The Granny Gretchen

When my son and his wife were expecting their first child we had a conversation about what name I would be called, as in Grandma, Nana, Mawmaw, Grandmother. I remember firmly stating, "They can call me anything except Granny." Granny would make me sound old, or so I thought.

Fast forward a few years and, yes, you got it, I'm The Granny Gretchen. It doesn't make me feel old, it makes me feel carefree. I'm The Granny, not any old granny on a rocking chair, although I've been known to sit on one whenever I get the opportunity and I do not apologize about it at all.

My husband and I just finished what we call "Granny Camp" with our two grand girls, ages nine and six. This year it was five days. Five days away from their Mama and Daddy. Five days to fill with activities and fun and making memories. First we went to the land of Oz and followed the yellow brick road with Dorothy.

My grands posing with Dorothy

It's a tourist trap, but so much fun, open on Fridays in June, at the top of Beech Mountain Resort in the North Carolina Appalachians. We went through the fake tornado, which was a scary experience for the six year old. We came out the other end, over the rainbow, house on the wicked witch of the east, Dorothy waiting to take us through.

That would be me in the bonnet
Script in my hand

There were no other characters, so the audience participated. I traded my granny hat for Auntie Em's. Grandpa was Uncle Henry. The scarecrow and the tinman and the lion were so perfect for their parts that I thought they were part of the production. But no.
We read the book, well, a picture book version that suited the purpose to prepare them for the adventure. We sang the songs. Oh, and we rode the ski lift to get to "Kansas."

With a start like this, how could Granny Camp follow up. No problem. These girls are getting older and able to entertain themselves in the down time from trips to a water park and a farm and a hot dog roast at the park, relaxing days of watching and joining in when invited.

I'm winging it. See, I had no grandparents and I've always been a little jealous of those who did. All mine had died before I was born, so I'm basing my grannyhood on what I imagined as the ideal grandmother. That and what I gleaned from my mother and mother-in-law when they were the grand generation. I'm also watching and learning from my many friends who also have grands. What works. What doesn't work. What I never plan to even attempt.

Grannyhood is like going down a yellow brick road. It's thrill a minute, so rewarding and so precarious with all kinds of creatures and goblins waiting in the woods. Holding on to little hands, reassuring them, comforting them. "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Celebrate Last Day of School

Watch the Celebration here

I remember it well.

The last day of school.

While the children are off singing their personalized version of "School's out, school's out, teacher let the mules out," the teachers are meanwhile, as the final bus pulls out of the parking lot, doing their own personalized version of "Celebrate Good Times."

Yes, I remember that emotion. It's a job well done, you can go home now, emotion of relief.

My friends who are teachers are expressing their emotions on facebook today, the last day of school here in our county. One shared this celebration, caught on camera. What uninhibited joy!

So did the teachers at Pilot Mountain School perform such antics the moment they were free?

Oh. Yes.

Okay, so I wasn't there, but I know teachers. I know end of year relief. They might not have cavorted in the halls, but they celebrated. Then they went home, worked their necessary summer jobs that would hold them over until the next pay check three months away. Or they tended their gardens and canned their vegetables in preparation of the next winter. All this time away restored their souls and prepared them for what they faced come the next time the bell rang.

That's what those teachers in the video are celebrating, the chance to rest, the job well done, you can go home and re-load. Because all too soon, that next bell will ring.

And they'll be ready and eager and full of promise. Because that's what teachers do.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Memoir Writing Workshop

This past Thursday evening a member of my critique group, Sandra Warren, and I presented a workshop on writing memoirs. This was our debut session, hopefully the first of several to come. The venue was perfect for our endeavor, a small room inside an art gallery, The Arrowhead Gallery and Studios of Old Fort, North Carolina.

Sandra's two books about the experiences of military nurses during the Persian Gulf War gave her plenty of insight into writing about the lives of others.

We shared our techniques with an eager group of aspiring authors. We let them in on what worked for us and just as important, what didn't work for us. I wish I had someone to advise me when I was writing about Pilot Mountain School.

Then again, I'm sort of glad I didn't.

If I had not floundered around, flopping back and forth like the fish out of water that I was, I would have missed way too much. I'm thinking of all the personalities I might have by-passed in the desire to get it done. Royal personalities. Enriching personalities, both in my life and in the quality of the book.

I would have saved time. I would have saved energy. I would have come up with a different book entirely.

What I learned from book one proved invaluable to me as I worked through books two and three in the memoir genre. That's what we shared with the group, where to begin, what to do next, and next, and next. It wasn't as much a "how to..." kind of workshop as it was a "how we..." kind of sharing. What worked for me and what worked for Sandra were two completely different approaches.

The project I'm working on now is similar to Lessons Learned only this one is about a ball field. It will require interviews with personalities I can't wait to meet up with, royal personalities that will enrich my life and my manuscript. The lessons I learned and shared with the class last week will guide me along the way. I know where to start, how to research those dogging questions, how to get the manuscript ready to publish.

Here's where the adventure begins though, with the unknown ahead, the surprise obstacle lurking around the bend just waiting in the shadows to add a clinker to my progress. It will be there, rest assured. It's a part of the process I couldn't possibly explain in a writing workshop. It's too unknown. It's too personal. It's too valuable to avoid.

It's the joy of writing.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Memorial Day 2014

Today I am wearing a bracelet. It's plain, smooth, not at all decorative except for two simple logos and a name etched into it.

Oh, and a date. 09-30-68. That's the reason I chose this bracelet of all the ones on display at The Wall.

This wall.

On that date, I was a newlywed, a mere 16 day newlywed. My focus was on the future. When I chose the bracelet in 1996, my focus was on the sacrifice of someone I didn't even know. I couldn't help but wonder what he was doing the day I was married. Was it a normal day for him in Viet Nam, if there was any such thing? What was he thinking that Monday morning, September 30, 1968? And most of all, what happened to him? 

On that date, Pilot Mountain School was going through a normal day of operation, a Monday when a new week presented hope and promise. Teachers taught lessons. Children learned lessons. These were ordinary life experiences made possible by veterans through the years who fought for our right to exist as a nation.

So today I celebrate the life and sacrifice of the man on my chosen bracelet. Missing. Not forgotten.

Domenick Anthony Spinelli

ON THE WALL:	Panel W42 Line 51
PERSONAL DATA:
Home of Record	Oak Harbor, WA
Date of birth:	11/06/1925
MILITARY DATA:
Service:	United States Navy
Grade at loss:	O3
Rank/Rate:	Commander
Note:	Promoted while in MIA status
ID No:	027145860
MOS/RATING:	1310: Unrestricted Line Officer (Pilot)
Length Service:	34
Unit:	VA-196, CVW-14, USS CONSTELLATION, TF 77, 7TH FLEET
CASUALTY DATA:
Start Tour:	Not Recorded
Incident Date:	09/30/1968
Casualty Date:	01/10/1978
Age at Loss:	52 (based on date declared dead)
Location:	Province not reported, North Vietnam
Remains:	Body not recovered
Casualty Type:	Hostile, died while missing
Casualty Reason:	Fixed Wing - Crew
Casualty Detail:	Air loss or crash over land   This page Copyright© 1997-2013 www.VirtualWall.org

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

NEW BOOK!!!

I'm going to divert a little from the school theme and introduce my newest book to you. 

         TA-DA!!!

Just out. As in this past week.

It's another life story, this done with a co-author, Johnny Turner. As I explain in the author bio at the back of the book:

Gretchen Griffith’s husband, Van, introduced her to Johnny Turner, one of his golfing friends, who had a request. Could she preserve the stories of his Uncle Claude? That answer was an enthusiastic, “Yes,” and the months of research and writing began. With this latest book, she adds to her collection of true life stories from the North Carolina mountains. 

Note the final sentence, "...adds to her collection of true life stories from the North Carolina mountains." That's the sentence I'm most proud of, the reason I am already into my next storycatching project. I have found my niche through stumbling upon these wonderfully rich life stories of real people. While I am writing fiction (that manuscript is begging to be revised, revised and completed...and submitted) I find compelling stories in nonfiction that I could never have constructed in my mind. Truth truly is stranger than fiction!

This was a fun book to write, filled with all kinds of wheels and moonshine stills.

There's history and early car wheels...

There's roller skating wheels...

Stagecoach wheels...

Wagon train wheels...

And, yes, Moonshine stills...

I can't wait for you to read it. Available now from Amazon or from the trunk of my car. Coming soon in Kindle ebook version.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Tweetsie the Train

I've been flying under the radar the last few weeks finishing a project that sucked all my writing energy, drained my brain in the process and cramped my precious fingers into almost permanent keyboard-hovering claws. I'm so close to being finished I can breathe a bit this morning and catch up with my Catch of the Day. Whew!

This new project doesn't stray all that far from my Lessons Learned book about Pilot Mountain School. No, there's not school in my new book, unless you count the one phrase where I say that Uncle Claude, the main character, attended Lebanon Schoolhouse for his first three years of schooling, and very little after that.

The setting for my new project is the foothills of western North Carolina. Hey, I write what I know. I also write what I don't know, namely moonshine, and through that topic, the two books overlap. Claude was a moonshiner...more details on that later...but he was also a stagecoach builder, a very good stagecoach builder.

And that is how these two books overlap in a most delightful way.

Lessons Learned, page 265...a quote about a first grade field trip with teacher Lana Reavis:

• One year we took them to Tweetsie Railroad theme park, with its reenactment of the Wild West. When the Indians started shooting, all the first graders wanted to sit in your lap. 

New Book, (Name still pending), page unknown:

• All that was missing in the mock western town was a stagecoach...until Tweetsie officials heard about Uncle Claude.

Ta-Da! 

The children from my first book play in a stagecoach 

built by the main character of my new book.

How Cool Is That!

Uncle Claude's Stagecoach, 

now parked for safety reasons.

Before I lucked across this picture from another stagecoach craftsman, Tommy Winkler, who so generously donated it to our cause, I asked friends and family and anyone and everyone for Tweetsie pictures I could use in the book. In the end, I'm going with this photo alone, but I do want to share the pictures one mother sent me and agreed I could post on my blog. 

I can't wait for the book to come out so you can see the rest of the story!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

PS If you have Tweetsie pictures, send them along. Let's share the good times.

Down with Negativity

Bad reviews. Negative political campaigns. Grouchy people. Facebook intimidations. Youtube videos of things-gone-wrong. Widespread negativity.

Sigh.

I read a post on negativity by Sandra Warren recently in her Grateful Writer blog this week. With a blog named Grateful Writer, how could she ever claim to have negative thoughts? Easy. Writers all do. We go through periods of self doubt that are reinforced (or begun) by not so flattering, but very public, book reviews.

Been there. Done that. Survived.

Sandra mentioned research by Dr. Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist delving into how negativity affects the brain. His recently released book, Hardwiring Happiness, sounds like something I want to read. Negative events remain imprinted in our brains for a reason, he says.

Survival.

Positive events take a lesser role in memory, he says. They're usually overshadowed or repressed by the negative.

But wait. I interviewed nearly a hundred former students and teachers at this school. They told me the positive first, and not just to warm up to the negative, either. Most people had to search their brains for the negative and when they came up with less than happy stories, they were told as lessons learned rather than as tattle-tale reportings.

Perhaps time mellowed their feelings. I'm talking at least fifty years, usually sixty or more. Goodness might take time, but it wins, at least at Pilot Mountain School it did.

In the moment, though, negative statements hurt. Lessons learned is little consolation for hurt feelings. So I decided this Lent period to rid my life of negativity rather than my usual. Chocolate. I will be positive, think positive thoughts, emit positive vibes, surround myself with Pollyannas.

Lent started for me the moment I felt the minister at my church draw the sign of the cross on my forehead. That was Wednesday. Thursday I was writing a post on facebook about the sleet and snow that was falling yet again. "Will this winter never end???" I wailed.

I lasted barely a day without being negative. Forty days looks like a long stretch ahead...ooh, that even sounds negative. Instead I'll say that I have forty days of opportunities ahead to turn my attitude from the negative to the positive. I will.

I'm positive I can.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen