UNA (Acrostic-tanka)

Thank you for the kind comment.  This recent photo is her at 103.  

To put her life in perspective; as a child she used to play the piano for the veterans at the old soldiers home (civil war veterans).  Her grandfather, was a Union veteran himself.  He homesteaded the Minnesota prairie home, she lived in nearly all her life, till a couple of years ago.

She was indeed, part and party, to the settlement of the American West.  She can recollect when their still were tensions between Indians and settlers.  She talks with candor about WWI, as if it were yesterday.  She recounts vividly, how the flue of 1916, nearly wiped out her small town of Fulda Minnesota.  And how hard it was for her, and others, to prepare dead family members for burial.

She's a little hard of hearing, and has trouble seeing, but she's still sharp as a tack, and is willing to current affairs with anyone.  If we should all be so blessed.

Yes.  What's fascinating is her concept of time, as compared to ours. She was amazed that Obama was elected President.

"I never thought I'd live to see the day, when a black kid was elected President!  I wonder what Fred would think, because he thought Black people were being treated terribly."

'Fred' was her grandfather who served all through the civil war.  Enlisting at the ripe age of 14, he had never seen an African American, till the army marched to the South and met liberated slaves.  She speaks of him, as though she had spoken to him yesterday.

I'm sure he has plenty to tell.  Thank you so much for your kind comments.