Islandport Press - Publishers of Northern New England Books and Media

ABOUT THE BOOK
Glenna Johnson Smith writes with eloquence and humor about the complexities, absurdities, and pleasures of the every day, from her nostalgic looks at her childhood on the Maine coast in the 1920s and 1930s, to her observations of life under the big sky and among the rolling potato fields of her beloved Aroostook County, where she has lived for nearly seven decades. The book also includes some of her best fiction pieces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Glenna Johnson Smith was born in 1920 in Ashville, Maine, in coastal Hancock County. In 1941, she graduated from the University of Maine, married, and moved to a farm in Easton, in Maine's Aroostook County. A teacher for many years, she also was heavily involved in school and community theater productions. Her writing has appeared in Echoes and Yankee magazines and other publications. She now lives in Presque Isle, Maine.

EXCERPT
“ I like the sound of the words 'old woman.' They're strong words – earthy, honest. I'm grateful I've survived long enough to be able to label myself by them. And yet, from many sources they've received a bad rap through the years. The young coach says to his player, 'You threw that ball like an old woman.' The young husband admits to his wife, 'I cried like an old woman at that movie.' A businessman says to his partner, 'Don't be an old woman. Take a risk.' And when a young woman hears that her grandmother is going to marry an old friend, she says, 'It's just for companionship, of course. They're old people. But honestly, sometimes they're so cute you'd almost think they're in love!'

"And the commercials don't help. Good old women are fat and say 'Mamma Mia!' as they stir the spaghetti sauce. And the less-than-admirable ones (by far the majority) are absent-minded and silly or petty and crabby. None of them know their way around the modern world; they learn about fast foods and laundry detergents from young-women-in-the-know.

"And then there are the well-intentioned people who always put the adjective 'poor' before 'old woman.' 'Poor old woman, she rattles around all alone in that big house.' It never occurs to them that she may be happily reading all the books and visiting all the friends she didn't have time for in her busy years. She's not necessarily sitting by the window like Red Riding Hood's grandmother, waiting for someone to bring her a cookie.

"Some people consider the words 'old woman' so insulting that they refuse to use them, substituting 'elderly lady,' which reminds me of furs, pearls, and lavender toilet water, or 'senior citizen,' which is a term too recently coined to be trustworthy. I prefer my 'old woman' pictures of weather-beaten faces, gnarled knuckles, and ancient, faded, baggy-elbowed sweaters for going to the clothesline, the hen pen, the woodpile, and the berry patch. ”

FOREWORD
by Cathie Pelletier
“ The writing in these essays and short fiction pieces is lyrical and steady, humorous and yet pensive, nostalgic but always optimistic. That could be a description that perfectly fits the author as well.

The word elder is used in many societies as a term of respect for the older members of a group or clan. With the wisdom of the years, they are the ones, after all, best prepared to counsel younger members, to guide and educate them. This would also be the best word to describe Glenna Smith except that, well, she's so darn young. When I first met Glenna, she was a few years past her seventieth birthday and driving about in a little red sports car, windows down and wind in her hair. Once, she drove me from Presque Isle to Fort Kent in that same car. As I watched her drive, I remember thinking, "I hope there are little red sports cars in heaven." Another time, we sat up into the very late hours of a special night reciting the poetry we both loved. She's an elder, all right, there's no doubt about that. But she's the youngest elder I've ever known.

Glenna has touched so many young people by the example she has set for them. She has taught us all how to face each day with humor, and courage, and the sure knowledge that life is the greatest gift of all. In these essays, we long for the Model-T that Glenna would like to keep in her backyard as a pet. "In summer I'd fill the back seat with pots of geraniums," she writes. By remembering her youth in these pages, she brings back to life percale dresses that cost ninety-eight cents, the importance of hanging on to a perfectly good button, rumble seats, and an old-world politeness we could use more of today.

Glenna writes that she's not up to modern notions such as computers, e-mail, and cell phones because she has "a 1920-model brain." Well, that might be true, but let's consider that statement. It was in 1920 that the League of Women Voters was founded. It was the year of the first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast, an event that probably rivaled the cell phone in its day. Women suffrage was guaranteed when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed. Babe Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees and the "Curse of the Bambino" was loosed on the Red Sox. The first commercial radio station made its debut broadcast, a happening that would match the first satellite dish marching into town today. And out in Hollywood an actor named Douglas Fairbanks married the lovely Mary Pickford. This was the world Glenna Smith was born into, and this is the history she brings with her into the new millennium. Her memories begin with a childhood spent in Down East Maine, with a view of the ocean, instead of those open and windy potato fields of Aroostook County that she grew to love and claim as home.

She is more modern than she will ever realize, and the reason is that she is ageless. She is akin to lichen, that can adjust to any surface, any climate, any idea. I've lost count of the young people who have told me that Glenna Smith is their mentor, their role model, their champion. You cannot counsel the young unless you hear their voices and listen closely to their words. To do that, you don't need the old wall telephone that would be the first Glenna used as a child; nor do you need the latest cell phone, what she refers to as "a tiny spaceship with its eerie blue lights." You simply need the human heart, open to new ideas, patient and loving. Glenna has that in spades.

People often ask, "How did we live before cell phones and digital cameras and a million television stations?" In this book, and in how she lives her life as example, Glenna Smith, our young elder, shows us how. ”