Category Archives: Life reflections

Author Guest Blog: Dear Miss Schneider, Please Excuse Walter

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The Little Bookstore receives requests from authors to showcase their work. As a bookstore we enjoy supporting writers, creativity, and spunk, so we offer guest blogs when possible. Today’s is from Linda Schilling Mitchell, author of:

“DEAR MISS SCHNEIDER, PLEASE EXCUSE WALTER…”

Times were tough during the Great Depression. It impacted every facet of family life. Fathers lost their jobs and Mothers had to go to work, often for the first time in their lives. But what about the children?

“Dear Miss Schneider, Please Excuse Walter…” takes you back to Miss Victoria Schneider’s classroom from 1937-1940. “She is 19 years old and stands a mere 5’2″ and weighs in at 78 pounds soaking wet. She is hardly bigger than some of her third grade students. But she is prepared….she thinks.”

“Thirty one faces gaze back at her. Boys and girls grouped together from various backgrounds and circumstances. Little girls dressed in their best first day of school dresses, hair ribbons neatly tied and pig tails perfectly platted. Little boys with fresh haircuts, shirts attempting to stay tucked into their pants.”

But what was life really like for these children during those difficult years? We find out through a collection of notes Miss Schneider compiled in a special scrapbook. Notes from parents explaining why their children were absent from school. Humble, heartfelt and often humorous notes, giving us a key hole peek inside the lives of these families.

“Walter has no shoes only Tennis Shoes and it snow Monday an was wet and He has a Cold any way and I could not send him,” reads one note.

Parenting methods of the day are also noted: “Miss Schneider, take you a stick and give Clarence a good beating and he will mind you. That’s all it takes to make him mind.”

In addition to the collection of notes, “Dear Miss Schneider, Please Excuse Walter…” contains photographs and memorabilia from Miss Schneider’s childhood and schooling in the northern Kentucky town of Newport.

Author Linda Schilling Mitchell is Miss Schneider’s daughter who now shares her family keepsake with people everywhere. It makes a wonderful book for all teachers, anyone interested in history, or those who remember those times.

It was a lifetime ago. Their story has been waiting to be told.

Hither and Thither and Whether the Weather

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Jack’s weekly guest blog on something all Scots know a great deal about– bad weather


The last few days have seen me driving around a fair bit and, since we’re in the season of changing weather, checking the forecast pretty regularly. About four or five years ago we had a devastating tornado roar through the town taking off roofs and throwing big trees around like matchsticks, so a tornado watch alert has become a bit more of a big scary thing for me. More recently Wendy almost got caught in a very bad one that roared through East Tennessee and up into Virginia killing many people and practically destroying a number of towns and communities.

News reports starting coming in of serious damage and multiple deaths over to the South West of us a few days ago with indications that those tornado bearing storms were heading our way. On Monday the first local warnings began to appear and I went into ‘check the interactive map’ mode. Sure enough – there it was – a big angry looking swatch of red and yellow heading straight for us!

But there’s something odd about the way we sit behind the Cumberland Mountains that seems to regularly affect what happens to storms as they approach us from that direction. This one did what many do and split into two halves just before it got here. All we got was a brief gust of wind, very dark cloudy sky and a short blast of rain and that was it. One half went North of us towards Norton and Wise and the other half went South towards Pennington Gap and Duffield.

Later on Monday I had to go to an event near Pennington Gap and saw downed trees, scattered branches and flooded fields.

In Scotland, where I lived most of my life, although the weather can be unpredictable it’s rarely extreme. It does have storms and frequent high winds but rarely anything that would be life threatening.

It’s tempting to think that we are seeing the effects of climate change but I haven’t lived here long enough to know what the typical weather pattern is in this part of the world so my jury has to be out on that.

There is one Scottish saying that seems appropriate however – Ne’er cast a cloot ’til May be oot (don’t divest yourself of any clothing until after the end of May)