Search just our sites by using our customised search engine

Unique Cottages | Electric Scotland's Classified Directory

Click here to get a Printer Friendly PageSmiley

Donna's Journal
March 2, 2005


    True to the suggestions sent along from my publisher I am trying to do things necessary to promote my book, “How To Keep Up With The Joneses,” and I'm beginning to think the authors are all of Jones descendants in the anthology they sent me. I've never seen so many ways they work to get their books before the public. In fact there are so many ideas I'm having to do just a few at a time else I would be lost with too much to do.

     An unusually beautiful day in Oklahoma allowed me to take my daughter and mother with me while I followed instructions for placing a small plastic,  covered flyer with merchants around and about where I will be giving a presentation, in this case, March 10, at the Heritage Center on main street, Newkirk, Oklahoma. My husband printed off three colored copies of the front and back cover of the book. He then took than and had it covered with a good,  strong clear plastic so it will stand alone in a window.

     Karen Dye at the Center seemed pleased with the appearance of the flyer and said she would save it after she takes it out of the window and put it back for the talk I'm to give in September.

     The next stop was at the local library. As I walked up to the door a tall lean cowboy stepped up and stood aside while he held the door for me. This was a nice thing to experience. The small town ways of yesteryear were alive and well I could see. Frankly I had almost forgotten what a pleasant, gentlemanly gesture this was. When I said to him, “What a nice thing to do, I didn't know there were gentlemen left in this world!” he only smiled in the slow stoic way I  remembered of these men when I was a child. Now I know that in this day and time many women are put off by these older customs but I am not. My tired arms, too,  at this age will say,  thank you to anyone who can pull a heavy glass door open so easily.

    The librarian was friendly and spoke easily about the love her friend, whose parents worked there, had for the old Indian School, Chilocco. She was pleased to know there was a bus tour planned. We chatted briefly about my short presentation after the tour I planned and how I was going to try to tie in the various facets of culture which made up the area around the town and at Chilocco during and around 1920. Many German residents in the outer regions of grasslands had farms and ranches. There was even a Lutheran Church, I learned,  where all spoke German until the Federal Government dictated this no longer be practiced. It reminded me a bit of the punishment Native American students received when they spoke their own language at Chilocco. Of course, someone might argue this was necessary to further a stronger unity among Americans else we would have been in the situation compared to residents around the Bible history of the Tower of Babel, whose tradesmen could no longer communicate with each other in order to do their building work. Sometimes the punishment seemed a bit harsh though but that is another story.

      After leaving the library I crossed the street to enter the small quilting shop. My reasoning on this was that more older women might be going in there to purchase fabric for their quilts. If I could catch their attention certainly,  some discussion would be made about the tour. There is a pipeline of information between the residents in small towns. Very little misses their attention and those of us who have been there know this is the most successful advertisement. The plus side of this visit was that I did get to enjoy the many beautiful patterns, colors and order of display in the large variety of fabrics for quilt
making.

      After our business was finished Mother treated us to a dessert at Perkins Restaurant and this ended a perfect afternoon.


Return to Donna's Journal Index Page


 


This comment system requires you to be logged in through either a Disqus account or an account you already have with Google, Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo. In the event you don't have an account with any of these companies then you can create an account with Disqus. All comments are moderated so they won't display until the moderator has approved your comment.

comments powered by Disqus

Quantcast