<div dir="ltr"><div><font face="georgia, serif">Dear Visionaries:</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><font face="georgia, serif">Here is my Mother's Day column for those who don't take the Daily News. The long version is attached.<br></font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">nfg</font></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></span></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">Blue Bellies and Personality Plus: A Tribute
to My Mom</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif"><br></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">By Nick
Gier, The Palouse Pundit</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">My mother
was a remarkable woman. “Lots of spunk”
would be a good way to describe her. She
was a fiery red-head, and she was just as feisty as Lucille Ball. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">When my
mom praised other people for having “personality plus,” she was also including
herself. She always complained about why
her vivacity did not “rub off” on her two sons, but she did not realize how
difficult it was to develop any personality at all in her presence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">She had a
quick wit and peppered her speech with colorful phrases. At the sight of a
beautiful sight or a nice piece of craftwork (usually her own), she would say
“feast your eyes on this.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">There was
one phrase that I repeat that puzzles everyone.
When anyone had failed at a task (and that was often), my mother would immediately
advise: “You’ll just have to lick your (cow) calf over again.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">Her
remarks could also cut to the quick. I
remember coming home and showing my first publication to my parents. It was on the religious view of the Founding
Fathers, and my father said something like “Good job, son”! My mother’s response was “I don’t care about
those old farts”!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">When my
dad wanted to take his two sons to an elk hunting camp in Troy, Oregon, my mom would
always object. Her dear boys’ ears would
be subjected to crude language. The delicious irony, however, was that she was
the dirty joke teller in the family. My
dad would turn beet red when she told one of her stories. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif"> My
mother’s family were tight-fisted Scots-Irish from Missouri, and my brother and
I never understood one of most her provocative statements: “Did you know that
people from Missouri have blue bellies?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">We were
too afraid to ask about these strange stomachs.
We certainly didn’t want her to show us either, even though I later
learned that Missouri was the “Show Me” state. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">Even
after much internet search, I am none the wiser about my mom’s amazing
pronouncement. Because of their blue
uniforms and their alleged penchant for cowardice, Union troops were known to
crawl on blue bellies. Missourians,
however, supported both sides in the war, so many of them would have gray
stomachs instead. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">My mother
was a very enterprising woman. She
helped her own mother run a boarding house in Evanston, Wyoming, and she always
boasted about running her own hot dog stand in that city. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">She also
bragged about the fact that she overruled her mother about not having a room
for a handsome man who showed up in the middle of the night. She gave up her own room, slept on the couch,
and married that man after a two-week courtship. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">My mother
was a creative craftswoman. She would make beautiful artificial corsages and
sell them at local taverns. While my
father drank at the bar, my teetotalling mother—all tarted up—would convince
men (she didn’t take “No” for an answer) to buy a corsage for their wives. She could easily make $50 in a night.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">After
reading one of my columns about speaking at a faculty meeting, she created a
masterpiece. It is a driftwood collage
with carefully chosen gnarled pieces, which actually look like craggy, old
professors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">I like to
think that I am a hybrid of my mother and father. In person I’m very much like my calm and
gentle father, but my mom comes out in my political activities and my writing. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">Thank
you, Mother, for giving me that special spirit (albeit sometimes impolitic) and
drive that have made me what I am. If
there is anything funny in this column, it came directly from you.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Georgia,serif">Nick Gier
still has a soft spot in his heart for Oregon, but he has enjoyed the beauty of
Northern Idaho for 42 plus years.</span></p></div></div>