Hi. This is Barb Clutter.
This is my second attempt to post the first discussion.
As per Melanie's suggestion I saved my first entry and believe it or not I do know how to cut and paste but only if I can find the original manuscript.
Consequently I am starting over. Technology is NOT my friend.
Starting over is nothing new to me as I seem to be perennially starting over.
I am a retired school teacher. I was fortunate enough to be able to retire early due to unfortunate circumstances. Every cloud has a proverbial silver lining.
When I retired at 55 I attempted lots of crazy full and or part time jobs just to see what was out there. Some of it was crap and funny fodder for the first writing class I took here at Chatham. Some of it was great.
One of the great jobs I had was working for Riverquest, a nonprofit organization that held one day field trip experiences for schools in the Pittsburgh area on a boat on (of course) the three rivers. Having married a country boy, this city girl learned grudgingly the ways of nature in a log home on 35 acres and slowly but surely began to love the simplicity and complexity of living in the country and appreciating nature. But working at Riverquest broadened my scope of knowledge and as I guided kids through experiments of water sampling, I learned about plankton, water chemistry, and macro-invertibrates that live in the waters around our town and enjoyed it immensely. It was a wonderful experience but as non profits are wont to do it had some finanacial difficulties and I left. The kids who remained needed the job whereas I was not dependent on the meager salary in order to survive.
I come from DC area originally but have lived up here near PGH for 30 years or better.
I taught 7th and 8th grade children the joys of literature for all of that time. It was not always an easy task, as young men of that age usually have other things on their mind. I always believed as a Reading teacher that students deserved to hear the well written word well read, consequently I read to the little darlings every day. We did Shane, To Kill a Mockingbird, so many others but one book became a standard for me because it caught the "boys." Hie to the Hunters by Jesse Stuart is a a beauty of a piece of regional fiction, set in the hills of Kentucky. There is lots of action: fightin', huntin', trappin', and spitting. As the school I taught in was in a rural community, I could not have found anything more appropriate for these kids. But along with this coming of age story of 2 young boys was this amazing description of the hills of Kentucky throughout the seasons. It is a little known jewel that is out of print but you can still get copies through the Jesse Stuart Foundation, if you are interested.
I am a widow. I have one daughter, Kate, who graduated from Allegheny College with a degree in English and minor in Classical Studies. I am sure some of you may know what a highly marketable degree that is, (;-(). But after working in a hospitilization advisory group, and being paid to mostly lie to people and get them through the system, she dumped that job, and moved to Boston with a friend. During the winter of the worst snows in the history of that city, she worked temp jobs at starvation wages, plugged away and finally got a job that turned into a permanent position. She is a manager for JLL , a commercial property management company, and she and 2 others run a 42 story office building in the heart of Boston. Who knew ? This from a girl who wanted to make a career out of Faulkner! Needless to say I am proud of her and we are best buds.
I have a dog and 2 cats. They are all monsters but I love them. I have a house that is now too big for me and I contemplate selling it every time it snows. The yard is going to be my place to write about as I have become a gardener, of sorts, in my dotage.
I am sure you are all bored to tears with my ramblings but that is who I am. Abstract and Random and proud of it.
Thanks for reading and please God let this go through to you.
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