Books   My Grandpa Macke was a reader and my Grandma Crawford gave me a few Tarzan books when I was still to young to read them. In the second grade John Stevens started calling me a bookworm, a tag I still wear with pride. A few years ago after meeting Cheryl (a kindred spirit) & finding a signed copy of Sinclair Lewis'  "Main Street"  I had the support & inspiration to begin collecting books seriously. Sinclair Lewis, Bill Mauldin and Studs Terkel are the three authors I collect along with mysteries, Award winners and an authors first mystery.

Stamps I was about eight when my Grandpa Crawford took me to Newberry's Department store in Cincinnati and bought me a Harris stamp album and two bags of mixed international stamps. I worked on my collection until I was 14 then took it up again for a few years when I was in my twenties. Most of the history and geography I learned was because of that collection. 

Genealogy I impaled my foot at work in the fall of 1987. With all the free time I had (11 weeks off of work) I managed to hobble into the Clermont County Library and get a good start researching my family's genealogy. I really enjoyed the research and after my divorce I put a lot of time into it. Unfortunately computers die and take their files with them. I have some information, the basic stuff, one the web and some of it is printed out, but the bulk of the data I gathered is gone. Not really gone, it is still out there waiting for me to pull it all  together again.

Gardening Between Grandma Crawford's container garden in her backyard and the vegetable garden at the farm I never had a chance.