Some of the Most Amazing Folks You'll Ever Meet Live in Pasadena

I’ve had the privilege of being accepted into an exceptional writers’ group in Pasadena.  It’s sponsored by Pasadena City College and takes place at Monte Vista Grove Homes in the southeast corner of the city, and is entirely populated by retired Presbyterian Church workers.  Except for me, of course.

The folks at “The Grove” have some of the most amazing stories to tell, and it is a joy sitting in and listening to them each week.  Now you can hear them, too, in the pages of Using All the Colors, a vibrant collection of stories and recollections from more than two dozen authors.

I got into the class through a friend of mine, a retired minister who attends the same church as I do, and was delighted to discover the diversity of experience and viewpoints in the group.

While the class began as a memoir-writing exercise, the writers go much farther afield than simply personal recollections.  Told with rare humility and grace, the stories are historical, philosophical, humorous, personal, and at times theological.  They are never preachy.  They resonate with the joys and fears we all have as human beings, offering a hand in friendship to the reader.

They take the pregnant wife of a missionary across the frozen tundra of Alaska in a dogsled, turn a teenager into a seagoing cowboy, land a retired minister on the stage at Carnegie Hall, encounter an angry Taliban commander in Kabul, or reveal the wealth of diversity on Los Angeles trains. 

The title calls to mind a box of crayons. An artist may limit herself to a handful of colors, or dump out the whole box in all its splendor and use all the colors.  My stories are more personal reflections on family life, but the others ride the rainbow.

The writers in Using All the Colors dump out the box and grab handfuls of crayons to take readers through nine decades to places exotic and familiar: a World War II internment for foreign nationals in the Philippines; San Francisco’s Chinatown of 80 years ago; a stunningly beautiful day for man—and bear—in the San Gabriel Mountains; the surprisingly multi-cultural Apple Valley of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans; Egypt, Rhodesia, Iowa, Pakistan, Michigan, England, New England, Brazil, China, and the always charming Tucumcari, New Mexico. 

The book is available through CreateSpace and Amazon.com.  Proceeds benefit Monte Vista Grove Homes.  The collection is edited by the writing group’s facilitator, Anna Zoeller Walker.