Groundwaters

What’s Been Happenin’?

With these beautiful Fall days that we’ve been experiencing, it’s been difficult to settle down in front of the computer for long. So, once again, I am behind on the posting to my blog. I have been doing some work, however. ..

My husband Jim and I finally removed the plywood sheets that have been covering the large front windows of the Dew Drop Inn for the past 50 years or so. We found beautiful window frames beneath them that were in very good shape for their age. Both windows have six 11″ square panes across the top and two larger panes beneath them. The larger glass panes had been broken out and needed to be replaced. Four of the smaller ones had BB-shot holes in them where they had, at one time, been used for target practice. Jim has replaced the large panes and we have the small replacement panes ready to install. Removing the long-adorned plywood has revealed the old building’s special personality. To be honest, though, it no longer looks like the rough-and-tumble tavern its remembered to be… especially with that bright aqua front door and windowsill trim and the pale yellow paint with white trim around the windows. With the outside painting almost completed and the trim almost done, it now has kind of a “cottage” look. I hope that we’ll be able to complete the outside before winter. Then it will be time to lay down a new floor and install a pellet stove for heat. It’s coming along slowly because of some health issues, but it is “coming along.”

Besides working on the building, I have been compiling some statistics for presentations we hope to make to raise funding for Groundwaters. I thought these stats might be interesting to our readers, too.

Since Judy produced the first issue of Groundwaters in October 2004, we have published 664 submissions by 147 contributors. Fifty-eight of those submissions have been made by 23 writers who are 18 years of age and under.

Our most prolific writers (not including current staff members) are:

Rhonda Rauch (22)
Millie Graves (21)
Karen Vosika (20)
Renee Dodds (18)
Elizabeth Tyler Brown (16)
Jean Marie Purcell (15)
Herbie Medlin (12)
Vicki Sourdry (10)
Sylvia Bertran (9)
Pat Gill (9)
Dana Graves (9)
Avis Rust (9)
Jim Koenig (8)
Liath MacTire (8)
Jessie Stinson (8)
Dade Cariaga (8)
Nick DeAngelo (7)
Gary L. Lewis (7)
Norm Maxwell (7)
Shirley Overed (7)
Alexis Lanham (6)
Caitlyn Meng (6)
Deborah Burton (5)
Riley Chambers (5)
Wanda Edwards (5)
Sarah Spaulding (5)
Crystal Spohn (5)
June Wyant (5)
… and a whole bunch more who have submitted less than five.

We are truly blessed!

Who are They? … the inside “scoop” on some of your favorite local writers

Jo-Brew

My husband, Ken, and I, both went to high school and then college in Southern Oregon and still have some ties there. My first writing was for a high school journalism class, then the school paper and school events for The Ashland Daily Tidings. I was paid for the school events column. A big deal in my mind.

We moved to Springfield when we had four children, one entering high school, two in between and one in pre-school. I taught elementary school in Cottage Grove and then Springfield while Ken was a band director in Springfield and then Bethel.

When the children were through school, I made a foray into the business world and became a Real Estate agent and then a broker. Through both the career in teaching and in Real Estate, I wrote as part of my job but not much beyond. It wasn’t the lack of desire that kept me from moving ahead with the writing, it was my terribly intense battle with the typewriter. I didn’t ever get to the point I was comfortable with it although I typed hundreds, or more likely, thousands of pages. The typewriter made no allowances for thoughts that came faster than the fingers moved.

Several years ago, a gift of a computer from a son who was upgrading opened the doors to a flood of words that still keep coming. I began with a small family history/cookbook project and then began taking classes through Lane Community’s Extension Service. I started with Women Write, moved on to Essays for another year, Short Stories and eventually novels.

Now I write some of each, personal essays, a column for the Creswell Chronicle, the occasional short story and I have six novels published. All of my writing is based on women’s life experiences, even the short stories and the novels. There are elements of all of us in the characters and all our lives in the stories.

The first novel Preserving Cleo is the story of a young wife and mother who married into a farm family and has trouble finding her place in the family. The second, Cleo’s Slow Dance, is a sequel as an older Cleo is left a widow with a farm and teen age children.

From there, I moved to a young career woman making a decision between her desires and those of her mother in Finding Clarice. The last three are each based on women at retirement and they do all have satisfactory endings. What Next, Ms Elliott, is a widow trying to find a new future for herself after living years for her job. Marge, Back On Track, is retiring before she’s ready to take care of her second husband, a stroke victim. In Anne Marie’s New Melody, Anne Marie, the gourmet cook, musician, and childless wife in a fairly new marriage finds her future travel plans interrupted by her husband’s grandchildren.

The columns and personal essays are all drawn from my own life and often include family members, particularly grandchildren who have opened our minds to so many new experiences.

Family gatherings and events are important to both of us and have enriched our lives in countless ways.

With only two of us in the house now and no day job, I’m less confined with chores and can do more picking and choosing. I write several hours a day, garden a lot and take an active part in several organizations that are specifically aimed at helping women break down barriers or benefit education, AAUW, Mom’s Rising, I Stand For Children and the Women’s Business Network. Of course I belong to a few writing associations also, mainly Willamette Writers and Women Writing The West.

Jo-Brew’s “Favorite Place”

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“Anne Marie’s New Melody,” the latest novel by Jo-Brew is now available. Anne Marie, a musician, gourmet cook and a woman of the senses retires to spend more time with Robert. She had been widowed once and does not want to miss the opportunity to enjoy a traveling companion or more time for the activities she enjoys. Without experiencing children of her own, she was unprepared to contemplate assuming a parental role for Robert’s grandchildren. Nor was she prepared to give up her relationship with Robert. It takes a Disneyland moment of self discovery for her to find the road to the life she wants.

It is the last in the series of three northwest women and the retirement choices they make. “Anne Marie’s New Melody,” is available through some independent bookstores, from Jo in person, from www.bbotw.com or from www.Jo-Brew.com. For information about appearances and sources, go to www.Jo-Brew.com or watch for announcements.

Excerpt from Anne Marie’s New Melody

Anne Marie put those memories aside as she got closer to home and let herself move on to pleasant thoughts about the evening to come. Robert had suggested the two of them go out for a wonderful dinner. He’d probably have reservations in Eugene, at the Country Club or maybe the Marche. She’d love French. Flowers or a gift were almost a sure thing. She let herself think about fun private activities after dinner. All in all, a real celebration.

She’d need to be careful not to let him see the concerns she had about retiring. Marge was right. She was used to being a leader. The change would be hard. She couldn’t imagine how they’d spend so much time together. She’d always worked most of the year, even before they were married.

They’d had individual lives for the biggest part of the day. Nearly every evening they spent the first hour or so after she came home discussing their separate activities over a glass of wine. That exchange kept their marriage intermingled.

Now they’d be together all the time except for the occasional trip he made to spend a day working on his mother’s house and the one afternoon a week he played golf with his son Eric. They wouldn’t have anything to talk about, not even separate friends they saw on a regular basis. She was going to have to find new interests. She hoped he would also make an effort or they’d run into problems.

Then there was the cooking situation. The last several years he’d taken over the meals on weekdays while she worked. By the time summer came around and she was home, he was ready for a break. She’d want to do more of the cooking now, take her kitchen back. Her cookbooks were all tagged to mark new recipes she wanted to try and old favorites she wanted to repeat.

What’s Been Happenin’?

I apologize for the long delay in our blog. The past three weeks have proven to be busier than I anticipated and I just haven’t been able to get anything written. I guess that I should be much more organized and have several postings written ahead of time, but so far, that hasn’t happened… and I don’t know that it will for me, anyway. I don’t think that I’m alone in this type of procrastination. Each of us gets so caught up in our own lives and the lives of those around us, that sometimes we must just live one day at a time in order to get through it all. I’ve always been an advocate of planning ahead a bit, however.

If excuses are needed, I guess that two major ones pop into my mind. My mother, who just turned 93 years of age on September 28, came to visit for a week. If I have to live to such an advanced age, I hope that I am allowed to have the sharpness of mind and wit and the desire to live life to its fullest that define this beautiful lady who is my mother. She lives in Bend, Oregon with her husband of 19 years in a senior retirement complex where she leads an active life centered around crafts, games, reading, and wine and cheese parties among her friends. Each year she crafts wonderful things to give to her family and sell at holiday bazaars. In years past when her eyesight was a little clearer, she made delicate cross-stitch bookmarks. Last year, she made colorful tote bags. This year, her beautiful southwestern-look macrame beaded key chains are being taken in and sold in stores. She’s one of the main “home-run hitters” on her beanbag baseball team and she frequently comes up a winner in her pinochle and bingo games. She and a group of other ladies have once-a-month wine and cheese parties, rotating among their individual apartments. When her body, which needs to be supported by her bright purple walker if she is on her feet too long, gets tired, she loves to sit quietly and read and/or take a daily nap.

So, when she asked us if she could visit my sister and I for the week of her birthday, we laid aside any other plans we had so that we could enjoy and celebrate her presence in our lives. What an honor that is for us.

One of the things that I needed to do before her arrival was to complete the October issue of Groundwaters. The computer and printer that I use to print the issues lives in the bedroom in our home that is set aside for my mother’s visits. The printing process gives off an odor while the pages are being spewed out, so I knew that I needed to have them all printed before her arrival. By the time we went over to get her last Thursday, the issue had been printed and put aside until this week’s distribution.

We took Mama home yesterday and Pat, Jen and I will begin placing the issues in our distribution points today. You’ll find that this issue does not have quite the variety of authors that many do. Summer is a bad time to get people to send in their submissions – everyone is so busy – so we decided to feature those that were submitted along with our own writings that are sometimes put aside so that we can showcase others. My mother teasingly called it our “family issue.” I guess, in a way, it is. Besides my brother Jim’s and my contributions this time, the works of two of our granddaughters and our daughter, Kelly, appear. Of our Groundwaters’ family, Jen, Judy and Sonny have included a couple of wonderful pieces We were able to include three of Norm Maxwell’s stories. Norm is a prolific writer and sends us his writings almost weekly. We also were able to print more poems and song lyrics from Elizabeth Tyler Brown, Herbie and Spyder that we have in large numbers. The writings of other “Groundwaters family members” Nichole Bain, Riley Chambers, Tom Howell, Wanda Edwards, Avis Rust, Karen Vosika, Nick and Joe DeAngelo are also included. We take great pleasure in introducing Karen Wickham, Rebecca Bain, Don Baker, Bridgett Johnson-Elliott and Linsey Kau to our Groundwaters readers, as well.

I hope that you enjoy this issue. We take special delight in presenting it to you!