This is just to say thank you to Jim, the researcher with extraordinary talent for finding what Oris Aaron once referred to as "pearls" and reminding us why they need to be revisited.

I should also say thanks to Beth Grant for commenting on Jim's contribution because her sincere note of family pride stirred me to read it more thoroughly and discover one of the most beautiful letters to a local paper I've ever read. Those counties he outlined as having so much in common do so to this day.

And as hard as it is to admit it, I should thank my first husband Ed who was always one to expect people to write things down and share them with their local newspaper. As a Metcalfe County High School reporter to the local Edmonton Herald-News when he was the new publisher, I once shrugged and said there'd be no column that week because there was simply nothing going on at school. Ed gave me a look of alarm and said, "that's when you are your most creative! Get back to writing"

I enlisted the help of my mother and the community and that may have been the week that the MCHS school news branched out to include headlines of Knob Lick chickens that were laying mysterious green colored eggs. But that's another story.

Thanks Jim and Beth and Ed. - Linda