Elizabeth, a Little Orphan Train Rider

I named this little mousie after my Grandmother.  She and her brother Frank were orphan train children sent from New York out to the Midwest farming communities. She was adopted first and her brother Frank was adopted 50 miles later.  My Grandmother never knew his whereabouts and often wondered what had happened to him. Many of the orphan train children were little more than child labor used to work the farms and do housekeeping. Some were lucky and were adopted into loving families. I believe my Grandmother was one of the lucky ones. Grandma' Elizabeth passed away when I was five.  I'll always remember her thick German accent and her wonderful windmill cookies. She  also had a fondness for African violets. Another thing I remember is her fear of being sent to the poor house.  As a kid growing up in the '60's, I had no idea that the poor houses were real. And that by being poor, your children could be taken away from you and sent to work.  Or that like my great Uncle Frank you could be sent to the juvenile authorities for the simple act of trying to sell newspapers on the street. There are people in this country that believe they'd like to go back to the good old days with little or no constraints on business and no public assistance programs. I only pray they do not get their way.  Someone who had seen my work on eBay recently sent me this poem:

Star Fish Poem

As I walked along the seashore
This young boy greated me.
He was tossing stranded starfish
Back to the deep blue sea.
I said, "Tell me why you bother,
Why you waste your time this way.
There's a million stranded starfish
Does it matter, anyway?"

And he said, "It matters to this one.
It deserves a chance to grow.
It matters to this one.
I can't save them all I know.
But it matters to this one,
I'll return it to the sea.
It matters to this one,
And it matters to me.