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I
became involved with Wising Up Press because of my long relationship with
Heather Tosteson and Charles Brockett, which did not begin with the press but
with my relationship with Heather
and her son when she was a doctoral student at Ohio University, where I
was also finishing a counseling degree. Even though we were related through my
mother and her grandmother (they were the youngest sisters in a large immigrant
family from Wales), it was through that period of time in Ohio that Heather and
her son became part of my family. Through me, Heather met my friends, including
Nancy Pelletier, who had received her MFA from Ohio University. Each year in
Marietta, Nancy and I held a Neat Ladies Lunch. Nancy and I had discovered that
each of us, she as head of a Humanities department in a community college and
me active in the therapy field and community mental health, each had wonderful
sets of friends in our professional lives who didn't know each other, so we
brought them together - and brought Heather in too. I remember Heather so
loving the Neat Ladies Lunches, which was perhaps an early version of this
women's collective We were ahead
of our time - because we were doing it not from any ideological basis, but from
a life-saving basis, just because we liked each other and wanted to know each
other. If you were at those lunches, you knew everything going on in that town.
We were all community focused, involved in the world. We always had the
illusion that maybe we could solve some of the problems in our Appalachian
community. We were all involved in some way. Looking back now in my
mid-seventies, to that time when I had five kids at home and was going back to
school, starting a community mental health center, we really did something. We
bloomed where we were planted.
Over
the years, Heather and I stayed connected - through moves, family crises and
celebrations, weddings and divorces. Some of those events - Nancy Pelletier's
marriage at age 80 to her high school sweetheart Louis Wymond and my own
divorce after 53 years of marriage -
inspired Heather to suggest we collaborate on a Wising Up Anthology: Love
After 70. Nancy and I agreed. All
these submissions came in. We met in Marietta (after Heather did some heavy
work and hard lifting in Georgia) to review three identical stacks of
manuscripts. We each sorted them separately into yes, no and maybe piles. For
me, an avid reader, there was a humbling sense of power in saying, no I don't
want this, knowing that the person who wrote it had really worked on it and
loved it. Finally comparing our piles in my condo in Williamstown, we
discovered that there was a great deal of agreement as to what we liked. And
what we didn't. We had a real laugh about a male fantasy (the author, we
checked it out on web, was only 50) - of
a man in his 90s entertaining a prostitute dressed as Marlene Dietrich.
Nancy
and I created a dog and pony show for Love After 70, each of selecting some of our favorite pieces to
read. We came down, with Louis, to Atlanta, where we helped with the Wising Up
Press booth at the Decatur Book Festival. We wore matching t-shirts with the
cover of the book on them, and
everyone stopped us to ask about the book. We were the best advertisement
going. We also read at retirement centers in Atlanta and had wonderful
conversations with our audience, who shared their own experiences, losses and
loves. We continue our dog and pony show in our own area - at Nancy's
retirement community, a senior citizen center, the POE women's sorority group,
and the Washington Community College poetry program. We get a call - Will you
come and talk to our group? - and
we're off. Marietta Senior Reading Club, which has been in existence for over
146 consecutive years, was the first place we read after Louis died. Love
After 70 is quite a sensuous book.
We thought that some readers would be put off, but they have been quite moved
and have loved the book.
As
an adult, I've always been an avid reader. I haven't read a lot of the
classics. I feel guilty, but don't have time to read them because I like what
I'm reading now. Reading keeps me connected with the larger world. I have
belonged for years to the Betsy
Bookers book club. We meet once a
month. Each person takes a month, chooses a book of her liking, and we discuss
it over lunch (we don't have wine. . . ). The person who has chosen the book
has done some research into the author, sought out reviews (positive and
negative). Once, one member couldn't find reviews and called the author and
interviewed her directly.
As
an avid reader, I can see that I read a little differently from the writers in
the collective. I draw on my own experience and my own professional interests.
I know clearly what I like and don't like and can tell you why, but without
any literary rhetoric. I can tell
you if I like the characters, whether I am emotionally invested in them,
whether I would like to meet them. Prize-winning books where you don't care about
a single character don't interest me - but I read passionately and with a sense
of direct engagement. I love things that are complex, like The Reader, which raises interesting questions about collective
guilt, where does our responsibility lie, what would happen to me in the same
circumstances. My best friend growing up was Jewish, and I always asked myself
what I would do in those circumstances. Same as a therapist in Appalachia, when
I listened I always wondered if I could live the lives of the women I was
counseling. The gift I gave back to them was how I mirrored how marvelous and
strong they were. I expect the same in the books I read.
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