Blog Editor, Linda Hoye, recently asked Story Circle Network's One Woman's Day contributors to consider a place they hold dear and to write about a special day they spent there or, perhaps the day they left. I accepted the challenge and wrote about the bittersweet leaving of our family's home in the South Pacific. Here's my story, recently published in the Story Circle Network's March Journal: Leaving An Island Paradise From January 1977 to September 1978 I lived with my family on an island in the South Pacific Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. The island is a military base, and my husband Bob managed a military-funded program there. We had a slow and easy life on the island, filled with all kinds of beach and water activities. When we arrived our sons Paul was five and Ben was two and a half. When we left Paul was seven and Ben four. Ben was glad to leave; Paul could have stayed forever. However, when we first stepped off the plane (a military carrier with no … [Read more...]
Some old stories
In 2012 and 2013 I contributed to a website called Storylane. It inspired me to write very short pieces about a variety of subjects. Unfortunately, Storylane no longer exists, but packrat that I am I saved every piece I submitted. Here's a few: How I Got My First Job Out of College I graduated from UCLA with a degree in English and had no idea what I would do professionally after getting it. I had wanted to work as a journalist and actually completed all the course work for a degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin. But family illness caused me to transfer to UCLA for my senior year, and UCLA didn't offer a BA degree in journalism. So I was stuck in a city I didn't know, and hardly knowing anyone in it. I tried valiantly and unsuccessfully early on to get a writing job and then gave up. It was 1962. Not a lot of jobs for women writers in those days, especially in Los Angeles. Then someone suggested I try the growing aerospace business in southern California. And I … [Read more...]