Outside Again

By Anita Garner

Happy people in Blithedale Canyon,
Mill Valley, CA

Finally some of us are seeing each other in person again.  It’s been so long.  It wasn’t just two years of not gathering, it was also a lot of booking then un-booking during our mutual commitment to staying safe.

I was invited to attend an in-person luncheon last week to discuss my book. If you’re new to this protracted book release story all you need to know is that “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” was released last year into the pandemic.  All book tour plans changed, not just for me but for all authors.  Some were cancelled, others switched to zoom appearances.

High praise for this gadget I’m in love with. It’s been zoom-ing with me for a while and now it goes traveling too. I spotted it during a CBS-TV interview with Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny a while back when they recounted their (remote) co-authoring of a new book.  I load songs onto tablet or phone to demonstrate music. Last week’s hostess has Alexa so all she needed was a list of the songs I would play. Alexa had all but one and my trusty iPad carried that one.

This tablet/phone holder swivels,
raises and lowers and has a weighted bottom
(you should pardon the expression.)

We planned to gather in Marin County on a beautiful Spring day.  After not going out much for a while I was a bit behind in the wardrobe department. This trip was a good reason to make the annual transfer. My closet was still stocked with flannel shirts while Spring had crept in again. I put flannel into storage and brought out floral prints.

We were invited to Marilyn’s home to share potluck lunch on her beautiful deck in the trees.  Potluck lunch. Friends.  Trees.  Those things can make me smile for days.

Elaine shuttled some of us up the hill in her snappy electric Tesla.  Tricia surprised us with an old fashioned raisin pie baked in honor of Sister Fern’s pies featured in The Glory Road.  I’d like to stress here that in-person pie is much more fun than virtual pie.  It was delicious.

Another happy combination: Platters of good food and thoughtful conversations. The group was ready with questions and those who hadn’t  yet read the book knew its themes and shared personal observations.  We talked about the South and music and food and religion and family.

As we introduced ourselves around the tables we were invited to state one thing for which we’re grateful. Jan offered a toast for the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson  which was happening as we gathered.

Any writer would be honored to be among this group of good souls and open hearts and while I remain happy to zoom everywhere, connecting in person is a gift I’m moving up near the top of my gratitude list.

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If your group would like to book a Glory Road discussion, there’s a contact form at my website.   www.anitagarner.com. 

“The Glory  Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” is available wherever books are sold. My publisher, University of Alabama Press, offers a discount for groups or ask your local library to order copies in advance for your group in  hardcover, eBook and audiobook.

 

 

 

 

 

Have you heard? Our kids don’t want our stuff.

By Anita Garner

I’ve read several columns lately reminding seniors to pare down, don’t leave it all for our heirs to do.  Lots of reminders about this from AARP. I did pare down some after each parent passed but you wouldn’t think so to look at the number of boxes I still have.

Mother kept everything, not as a hoarder but as a person who knew what she had and why.  She labeled and neatly cataloged containers.  Did I mention there was SO MUCH stuff? I’ve already been through several rounds of decision making about what to keep, what to sell and what to donate.

Thank goodness her songs are preserved so our family can continue sharing the music she wrote and recorded.  Her scrapbooks have also been a valuable resource for me as a writer.  The fact that Fern Jones was an organized keeper of things turned out to be important for future generations. We have professional help with her music (“Fern Jones: The Glory Road”) and song publishing and now there’s a book (“The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” from University of Alabama Press, available wherever you buy books) which shares stories and photos from her archives, all because she was a faithful and detailed keeper of things.

The photo up top is of two small things I choose to keep nearby, representing both the happy and sad.  The pink bowl is from her 1950s collection.  I kept only this one piece. The little brass apple is a bell – a very loud one.  In her home in Palm Springs, when ALS confined her to a bedroom down a long hall, for a while she was still able to ring for us.  She often rang to get one of us to put pictures of Daddy on a chest within her view.  She liked to rotate her favorite pictures of him.

My daughter, Cathleen Fern, has the piano her grandmother played. Fern was crazy for pink and Cath had the piano painted.  This is an old spinet, the kind that isn’t appreciating in value but provides plenty of memories at home.  We also keep her guitar in view. It’s not the best guitar Mother and Daddy owned but it’s the one she played late at night while writing her songs or to comfort herself when she couldn’t sleep. When my brother and I were very young and her playing woke us in the night, she’d let us stay up if we’d sing her favorite ballads.

My latest decision is to take no position about what’s left, letting my daughter choose the next disposition of Jones memorabilia after I’m gone.  There’s still a box filled with Daddy’s Bibles.  His briefcase, which was his preacher’s traveling chapel, is here with sermon notes still inside.  We have old photos and souvenirs from years of touring the Deep South and some of Mother’s correspondence in her fancy handwriting that I’ve read but then couldn’t throw away. Her songs-in-progress are noted in old composition books. Who could get rid of those?

I rationalize this pause in downsizing based on the fact that I have only one child and she’s an organizer and thus potentially better equipped, a generation removed from the Reverend Ray and Sister Fern Jones show.

 

My book is in one of my favorite magazines this month.

By Anita Garner

My gospel-singing family appears in the March, 2022 issue of Reminisce Extra magazine.  I’m thrilled.  My parents, Sister Fern and Brother Ray Jones, would be thrilled too.  This excerpt from my book, “The Glory Road: a Gospel Gypsy Life” continues a years-long relationship with the company that publishes this magazine.

It’s from a chapter about Johnny Cash recording
a song Mother wrote.

Our family read every issue of Readers Digest until the pages were soft as tissue then we passed them along to others.  Readers Digest is owned today by Trusted Media Brands, a company that also owns several other magazines.  Years ago I received a gift subscription to one of their publications, “Taste Of Home” magazine, fell in love with it, saw an ad for “Reminisce” and subscribed. Every other month, it’s “Reminisce Extra.”  Which brings us to today, when my advance copy arrived with a story from my new book inside.

Thanks to Trusted Media Brands’ Mary-Liz Shaw, my publisher, University of Alabama Press and UAP Marketing Director, Clint Kimberling for putting this together.

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Anita Garner’s Website

 

Old Friend

By Anita Garner

  Much more than a Rolodex  

Unpacking a box of office things, I discovered this and now I can’t stop flipping through, stopping, remembering.  You don’t toss out a time capsule. When I’m gone my family can decide what to do with it.  Better yet, it might be fun if they look at some of these cards and wonder what the heck I was doing with that person.

This sturdy keeper of contacts was decades in the making and it never disappointed no matter how it was treated.  Information is stored on here every which way.  It started with blank cards typed on an IBM Selectric.

I see cards typed on both sides and wonder why.  Was a fresh pack of empty cards too much trouble?   I see the point when I gave up typing and stapled on business cards. Many entries here are handwritten and my penmanship has always been awful so some of them remain a mystery, a security system without a password. Write horribly and no one can decipher.

On this distinctly analog device I spy baby steps toward a digital world, cards that say dot com. Online passwords written in ink.  I must have thought a password was forever and that using a Rolodex card to keep track of the internet was an efficient decision.  Ah, innocence.

Here are my agents in two cities, Look Talent and Tisherman.   I remember when Look Talent agent, Joan, was on Geary in San Francisco.  Up I went in the historic, clanking elevator to audition, then across the street for lunch at Neiman Marcus.  Look Talent still thrives but don’t try to find them on Geary.  They’ve moved.

Lots of show biz managers and agents and publicists are here, representing entertainers we featured on radio shows in L.A. back when radio shows were full service. RIP Bill Waite who worked with the Osmonds.  RIP Merle Kilgore, legendary country songwriter/performer turned manager.

I spy a business card for a psychic in Chatsworth recommended by Studio City Esthetician, Claire (she’s in here too) who regularly turned my blonde eyebrows brown so they could be visible in the outside world.  RIP psychic Tom Sexton who, before hello, told me what I was writing and why the original title was wrong and exactly what the new title should be.  I don’t remove cards just because someone has died. They’re my memories and I’ll cling if I want to.

Now my password file is on the computer. I keep meaning to update the hard copy in the Important Papers file, but they change so fast, maybe I’ll just update it on a flash drive.

Is this a eulogy, then, for my Rolodex?  Oh hell no.  I’m not getting rid of it. We started out together long ago and I respect our history.  Flipping through is a fine thing to do on a rainy, remember when kind of day.

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www.anitagarner.com

 

Defending Fruitcake

By Anita Garner

Every year about this time I have to come over here and defend fruitcakes.  If I didn’t, some of y’all would be using them to build tiny houses. They’re heavy, yes, but sturdiness is part of the charm.  A chunk of fruitcake should offer some resistance when you pick it up.  A stomach should know it’s had some fruitcake.  What’s the point if it looks and tastes like other cakes?

I like the ones in a circle with chunks of candied fruit protruding.  I like the loaf shaped cakes heavy as bricks.  I like them all.  I tried to make fruitcake at home a couple of times.  Mine didn’t have the heft and the mysterious bits of things like the ones you can order.  I don’t even know what all those chunks are.  Don’t care.  Old or new, a fruitcake looks and tastes the same after weeks.  Words make this sound like a bad thing, but my mouth waters and I’m about to begin my once a year fruitcake sampling. .

My family goes way back with fruitcakes.  We’ve ordered from Collin Street Bakery in Texas, Sunnyland Farms in Georgia, Harry & David in Oregon and Vermont Country Store.  Sunnyland Farms is heavy on the pecans.  Mother loved pecans in any form so she always ordered a selection of them when she picked up a Sunnyland catalog.

Wherever you get yours, fruitcakes are colorful and weighty and loyal.  They’ll stick by you for a long time.

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Details about my new book, “The Glory Road:A Gospel Gypsy Life” at anitagarner.com

 

Suggestion from a Facebook friend.

By Anita Garner

Nostalgia is a favorite part of Facebook for me. I’m a lifelong broadcaster and we’re fraternal. When we leave microphones and cameras behind, we don’t necessarily leave each other. I belong to several Facebook broadcast groups, at least one for every station where I’ve worked.  Then there are school groups and groups with  special musical interests and groups that celebrate places we once lived.  Bonds form, sometimes with people we’ve never met.  We stay in touch enough to feel like a neighborhood. Most of the time I scan updates but always stop long enough to remark on milestones.

There’s more to each of us than our closest relatives and friends know about.   My nearest and dearest couldn’t know of conversations on Facebook with people they’ve never heard me mention, chats with Facebook friends I’m by now genuinely fond of.  Nothing wrong with a bit of mystery but it can also be a downside to all this fraternizing.  If our families don’t know the people in our chats, they can’t let them know when we’re gone.  More than once I’ve started to wish a Facebook acquaintance a Happy Birthday and find a comment from someone else a while back, indicating the friend has died.

A suggestion:  When Facebook knows a person has died, they should say so.  An icon on the page of the person who’s passed away would suffice.  Adding it near the profile picture or the friend’s name would give us a chance to decide whether we  want to say something personal about the departed.

I appreciate knowing when a Facebook friend has passed away. Some families announce it on a Facebook page, but many others don’t know how to gain access.  Perhaps for a year the page could remain open with the icon indicating the person has died, giving everyone a chance to comment there.

How about a small wreath? It doesn’t have to be black, though that seems to be acceptable in most cultures.  Or maybe green would be nice? Just a little something saying this Facebook member is now eternally emeritus.  Here are a couple of ideas –  not my designs.  I found them online.

 

And dear Facebook, please don’t worry about your aging demographics. We’re living longer, we’re spending longer, and many of us consider a little Facebook time a bright spot in the day.  I hope you’ll accept this icon suggestion as a nod to certain courtesies and rituals many of us embrace.  We celebrate our lives on Facebook and we appreciate the opportunity to pay our respects to the departed.

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Anita Garner Website

 

 

Looking Ahead

By Anita Garner

aka Blinky Faye Jones

Thank you for all the messages and good wishes and encouragement about Monday’s eye surgery.  I miss connecting with all of you. Here’s my update.

A couple of days after surgery the right eye was already showing me things I haven’t seen without glasses or contacts.  I glance at the TV and realize I’m reading the breaking news crawl across the bottom of the screen. The left eye struggles to participate.  If I cover the left, the right clears up everything, but I don’t want to cover one eye.  I want to give it a chance.

My cataract surgery experience was never going to be an overnight everything’s-all-right situation.  All hopes were pinned on the right eye. There’s no mystery here.  My left eye has never been a participant in my view of the world.  It was a condition that could have been fixed in childhood but I was raised by faith healers and no medical intervention was going to happen in our family. We didn’t go to doctors.

I’m about to sound like a talking head being interviewed to promote a new book and if you’re interested, there’s much about this faith healing family in my new book, “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life.”

In the fifth grade an Arkansas teacher sent home a note to my parents saying I couldn’t see the blackboard.  Everything about our learning happened in books and on that blackboard. The school insisted I have an eye exam.  Meanwhile I was moved to the front row, a ten year old’s least favorite spot in class.

Daddy resisted.  He wasn’t rude about it, but he was ready when the principal called on Reverend Raymond Jones at the parsonage.  Back then in the Deep South teachers even came to your house because of missed math assignments.  (I heard from a friend.) It was either get an eye exam, the principal said,  or I wouldn’t be allowed to attend school.

My brother and I had always lied to people who didn’t share our parents’ beliefs.  We didn’t share them either.  Our lies and evasions must have been transparent to adults, but we felt better about lying than about acknowledging one more thing about us that was different.

Off we went, Daddy and me, to a nearby town to see an optometrist who told Daddy it was amblyopia.  Our people called it “lazy eye” which I, the owner of one, did not appreciate.  It could be fixed for good, he said.  “Nossir,” Daddy said.  “We’ll pray on it.”

With every subsequent eye exam, every increase in prescriptions through the years, someone always said too bad this wasn’t treated early on.  If this had been handled by the age of ten or eleven…

This week I’m grateful for science, for a skilled surgeon, Dr. Esther Manolarakis, for a great medical team, and I’m praising my right eye for recognizing that more work remains.  We’re already sharing  many positive experiences. Richer colors, improved distance vision, and I’m told there’s more to come.  Every day I say to my left eye, Come on girl, you can do it.  Just a little more.  Every little bit helps.

I’m still wearing sunglasses in the house some of the time.  My computer screen is too bright for the left eye and the brightness display control isn’t functioning so I dictated this to myself on iPhone, found photos on iPad, and will contact a computer guru soon to fix the monitor’s problem.  Going into surgery this week we knew the left eye would remain limited but there’s still hope for continued improvement as healing progresses.

Thank you for checking in. I can’t wait to bore you next time with all the new things I can see.

Blinky Faye Jones in the near future

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Itsie’s Table

By Anita Garner

When this year’s Vermont Country Store Christmas catalog arrived, I saw this page and thought of Itsie.

Italo Luigi Orlandi lived one canyon over from me in Mill Valley, California in a huge house on a hill.  In his 80s he was still sprinting up four flights of stairs from the steep driveway in the redwoods to his kitchen door.

Itsie loved oilcloth and always had one covering his old kitchen table.  He sat with a visitor sharing instant coffee from chipped cups (“No need for a fancy coffee maker. It’s just me here. I know how to boil water.”) One of his hands was always in motion soothing the tablecloth while he talked.  The oilcloth was frayed, nearly bare in places.  It had already been turned and turned again so there were no more fresh surfaces to see.

He’d recently given up driving his big blue van around town, quit driving voluntarily, said it was the responsible thing to do since his vision wasn’t what it should be.  I drove him places and had the pleasure of his company and his stories from decades spent buying property all around us.

He finally agreed he needed a new table covering. I mentioned some nice ones in the Vermont Country Store catalog.  Plenty of patterns and colors to choose from.  “How much?”  I said their prices are reasonable and their dry goods are impeccable.  I’ve been ordering from them for years.

Before any more tablecloth talk, let me show you the home where this old kitchen table and worn oilcloth resided.

Itsie lived alone in this enormous home in Corte Madera Canyon

No he wasn’t going to pay for a finished tablecloth. He’d rather buy from a bolt at the yard goods store and have it cut to the right size.  I pointed out that ready-made oilcloths last for years and have a nice backing, but he insisted we go to Joann Fabrics in Corte Madera.  That way we could stop at Safeway on the way and get him a can of soup too.  A few minutes later at the fabric store he chose a new pattern.  He had his exact table measurement with him. I insisted on a bit extra for overlap so it would drape.

His eyes lit up at all the new patterns. I tried to talk him into getting two cut to size so he could switch them around.  “Nobody needs more than one tablecloth.” But oh how he loved the new one!  He ran up the stairs ahead of me, eager to put it in place.

Then he immediately took it off the table and trimmed it so it barely covered the edge, removing the overlap.  He liked to save scraps and in this case I watched him create scraps on purpose. Scant as these oilcloth strips were, he’d find some use for them, he said. He was a handyman at heart with a huge attic and a full-floor workshop, both kept orderly and organized, down to the last scrap of whatever he’d saved. He knew where to find everything and everything would be used eventually.

Itsie lingered at the bottom of his steep drive, trimming plants, waiting for neighbors to come by.  It was his habit to invite them upstairs for a cup of coffee.  He’d soon be telling the story about the morning spent choosing a new tablecloth, including specifics about how much money a person could save having oilcloth cut to measure like his.

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Zooming The Hard Way

By Anita Garner

My new book released a few months ago and at the same time a series of  personal events happened alongside the universal one, the pandemic.  For a while appearances that were meant to be in person looked fine until cancellations began again for the second time.  I’ll be talking about  “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” from the corner where my computer resides.

It’s  time to revive still-workable parts of the plan.  Zoom it is. I’m a Baby Zoomer  (sorry)  but even I know what needs to be done before the connection is made.  I do it but then I change it.

My friend, Karin is the opposite.  She also knows what needs to be done, knows what time to do it, has her routine down and is always butt-in-the-chair on time, smiling and looking great. She’s a heavyweight in her field who never leaves things to chance.  Preparing for a discussion with a board of directors about a new contract, you can bet she’s done her research on the organization before all the faces click into place on her screen.  Then there’s her personal ritual she describes this way:

“Hair fluffed up.  Makeup on.  Outfit of the day in favorite colors, spritz of Chanel.  Go!”

Here’s me getting ready: Change out of plaid flannel shirt or a faded tee shirt from long ago into something that looks like a grown-up might wear it, something with buttons.  Spritz water on the cowlick that recently arrived to change what was meant to be a new hairstyle but now must be adjusted because of that piece that sticks up in front.  Move the monitor.  Move it back.  Become fixated on the background that’s showing.  Get up and move the chotchkes on the bookshelves. Now engrossed in re-arranging  the entire shelf.  Back to the chair by the desk by the window. The light has changed.  Change position again.

The call is delayed,  leaving time to look at the background again, not so much for the sake of the people on the other side of Zoomland  but because it’s the first time I’ve seen the room like this.  Some of it I like but most things would look better on a different shelf.  Mental notes about putting this over there and that over here.

Back in my seat just before the new start time.  Lessons have been learned about Zoom backgrounds but now my family is moving into a new home  where I’ll assess and re-assess the view I wish to present on the next call.  Admit I will never be as good at this as Karin.

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I’m joining another club.

By Anita Garner

A friend and I share details of upcoming events in our lives, large and small.  We’ve known each other for decades and by now we accept without judgement our differing degrees of anxiety, phobias and fears of approaching events. It’s good to have a friend who doesn’t think you’re silly when you’re scared.

We laugh at ourselves about the ways we cope and endorse whatever it takes to get through it. This has involved births, deaths, falling in love, falling out of love, marriages, divorces, packing, moving, unpacking, caring for others, flying, public speaking, insect and animal frights, needles, eye drops, nose drops, scary sounds in the night, getting older, and lately more and more medical talk.

We both gave birth during times when pregnant people didn’t learn all that much in advance about what to expect when you’re expecting. We marched into the hospital like soldiers reminding ourselves we’d been conscripted by this little thing kicking us in the stomach and controlling what’s about to happen next. Back in the day, older women told us stories about labor and delivery and the greater the distance between labor and the child’s age, the more dramatic the re-telling became.  How many hours of labor?  Is that even possible?  How big was the baby’s head?  Is that even possible?

Still, labor pains were surprising. Nurses were kind to those of us who went into it uninformed.  Yes, they said, this is how it goes but it won’t go on forever. They taught us ways to breathe. But what worked best for me was remembering stories about women giving birth in unusual conditions, producing a baby and going on about their business. I also reminded myself that every animal in the kingdom gives birth.  It’s going to happen.  It’s going to hurt.  The good news is that you get to take home a sweet little baby.

Decades on, we’re talking about a whole different set of medical issues. Now it’s time for swapping stories about procedures that stack up closer and closer together. This month it’s eyes that require attention. I need more powerful glasses but the optometrist said no new glasses for you, missy.  That cataract has to go first.  I called my friend with whom I share these details. She’s already joined the Cataract Club and provided helpful details.  Nothing but positives were discussed. Medicine has moved so far ahead in our lifetimes.

The cataract procedure comes with the good kind of anticipation. I’m excited about the probability of improved vision and I’ve got my anti-anxiety potion ready in case I need it.  I’m remembering reports of doctors volunteering  to perform hundreds of these procedures all over the world and people walking miles to line up for hours to get to see better and then the faces of the patients seeing clearly for the first time in years.

By now many other friends have had cataracts removed.  The procedure’s  so common and so readily available, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore.  For me though it is a very big deal to get to see better, something I’ve struggled with for decades.

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*Photo from Cataract Club.

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