I had several suggestions from Judy (the president of my Wisconsin fan club) and Cherie yesterday, so since Mark and I had this afternoon off we endeavored to check them out. In the process, I also did some initial research on a suggestion many of you have made. Continue reading
Monday morning I had a Hertz car reserved and they were supposed to come and pick Mom and me up from her house at 9:00, which is when they open. The Hertz place is within a fifteen minute drive from Mom’s house so I wasn’t concerned for the first fifteen minutes, but by 9:20 I was beginning to get antsy. We wanted to get on the road to visit my younger sister in Klamath Falls. Continue reading
I tried to call my father this afternoon to wish him a Happy Father’s Day but ended up having to leave a message on his answering machine. Even better than that, Jamey left a Happy Father’s Day message on our answering machine for Mark. I hope Dad gets as much pleasure from my message as Mark got from Jamey’s! Continue reading
Those of you who have been following my blog for a while may remember how upset I was about a year ago when a reporter from Harpers classified Workampers as senior citizens who have to work to survive and get taken advantage of by their employers. Another reporter compared Workampers to the Joad family from Grapes of Wrath or to Woody Guthrie. A rash of reporters began contacting Workamper News asking for people to interview so I offered to be one of those people. Several months ago I was contacted by John Glionna of the LA Times who, at the time, was looking for a modern migrant worker-type story and I told him if he wanted to interview me he had to tell the story like it is. He agreed to interview Mark and I and two other Workampers and do our stories justice, so this weekend he and a photographer from the LA Times, Francine Orr, are here following us around and asking us all sorts of questions about our lifestyle. I believe he’ll write a good story. I’ve asked him to do a guest blog: telling a little about himself, explaining his story idea and what he’s hoping to get out of this. I’ll let you know when his story is published so that you can find a copy of the LA Times and read it if you so desire. And now, without further ado, here’s John… Continue reading
I haven’t written for several days because we’ve been working on an inspection of our RV, but this afternoon we took some time off to drive into Hannibal, Missouri from our campground in Monroe City. There is so much more we would have liked to see, such as the home of the “Unsinkable Molly Brown”, but we only had an hour to look around after having lunch at the Mark Twain Dinette, famous for their Mark Twain fried chicken and homemade root beer. We went to the historic area where Mark Twain’s home and those of his friends are located. Continue reading
It was Christmas Eve and Bob Cratchett sat huddled over a candle flame trying to warm his hands. Scrooge heard his lack of work, counting money and writing figures, and told him to get back to work. Bob said, “Please, Sir, may I take off a little early tonight? It is Christmas Eve, after all.” Continue reading
Last night we slept with the windows open all night, and this morning we kept hearing an occasional Thwok! sound. We figured out it was a bird trying to get in our window, but we couldn’t actually see him till we sat down for breakfast. He came right up and sat on our window ledge for probably half a minute or so, having a good look at us as though we were animals in the zoo. We said hello to him and he flew into the tree next to our window. Continue reading
Several weeks ago Mark and I woke up to an NPR interview with a reporter from Harper’s. The reporter had written an article about Workampers where she described us as elderly people who couldn’t afford to retire. She told about a woman she interviewed who sounded suicidal because she was so depressed about having to live in her RV and travel around looking for work. I commented on NPR’s web site asking where the reporter’s sense of adventure was. Continue reading
I woke up this morning and I was laying in bed letting my mind wander. It started out with a message I’d picked up on my phone last night from Rose, the woman who wants us to come up to Tok, AK. Continue reading
Please welcome Susan Hornbach, an author/writer of children’s literature. I met Susan on LinkedIn and she seemed to have some good advice for writers who want to publish, so I asked her to write a guest blog for my web site. She did so in the form of an interview: Continue reading