In this issue

• Tulip Festival
• Sherwood Forest Grants
• Disc Golf Tour
• Book Review

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Letters From Ralph

Ralph J. Mouw, a native of Orange City, Iowa, never forgot his roots - even when he was halfway across the world during World War II. In this collection of letters, you'll find a firsthand account of what life was like during the war at home and overseas. Although letters were heavily censored during the war years, the editors have added comments to place them in context.

San Diego Vacation Rental

Planning on a vacation in San Diego? One of Jubon Juweelen's co-owners has a vacation rental 10 blocks from Ocean Beach near downtown San Diego. This is a beautifully furnished 3 bedroom, 2 and 1/2 bath home ready to provide a comfortable stay for you and your family. If you are interested, you can see its availablity at https://www.airbnb.com/

tulip festival 2023, here we come
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

We haven't received the new flyers yet, but should soon. If any of you would like us to send you one, just let us know and we'll send you one as soon as we receive them.

Wednesday, March 22, we celebrate our 2023 Tulip Festival Extravaganza. That is the day that the new Tulip Court Dutch costumes are revealed, our parade marshals are announced and is generally the real beginning of our Tulip Festival celebrations.

I just put in a nice order with our main supplier of Dutch supplies and we should be receiving everything about the middle of next month. I always try to keep about six pairs of each size of plain wooden shoes and two pairs of the various decorated ones. We will also have all sizes of plastic clogs, and Tulip and Traditional Dutch slippers. New this year will be some very nice Dutch sweat shirts. I will only have a few because they are fairly expensive, but if you want something unique and nice to wear you can come in early and see them before the festival. Dan Hurt and his big dog will be helping fit shoes at the Straatwinkel again. We look forward to seeing you at our festival. Dates this year are May 18, 19 and 20. We'll hope for a good showing of tulips this year. We still have snow on the ground, but someone posted pictures of tulips peeking out of the ground already.

Sherwood Forest Grants, LLC
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

I don't think that I have ever mentioned this in our newsletter before, but I do have a second business that I started over 25 years ago. The reason I'm mentioning it now is that there seems to be a lot of grant money available and I've been busier than I have for years in my second business, which is writing grants. This is a business I started in 1998 and have been involved in ever since. In fact at one time I was doing this full time with another partner and other outside help. I originally was busy mainly with just school grants, but have expanded into many other areas, including a lot of USDA energy efficiency grants, fine arts grants, and many smaller foundation grants.

If you, or anyone you know, wants to know anything about securing grants, you can call 712-737-8920. I do have a website, but it is kind of out of date because I haven't kept it up, but you can see more about this at sherwoodforestgrants.com.

Disc Golf
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

Juliana and Jim are both in full swing now with their disc golf season. They have both been doing well. Juliana has placed 1st in two age protected events (one in California and one in Arizona) and in one open event (all ages). She placed 14th in an elite series event in Texas. Elite series are the events that the best in the world play and these events often have 50 or 60 participants in the women's division.

This past week, for a change in pace, she was the commentator for Disc Golf Network at an Elite series event in Austin, Texas. Upcoming for Juliana is the Innova Open in Houston Texas, then they move on to Kingsport, Tennessee for the River Valley Masters and then Appling, Georgia for the PDGA Champions Cup presented by Bushnell. She will be doing more commentary also in the future.

Jim has played four age protected (60+) tournaments and came out first in two of them and 2nd and 3rd in the other two. However, he was in first place until the last couple of strokes in all of them. That is pretty good considering he had open heart surgery just a year ago. He is an inspiration to all the players. This past week he played in an open event (all ages -- including the best players in the world) and was the only one who shot under his age. He is almost 62 and some of the players he played against are in their teens. He and Juliana are having quite an adventure this year. You can always follow their scores on the PDGA.com website and often on the Udisc website. The elite series events can also be watched on a smart tv through the Disc Golf Network.

Book Reviews
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

This is a hard cover book with a copyright of 2003. This is a story of identical twins, one who is a police detective in Atlanta, Georgia. She is badly wounded and her partner is killed. She wants to pursue the killers before the trail gets cold, but she has not regained her strength enough to do it herself, so she asks her twin sister to do it for her. Her sister is a high roller professional gambler from Las Vegas but comes to her sister's aid. It is a fairly light entertaining read 282 pages long in hard cover. Fern Michaels is an American author of romance and thriller novels with nearly 150 best seller and almost 200 million copies in print. She was born in 1933, started writing in 1975 and is still writing. We have one copy and it sells for $5.50.

This is a soft cover book with a copyright of 2002. My Queen is Marie-Antoinette and is written from the prospective of a reader to the Queen. It takes place in Vienna in 1810 and then goes back in time to three days in 1789 when the Bastille was stormed. It moves a little slow in places because most of the 226 pages take place over three days. However, it really gives an inside look at palace life. What is really interesting is PBS just started a series this past Sunday on Marie-Antoinette and comparing the book to the tv show is like night and day. The author makes it sound like the castle they lived in wasn't a very comfortable place, but according to the TV show, it is unbelievable luxury. The author, Chantal Thomas, is a French writer and historian. This book won the Prix Femina and was adapted into a 2012 film. She lives in France and, I'm pretty sure, the book was translated from French because there are still many French words in the text. We have one copy of this book and it sells for $2.00.

This is a Lovejoy Mystery story. I'm actually only 1/2 way finished with this book, but I think I've read enough to review it. Johnathan Gash is an English author who lives in Colchester, England. You would probably enjoy this book if you are into antiques because the whole story revolves around them. Antiques in England must be so different than in the United States because they often have things that go back to the Holy Roman Empire. The big drawback of this book is that there is so much English slang used that it is often hard to catch on to the meaning. Mr, Gash does a pretty good job of realizing this and often explains what he is talking about, but it is still sometimes hard for me to follow. The story is about an antique dealer, Lovejoy (not sure they ever mention his first name) and all his adventures, including murder and corruption. It is very politically incorrect in places and you can definitely tell that it was written by a man. Mr. Gash was also born in 1933 and his real name is John Grant. He is also a doctor and specializes in tropical medicine and lectures worldwide on the subject. His Lovejoy series has been adapted to television. We have one copy of this hard cover book and it sells for $4.00.