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I took motorcycle riding lessons with Garden State Motorcycle Safety School in New Brunswick, NJ, when I was 52 years old. I was back in college to finish the Bachelor’s Degree I’d started at the University of California at Irvine in 1967. After parenting five children into their own college years, I was ready to reinvent myself. In that long interim, personal computer technology advanced to the point of being both necessary and affordable for everyone in the family, and I threw myself into mastering its use in my studies.
I enrolled in the low-residency program at Vermont College (now a part of Union Institute and University) to complete the three semesters of work required for my degree. What I discovered there was the well-established genre: creative non-fiction, an area of study I had not come across in my previous years of higher education. It was like coming home. For the next eighteen months, I was immersed in a rich variety memoirs, personal narratives, essays, and narrative journalism. I had found my niche, it seemed.
After graduating, I started to write professionally—learning to craft stories and reports, getting familiar and comfortable with pitching and being edited, settling into a workable schedule to meet deadlines, gaining experience in interviewing people, and embracing the whole process.
At Ulster Publishing in Kingston, New York, I’ve taken assignments for The Almanac Weekly, an arts and entertainment insert that goes into UP’s four community weeklies: Kingston Times, Woodstock Times, New Paltz Times, and Saugerties Times, now consolidated into one print edition known as HV1. I developed a monthly column called “Bookings” to review books and list author appearances at bookstores and other venues in the Hudson Valley. And I sometimes contributed feature articles to Special Sections for the newspaper.
Additionally, I’ve written pieces for publication, both pitched and assigned, for a number of regional magazines: Chronogram, Upstate House, Kaatskill Life Magazine, Hudson Valley Magazine, Green Door Magazine, and Catskill Mountain Region Guide.
I have volunteered for local grass-roots non-profit organizations, such as O+ in Kingston, NY, Circle of Friends for the Dying of Ulster County, and Project Hope (a woman to woman mentoring program, also based in Kingston). I’ve also assisted the production staff of the Woodstock Book Festival in Woodstock, NY, and have served as an Elections Inspector for the Ulster County Board of Elections for nearly two decades. I have led writing workshops for HealthAlliance Hospital’s Oncology Support Program, for the Breast Cancer Options Retreat at Omega Institute for women with metastatic breast cancer, and at the Lifetime Learning Institute at Bard College.
I kissed my beloved Harley Davidson Sportster goodbye a few years ago, but still have the impulse to give oncoming riders the wave–even from inside my car!