Catching Up
- Catching Up, family, Gold Country, History, House, preservationista, renovations, This Old House, Uncategorized
Living History
We’ve been in the 1880s house for a little over a year now, and have gotten to know her creaks and groans. We lost a housecleaner who felt a ghostly presence in the upstairs bedroom. I’ve found hundreds of pennies in the dirt and grounds, mementos perhaps of the previous owner, Penny, who passed away just as we were taking possession of the house. We have been visited by neighbors who have rejoiced at the resurrection of this old house, from its decrepitude to its new life as our home. And we have lived through a year in real seasons, with snow, heat, power outage, wildfire, and autumn colors. We…
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Latest Vision
My apologies for the long silence. When last I wrote here, we had moved to the country and my husband was seriously disabled by his back injuries; he retired and we left the busy East Bay for Wine Country-quiet. I have been working on several projects in that time, namely my historical novel about the Orphan Train mama who lost her children and set about getting them back. That novel is in revisions and needs another deep dive. (Not this week, she said, juggling several pins, but one of these days soon.) Another sideline has been our cabin, the Crow’s Nest, which we renovated from the studs out, and welcomed…
- Catching Up, family, Green House, History, Mr Husband, My Little Country Cottage, Orphan Train, The Bereaved, work, writing
A Whole New World
It’s been a bit since I posted, mostly because my dear husband has had some health issues, which led to his early retirement, which led to us moving from the island of Alameda to the beautiful redwood forest of Sonoma County. He gets to enjoy baseball and all of his favorite sports programs as well as breathe in the fresh air and peaceful surroundings. I get to write on the deck outside, with sky and trees as my ceiling and walls. Honestly, it’s pretty amazing. It did, however, suck up a ton of my time, so I wasn’t able to blog. I’m writing a historical novel just now, and have…
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Do Not Disturb: Am Writing.
Don’t try and stop me. I have writing to do. I’m writing while I fold laundry and wash dishes. I’m writing while I sit by my husband’s bed awaiting his back surgery. I’m writing while I drive home late at night. I’m writing when I get up at 3 a.m. to let the cat in. Or out. I’m writing when it looks like I’m reading. Or spacing out. Or chopping vegetables. Because, for me, writing doesn’t look like writing until the last 10 percent. “Genius is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.” — Thomas Alva Edison Writing — for me — is like that, too, sort of. It’s all in…
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Fishing for stories
I spent Saturday digging through old newspapers to see what frolics my great-grandmother was up to as president of the Daughters of the Confederacy in Portland, Oregon, 100 years ago. Let’s just say there plenty of genteel hijinks that involved white women doing the Virginia Reel, reading nostalgic poetry in “slave dialect” and guest speakers telling “many clever darky stories.” Can you tell I died a little bit inside when I read that? I did a lot of family research while working on the two volumes of the Doris Diaries (I’ve Got Some Lovin’ to Do and Reaching for the Moon, from the 1920s). In those hours of internet and…
