Clothing Of My Mind of Thoughts And Pages of Heart

Today is July 19th, 2013. Two years ago today, I had my first article published for The Cockeysville Patch. It was about a blade of grass that becomes a “patch.” I was writing about a saying in the Talmud that applied to the name Patch which is the name of this online newspaper that is read all over the country. One year later, I moved with the editor Nayana Davis with her to The Towson Patch. Together with the two Patches, I have written a total of 510 articles and this one is the 511th article. This was written three years ago and it is relevant today, when I am writing today for Fairfax Station Patch and this is my 18th article for them. I love them and 18 is a lucky number. It means good luck, happiness and health. It has been my complete happiness to write my stories/articles for the Patchs and especially to have such a fine, young and competent editor as Nayana. She is respectful to the writer and is enthusiastic for me to continue on my stories all about ballroom dancing which was my first topic when I applied for this job. She loves dancing, so I hit the passion of her likes with my dance stories. I also include my life when I was a kid in the forties so long before she was born, about work, marriage, kids, being a daughter to a widowed Mom, stories about my Mom and Dad and their family members, cousins, my grandchildren, aunts, friends, neighbors and my always encouragement for seniors to go out and to accomplish things even at this senior age. The editor of Fairfax Station Patch is not known to me yet. However, I love him or her up to the sky (as I use to say this to my children when they were small.) He or she is kind and appreciates my writing and I love being able to write for them, since I live in Virginia now. I quote famous people, not so famous people and I use their quotations with credit given to them and fit them into my various topics and stories. When I was twelve, I wrote book reviews on teenage books for the Enoch Pratt Free Library which is still in the knowledge business. The reviews were printed up and laid on the check-out counter to be taken home by the teens. My young life revolved around going to the library probably four times a week, to gain knowledge for school projects, for homework assignments necessary information and just for fun to take out books to read. I loved to read and going there was a joy even if the old librarians had a habit of shushing anyone who opened up their mouth other than to breathe or cough. In those days, silence ruled and the many lady librarians, who were very stuffy, prim and proper, did not allow more than one word to be said while in there. I even got a job working there putting away the books on the shelves and I made the grand amount of forty-five cents per hour and every other Saturday, a check would arrive in our mailbox for about five dollars for the previous two weeks work. Oh how proud I was to sign the check and Dad would go to the bank to get my huge amount of money for me. Oh how I loved to spend that hard earned money from the boring job of placing the books on the shelves in the alphabetized manner of letters and numbers for the non-fiction section. Sometimes I would get too tired doing this for seven hours on a Saturday; I would just place them anywhere. The uppity librarian once caught me doing that and I got a talking call down. Of course, there were no computerized cards or checkout systems way back in about 1946. I loved to stamp the personal identity card given to each patron using the rubber stamp pad with great glee. I felt very important in this very important job for a twelve year old. When we moved away when I was fourteen that was the end of the job. I still went to other libraries and in those days this is where we got our contact with books of all types. When I went to work when I was sixteen part time after some school days and all day Saturday, I would take my newly earned money making sixty cents per hour and I often went into the book section of the department store called Stewarts and I would buy a book there with my ten percent discount Stewarts card. Oh how proud I was to own my personal copy of a book, rather than to take it out from the library where so many people had turned the pages before me. This was my own, special and intimate book and again there was great pride in doing so. When we bought our first dog, a white Pekingese, my first thought was to name her Paige after my love of books; but then we named her Candy because she looked like a fluffy ball of candy you buy at a carnival. The second dog we bought we named Rhumba after the ballroom dance I loved the most. In 1990 I became the senior page editor of a ballroom dancing magazine called Amateur Dancers. I wrote for them for seventeen years until it folded. Then in 2007 I started writing stories mostly about ballroom dance and the people I met through the years of writing for AD and their thoughts on dancing along with mine. I wrote for several websites including the Fred Astaire dance site. I had always loved Fred and Ginger Rogers, so I felt a closeness to ‘them’ writing for the site. On July 19th 2011, I wrote my first article for Cockeysville Patch and my senior life changed because now I wrote not only about ballroom dancing but about life too. I am ever grateful to Nayana Davis, my special editor who gave me the chance to write for her Patch and the two years have been really a blessed time for me to compose my stories and to see them all published. My totals were 246 stories for Cockeysville Patch and 265 for Towson Patch. When I was a kid, the word stunning really meant you were beautiful. Now it is used often by reporters on TV to describe lots of happenings. Not overwhelming and dazzling as the Thesaurus says. Lord Chesterfield said “style is the dress of thoughts.” I can change that to say for me that my Patchs have been not only stunning for me, but they are the clothing of my mind of thoughts put down on the computer screen, that becomes pages of my heart. . 1 Across Maryland