A Bit More About My Nebraska Life-Annette Snyder

It’s  good I can write because numbers aren’t my forte.  Anyway, I skipped a week in scheduling for my blog because I didn’t get my numbers straight.  I’ll fill this spare week with a little more about me and my blog, which went live in 2011. The first post went up in 2010 with a few guest spots just to see if I could manage the project but I didn’t want to do it alone.  That’s where the other forty nine writing pros come in.  They’ve all volunteered for a spot on the blog and put their work out there for others to find.   Readers found it and this blog gets hits from all over the world—even the smallest countries.  It makes me realize the reach of the internet. 

 (See this picture of me and my two grandmothers while I'm showing them  my website on the internet.)

My great grandparents, who adventured the Midwest way looking for a better life,  traveled an ocean on a boat full of immigrants and knew their trek would most likely separate them from their families forever . Today, relatives on other continents are only a link, a page or a tweet away.

When I wrote Viveka’s War, I dedicated it to my two grandmothers.  My family has lived in my town for many years, owned a tavern.  That bar had the very first television in town.  Fifty years later, look what we’ve got--TV’s on walls big enough to see in a football stadium.  And football stadiums!  I wonder if the pioneers ever thought they’d be bringing, along with determination, seed and plows, enough drive to build cities with venues bigger than the 160 acres they won in a free land race. 

I was fortunate that my ancestors started young in America and I knew some of them.  My lucky children, who are now just at the mark of their thirties, knew two of their great-grandmothers—lived only a short distance from them and were lucky enough to hear the same true life adventure stories I did.   Stories of covered wagons and Indians, of blizzards that took away family members and heat that boiled eggs right inside the chickens—well maybe some stories were a little exaggerated.  

I wrote this for one grandmother for her birthday:

Traveling across an ocean, they became adventurers and 

changed the direction of their future. 

They left their families and friends behind and 

braved a world of unbroken ground where some succeeded 

and many failed. 

They traveled to a foreign land where nothing was usual.

They survived sickness. 

They survived drought. 

Yet, they survived! 

They were paupers. 

Strength and determination were their riches.

They grew in character in ways few men did.

They learned to cope during hard times and relished in the sweetness of the good.  They raised children under the best and the worst of circumstances. 

They cried.  They starved.  They suffered. 

They laughed.  They feasted.  They prospered. 

Under their direction, their children learned honesty and

fairness, happiness and civility.

How fortunate we are to be made from a foundation in 

which perseverance existed so powerfully. 

How fortunate our ancestors strived to make life better and 

taught us to do the same. 

How very fortunate we are the Kubat’s.

My great grandparents ended up in the Midwest but their journey wasn’t just a straight shot and the life that brought them here spanned years and many states.  For me, growing up in one place my entire life, the thought of living and traveling intrigued me. (See this picture of my grandmother by a cedar chest filled with family wedding dresses and other historical clothing of baptisms and such belonging to family members collected over the last hundred years)  

That’s when I got the idea for this blog—through my love of travel and writing.  I’m so glad others across the USA are interested in the same and willing to share the stories of their areas and work.

I’ve still got half a year to go for this blog and 2013 is shaping up—I’ve got five more spots to fill and I’ve got plenty of room for sidebar posts so, if you’re a writer, a publisher, agent, printer, artist—anyone involved in the writing world, leave a post or contact me through my website and I’ll get you the details.

Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned next week for New Hampshire.