Europe Without A Passport

I'm Program Chairman for my PEO chapter, a woman's philanthropic organization which supports education for women. My committee met this summer and lined up programs from October through June. Our first meeting of the new year is this morning, so about ten days ago I tried to get in touch with the woman responsible for this one. Long story short, I didn't reach her until late yesterday afternoon and then discovered that we have no program for today. A snafu. A miscommunication. A misunderstanding. It doesn't matter how or why. The important thing was that I had no program that was to be given in less than 24 hours.

Suddenly, I was very happy to be a writer who has files of stories on hand. I've given programs for this group a few times, and they've always gone over well, so why not one more? But it should be on a theme of some sort, I thought. Our PEO theme for the year is Destination:  PEO. Travel came to mind. My travel stories popped into my head next so I began to look through the ones I had.

I selected three travel article/stories and 1 poem. I plan to open the program telling the ladies that we are going to Europe this morning, but they won't need a passport. They won't need a suitcase. They won't need any euros either.

The first story takes place in Lahr, Germany and is titled "Grandpa's Town" The picture above is of my husband, Ken, in Lahr, the town where his paternal grandfather grew up. Next, I'll take them to Ireland via "Kissing The Blarney Stone."  Back to Germany with "A Hungarian Hotel In Germany" which won first place in the Feature Article category in the Kansas Authors state contest this year. And finally, I'll read a poem that was inspired by our visit to Monet's home and garden in Giverny, France. It's called "In Monet's Garden." One of the women asked me if I'd do a program with poetry sometime, so this one's for Sue.

You can read "Grandpa's Town" at http://www.ourecho.com/story-5240-Grandpa-s-Town.shtml
and "Kissing The Blarney Stone" at  http://www.ourecho.com/story-4862-Kissing-The-Blarney-Stone.shtml

The moral of the story is to always have a back-up plan. This time, I was fortunate in being able to provide something at the last minute. I hope I don't have to do it again because I have few other talents. Can't sing. Can't dance. I write and that's about it for talent.