JOHN DAY — The wonderful Jammers I referred to last week are Bill and Laura Kuffler, Ronda Metler, Ron Phillips, Vern and Linda Pifer, Ben Richardson, Steve Moyer, Wendi Cates, Earl Carlton, Doug Boyer and Jon Meiling. For the most part you will find them serenading folks from 10 a.m. to noon every Monday. Last Monday they were joined by former resident Larry Cannon, who now lives on the coast. Consider stopping by and enjoying the music.

If you enjoy corned beef hash, consider bringing a friend and having lunch on Jan. 27. Enjoy corned beef hash, coleslaw, fruit and lemon macaroon bars. However, if you’re more of a salty dawg person, you can enjoy clam chowder, Caesar salad, garlic bread and fruited gelatin on Jan. 30.

Unless you are new to the area, you know we have it pretty good here. A drive to Central Oregon would convince you of that. If our forests were managed wisely, we might even have some jobs to offer. If we hadn’t dropped the ball with city management, property owners might not be so disgruntled. 

Disgruntled or not, our volunteers delivered to 44 homes this week, while 53 enjoyed lunch at the center. We were blessed to have three volunteers in the kitchen, two in the dining room, a welcome staff of two and four driver teams.

All that aside we are known for helping others and the JDSC would like to do what they can. This week I want to highlight our equipment room. If you need any assistance pieces, we are prepared to help. Crutches, canes, walkers, manual scooters, wheelchairs, an electric outdoor scooter and other items to aid with recovery or just life the way it is. The reason we have these items to give, or loan, at no charge is people have passed them on to the center, knowing they would benefit others. Stop by on a Monday or Thursday morning and ask to see our inventory for what might be of help to you. While you’re there, check out the great library we have. And if you have books to share, drop them off anytime.

This week’s meal numbers include 266 meals put out on Monday and Thursday combined.

The second word in our commonalities puzzle is “lumber.” Lumber can be measured in board feet, square feet, linear feet and even cubic feet if in a unit. The latter being to determine weight for transport. This is where I could have used the algebra I failed in high school. Most of the wood products came from Portland and had imperfections and were referred to as seconds or No. 2’s. Those imperfections were no problem compared to the great price offered to our customers.

Now you may wonder what last week’s word (tenacity) has in common with lumber. Tenacity was needed to restack/arrange the lumber once customers finished sorting through the stack, looking for the best pieces for their job. I recall a time when a lady spent at least 30 minutes deciding if she should use sheetrock or particleboard for her job. Both were heavy 4-foot-by-8-foot sheets. She decided on sheetrock. The 12 sheets requested were loaded into her Chevy Luv with a small canopy. While we were loading, she was pondering. Yep, she changed her mind and wanted particleboard. So we unloaded the heavy sheetrock and replaced it with her second choice — no small task. I began to question my tenacity when delivering customer satisfaction.

Have time on your hands, thinking you need something more meaningful to do? Consider volunteering for our senior center. So much to do and so few bodies to help with it. Consider partnering as one of our overseers at one of our game events. Don’t want to oversee one? How about being one of the players. Chess, backgammon, checkers, cribbage, pinochle — all this and more in the works. More details to come.

MONUMENT — It looks like the month of January is coming to a close. Wow, this month has just flown by! It’s been super-cold over here. We even hit single digits. Brrr! I saw that parts of the John Day River were frozen while I was driving to town. One part of the river in Kimberly was quite a sight to see for it was frozen over in what looked like one massive chunk of ice covering a big area. Hopefully, it will not cause a flood as the ice begins to melt and break apart.

Our greeters at the table were Sue Cavender and Linda Abraham. They checked in all the guests, collected and counted up the money. Jan Ensign filled out the paperwork. Ellie Lucas led everyone in the flag salute and made the announcements. Yours truly prayed the blessing over the meal. Judith Bustardo was the lucky winner of the free meal ticket.

Our cooks, Terry Cade and Carrie Jewell, made us Philly cheese sandwiches, curly fries, a fresh green salad, and fruit with sugar cookies for our dessert. We thank them for their hard work and for our wonderful meal!

We celebrated Terry Cade’s and Larry Vote’s birthdays by singing them the Happy Birthday song. We hope that they enjoyed being serenaded by all the guests for lunch and had a most wonderful celebratory day.

The first shotgun shoot of the year 2025 will be Saturday, Feb. 1, at Brad and Julie Smith’s place. The start time will be at 11 a.m. and it will go to about 3 p.m. This will be a fundraiser for the Spray Rodeo queen.

We had a whole bunch of our Spray friends come and join us for lunch. Joni Kabana was among them and she had announced that if anyone had any ideas or stories that may be of interest to share and write about, to come and talk with her. Joni is now the new writer for the Ruralite magazine because Jody Foss has retired to pursue writing her book and other interests. Joni took a bunch of photos of our guests during lunch.

The ground is frozen over here in Monument. We have been having gorgeous mornings with sunny sunrises. But that does not mean it is warm by any means! It is an illusion. I had to go outside one of the evenings and the ground was already frosty. When my headlamp shone on the ground, it was all aglitter and sparkly! It looked amazing, like someone had scattered very shiny and sparkly diamonds all over the place. Wouldn’t that be so neat if that were the case? I just started praising the Lord for His beautiful handiwork.

My little Rebel is still coming over and wanting to sit on my lap. She really is a cutie. She has a sweet personality and disposition. Unfortunately, that causes her to be bullied a little by the more dominant ones. I think Rebel and Mei Mei are my favorite out of this group. They both like to sit on my lap for some loving. LOL.

Psalms 37:16-17 Better the little that the righteous have than the wealth of many wicked, for the arms of the wicked will be broken but the Lord upholds the righteous.

PRAIRIE CITY — Well, we all survived the inauguration in fine shape, right? I don’t think I have to say any more about it!

Ginger led the flag salute and Tom asked the blessing. The winner of the free meal was our faithful volunteer Teresa Harwood. The other volunteers for this day were Sharon, Mary, Pam, and Tom.

Tom had a most appropriate quote on the white board: “I finally know why they call me ‘grown up.’ I groan every time I get up.” Oh, my, isn’t that the truth! The doctor told me that (have I mentioned this before?) the cause of my lower back pain was old age. Guess that’s good news. … Frank Lloyd Wright said this: “The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” So I need to put those two pieces of information together and get on with the projects of the day …

Before we ate, we had one project to take care of: election of board members and officers. Ginger stated that anyone who voted against the reelection of the current board members would be automatically installed as a board member (tee hee). Well, that didn’t happen, so here we all go for another year. 

Our meal today was breakfast. Lots of people said that they really like to have breakfast-type meals at other times than the usual morning time. To each his own. … Pam and Pam really outdid themselves today with this meal. We had scrambled eggs, hash browns, French toast, sausage patty, biscuits and gravy, mixed fruit cup, and a maple bar! There was also peach nectar, coffee, milk and water for your liquid refreshment. Lots of the illegal takeout boxes were taken out with leftovers for future consumption. … The sponsor for this meal was St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

We were saddened to learn of the unexpected death of our friend Ardell O’Hara over the weekend. Our prayers go up for her family for comfort and guidance.

On a brighter note, the maintenance box for the printer came. Had to call son No. 1 to find out what to do with it. He was able to find the directions online and read them to me over the old landline phone. … You just had to know where to look and use a standard screwdriver to take out the old one and put in the new one and all the little electrons were happy! Prints great. There was a page in the box with precautions about handling the little box in 40 different languages! On the other hand, the computer keeps having to fix problems, and Sharon warned that she was amazed that a computer this old was still working! Oh, no. Don’t tell me that …

Lev. 19:32 Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD.