Today is for catching up.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about mink and its popularity with earlier generations. Several people wrote to reminisce -- including one grandmother who thought I was making fun of those who loved mink. I wasn't; I was just reflecting on it.
"My grandchildren love my mink coat!" she wrote. "They delight in the security, comfort and love of being warm and cozy wrapped around their grandmother in that wicked mink coat!!! Please think about this when you take on the 'grandmas'..."
I had described my grandmother's stole, made of minks linked by heads biting onto the ends of other minks. One reader's grandma had one of those, too.
"When we were little, my brother and I would use it as 'prey' when we would play big game hunter," he wrote.
Another told of a cousin whose mission was to obtain a full-length mink. "Eventually she saved up enough to get it," he wrote. "Funny thing is that it now hangs in a closet in sunny Florida."
One thing I learned was that this area used to be home to quite a few mink farms.
"There were more than a dozen mink ranching operations within a 15-mile radius of TC from the early '40s through the mid '60s," wrote Harry Dorman, whose dad ran a mink farm here for 25 years.
Changing topics, a while back I wrote of being frustrated at keeping track of the myriad passwords for email, credit card, bank and other accounts. Several readers had suggestions.
One uses phone numbers and radio station call letters from long ago -- things that are "burned into memory" but that others would never guess. Another uses a program called AZZ Cardfile, at www.azzcardfile.com/.
"I have a separate card for each account that needs a password," she noted.
Another pointed to www.keepass.info/index.html, a free, easy to use password manager site. One man suggested www.roboform.com, also free, though he recommended paying the small fee for the pro version.
One woman said the best gift she ever received was an Internet Journal notebook. Visit www.paperstyle.com and enter "Internet journal" in the search box.
"It is only $8.95, but it is one of the best gifts I have ever received," she wrote.
The last word comes from a reader who described trying to change the username on a credit card account.
"I called them and they said the only way to change the username was to request a new account," she wrote. "So I did, that didn't work either. What did I do next? I paid off the balance! Cut up the credit card -- that will teach them!!"
Print this story
E-mail this story
