Issue #10
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Developer: Bioware
Publisher: Lucasarts
Platform: Mac, PC, Xbox
Rating: T for Teen
It's difficult to explain to someone who didn't live through the 1980s just how quickly and completely Star Wars saturated our culture during that decade. All of my friends, male and female, had Star Wars action figures, lunch boxes, breakfast cereal, bed sheets, underpants, etc.
Every young child has his or her hero -- often a celebrity. That's okay...everyone needs a chance to dream. But at some point those heroes get moved to the back burner and a more realistic mentor/hero takes his or her place.
By Joanne Niswander
As some of you know, my husband Dean passed away just after the first of the year. It wasn't unexpected. He had been in Mennonite Memorial Home for the past 15 months.
In addition to physical problems that kept him in a wheelchair, he had Alzheimer's disease. And that is what I want to talk about.
I grew up on a farm in good country. A creek ran through the southwestern corner of it. A creek is a natural waterway larger than a run but smaller than a river. In romantic lore, poets have celebrated the rivers of the earth - the Rhine and Danube, the Volga and Don, the Tigris and Euphrates. In Allen and Putnam counties it's the Riley, the Blanchard, the Auglaize and Ottawa of which natives speak. So close to home, those small waters seldom rise to the level of romance.
