by Judy Bushy January 2016
The busy Holiday season was fun! Thanksgiving, Hanukkah,and all the many celebrations of Christmas has given way to New Year! Good Day, and Happy New Year! Our hope and prayers that this year will be a good year for all our friends and Neighbors along the Klamath River and for all!! Although we are glad to see some sorrows and problems of the past year are over, now we are looking forward to the bright future that 2016 could be. “Life is filled with wonderful surprises,” says a little lighthouse picture over my desk, and especially at this time of changing the year, it is good to recall that.

My favorite way to look at the new year is as a blank page, of a book to be written. journaling is fun for me, and helps me with reminders of things to write about, or things I would otherwise forget. When Ohlunds Office Supply used to have a journal with dated pages, I always knew that page would be wasted if it wasn’t written on, and that helped to keep up with the daily writings!! A bank notebook doesn’t work as well.

Happy Camp became “Happy Camp” 165 years ago this year! That’s a good reason to celebrate, as many towns formed by gold prospectors left as the gold rumors of other places drew them to bigger strikes. Happy Camp endured as a fishing paradise even though it made it into one book of California Ghost Towns!! It didn’t become a ghost town completely, and then logging became the chief industry. Timber supported the schools and the infrastructure of our town. While the timber industry moved on when the last mill closed in 1995, we haven’t altogether disappeared and Happy Camp is still on the map.

Happy Camp Chamber of Commerce has been endeavoring to keep Happy Camp on the map for the past thirty years as of July. Can’t wait to see what will be happening in the coming year!! Jedi gave some Chamber members a training in Mount Shasta on using Google to put businesses “on the map!!”

The Mini-Acorn Grant received by the Karuk Tribe for the Happy Camp Walk/Jogging obstacle Course is an exciting plan on the horizon. The weather didn’t cooperate, although we enjoyed the precipitation!! and the Big Boy Toy Competition to clear out the brush on the site at the River Park had to be postponed. Look at it as a blessing, you can still volunteer and get involved. and you can get forms for your team to sign up from Debbie Bickford,
Annie Jones or Jamie Smith. You can fulfill lots of those New Years’ resolutions, help out and volunteer to help make the Obstacle Course ready for your fitness program

This years Bigfoot Jamboree will be the 50th! What an exciting time to have a golden anniversary. Help out the Happy Camp Coordinating Council with your suggestions, backed up by your volunteer time and efforts!! Give Linda Zink or Abigail Yeager and the rest of the Happy Camp Coordinating Council a helping hand and look forward to a great time.

Please let me know the plans and activities that you’ll be having this year so that I can let the readership and community know about it. Thanks so much!! Looking forward to a great new 2016 for the whole community!!

by Judy Bushy
Sunday is Father’s Day. I don’t know if I’ve ever written anything especially for Father’s Day. The day I turned eight years old, my father was left out of my life, except for a handful of visits in the ensuing years, and he passed away 36 years ago. We did move in with my Hudson grandparents for a few years until my Mom bought our home, but my mother never remarried or even dated.and passed away just over a year before Dad did so it has been many years since I’ve had parents here to celebrate on those days.

That was definitely a different era. In my sixth grade class I was the only child of divorced parents, perhaps in the whole school, Other students didn’t know what divorce was in sixth grade. Today, I don’t think that children of that age are unfamiliar with divorce, even experiencing it first hand in many cases. One-third of American children are growing up without their biological father, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the past 50 years, the percentage of children who live with two married parents has dropped 22 points. During that same time, the number of babies born to unwed mothers jumped from 5 percent to 40 percent.

While statistical studies by fathering advocates say that almost every social ill of American Children is related to fatherlessness, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, physical and emotional health, and even educational achievement, incarceration, promiscuity and crime are all blamed on the absence of Fathers. Those are only statistics and I’m grateful for my mother and other family members who gave us stability in the absence of a father.

The bigger problem for me was missing my father. I still had memories of the little black puppy he brought me, watching him practice archery, his making milkshakes for us, serving us orange soda when we stopped by the Log Cabin Café, and other family activities. Everyone always said that it was a good thing that my sisters and I were girls, as if a father isn’t important in a girl’s life as well as a son’s.

So this Father’s Day, I would like to thank Dan for being a wonderful father to our four children. For always putting our welfare before his own, and the decision of whether to move or not to move, to take a job or not, was always based on what was best for the family, because he felt that the Lord wanted him to have that priority. From the time that Michael was tiny, he rocked and sang hymns to him and practiced his Greek grammar during the seminary years. Back in those days (since our youngest child is 30 now) they didn’t have as many board books for the little guys, but he always spent time reading a story and Bible stories to the four children every single night for an hour or two, Little House books, and many classic children’s stories. Even when the older children were able to read their own chapter books, he spent that time and they enjoyed being read to as well. Sometimes he was so tired working two jobs that he would fall asleep before they did, but that hadn’t been an excuse to skip that special bedtime time with them at night. When we were in Wisconsin teaching, he took the children to school with him every day and brought them home each evening. Usually he was the principal but he did have the 5th & 6th grade classrooms when Esther was that age.

When he was off work in the summer, he found a job, even if it was peeling pulp logs for 10 cents a stick (which was the whole log of a tree.), being butcher in a grocery store or sorting mail at the post office in the Christmas rush. He was payed in hay for hating with our farm neighbor so didn’t have to buy hay for the goats and Dusty. the pony.

We started teaching Good News Clubs for children as soon as we got back from our honeymoon summer at the Hiawatha National Forest in Upper Michigan. Later were involved in Awana Clubs, Sunday School or Scouts most years. We’ve lived a child centered life which makes it hard when the children do what you always hoped they would; grow up to be responsible and respectful adults. They go away and there isn’t anyone to take care of anymore.

There is a great deal of talk today about marrying for “love,” but that is rather a new practice in human existence. Even in a great many places in the world today, marriages are arranged by parents or elders of a community, and are based not on some emotional or physical attraction, but on the raising of children and prospering of the family. We have no idea of Eve would have picked out Adam if he had competition, but they were instructed to love each other and be fruitful. They were partners in the building of their family and the growth of the children that were born into their family was the goal. Surprisingly people claim that Jesus Christ never said anything like Genesis 2:24, but have they read Matthew 5:31,. 19:3, Mark 10:7 or Ephesians 5:31? When he becomes a father, a man has many responsibilities to:
1. Provide for his family (Mt. 7:9-1; 1 Tim 5:8)
2. Instruct his children (Prov. 1:8)
3. Exhort, encourage and implore children (1 Thess 2:11)
4. Punish unruly children (Dt. 21:18-21)
5. Raise the children in the discipline and nurture of the Lord without provoking them or causing them to lose heart (Eph. 6:4; Col. 3:21)
6. Discipline his children (Heb 12:7)
7. Love his wife (Eph 5:25,28,33)

Thank you to all the Fathers that are actively involved in the lives of their children. Parenting can be the hardest job in the world, but it is also the biggest blessing. A family is rich when there is a Father in the home, and the best thing that he can do for his children, is to love their mother, and take care of the family.

January blues aren’t a problem when all the fun garden catalogs begin arriving. What fun!! The days have been much too dry this winter, but the sun is wonderful. The low level of the lakes and str3eams remind us that we need the precipitation.
Perhaps it is because children love holidays, and from day care years we celebrate every holiday that comes along with enthusiasm! We make up a holiday if there isn’t one. This time of year, with all the Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, and New Year’s holidays over, we need a holiday.
Valentine’s Day is coming, it is true. Three weeks from Friday, everyone can celebrate Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day can celebrate our romantic love, but all love deserves celebrating.
Love always deserves celebrating because it is what makes life worthwhile. It is love we first experience as all our needs are taken care of in a loving family. It is loving friendships that take us to our first experiences in the outside world and enlarge out circle of living. It is the neighborly love of our community of Happy Camp that encircles us in the center of this beautiful surroundings of forest, stream and blue skies above along the Klamath River. Our Klamath Neighbors are privileged to live, work and recreate in this home of outdoor beauty.
Our school children will, no doubt make red hearts to share with each other. Some high School students are planning a bake sale the day before at Parry’s Market. Our church messages will teach that we Love God because He first loved us, and we ought to Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. The Golden Rule, to do to others as we want them to do to us is the heart of many persons value system.
Hope that you will give me a call and share what is going to be happening between now and then, Who is having a bake sale, where a special meal will be offered for the occasion, or other special things will be happening to celebrate love.