The Pearlsong Letter

Pearlsong Press seeks inspiring seniors -- call for nominations

Pearlsong Press calls for nominations for its “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program celebrating people whose post-65 activities can inspire all ages.

NASHVILLE, TN— Pearlsong Press is seeking nominations for our year-long “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program.  The award is given monthly to living seniors who have accomplished an inspirational goal or action after the age of 65.  The goal can be related to creative work, charity work, community involvement, political action, or any inspirational accomplishment.

Honored seniors receive frameable certificates  recognizing their “Splendid” status, as well as autographed copies of Jack Adler’s book Splendid Seniors: Great Lives, Great Deeds, published by Pearlsong Press in March 2007. The award is  announced at the Pearlsong Press blog (www.pearlsongpress.com) and website  (www.pearlsong.com), and the senior’s hometown  media and mayor’s office are notified of the honor.

At the end of the promotional period in March of 2008, the 12 honorees of the “Splendid Seniors  Among Us” program will be included in a special Adobe PDF ebook that can be downloaded for free at the Pearlsong Press website.

There is no fee for nominating a senior for the “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program. 

All nominations can be mailed to Pearlsong Press at P.O. Box 58065, Nashville, TN 37205, emailed to splendidseniors @ pearlsong.com,  or faxed to (615) 352-4222.  More information  on the “Splendid Seniors Among Us” award, as well as information about Pearlsong Press itself,  can be found at the company’s website at www.pearlsong.com/splendidseniorsamongus.htm.

Press release written by Pearlsong Press intern Rachel Pitt.

Honoring the past and nurturing the future keeps retired schoolteacher Evelyn Lawrence busy

Marion, Virginia resident honored in national "Splendid Seniors Among Us" program recognizing people whose post-65 activities can inspire others at all life stages.

Pearlsong Press is honoring Evelyn Thompson Lawrence of Marion, Virginia as the "Splendid Senior Among Us" for June 2007.

Lawrence retired as a primary school teacher in 1985, but now in her 80s still actively serves all ages through tireless community and church work. She continues writing and producing children’s plays and operettas, including a recent production with about 30 seven-year-olds celebrating Jamestown, Virginia's 400th anniversary.

The town of Marion honored her last year by declaring July 22, 2006 the first "Evelyn Lawrence Day," and in May 2007 she spoke to the community during "An Evening with Evelyn Lawrence" hosted by the public library.

“You know, as a black person, I’ve had all sorts of things that I had to overcome,” Lawrence says. "But no matter how much you lose, do the best you can with what you have. Stick with it -- good will come out of it."

Lawrence serves as director of the project transforming the old Mt. Pleasant United Methodist Church building in the Historic District of Marion into an African American Museum. She was choir director and organist at the church for most of her life.

"I was born into Mt. Pleasant," she laughs. Her maternal grandmother Sallie was one of the founders of the church.

Sallie had been born into slavery. In the 1840s, when Sallie was five, her family was sold to a slave-owner in another county and she was sold to a Smyth County man who wanted a caregiver and companion for his ailing wife. Sallie coped with her pain and loneliness by sharing her tears with a big white oak tree in her owner’s yard. The tree the child wrapped her arms around is still standing, and has been honored as one of the Remarkable Trees of Viriginia. (See http://www.cnr.vt.edu/4H/remarkabletree/detail.cfm?AutofieldforPrimaryKey=1398 for a photo of Sallie’s Crying Tree.) Lawrence nominated her grandmother's Crying Tree for the honor.

Lawrence taught in Marion's traditionally black Carnegie High School until that school was closed in 1965 when the public school system integrated. At that time she moved to Marion Primary School, where she was a popular teacher.

She’s proud of the work she did at both schools, but many in the African American community are especially grateful for her influence at Carnegie. “I just wanted to see that our children had an opportunity to show their talent and be heard,” she says.

As a local historian she compiled a book documenting every child who ever attended Carnegie High School, thereby saving a segment of history that might otherwise have been lost. She still coordinates regular Carnegie reunions, where alumni report that the loving attention given them by “Miss Thompson,” as she was then known, and the other Carnegie teachers prepared them to step confidently into and succeed in the larger world.

After Mt. Pleasant United Methodist Church closed, Mrs. Lawrence joined both Grace United Methodist Church and Greenwood United Methodist Church. She plays the piano at Grace United Methodist, provides music for community weddings and funerals, and recently represented both churches as a delegate to the Holston Conference.

She has served on the board of directors of Smyth County Community Hospital and has been chairperson of the Cultural Relations Committee of the Smyth County Branch of the American Association of University Women.

As the “Splendid Senior Among Us” honoree for June 2007,  Lawrence receives a certificate and an autographed copy of Splendid Seniors: Great Lives, Great Deeds by Jack Adler (original trade paperback published by Pearlsong Press in March 2007).

Pearlsong Press is sponsoring the year-long “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program in conjunction with publication of Adler’s book, to honor seniors who are living inspirations. For more information about the “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program, see the Pearlsong Press website at www.pearlsong.com.

Pearlsong Press, founded in 2003 by psychologist and journalist Peggy Elam, Ph.D, specializes in books and resources that entertain while expanding perspectives on the self and the world.

Catherine Kottner follows her own advice for successful aging--stay connected, keep busy, and know who you are

New York City resident is "Splendid Senior Among Us" for May 2007

It seems only fitting that Catherine Kottner is being honored as an inspirational senior, since the 79-year-old New York City resident facilitates a weekly women's discussion group on "successful aging."

Her advice to others in or approaching their senior years? Stay connected. Keep busy, if that’s always been your way. But also take time, if need be, to figure out who you are.

“If you’ve always been busy and connected,” Kottner says, “take courses,” volunteer in the school system (a good way to “pay back” a public education), but also take time to think about yourself and your life instead of “just being busy.”

That’s worked pretty well for Kottner, who is the May 2007 “Splendid Senior Among Us” in the national program initiated by Pearlsong Press. Kottner was nominated by Patricia A. Kusnick, director of the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House Senior Center on East 70^th Street in New York City, where for the past 15 years Kottner has facilitated the women’s group as well as presented orientation programs dealing with relocation stress, national and international volunteerism, and “Where, When and How to Shop in New York.”

The women in her discussion groups “never tire of the topics that she introduces every week,” Kusnick wrote in her nomination letter. “She has the ability to work with women of all backgrounds and to draw out the humanity in all of them….Catherine has inspired me to be the best that I can be.”

In working with women from many different backgrounds, it probably doesn’t hurt that Kottner speaks six languages. In addition to the Serbo-Croatian she spoke at home as a child and the English she learned in school, she speaks French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. She worked for more than three decades as a United Nations executive in New York City, and helped establish the first UN Child Care Center (“a labor of love,” Kottner says).

Kottner’s interest in helping others was apparent even in elementary school, when she organized and headed a toy library for children unable to buy their own playthings.

She encourages other senior women not to focus on whether they have a man in their lives, how often their children or grandchildren visit, or whether they have children at all. There’s no reason to be lonely or unhappy even if single, widowed or childless, she says.

A good way to feel loved and nurtured is to give love and nurturing to others. There’s no trick to meeting other people, she says—“you meet people while doing things you enjoy.”

As the “Splendid Senior Among Us” honoree for May 2007, Kottner receives a certificate and an autographed copy of Splendid Seniors: Great Lives, Great Deeds by Jack Adler (original trade paperback published by Pearlsong Press in March 2007).

Pearlsong Press is sponsoring the year-long “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program in conjunction with publication of Adler’s book, to honor seniors who are living inspirations. For more information about the “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program, see the Pearlsong Press website at www.pearlsong.com.

Pearlsong Press, founded in 2003 by psychologist and journalist Peggy Elam, Ph.D, specializes in books and resources that entertain while expanding perspectives on the self and the world.

The Queen of Rubenesque Romances to reign at Brentwood, TN Borders bookstore Saturday, May 12, 2007

After nearly dying from an eating disorder in her teens, Pat Ballard fought her way to self- and body-esteem. Now, as the Queen of Rubenesque Romances, the Nashville, TN author encourages women of all sizes to love themselves.

NASHVILLE, TN--Pat Ballard will appear in full regalia as the “Queen of Rubenesque Romances” at the Brentwood Borders bookstore at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 12 in conjunction with the publication of her latest book, the romantic suspense novel The Best Man.

Ballard’s books and short stories feature “plus sized” heroines and are written to inspire self-acceptance and self-care in all women, as well as to entertain. Ballard herself almost died from an eating disorder in her teens, and continued dieting/starving herself  for years until resolving to eat normally and learning to love the body that resulted.

In addition to signing copies of The Best Man, just published by Pearlsong Press, Ballard will chat with
the public and pass out ribbons imprinted with her “10 Steps to Loving Your Body (No Matter What Size You Are)." She is expanding the steps into a nonfiction book tentatively scheduled for publication by Pearlsong Press in 2008.

Ballard is also the author of Dangerous Curves Ahead: Short Stories, Wanted: One Groom, Nobody’s Perfect, His Brother’s Child, A Worthy Heir, and Abigail’s Revenge. She maintains a website at www.patballard.com.

Excerpts from her books, as well as archives of her monthly newsletter, “The Queen’s Proclamation,” are posted at her page on the Pearlsong Press website  (www.pearlsong.com/pat_ballard.htm).

At an age when most people retire, Jan de Goede picked up pen and paintbrush and began mining a new creative vein

Chicago resident honored as Pearlsong Press's "Splendid Senior Among Us" for April 2007.

At the time of life when most people think about retiring, Chicago graphic designer Jan de Goede not only kept working but started four new avocations: drawing, painting, writing poetry, and creating striking illustrated books.

By the time Pearlsong Press chose him as its “Splendid Seniors Among Us” honoree for April 2007, the 72-year-old de Goede had 66 paintings and 130 poems to his credit, as well as 20 books—all created since the turn of the millennium.

“I’m having fun,” he says.

The paintings and line drawings are created with traditional media such as oil paints and pen and ink. But de Goede’s books, including clever full-color parodies of guides to wines, art, and even religion, as well as collections of his line drawings and poems, are created on computer and assembled by hand after being printed on a $79 Canon printer.

His graphic design skill and nimble use of the Adobe Illustrator software program make the coil-bound books at first glance almost indistinguishable from commercially printed volumes. It’s only when looking at the “guides” more closely that their tongue-in-cheek nature becomes apparent, as exemplified by the lines on the front cover of The Book of Wines: “THE BEST GUIDE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WINES (ACTUALLY THE ONLY GUIDE)” and ‘IF YOU CAN’T FIND IT HERE, YOU’RE NOT DRUNK ENOUGH.”

Other of de Goede’s hand-assembled books are more serious, even poignant: Chicago Drawings, Talk to Me of Love (drawings and poems), Talu: A Childhood in the Tropics (an account of his childhood on coffee and sugar plantations in Indonesia). Then there are the fanciful illustrated “children’s books for adults”—The Book of Trains, The Book of Ships, The Book of Snakes, The Book of Towers, The Book of Taller Towers, and The Book of Squares and Cubes. (See http://tinyurl.com/2rdt8t for a PDF sampler of the work he publishes through his whimsically named company Penand, Inc.)

Thus far only one of de Goede’s books, Chicago Drawings, can be purchased in a public store (the shop at the Chicago Cultural Center). He sells the others on his own; email him at jan@degoede.net if you’re interested.

De Goede had drawn in high school and college, but never seriously thought of himself as an artist until picking up pen and paintbrush in his mid-sixties. Since then he’s displayed his paintings in a couple of shows and sold a few. “I’d like to find a gallery willing to take me on.”

De Goede has had his share of life challenges. It was divorce, for instance, that left room in his life for his new creative pursuits. His childhood idyll in Indonesia ended when the Japanese invaded during World War II; young de Goede then spent three years in Japanese concentration camps on Java. (Afterward, his family moved to Holland, where he studied shipbuilding and lived in Denmark and Sweden before settling in the United States to work as an engineer.

When de Goede no longer enjoyed shipbuilding he walked away from a lucrative career and became a graphic design apprentice—“a nobody”—because “I just wanted to do something I enjoyed doing.” He was miserable for a while “because I thought I’d screwed up my life,” but his graphic design work eventually won awards. He’s now glad he made the leap from engineer to graphic designer.

As the “Splendid Senior Among Us” honoree for April 2007, de Goede receives a certificate and an autographed copy of Splendid Seniors: Great Lives, Great Deeds by Jack Adler (original trade paperback published by Pearlsong Press in March 2007).

Pearlsong Press is sponsoring the year-long “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program in conjunction with publication of Adler’s book, to honor seniors who are living inspirations. The program honors 12 “Splendid Seniors,” one a month from March 2007 to February 2008. The year-long recognition culminates with publication of a special Splendid Seniors Among Us Adobe PDF ebook that will be available free of charge at the Pearlsong Press website (www.pearlsong.com).

For more information about the “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program, see the program's page at the Pearlsong Press website: http://www.pearlsong.com/splendidseniorsamongus.htm.

Pearlsong Press, founded in 2003 by psychologist and journalist Peggy Elam, Ph.D, specializes in books and resources that entertain while expanding perspectives on the self and the world.

Big girls -- and women -- live happily ever after in tales by Canadian author Judy Bagshaw

Judy Bagshaw has a mission and a vision: writing romantic stories and novels in which plus-sized women live rich, involved lives. It’s a dream that grew out of her struggles living as a large woman in a world in which fat is reviled.

It wasn’t until her late twenties that Bagshaw realized she had wasted a good portion of her time obsessing about her weight and her looks. The subsequent journey of self-acceptance led to her writing career.

Her most recent work, At Long Last, Love, a collection of short stories featuring plus-sized (and in some cases middle-aged) heroines, was published by Pearlsong Press in April 2007.

Writing had always been a part of the Canadian school teacher’s life, but it became a serious pursuit when she reached her mid-thirties. Bagshaw started taking writing classes and one summer stumbled upon an ad for a publisher seeking plus-sized romances.

“I can remember a writing instructor telling me emphatically that there was no real market for romances featuring plus-sized heroines,” she says. “I thought then that I would really enjoy proving him wrong!”

Her first work was published in 1999. In 2005 Bagshaw retired after a 28-year career as an elementary school teacher to devote herself to writing fulltime at her home in southern Ontario.

“I have so many stories I want to tell. And since finding publishers who want work that is outside the mainstream box, I know that there are people out there that want to read stories where the big girl wins the hero’s heart and lives happily ever after.”

At Long Last, Love: A Collection is available from online and offline booksellers, directly from the publisher at www.pearlsong.com, and wholesale from Ingram Book Co. and others

From swimming with sharks to skydiving, 88-year-old Jane Yeager inspires as Splendid Senior

Boynton Beach, FL resident chosen as first honoree in national "Splendid Seniors Among Us" program recognizing people whose post-65 activities can inspire all ages.

NASHVILLE, TN --When Jane Yeager was in her mid 70s she told her son Tom Werner she’d enjoyed snorkeling while a big, “pretty fish” swam around her. Werner glanced at the spot in the ocean where his mom had just been swimming and yelled “Mother! That pretty thing is a shark!”

 

That didn’t faze Yeager, who went on a few years later to take up skydiving, hang gliding, and whitewater rafting and kayaking—all after turning 80. Yes, the Boynton Beach, FL resident, now 88, has done more than remain active in her senior years—she’s engaged in feats that make many people decades younger quake in their sneakers.

And for that, Pearlsong Press has chosen the retired swimming instructor as the first honoree in their national program recognizing “Splendid Seniors Among Us”—people whose activities and accomplishments after age 65 can serve as inspiration to all ages.

As the first “Splendid Senior Among Us” honoree, for March 2007, Yeager will receive a certificate and an autographed copy of Splendid Seniors: Great Lives, Great Deeds by Jack Adler. The book, published by Pearlsong Press March 15, 2007, recognizes 52 people throughout history who withstood any disabilities of age to continue contributing to society well past their 65^th birthdays.

Yeager, too, has experienced physical challenges. She is hard of hearing due to eardrum damage suffered decades ago when she was “beaned” by tennis balls twice while playing that sport, Werner says. The blows burst her eardrums and affected her equilibrium as well as her hearing. She gave up tennis as a result, but still hits a pool daily to do six laps, and enjoys going to the beach as well.

“Keep active,” Yeager told Pearlsong Press publisher Peggy Elam, Ph.D., who called her Thursday, March 15 to inform her of the award. “That’s the whole answer, I think.”

But the occasional treat also fits into Yeager’s lifestyle. Elam's phone call caught her on the way out the door to get a banana split.

The “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program will honor 12 “Splendid Seniors," one a month, from March 2007 to February 2008. The year-long recognition will culminate with publication of a special Splendid Seniors Among Us Adobe PDF ebook that will be available free of charge at the Pearlsong Press website (www.pearlsong.com).

Click here for a downloadable PDF version of this press release. For a longer version of the press release, click here. For a full-size PDF of the SSAU certificate for Jane Yeager, click here.

For more information about the “Splendid Seniors Among Us” program, see the Pearlsong Press website at www.pearlsong.com.

Pearlsong Press, founded in 2003 by psychologist and journalist Peggy Elam, Ph.D, specializes in books and resources that entertain while expanding perspectives on the self and the world.