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Beautiful Women over 50: Kathy, Freelance Editor

Friday, August 6th, 2010

My friend, Kathy, is making her living these days as a freelance editor, and a new book that she developed and edited has just come out. I’m particularly excited about it–and not just because Kathy is the editor. It’s called Craft Hope: Handmade Crafts for a Cause, and it is written by Jade Sims (a beautiful woman under 50!) Here is how Kathy describes the book’s origins, in an article featured on the website of Lark Books, one of the premier publishers of craft books in this country (to read the whole interview, click here):

A year and a half ago, I was tooling around on the Internet, half goofing off from my then-job as managing editor at Lark Crafts and half hunting for book ideas. I wanted to do a book that offered both beautiful craft projects and a way to make a difference in the world, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. I googled “craft” and “charity,” probably for the 20^th time in months, and this time I landed on the recently launched Craft Hope site. As soon as I saw the Craft Hope logo, I knew I loved the aesthetics of Jade Sims, the site’s creator. Part way into her description of the first project—sewing pillowcase dresses and bandana shorts for a children’s shelter in Mexico—I knew I loved Craft Hope and had found my author. What I didn’t know was that I’d also find a friend.

Kathy

After looking over this wonderful book, I asked Kathy to let us feature it on the blog. I also asked her to send us a description of the book in her own words. What follows is what Kathy, our featured beautiful woman over 50, sent me from her home in Charleston, South Carolina.

The book, she says, “tells about crafters using their passion to help those in need. Part of the movement of crafts online has been the tremendous number of people sharing their love of crafts through personal blogs. Jade Sims was one such crafting/blogging mother in Austin, Texas. After a few years of successfully blogging, she began to wonder if she could find more meaning from this mix of craft and community, so she launched Craft Hope, an organization that combines love of crafting with a desire to help others. Her first project,” (the pillowcase dress project described above), “brought a surprisingly large response. Her next project, handmade cloth dolls for an orphanage in Nicaragua, resulted in over 400 dolls sent in from all over the world. In July, she shipped 2,614 handmade blankets, booties, and beanies to infants in orphanages in India. These items were sent to Craft Hope from crafters in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, England, Scotland, Holland, and Malaysia. Crafters in more than 100 countries now follow the Craft Hope site, and the audience just keeps growing with each project.

The book Craft Hope presents photos, instructions, and templates for 30+ craft projects by top designers, each matched with a specific charity and with alternative suggestions for local places to contribute the item. It also highlights the charities that are being helped through Craft Hope.com. There’s information on how to give locally, how to give thoughtfully (making sure items are appropriate and useful), and how to empower those you are helping. One dollar from the sale of each book will go to Global Impact, an organization representing more than 50 leading U.S.-based international charities.”

So, to all our crafters out there, can you think of a better way to spend your time than working on some of the following projects to help Jade Sims with her important work?

Pillowcase dresses for girls in a shelter in Mexico
Cheerful quilts for homeless children
Soft dolls for orphans in Nicaragua
Patchwork Pillows for families in transition
Sock monkeys for children in African communities affected by HIV/AIDS
Knit scarves for teens who have aged out of foster care
Soft puppies for children convalescing from cancer treatment
Art Kits for children undergoing heart surgery in Iraq

By the way, here’s what the book looks like:

You can purchase it on the website for Barnes and Noble.

Tags: Beautiful Women >50, Books, craft books, crafting for charity
Posted in Beautiful Women >50, Books, Hobbies, Products | No Comments »

Eat Pray Love: the movie

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

: Sadhvi

I remember reading the book, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert when it first came out in February 2007. It was so good that I didn’t stop until I was done, and I continued talking like Ms. Gilbert for a few weeks after. Then again, I also dressed and talked like Diane Keaton’s character in the Woody Allen movie, ”Annie Hall” for a long time after seeing it. I guess I’m just a wee bit impressionable, no?!

I knew when I finished the book that it would be made into a Hollywood movie at some point, and sure enough, Julia Roberts bought the rights shortly after it came out. She stars in the movie that is coming to the screens next month. So if you have NOT read the book, DO! The book is gonna be hard to beat.

Here’s the trailer, take a look, and hopefully, we will all enjoy a good film this summer taken from a great book!

Tags: eatpraylove, EatPrayLove the movie, julia roberts eat pray love, oops50movies, sadhvisez movies
Posted in Books, Entertainment, Love, Movies, Relationships, Sadhvi Sez, Spirituality, Travel | 2 Comments »

Beautiful Women over 50: Jean Boone Benfield

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Jane

Jean Boone Benfield decided in her early seventies to do something she had never done before: to write a book. Jean was born in Buncombe County, NC, and the book, Mountain Born, tells about her life growing up on a farm. Her first inspiration for writing the book was noticing that a lot of the “mountain” expressions she’d heard during her growing-up years were disappearing before her eyes. So, she decided to write them down. She started taking notes on little pieces of paper and then in notebooks. And then one day, her sister-in-law suggested that she put them in a book: phrases like “soft as a pocket full of mice” or “pee out the fire and call the dogs”.

Jean’s first plan was to just make a permanent record of all that wonderful language, but one thing led to another, and the next thing you know, she was writing about her childhood and her parents and growing up poor in Western North Carolina and Asheville during World War II, and on and on.

Jean Boone Benfield

Jean’s book, which is self-published, is worth a read, not only if you have an interest in what it was like to grow up in the southern Appalachians of the forties and fifties but also if you like etymology or are interested in the history of Western North Carolina—or if you just like to add interesting phrases to your vocabulary, especially ones with homespun wisdom, such as “Flit like a butterfly from flower to flower and land on a pile of cow crap.”

I had lunch recently with Jean, and she told me about how she’s descended from Daniel Boone’s brother, Israel. She also told me that another of her motivations for writing the book was being fed up with all the “silliness” that is in books about mountain ways or mountain language, such as the “hillbilly books” that you can buy at tourist stops on the highway. She wanted to, whenever she could, show the history and derivation of the words or phrases she was quoting. This adds another interesting layer to the book for students of language. As Jean said, she had to do “a lot of old-fashioned research” for parts of the book. (more…)

Tags: Beautiful Women >50, Books, writers, writers over 50
Posted in Beautiful Women >50, Books, Entertainment, Family, Main, Relationships | 1 Comment »

Beautiful Women over 50: Writing My First Book

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Annette Dunlap is an independent scholar and author. Her book, Frank: The Story of Frances Folsom Cleveland, America’s Youngest First Lady, was published by SUNY Press in 2009. She lives in North Carolina and is hard at work on her next book (because she’s not getting any younger). She and her husband have four children, one grandchild and another one on the way.

My 50^th birthday occurred 10 months after my father died. Those two milestone events – passing the half-century mark and losing a parent – starkly reminded me of my own mortality. My new mantra was, “I’m not getting any younger.” Writing a biography had been a dream ever since I was in elementary school, and it was now time to move from ‘dream deferred’ to ‘dream realized.’ My new mantra became, “I’m not getting any younger; so, if I’m serious about writing a book, I’d better get with it.”

The book I planned to get serious about was a biography of the nation’s youngest first lady, Frances Folsom Cleveland. I had begun researching Frances’ life in 1994-95, when I was a marketing professor at a small liberal arts college. The school laid off all of its non-tenured faculty in 1995, and I went on to run a consulting business for the next six years and dabble in a career change or two. My 50^th birthday occurred at a time when I was in the throes of deciding what I was going to be “when I grow up” (read: I was unemployed). For once, issues of impending mortality took precedence over how much money was in the bank account.

Two months after my 50^th birthday, (which, for the record, was five years ago), I attended a women’s writers’ conference at Salem College. One of the break-out sessions I went to was entitled, “How to write a Book Proposal.” An hour later, I had my game plan. For over 10 years, I had written strategic plans for businesses as my business, and that, I had just learned, was all a book proposal was: define your target audience, describe how the book meets the demands of the target, tell how you’ll market the book, and show why you’re qualified to write it.

I dug out my research on Frances (there are certain benefits to being a pack rat), drafted my three sample chapters, wrote the book proposal, and sent the material to one of the agents who had been at the conference. She contacted me within the week and suggested I consider a university press. I took her advice, selected three possibilities, and had the proposal accepted by SUNY Press.

In retrospect, I think I did a better job of writing biography at the age of 50+ than I would have done had I written it in my 40s. Being older gives me more perspective and a better framework within which to examine and handle the experiences of someone else’s life. For example, Grover Cleveland, who was 27 years older than Frances, died when she was 39. He left her with four children to rear on her own, and the youngest was only five years old. At 40, I certainly could have understood the challenge of rearing children alone, having four of my own. At 50, however, I could sense, even more, how demanding it had been, and I could also understand Frances’ line to a friend upon her re-marriage (at age 50), which went something like this: “I feel like an entirely new person.” (more…)

Tags: biography, Frances Folsom Cleveland, women over fifty, writers over 50, writing
Posted in Beautiful Women >50, Books | 2 Comments »