Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 3

What does it cost to join Kindle Unlimited?

You may have seen books marketed as “Free in Kindle Unlimited,” but what does that mean?

Kindle Unlimited is a $11.99 monthly subscription service offering access to digital books, audiobooks, comics, and magazines through Amazon. Users can borrow up to 20 titles at a time with no due dates, accessible on Kindles, smartphones, computers, and tablets via the Kindle app. I don’t know anyone enrolled in KU. 

Authors enrolled in KDP Select (Kindle Direct Publishing) earn royalties based on the number of pages read by subscribers, not the number of books borrowed. The payment amount fluctuates monthly and is determined by “a portion of a global fund that Amazon allocates.” While the exact per-page rate varies, it generally falls between $0.004 and $0.005. 

KU can expose books to a new audience that might not otherwise find them, especially if the authors are not well-known. I think that’s how readers find the Leora books, and they’ve been reading them steadily again now that summer is winding down. 

KU readers have read nearly 8000 pages of Leora books so far this month, over half of them in Leora’s Dexter Stories, the dear Depression Era book–in blue on the chart. Next is the WWII family story, Leora’s Letters (in gold), with less then half the pages read of Dexter Stories.

We live in amazing times, where people across the globe can learn about the remarkable times Grandma Leora here in the middle of Iowa!

Do you read many books on a Kindle or Nook?

A beautiful review of Meadowlark Songs by Lauren Scott

[Reviewed on Amazon.com]         Lauren Scott5.0 out of 5 stars A poetic culmination of excellent research into the depth of the women in the author’s life.

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2025

Verified Purchase

I was introduced to Joy Neal Kidney’s family history by reading Leora’s Letters, which is a book that touches on love, family, faith, loss, and resilience. Beautiful and heartbreaking. Meadowlark Songs offers the same effect: a culmination of excellent research into the depth of the women in Joy’s lineage. Through elegant poetry, prose, and priceless photographs, I was presented a window into seven generations, including the author who became “The Memory Keeper.” Guided by faith, each woman inspired the next, celebrating victories while encouraging strength and tenacity through loss and hardships. Every generational memory is one of love, admiration, and honor.

This book covers stories of farm life, of “Women in long dresses,” of good times and unimaginable sufferings. The genealogy began in Virginia but landed in the west where the Motherline planted roots in Iowa, the 29th State – five of the women lived in Guthrie County. Kidney’s account of her Motherline is poignant and highly recommended. A lovely example of her poetic voice is:

I Inherited Iowa

from ancestors’ long-ago decisions
to settle here, a land of small towns,
gravel roads to hike,
meadowlark songs,
the chirre of redwing blackbirds,

lilacs in spring, wild roses,
lilies of the field, the call of pheasants,
a neighborhood barred owl,
a pork chop on a stick at the Iowa State Fair,

the Milky Way sprinkled across night skies,
bur oaks sheltering pioneer graves,
bountiful autumns,
the hush of snowy Januarys.

The American flag gained two stars
while I was in high school,
the Pledge of Allegiance added two words,
“under God.”

Though I’ve traveled the nation
and abroad, I’m blessed by the choice
of those long-ago pilgrims
of Iowa, Beautiful Land.

—–

Thank you to Lauren for this winsome review.

Lauren Scott is a poet and author. Her latest book is King Copper: Our dog’s life in poetry. If you’ve ever loved and lost a pet, you’ll find this so compelling. (You’ll find my review on Amazon.) Here is her Amazon Author Page featuring all her other books.

Please check out Lauren’s website, Baydreamer Writes.

Goddess of Generosity: Sally Cronin

From her computer in Ireland, Sally Cronin has showered generosity across the globe through her Smorgasbord Books website for fourteen years. She’s branched out into themes, which she changes up from time to time, each one with fascinating individuals whether writers or musicians or other creatives.

Sally is especially keen to feature indie authors, so I’ve been a grateful recipient of her encouragement.

This has also enabled Sally to feature her own books, sharing chapters from one of her older ones, which is fun for those of us who’ve discovered her more recently.

One of her most important books is Size Always Matters. At age 41 in 1994 and weighing 330 lbs, Sally was given two choices if she hoped to live to 45. She could carry on eating or get her act together. She chose to study nutrition and change the way she approached the food she ate and her other lifestyle choices.

Smorgasbord Book Promotions.

Smorgasbord Summer Book Fair – My recommended books. Sally’s own choices.

Smorgasbord Summer Book Fair – New Book Spotlight.

Smorgasbord Short Stories.

Smorgasbord Music Column – William Price King.

Smorgasbord Blog Magazine Weekly Roundup.

You get the idea! Sally also shares and reshares others’ posts on various social media sites. All of us follow her blog benefit from having our work shared, but also getting acquainted with other authors and their books.

Please check out Sally’s Amazon Author Page with all her books listed.

I’ve especially enjoyed several of Sally’s books of poetry, including Variety is the Spice of Life, and following her father’s memoir of being in the Royal Navy on her website.

Thank you, Sally Cronin, for your generous encouragement!

Here’s her newest Smorgasbord Blogger Monthly – August 2025

The Dexter Library gets refreshed

The last time we drove into Dexter (population 631) from White Pole Road, we were met by this beautiful stucco building. How refreshing!

This is how the building looked most recently, although the building next to it has been torn down.

It began as a two-story building, with a doorway where the beautiful corner window is today. in 1938 it became a WPA job, to have the top floor removed and the materials used to create a town library and community hall below.

My grandparents, Clabe and Leora Wilson, raised their family in Dexter in poverty during the Great Depression. Clabe worked part time WPA jobs when he was chosen. The library job was his last one, when he was hired to run a farm near Minburn.

This was the local library when I was growing up. The bench in front of the library remembers the five Wilson brothers, my uncles, who grew up in Dexter during the Great Depression and who served in WWII. (Their sisters were Darlene Scar and my mother, Doris Neal.)

More history of the Dexter Library, with photos of the original building and clippings about the WPA remodel.

The Panorama FFA restored the Stanley family’s 1940 Ford Ferguson tractor

2025 Iowa State Fair, FFA Ag Mechanics Technology, Blue Award!

Rod Stanley, retired history teacher and coach at Panorama High School, Panora, posted photos of this tractor, along with this note: “The Panorama FFA restored my Dad’s 1940, Ford Ferguson tractor. They had it on display at the 2025 Iowa State Fair and won a blue ribbon for their great work. Those members and advisor did such a nice job with the restoration. I donated this tractor to them after the death of my Mother and I could not be prouder with the work that they did on the tractor. Thanks Panorama FFA for the fantastic restoration! My Dad would have been proud of your work!”

Rod grew up in Dexter and is on the board of the Dexter Museum. I asked him if he’d share more of the story behind this handsome tractor.

This Ford tractor first belonged to his Grandpa George Stanley, the first tractor he ever owned. Before that, most farmers with horses. When George died of a heart attack in 1958, his son Gerald (Rod’s dad) ended up with the tractor, along with the 2-bottom plow, disc, cultivator, and harrow that George had used.

Gerald Stanley, about 1947

When Gerald owned it, he plowed and disced many gardens in Dexter. It seemed like everyone in town had a garden. He would not take any money unless someone put it in his pocket. He eventually bought a 2 -row planter for it that he used to plant sweetcorn.

Gerald attended a school to learn how to fix Ford tractors. He worked at Akins’ gas station, along White Pole Road in Dexter, which was located where Don and Tony’s was. Akin sent him to the Ford School. When Akins’ station burned down, Gerald was out of a job. Many people around Dexter who owned Ford tractors brought them to Gerald to repair.

After Gerald died in 1997, the tractor sat in the shed, not used that much because they had another Ford they used to mow and for gardening.

Rod’s mom passed in 2023, he decided to donate the tractor to the Panorama FFA. High schoolers. They spent a year and half tearing it down and completely rebuilding the tractor. They have their own paint booth so it looks like new. The FFA decided to take it to the Iowa State Fair where they received a blue ribbon for their efforts.

“I am so proud of the work the boys and their instructor did on the tractor,” Rod noted.

The Stanley family 1940 Ford Ferguson tractor restored by the Panorama FFA at the 2025 Iowa State Fair

 

His Grandfather’s 1937 Allis Chalmers WC Tractor

Noah Shepherd restored his grandfather’s 1937 Allis Chalmers WC tractor. It had been sitting in a shelter-belt on the family farm in rural Norfolk, Nebraska, for 40 years. In 2020 the family hauled it to Iowa for restoration. 

During the next four years, Noah learned the craft of antique tractor restoration, eventually entering it as a 4-H project in the Iowa State Fair, where it won Best of Show.

The tractor was originally used by his grandfather Orin Rinkel and Orin’s uncle Harvey to move hay during the Great Depression. Harvey purchased the tractor in February of 1937 at White Equipment in Pierce, Nebraska, officially selling it to Orin in 1945. They also purchased a John Deere two-bottom plow (which Noah restored prior to restoring the tractor) and a cultivator. They hand-made a “buck style” hay sweep on the front end for moving the haystacks. Noah has started the process of restoring the old sweep.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the tractor was parked on a hill to make it easier to start. This Allis Chalmers was the first in Norfolk area with rubber tires. Many family members have regaled Noah with stories of first learning to drive using the old WC tractor. Noah learned a lot as part of the restoration process and met a lot of interesting people along the way.

Since finishing the restoration, Noah has driven the tractor in parades and the annual Harold King Memorial Tractor ride in northwest Iowa. He will show it off this month at the annual Albert City Threshermen’s show in Albert City, Iowa.

“Nothing like a boy and his tractor,” noted his mother. “Noah is having the time of his life riding my dad’s restored 1937 WC in the Harold-King Memorial Tractor Ride. . . “Storm Lake, Iowa, July 4th parade. Noah and his tractor.

The WC was built by Allis-Chalmers from 1933 to 1948, designed as a nimble, low-cost, but well-powered row-crop tractor to ride on pneumatic rubber tires. It was the best-selling tractor model that Allis-Chalmers ever built.

There’s more: Noah Shepherd, grandson of my cousins Ken and Jeani Shepherd, became very knowledgeable about magnetos (the device that pre-dates the use of a battery to create ignition) and currently runs an antique tractor and magneto repair business when he’s not busy studying engineering and physics at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.

Thanks to Noah’s dad (Jason) for these delightful details!

Iowa Professor Dan Davis serves as Scientific Recovery Expert for the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA)

Dan Davis’s interview with Sue Danielson was aired early one Sunday morning over WHO Radio. An Associate Professor at Luther College, he teaches ancient Greek, Latin, and classical studies courses, including Greek and Roman archaeology, Greek and Roman civilization, ancient science, and marine archaeology.

But Professor Davis was also a marine archaeologist for the E/V Nautilus expeditions, led by Dr. Robert Ballard and Dr. Michael Brennan from 2008 to 2013. Their survey areas included the Black Sea and the southeast Aegean, areas that witnessed high volumes of seaborne commercial traffic through the Middle Ages and discovered and documented nearly fifty shipwrecks.

Dan Davis and Robert Ballard aboard the R/V Endeavor, Black Sea

Why I was interested

Dan Davis with Project Recovery

In 2019, this Iowa professor was invited to serve as a Scientific Recovery Expert for the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), whose mission it is to search for and locate American MIAs and POWs from conflicts around the world. He volunteers with DPAA-partner Project Recover and the University of Delaware to locate missing World War II aircraft underwater. The goal is to locate American service members still missing in action since World War II and to bring home their remains, providing recognition and closure for families.

Oh, I fired off an email to Dan Davis to let him know about the B-25G lost off New Guinea with six crew aboard, including my mother’s brother, Dale Wilson. I told him I am still in contact with Mary Ragsdale, the niece of the bomber’s navigator, and two great nieces of the very young Ted Sharpton, sixth crewman (whose first mission was his last).

Pilot Wieland, Copilot Wilson, Navigator Stack. Front: Aerial Gunner Woollenweber and Radio Gunner Banko. The next man wasn’t on the crew when it was shot down, but gunner Ted Sharpton took his place.

Dale Wilson was the twin of Darlene Wilson Scar. One of her sons is still living, as are several grandchildren (who are having a reunion in Iowa soon). We all would be blessed if Dale Wilson’s remains were found and brought back to Iowa, where his parents and youngest brother are buried. (The engine of Junior Wilson’s P-40 threw a rod and exploded, killing him the day the second atomic bomb was dropped. Their brother Danny Wilson, a P-38 Lightning pilot, was KIA in Austria and is buried in the Lorraine American Cemetery in France.)

And that there has been one serious attempt to locate the bomber, which ended with the heart attack of the diver.

My email caught Dan Davis here in Des Moines, his home town, ready to leave the next day on a flight to Denmark and the search for a downed B-24 bomber. (They were successful, with a service for one of the crew just last month.)

Dan Davis checked with the historian for Project Recover and learned that they are tracking the case of B-25G, 42-64889, MACR 1177. He said he’d keep recommending Dale Wilson’s lost bomber to them, “especially since there’s an Iowa connection.”

—–

You may follow Project Recover on social media: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter/X

Kidney family tractor in the Glidden parade– an Oliver 60

Guy’s dad collected old tractors, keeping them in a grove on the farm. Most of them were sold after his death (at age 48) in 1970, but Guy’s mother kept the old Fordson. Guy’s brother Vey, 14 years younger, who has lived in Indiana for decades, hauled it back to Indiana and is restoring it.

Another tractor that survived the sale was an old Oliver 60 which Vey got running again. It stays on the farm near Glidden where they grew up and where their step-father still lives.

Fordson and Oliver 60 tractors, farm near Glidden, Iowa

The Oliver 60 was introduced in 1940 as a less expensive alternative to the Oliver 70. Those were row crop tractors built by the Oliver Farm Equipment Company in Charles City, Iowa.

Guy has been unable to attend the Glidden school reunions lately, but Vey still returns for it. The weekend includes a parade and Vey, a Hospice chaplain, has enjoyed being part of the parade driving the Oliver.

Vey in this year’s parade, August 2025

B-29 Superfortress

There are only two air worthy B-29 Fortresses in the US these days, Fifi and Doc.

Fifi is on display and giving rides at the Des Moines airport this week. We won’t get to see it unless its flight pattern comes over our house, but last year we did get to watch (and hear it) take off . That had been on my bucket list since 1991.

By 1945, Dad had been instructing advanced cadets at Marfa ABF, Texas, for a couple of years, since the earning of his own wings there in early 1943. At the end of WWII, seasoned pilots were trained for combat in bombers. Dad became the commander of a B-29  Superfortress, the largest the USAAF had at the time. They, crew of ten, had combat orders for September 1945, but the dropping of the two atomic bombs (August 6 and 9) brought the war to a halt. Japan finally surrendered September 2.

1st Lt. Warren D. Neal, commander B-29, Biggs Field, El Paso, TX, 1945Awaiting two more crew members. Dad is in the back, center. Biggs Field, El Paso, TX 1945

Dad had a chance to visit a B-29 at Offutt AFB, Omaha, years later. The old warbirds were displayed outside, with birds nesting in their engines. (Since then, we’ve enjoyed exploring the air conditioned SAC (Strategic Air Command) and Aerospace Museum which was built just SW of Omaha, with old planes displayed on two levels, along with other items.)

Dad and a B-29, Bellevue, Nebraska, 1974

Years ago, 1991, when we learned that Fifi would be on display at the Clear Lake Airport, Mom, Gloria and I drove up to tour it.

Me, Mom, Gloria, Clear Lake, 1991We took turns sitting in the commander’s seat and exploring the cockpit.

Of the 3970 B-29s built during the 1940, 26 survive and only two are air worthy. Here is a list of the surviving Superfortresses.

Son Dan’s Iowa State Fair Ribbons

During the 1980s, I entered handwork items in different categories at the Iowa State Fair. Dan had helped me make jam before and decided it would be fun to make some himself to enter.

Visitors may watch the judging of the foods, so we found our seats in time for the jam and jelly judging.

Dan won first prize for his pineapple jam his first year, 1984. His recipe was also published in the Iowa State Fair cookbook that year. His other ribbons were for watermelon jelly and spelling bee participant. (There were 51 kids ages 9-12. By the time he missed the word “libel,” there were five kids left.) Dan was 9 that summer.

The next year, his apple jelly won the blue ribbon, pineapple jam placed third, and pineapple jelly earned “near winner.” He also placed 6th in the spelling bee, out of 61 kids who entered.

In 1986, he was the Iowa State Fair Spelling Champion for his age division, which started with 26 kids and went 24 rounds. His prize was $25 plus a three-volume dictionary, which we toted around the rest of the day. His win was reported in The Des Moines Register the next day.

We bought a commemorative brick to remember his win. It’s on the north side of the Administration Office at the fairgrounds, below the entrance steps. Long after Dan left home, whenever we’d split up at the fair to see different things, we’d choose a time to meet again at “Dan’s brick.”

Dan soon spent his State Fair time at an arcade tent instead of kid things he’d enjoyed when he was younger.

Here’s Dan’s blue ribbon recipe from Iowa State Fair Award Winning Recipes, 1984.

I tried the Holiday Fruit Drops recipe from the cookbook. It was a favorite of Dan’s Grandma Doris, and one of the cookies we served after Dan’s Eagle Scout Court of Honor in 1991.