I just returned from powerful Mindfulness Retreat by Larry Ward and Peggy Rowe Ward. Thinking about how to start with love and gratefulness, I took a drive through the Winterset cemetery. And the new gravestone for Charles Moore gave me pause. A slave who followed the north star, he lived in Winterset for several years, became a businessman here. I've seen his name occasionally in the historic local paper, with a horse for sale or other various reasons. Our historians were recently able to identify the grave and raised money for a new marker. Then I paused at the marker for Thankful Robbins, at first because I was pondering gratefulness, and wondering how much impact it would have on your life to have the given name of Thankful. Then I recalled that this was the woman who bumped into George Washington Carver at the south edge of Winterset. He had walked north from KS after being turned away by a college that had earlier accepted him for admission, but changed their mind. He was ill, and Thankful was good with natural remedies, and took him in to nurse him. He eventually opened a laundry and lived in town for a couple of years before going onward to Simpson College with less than a dollar in his pocket. The Dr. Milholland family had befriended him and encouraged him to go on to college. I'm continuing to ponder the phrase "start with love, start with thankfulness." I would say that Thankful was able to start with love. I'm grateful for my local and global community and their history. May it guide us to ever more humane and inclusive decisions. Just offering up my musings of the evening here in the Heartland. Nancy Trask Winterset IA