Cape Girardeau wants her streets cleaned, the city blooming and looking in anything like comparison with our cemeteries, put a woman up for mayor. Give us women the power to vote. We will show you how easy it is to elect a woman for our mayor. We pay taxes. It is time we were represented."

The writer is just getting warmed up.

"Are we not as good as our men? Who is it that teaches our youth in the public schools? Women! Women like Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Julia Ward Howe and Helen Gould have not been allowed to vote, but barroom loafers, ward heelers and grafters, who are not worthy to touch the hems of these noble women's garments, are allowed to exercise the rights of suffrage."

It gets better as the writer starts swinging with both fists -- properly covered in white gloves, I'm sure.

"Thousands of our male voters are too befuddled with alcohol, too pickled in liquor, too soused with rum, to be able to form an intelligent idea of what is best for the public. Women are not all angels. There are bad women as well as good ones, but if a woman is bad you usually find she became so through the evil influence of one of the so-called stronger sex."

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Finally, here's a copy of the itinerary for the trip my wife and I took a few years ago to France.

We thought we had found a low fare with the fewest connections.

I am a dreamer.

We flew to St. Louis, got on a Delta flight that went to Dallas/Fort Worth, then flew nonstop to Paris.

An hour or so out of Dallas-Fort Worth, we were directly over Cape Girardeau.

Maybe flying to Cincinnati isn't such a crazy idea.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.