My weekend was one of diversity.

On Friday I began reading a book called &uot;No Tears Allowed.&uot; It is the story of Eva, now 87 years old, as told to her daughter. Eva is one of those marvelous people who considers herself blessed in so many different ways.

She was born in a two-room cabin near Deer River, Minn. in 1915. The family (she was the oldest of six children) slept in one room, and the other room served as the kitchen/living quarters. Her father was a logger and kept a moonshine still in the woods near their home. He was gone during the week, and the only time they had a cooked meal was when he was home on the weekends. The rest of the time, the children ate berries from the woods, raw vegetables they pulled from the garden or crackers. Eva never remembered sitting down to a table for a meal with the family. Her mother was always bruised and pregnant.

When Eva was six years old, she and her five younger siblings were taken from their home and carried by train to Owatonna. It was more than 50 years before she would be reunited with anyone in her family. In the meantime, she lived at the Owatonna Orphanage (where she was punished for crying) until she was 12, and then in a foster home (where she did many of the chores including milking the cow) until she was able to be on her own. She married a man who was 15 years older than she was, and together they created the warm, loving, family life that she had missed. She closed the chapter on memories by saying, &uot;I’m rich, I’m rich, I’m rich!&uot;

The weekend I read that book, I had the opportunity to spend several hours in an art studio in Kasota, Minn. Mark Hall is the glass and metal artist who is doing the wall sculpture in Albert Lea’s new high school.

We first stopped at Mark’s home, a small house whose walls were fined with shelves of books and pieces of beautiful stained glass, and cozy little nooks just perfect for curling up with a good book. Mark was making freshly ground coffee when we arrived and I felt welcomed and warm and excited about what the day would bring. Carrying our coffee, we walked across the street to his studio, a solid brick building, originally the town’s blacksmith shop. Here, too, the interior was warm and inviting, filled with containers of colored glass, unusual pieces that he had made, special equipment for working with metal and glass, walls papered with designs of past and future projects, and the barrel shaped furnace for firing his pieces.

The three hours we were there just flew. We talked about design, and different types of glass, and metals, and processes, and schools, and historic restoration, and creativity, and future thinkers, and travel, and school politics, and history, the difficulties in raising teenagers today, and the Albert Lea High School wall sculpture (for which we were attempting to make some small glass pieces).

Sunday brought a trip to the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre and the &uot;Camelot&uot; experience. I have to describe it that way, because I cannot just watch &uot;Camelot.&uot; It is to be felt, with all of the emotions one can muster. The story arouses joy and sadness and anger and pity and frustration and respect, and on the way home, we discussed one of the lines near the end of the story. I don’t remember ever hearing it before, and maybe that’s because I wasn’t ready. When King Arthur was telling little Tom of Warwick about the upcoming battle and the hoped for peace in the future, he described the round table where the knights discussed honesty and integrity and respect for people, and then he said, &uot;Now don’t you forget. The world too is round.&uot;

On Monday I attended the Martin Luther King program at the Civic Theatre. Once again, as Huckleberry Finn agonized over the problems inherent with prejudice, I was reminded of how different we all are.

Each encounter throughout the weekend was different &045; in interests, in background, in personality, in families, in ethnic influences, in color, and in religion. My experiences were amazingly diverse, and they all took place in a small part of our round world.

Bev Jackson is the executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum.