Blondi WHO?

Blondi Blathers, gussied up

Blondi Blathers is my Twitter handle. Blondi herself is a fictional character. Blondi Blathers is not me.

She sees ghosts. I wish I could.

She’s single. Not me.

She runs a village cafe. I’m doing well when I get a sandwich made for supper.

We have a few similarities. We bake bread; she uses the oven on weekday mornings; I make six loaves every once in a while. She jaunts to the lake before unlocking the cafe’s front door. I stroll on a gravel road surrounded by farmers’ fields. She has a sister who’s a master baker and an artist; I have one of each. We read the same books. We both do hatha yoga, though she is more dedicated to it and has renovated the attic floor of the little old elevator specifically for her daily practice. She lives on the second floor, above the cafe. I live at Golden Grain Farm.

I post on this blog most days, right here front and centre.

Blondi has too many things on her plate; she updates in the sidebar when she gets around to it, sharing bits of conversation “Overheard” or little snippets about life in the cafe, but these are lost and gone forever (dreadful sorry, Clementine) when that section is updated. If you like that sort of thing be sure to click on over there.

Some of the images in the sidebar are clickable. Hover over them with your mouse to see where they’ll take you, if anywhere.

Me? They call.. me… Kate.     KATE OF THE NORTH. You can CONTACT ME directly at stubblejumperscafe@gmail.com. Please do. Love to hear from you.

Once in a while I send out a newsletter too. If you’d like to receive it, email me and say so. It’s called Kate’s 5 Things. It contains 5 brief items I haven’t mentioned on the blog. More or less. Sometimes there’s a photo or a link or whatever strikes my fancy. You takes your chances and you pays the price: free.

Your name and address will not be shared with anyone, and a simple email with “unsubscribe” in the subject line will remove you from the list, no questions asked, no feelings hurt, no voodoo doll created in your image.

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Where I Live

Golden Grain Farm is about six miles from Wadena, Saskatchewan, Canada. The property was named by children’s author Thornton W Burgess (1874–1965). Apparently there once was a big three-storey farmhouse (long gone) with a wraparound veranda. It was his summer retreat back in the day, but it burned down. Now we live in a smallish 1970s bungalow. This sign hung at the end of the driveway when we bought the place, and it is still there along with this old eyesore hunk of junk farm implement. More info about Thornton Burgess: click here.

More about me:

• born in 1959.
• where we get the mail, buy groceries, go to the library:  TOWN

• I wrote letters as a kid and a young woman, and at 12 I got my first diary. At 15 my English teacher assigned a journal for the duration of the school semester and I’ve kept one ever since. When email and online journals came to my attention around 1995, I jumped right in.

 • If I could do exactly what I wanted to do every day of my life, I’d be reading, writing, listening to music, playing music (though I can’t play my guitar, piano, harmonica or accordion worth shit, it’s still fun), singing (not in public), listening to my favourite radio programs, communing with the flowers and birds and fairies and elves, and sitting on the deck with a friend and a glass of wine on a summer evening, or by a crackling fire in the winter.

• What I actually do is try to keep on top of the dishes, read and write at every opportunity, forget to play my musical instruments,  spend as much time outside as I can when the weather is fair, and sit alone on the deck with my glass of wine on summer evenings, admiring my flowers and listening to the birds and hoping fairies and elves really do exist.

For about 10 years I freelanced as a subject editor for the architecture, dance, theatre and film sections of The Canadian Encyclopedia. In September 2016 I came off a three-year stint in the editor’s chair at the local newspaper. Now I’m a part-time writer, copyeditor and proofreader for a publisher of student agenda books. In July 2019 I got a part-time position as clerk/administrator of the village office in my home town (yay!). I volunteer for the Wadena Food Bank as its communications person.

• It’s possible that you have landed on this page without knowing that Saskatchewan is in Canada, so here you go: Canada.

• My home town is Margo; it’s just 20 minutes down the highway.

 The link will take you to three women singing a Christmas carol at the village hall.

My sister Karen is in the centre.

Or here: take a little tour of Margo.

Or HERE; Margo as it was in 1914.

And look! Even MORE about Margo!

And yet more AGAIN.

• Some of the family: click here.

I’ve lived with Scott since 2002 and between the two of us we have three sons (Gunnar, Emil, Everett), a daughter-in-law (Melissa) and two little granddaughters (Little Eva and Little Rose).

X’s and O’s, etc.,
Kate

My Kateness

I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. ~ Michel de Montaigne

STUBBLEJUMPERS CAFÉ RECIPE COLLECTION: where I share my tried ‘n’ trues

A Letter Out — Blog 2009-2016

Who Does She Think She Is, Anais Nin? — Blog 2002-2008

Indeed, that is just what a common and private life is: a life of the richest stuff imaginable. ~ Montaigne biographer Sarah Bakewell

Some of my stuff online:

Stuart McLean
Nell Shipman
Little Mosque on the Prairie

You Never Know Who Will Come Calling
Constable Watkins Joins Local Force
No Perfection Unless You’re a Sunset
On His Way to Wadena
And the Winner is Codie Prevost

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