On the banks of the Missouri River – there is a City called Omaha – Omaha Nebraska.

Below is a postcard mailed from Council Bluffs Iowa July 6. In pencil someone has added c. 1910. Note that the stamp coincides with that dating. I don’t have this card right to hand at the moment. Interestingly it is addressed to Cincinnati Iowa. Googling Cincinnati Iowa I find that now it is a very tiny settlement with a. population less than 1000.

Solving word puzzles is hardly my forte but with the current craze re Wordle I am having a lot of fun. It’s about the right level of difficulty to be a challenge and I am having success in finding the solution each day.. Today I struggled but solved it in 4.

As many of you know, we used to live on the 3rd floor this building. We had a spacious 1 bedroom apartment with lots of storage space. The apartment was North facing and we looked out onto a huge tree. We could also see the corridor which linked our D building to the A and B buildings. I would have dearly liked to have a cat in the apartment but a) I didn’t want to have to deal with the litter box, b) I consider cats to be “access to the outdoors” pets, and c) I had more than enough to cope with just moving ourselves.

This morning as I walked along the connecting corridor what did I see but a white cat lying at the window of our old apartment. I feel delighted that the new occupant, a single man, has a cat!! Hooray for him – and his cat.

Some white cat photos

This is my mother’s birthday. If she were alive today she would be age 110. This makes me feel as if we are all on a conveyor belt and as the years pass, the generations roll on. Next it will be my turn to fall off the conveyor belt!

My mother lived a full life, there were many ups and some downs. I won’t give a full biography now. I’ll save that for another post.

I don’t know if I have used the right term for these cards but I mean the cards like the following:

Pictured below is a mountain that was popular in my mountain climbing days at Middlebury College in Vermont

The daily word game challenge is taking me a lot of time. But getting the right answer is so satisfying.

I am currently doing easy crossword puzzles. Although I consider myself to be fairly intelligent I have never been very good at crossword puzzles. I read a lot but that doesn’t seem to transfer over to crossword puzzles. Now I am doing the daily Wordle which I find very challenging. I struggle but I am doing fairly well. Part of the fun is comparing one’s efforts with others, family and friends. It spoils the fun if by accident I come upon the answer in someone’s blog. Please, those of you living in Australia or other parts of the world ahead of Seattle in time – don’t give the current day’s answer.