I wrote a history book twenty-five years ago. It told when, how, and who made Saint John the Baptist Church in Marshfield become the first Catholic parish in our newly formed Central Wisconsin city 125 years before. To accomplish this, I borrowed a friend’s Publisher program. Being relatively new to computers, and totally without instructions on how to use the program, I went to work making a desk-top book.

Saint John the Baptist Church will celebrate 150 years as a parish in 2027. Father Thelen, our current pastor recently asked me if I was interested in updating my history book for that event. I instantly felt panic. I’d changed computers at least three times since 2002. Would I still have a copy of the book?

The word serendipity came to mind when I looked in my file cabinet and saw a CD labeled; my documents 2004. A friend visited me one evening, two years after I wrote the history book. She told me I should occasionally make a copy of what I had on my computer, so if it ever crashed, I would have my work saved. Computer CDs were new to me, but Val had one with her and proceeded to make a copy of my writing program. It was the only time I have ever made a copy of my computer’s contents.

My lack of computer experience and total lack of knowledge of the Publisher program turned making the book into a major struggle. One unsurmountable technical difficulty I had 25 years ago, was how to put pictures into the book. Unable to solve this problem, I ended up taking my digital book stored on a floppy disk, to the printer and proceeded to physically lay the pictures out where I wanted them. Surprisingly, the printer let me do this, and even more surprisingly, the book turned out. I returned all those photos and original documents to the church rectory and parishioners.

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