Tulip Festival
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

The front page of our local newspaper had this article on the front page, "It's a Go! Steering Committee makes Tulip Fest Announcement". The announcement is that the 80th Tulip Festival will take place on May 13, 14 and 15. Energy is being focused on safety during the festival and "extra consideration for sanitary protocols is being taken throughout the planning process."

Current information can be found on the Tulip Festival website at www.octulipfestival.com.

For Jubon Juweelen this means that we will be hosting the Straat Winkel again. The Committee actually hasn't put any restrictions on us, but the restrictions that we are going to put on ourselves is that we are only going to allow three people at a time in our little building. We will have someone at the door "directing traffic" and visiting with you while you wait your turn. We hope to have a large selection of new items from Holland along with our four different choices for wooden shoe designs, two different slipper designs and garden clogs (which look like real wooden shoes, but are a little more flexible). We only have one more issue of the Jubon Journal before the festival, so, hopefully, we will have a few more details in the April issue.

Des Moines Book Festival
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

Renae Vander Schaaf and I have been chosen to be listed as Festival Authors in the Des Moines Book Festival. The book festival will be virtual this year and you can checkout the Festival Authors at dsmpartnership.com, All the Festival Authors will be highlighted in a special blog. The list will be active on their website until October 31, 2021. This is for our cookbook Receptenboek Van De Nederlandse Huisvrouw which contains over 200 pages of Dutch recipes, history of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dutch sayings, and more. Renae's book about Doc Neumann, Get Up, Get Going will also be featured. There will be workshops and presentations offered during the four weeks of this years Festival, but you must register online for those.

Old Tiles
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

People still remember our brick and mortar store and all the consignment and antiques we used to have there. This past week I had a man call from Ida Grove saying that he had a lot of old Dutch stuff from his Grandmother (or Great Grandmother???) and would like to find a home for it. He came over and we purchased it for resale at Jubon Juweelen. The main item was a complete set of Delft Christmas tiles from 1967 - 1987. If someone is interested in the whole set, we would sell it for $210 (that's $10.00 a tile). Look them up on Etsy. If you can find them, they usually sell for around $20.00 a tile. If we don't sell them ahead of time, they will be for sale at the Straat Winkel during the Tulip Festival. We also purchased a 1955 Dutch calendar with pictures of the Princesses and their birthday's indicated. For instance, Princess Juliana's birthday was April 30. However, it is missing the months of August and December. There were a few other nice things, but they sold already.

Juliana Wins in FP40 at The Memorial
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

Juliana has started playing some actual disc golf tournaments again. She entered The Memorial in Arizona a couple of weeks ago and won her division, FP40 by 25 strokes. FP40 is Female Pro 40 and over. She actually turned 50 this year, but she said there weren't enough 50 year olds to have their own division. She played well enough that her score would have put her in 4th place in the FPO, Women's Pro non-age protected division.

Juliana will be playing FPO next at The Challenge at Goat Hill, May 7-9 in Oceanside, CA. This is a Disc Golf Pro Tour silver series event. It will be the first DGPT event that Juliana has played. Shortly following that she will be competing in the Women's National Championships again in FP40 and then later in the year at the US Master's Disc Golf Championships.

Disc golf is one of the few things that is still viable to play because it is outside and there is quite a bit of distance between people. However, there are some new COVID guidlines to keep everyone safe. One is that you can't have a caddie and I believe that spectators were limited. Over the last 5 years, Juliana has been putting most of her efforts into Freestyle so playing disc golf again is fun for us to watch. The sport has come a long way since she started playing in 1992 and it's fun to see the progress.

Book Reviews
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

My book reviews this month are going to be a little different from previous months. Normally I review books that I have for resale and you can buy them. The books I'm going to review this month have some history behind them and, at this time, aren't for sale.

This book was written in 1907 and this particular book was a Christmas present from my father's mother (Grandma Bastemeyer) to my Great Aunt Helen Rozeoom in 1913. I love reading books that were written at a different time because things that we take for granted weren't common place then. The story is about some Irish immigrants living in Indiana at the turn of the century. The story was just a good human interest story, but the most interesting part is reading about the author. The author Geneva Grace Stratton (later married to Charles Porter) was born in Largro, Indiana in 1863, during the Civil War. She was an author, naturalist, nature photographer, and film producer. She died in 1924 in Los Angeles. If you want to read about an interesting life, look her up on the internet.

This book was a gift to my husband's father on June 19, 1942. When my husband was ten years old his family was in a bad car accident and his father, a dentist, was laid up for some time. This book was a gift from two of his nieces at that time. The story takes place in England during the First World War and is the story of socialists in German and England trying to work together to end the war early. However, reading about the author is just about as interesting as reading the book. E. Phillips Oppenheim was born in 1866 and was an English novelist and was a prolific writer of best-selling genre fiction, featuring glamorous characters, international intrigue and fast action. He was featured on the cover of "Time" magazine in 1927. He died in 1946.

I don't always like facts about the wars, but this one is very interesting. It is a fairly big and long book and isn't exactly like reading a novel, but is actually very interesting. The chapter I'm on now is all about Stonewall Jackson and the previous chapter was about Frederick Douglass.

So, all interesting books, that might be available for sale --- sometime.