I am thankful for...more Batum Story excitement!

This evening, as I started my five-day Thanksgiving weekend and was waiting for my simple pre-feast supper to bake (off-topic: after trying various sweet potato recipes, I still think the most wonderful way to prepare these humble tubers is to bake them like a baked potato, and enjoy with butter, salt, and pepper), I got a phone call. Now, I still live in the dark ages as far as having a land line with no caller ID, so I assumed when a voice was asking whether I was Mary Janzen, it was yet another appeal for end of year charitable giving like I got from the local public TV station or my grad school alma mater this week. Fortunately, I answered and did not hang up, for it was a descendant of the author of one of the sections in The Batum Story named Agnes and her husband, who live in an undisclosed location in Pennsylvania (reference a previous post for my vagueness).

They had just been about to make photocopies of my grandmother Mary's first edition of the book from 1974 as holiday gifts for their children when they attended a historical talk and bumped into one of the persons I named in the foreword of the second edition for helping me. They got to talking and found out about my second edition. They even got a brief glimpse of a copy I'd sent to a historical library.

When I created said second edition, I was hoping to obtain comments and/or photos from each of the families represented in each of the sections of the book. This family was the most elusive for me, so I never obtained what I wished for. Now with this call I learn they are not only extremely interested in the history, but they want to send me a photo of Agnes's forebears taken while the immigrant group was still in Turkey, before arriving in America! They'd like me to insert it to make a kind of edition 2-1/2.

Now, my only conundrum is kind of a good one, I guess, but already nagging at me. All other copies I made I gave out gratis. In a few cases of late requests I hadn't planned myself, I did ask that instead of paying me for the copying and mailing costs, the recipient would donate the equivalent to the charitable organization that first sent food aid to the immigrant group and kept my grandparents and others on the journey alive. However, this family who just called me might want me to make something like 25 copies. They want to pay me for the expenses. It is true that I would be unable to afford making that many copies at this juncture, just having charged an expensive veterinary bill on my credit card, with contemplating a Christmas trip to see my family besides.

I told them I would make their copies, and I gladly will. I just wish I didn't feel like being paid for it will be violating the spirit of my having begun the project in the first place, which was a labor of love to honor my buddy, Mary Janzen Sr. and keep her memory alive within her descendants. WWMSD? (What would Mary Senior do?)