Creative Retirement -- A Job, but I just retired!

                Starting retirement is exciting. Everyone thinks you are have all that money saved up to go traveling, or buy a RV or a boat, or go on a cruise, or live in another country.

             Well, for 90% of us now, we will be enjoying the first few months until the money gives out, and then settle back to . . . find a part-time job.

              Not anything full-time, just a nice part-time occupation that you enjoy and can make a little money—oh, you know enough to buy gas for that boat, RV , cruise or to send that last kid through college—one of those nice jobs.

              Trouble is, in 2013, those nice paying part-time jobs are already taken, and the application line is 300+ long with younger, more desperate unemployed in your way. And the employers know that “those kids” are more desperate than you are.

Creative Retirement

Anyone who knows me, (and I know me very well), can tell that I am not a good money manager. Heck, I can’t even manage bad money.

But we made it to retirement, and now the true confession time has come. We are not well off.

We are juggling our bills and adjusting to the ebb and flow of the stock market, especially since 2008 and 2009, and 2010, and you know the present.

So why am I emptying my soul on this blog?

Because we have had to learn the tips and tricks (and still are, daily), I want to record it in case any one else out there who reads this just might heed our experience.

But I know I taught high school for 31 years, and I have only been retired for three years—you kids don’t heed anyone’s experiences. So maybe this time, some one might—it could be you.

Ah, memories live on through my daughter's babies.

Oscar Party this weekend--Help me fill my ballot

I and my friend Dara smiled a lot
at the Oscar Party back in 2009.

            Hey, all my movie-loving friends, I need your help on picking the best of the best this year. Send me your choices to win the best movie, actor, actress, song, supporting actor or actress, or any other catagory you like.
      This is a rare year when I didn't see most of the movies nominated for the Oscars. But
      That's not going to stop me from going to a friend's Oscar Party on Sunday night at a local hotel lounge.
      We get all dolled up and watch everything from the Red Carpet through to the last award. We vote and win prizes as we eat, drink, talk and watch the biggest TV screen show we can find.
       Help me win a prize, Maybe the grand prize--Selecting the most Academy of Fine Arts winners in all catagories!

Palisade People #3 -- Knitting Ladies

         Some people can never remember how their friendship began. Others never forget. Of the 10 friends who met at the Palisade Library on Tuesday, Feb. 19, eight have similar memories of why they became members of the local Knitting group.

They met almost three years ago when the library was in the Old Palisade High School annex.  Two friends, Beth Washington and Yoshiro Iznuri, were busy with work and family, but over lunch at Mumzel’s they wondered “if other local women would like to meet to knit and talk.”

Librarian Karen Mahewy encouraged them to start a knitting club and hold it at the library. They posted an announcement for the first meeting on the bulletin board and then advertised it on the library calendar.

“For me it started with the list, a list on the desk. ‘Sign up if you want to come and knit.’ And I signed it. It was in the old library, and we met on a Thursday or Friday, two years ago,” Elaine Korver said decisively.

“We switched to Tuesday because Beth (one of the founders) could not come. That’s when we switched to Tuesday, so she could come, and I could come.” Elaine smiled.

Now each Tuesday morning several ladies arrive at the downtown Palisade Library carrying varying bags filled with their knitting needles, balls of yarn and pieces of bright pieces of their projects. They do not stop until they drop their colorful bags on the tables in the back room of the library. These are the Palisade Knitting club.

“It is not really a club. We are just a group of friends who are busy (and who isn’t),” Beth said, “who like to knit or crochet.”

They come in casually one or two at a time around 10 a.m. No matter if it is two or twenty, this group is not a club with set agenda, goals or a mission. The Knitting ladies are a loosely structured group of friends who meet for an hour or two, just to sew and enjoy the camaraderie of friendship.

“It is a come-and-go type of meeting with a focus on knitting and learning from each other. Yet we are friendly and have fun.”

So when they arrive they pull out their sewing bags and begin working while sharing advice, help and laughter as they talk.

Skeins of color flash through their fingers and every-growing pieces are admired.

At age 84 Yoshiro Iznri is the oldest member of the Knitting Ladies, and as Elaine said, “she is one of the founders of the group,” but Yoshiro points out, “Everyone helps each other.” She has moved the most of all the members before settling in Palisade in 2007.

“I was born in Bighorn, Wyoming. My family moved to California. I and my sister went back to Japan when I was 14 to go to school while my parents and brothers were moved to a Japanese American Interment camp in Arizona. I came back to California after I married, and my son Hero who owns Inari restaurant brought me here in 2007.” She explained her travels and her artistic experience.

“I first learned to knit on a knitting machine when my son was little. Hand knitting was different. You have to pick it up yourself.” This is what she did, but not by reading the pattern.

 “That’s how Beth and the others help me. I can read the instructions, but get lost. They explain it to me, and I can do it.”

“She can just look at a finished piece of knitting, and recreate it exactly.” Beth said.

“Our range of knitting experience in the group is from beginning to expert. The focus is on knitting, and while there is teaching and learning from each member it is a friendly and fun. And everyone does her own projects.”

Newest member Lucille Barber joined the group last month, because she wanted to learn how to knit a Ruffle scarf, the trendy multi-colored scarves that people have been selling at the craft fairs last year. Lucille saw them and said, “I wanted to learn, and it is easy, only six stitches.”

Finishing up number #7 of the Ruffle scarf design, she doesn’t plan to sell her scarves. “Right now, I’m making them to give away to my twin daughters and daughter-in-law or friends.”

Lucille may be new to the Knitting Ladies, but she is not a beginner in knitting. “My mother did every craft in the world, and taught me back in Iowa.”

Pennie Snavely came to the group in December, and she has years of experience in crocheting and knitting. She and her husband Richard took a two and half month vacation to Alaska in their 5^th Wheel last spring.

So she shares with the others her experience of using on-line knitting sources. “I don’t deal well with buying yarn locally. I go to Knitting Paradise.com where you can get free patterns, and information about free sites. I wanted to do an afghan, and went to knittingparadise.com and this lady from Maine sent me a pattern for free. I have gotten information from all over the world.”

Another member Dianne Swett has been knitting and crocheting since she was 12 years old. She and her husband moved to here a year ago from Wisconsin, and she said, “At first I mispronounced the town name wrong. I would tell my friends I live in Paradise instead of Palisade.”

She greatly likes living in her old Victorian house, “not the pretty one, but the more homelier one,” than her neighbor, she jokes.

Dianne keeps everyone laughing as they work. They can tell she is still partial to her old state football team, the Green Bay Packers. This week her color choices for her washcloth project were bright green and yellow.

The only other International traveler in the Knitting group than Yoshiro is Sheila Ruth. From northern England near Westminster, Sheila was 24 years old when her 2^nd husband moved her to Boulder, then to Grand Junction. It took her 20 years to get him to move to Palisade. But in April 2011 she came to the Library, and “I saw the library poster. I thought this would be a reason to get out of the house, and have a little bit of a social life.”

Sheila joined the group in October and says, “I love it. This is a nice group of ladies. We help and share patterns, ideas, food and friendship.” She is always smiling but serious as she works on her 2^nd scarf in the cable stitch, and she has made an afghan.

Not all of the Tuesday morning group can come and stay for the entire time, or even make it to every meeting. According to Yoshiro, they have 20 names on their membership list. Today only nine were there for the full work time. Mary Leonard said she was between projects and left after the beginning, and several others could not make it due to appointments or work, full time or part-time.

Belma Morales came in after the first hour with an unfinished bright pink cowl and hat. She received individual help from Yoshiro. Then she went back to her family’s orchard.

That’s what some members do—Come and go—as they need to do, or stay and talk. The Knitting Ladies are loosely structured to work around what the individual wants and needs.

As the two hours were ending, all but two ladies were still talking and stitching after the noon hour. Elaine Korver and Yoshiro reminisced about the club’s beginning and changes.        

         “It’s exciting to see how we’ve progressed. People can knit, crochet, and weavers. We are having fun. Everybody helps everybody.”

         “I’m probably the one with the least amount of knitting skills in this group. I knitted in junior high to my late twenties. I started with knitting washcloths. Now, I’m doing socks. Now I am getting back into it.” She pauses with a sigh, “Yes, everyone has given us something to learn and use.”

         The clock ticks after noon. Their knitting is rolled up and packed up in the bags. They leave casually, one or two at a time, saying good=bye until next week. The back room in the library seems dull and empty, the cheerfulness and colors are gone.

         Calling them just a knitting group is a misnomer because the ladies who meet each Tuesday are more that knitter. They are a wonderful group of ladies who help, teach, laugh, share, listen and enjoy each other’s skills, talents, creativity and personalities.

         Whether you can sew a fine seam, knit, crochet or embroider, come join the group. Together they form the Palisade Knitting group, loose-knit friends of various ages and backgrounds who share a common thread of sewing. 

Snapshots: My Personal Paparazzi

Snapshots: My Personal Paparazzi

2nd Story for Tribune--Palisade People

Wild Flower Shop still busy in Palisade

Valentine’s Day is the starting date of the busiest season for florists, according to Pat Sommers of the Wild Flower in Palisade.

“Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day are the busiest,” but with Easter, Prom, graduation, birthdays, Sommers predicts her business will not slow down until the middle of summer.

Some people have the misconception that Palisade does not have a florist.

They are wrong.

Sommers started the first flower shop in Palisade, 21 years ago and has moved a few times around town, yet it is still going strong.

“We have never quit doing business,” said owner Sommers who moved back into the original shop behind her house on G 7/10 Road a few years ago.

That’s where it all started in 1984 when Pat and Dan Sommers moved their family to Palisade from Meeker.

They bought land for their peach orchard, but Pat noticed a need for a flower business as well. She asked around, “If we were to start a flower business, what kind of flowers should be have? Everyone said ‘baby’s breath.’”

“It was my husband’s idea. In 1984 we planted one acre of baby’s breath. The next year we put in two more acres. Then we leased two acres from our neighbor. We had a field of flowers, all kinds of flowers, and Dan built me a shop behind the house. That business was just wholesale.”

As her three children grew, the farm became a family affair: Dan and son Patrick worked primarily in the peach business, Sommers Harvest; and Pat and her girls, Kathy and Charlotte, worked more in the Wild Flower business.

In 2000 the girls talked their mom into opening a shop in the downtown building that is now the home of the Palisade Library.

“We shared that space with Palisade Pride. At that time we just grew and preserved flowers,” Pat remembered. 

They expanded their offerings to live flowers and novelty items, and had a good business for about five years on Main Street.

The economy and personal happenings affect every business. The kids grew up, married and were not able to work or help as much with the florist shop, so the Wild Flower moved off Main Street to next door to the Palisade Super Stop for three years.

The new Wild Flower shop over by Taylor Elementary was a success in the smaller single business place, where they arranged flowers for the holidays, school dances, prom, graduation as well as birthdays, anniversaries, get well greetings and funerals.

Pat and her daughters, Kathy or Charlotte, would do single flower arrangements for weddings, parties or whatever the customer wanted. “Sparkle is our trademark,” so any happy bouquet or boutonniere would be dusted with a little glitter.

“I even had one customer order sparkle on a funeral sprays: one for her mother’s and another for her mother-in-law’s.”

In 2008 and 2009 the economy started dropping, and her girls got busy with marriage, children and other jobs.  Pat moved her business back to the farm, back into the original shop. “We had to come back to bare essentials.”

Now her shop is not as expansive as the bigger ones in town, but Pat wants people to know “We are still here. We are in the phone book, on the internet, but we primarily do on-line orders or telephone calls.“

“We work through a wire service called Flower Shop Network. They are a good company to work with.” Customers can select from the pictures posted, and we can follow the design. But Pat and her daughters can also design an arrangement from the customer’s request or “Sometimes I get a little wild. So can Charlotte. It is part of the creative process.”

Pat has heard quite a few times, “We thought you had gone out of business.”

The Wild Flower is still a family business. Pat loves her job. Her husband Dad does the delivery radius from Palisade to Fruita not Glade Park or Mesa. They had to cut back on deliveries up to the Mesa and Glade Park, because of the expense of gas.

Son Patrick has a job as a plumber, but helps in the fields of flowers.

Oldest daughter Kathy Amigo helps when she is needed and can get away from her cleaning business.

Youngest daughter Charlotte Miner helps almost daily in the shop. Remember their trademark is the “sparkle.” Pat loves it when Charlotte brings her three-year-old daughter to work in the shop. “We let her sprinkle the glitter on the flowers. That’s when it is fun.”

Pat Sommers has no plans to retire. “With all the moves, Pat still can say, “I love my job. We are very busy. We have loyal customers. People know where you are and the good quality you do. We give you more flowers than filler because if we don’t want it in our home, then we darn sure don’t want to send it out to someone else’s home.”

So the Sommers have made a complete circle of locations: the original shop behind their home, Main Street shop, at the Super Stop building, and now back to the original.

“I had two very cool shops. We are not flashy out here (the home shop). We just had to come back to the bare essentials, but I have been really busy in the last few weeks. Shocks me, January is generally not that busy, and now we are working on Valentine’s Day orders.”  Pat smiles.

She finishes up an early Valentine’s Day delivery of her original design, called an “all-round” flower basket. The Fire-and-Ice roses, Gerber daisies, dark purple Asian lilies, ferns, small flowers, ribbon and of course “sparkles” of glitter artfully arranged to be seen on all sides of the basket.

Go a little “Wild” with your flower gifts. Palisade’s oldest florist shop is willing to help you.

Just call Wild Flower in Palisade, or order on the internet at any time.

I'm writing . . . Again. . . Back in Palisade

Donnie Bishop -- The Pie Man

Do you know the Palisade man?

The Palisade man, the Palisade man

Who bakes a 4-pound pie in a pan?

Well, come to Palisade and meet the Pie Man

Donnie Bishop only recently became known as “The Pie Man” around his hometown, but his reputation is spreading due to friends, family, and his business cards that proclaim his art in baking pies, especially, the “4 lb. fruit pie.”

“I have cooked all my life, just for family and friends,” this 55-year-old bachelor explained modestly. “I didn’t start baking so many pies until two years ago.”

After working for seventeen years, Bishop lost his job in 2010, due “to the economy.”  He didn’t want to move away, and his family home is surrounded by peach and apple orchards and fruit stands, so he does seasonal work for his neighbors and friends in their orchards and fruits stands.

             It wasn’t until summer of 2011 that everyone discovered his talent for baking.

“I took four or five pies up to the fruit stand, and Mrs. Bikki (the owner of Farm of Liberty) put me to work. She told me, ‘You make the best pies. You bake them. I will sell them.’ 

“I baked 126 peach pies in August and September that year (2011),” he said smiling as big as one of his pie pans as recalled the neighbor lady who cared so much about him after his mother died. “She kinda adopted me as her third son. I do odd jobs for her all the time.”

Last summer is when he started his signature pie: the 4 lb. fruit pie, just to see if he could do it.

“I was working at a fruit stand. I’d bake two or three pies, and sell them that day. I’d wait two or three days and make some more. One day I put one on the scales; it weighed 3.87 pounds.” He laughed at his experiment, “I thought, I can improve that. I just kept stuffing and stuffing more fruit in there until I had a pie that high, at 4 lbs even.” Now all of his fruit pies are four-pound beauties.

Donnie had no formal cooking or baking lessons, everything he learned from his mother.  “I was five when my mom taught me how to cook. She was a wonderful cook. She didn’t write down recipes. She just kept them up here,” he pointed to his head, smiled and continued. “She didn’t teach them by the book. You had to watch, watch very carefully to catch all the little details.”

Donnie must have watched well because he has been cooking and baking for 50 of his 55 years, but not professionally.

“I was always the cook when we (family and friends) went to hunting camps. I would make up four or five pies, freeze ‘em, take ‘em and bake them in a Dutch oven then bury them in the ground.” He looks up with a twinkle in his eyes and laughingly said, “If I didn’t bring the pies, they would shoot me.”

After two and half years, Donnie’s favorite remains peach because, “I live in Palisade surrounded by the peach orchards, and because I made so many that first summer.”

But he can make any kind of pie, and lots of them, it seems. “This was the first year to take orders for the holidays. I made a total of 65 pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas. “

Also, he added a variety of cream pies to his pie making, which met with success from his friends around Palisade.

On National Pie Day, Jan. 23, Donnie surprised some of his Lion’s Club members with cream pies. “That was the best coconut cream pie I’ve ever eaten,” complimented Jane McFarland, Club secretary.

Donnie’s sister Cindy Kubicek prefers his variations on the Peanut Butter pie, “It is good with whipped cream, but add a little chocolate on top or carmel swirled in. Yumm, delicious.”

He has built up his menu to 13 pies, “a baker’s dozen,” but he doesn’t have a finalized list because he likes to “improve them. Or at least I try to.”

He likes to customize the pie according to what the person wants, or ” If some one gives me a recipe or tells me about a favorite, I will try it, and give it my personal twist.”

The most unusual request he has completed was for a green tomato pie.

“Some friends said they really wanted a green tomato pie like their grandmother used to make. I made it, but they said it wasn’t quite the same.

“When I saw the recipe, the grandmother had used vinegar in it. I didn’t use vinegar, but I thought mine was okay. It tasted just like apple.”

            He does more than pies. He has friends asking for his own jars of salsa, which he makes from his own garden.

According to Cindy, his sister who moved back home in 2010, “He does all the cooking here. All my brothers cook better than me, but Donnie does it best.”

            Donnie Bishop has been a proud member of the Palisade Lion’s Club for the last five years. A friend invited him to a meeting, and he decided to join because, “They do a lot for people, the dues are much, and you don’t have to talk much.”

His friends knew he was a cook, so they asked him to be a cook for almost every event they sponsor.

            “I make the chili and the potato soup for the Chili Supper fundraiser.  Then for the Peach Festival, we meet the night before at Alida’s Fruit to chop peaches and mix up the spices for the non-alcohol margaritas to freeze to sell at our booth the next few days.

“And I especially like to flip pancakes at the Pancake Breakfast.  I don’t bake for any stores or restaurants, or the Lion’s Club.”

            He is just as proud of his volunteer work in the community as his hobby of baking pies. Donnie is always there when the Lions do fundraisers or distribute items, such as the bicycles at Christmas or laptops to Taylor Elementary students, or building new playground equipment near the Palisade pool.

Because of all the work he does for the community, Donnie was recognized as “Palisade’s Lion of the Year” and “Humanitarian of the Year” in May 2012 at their annual awards banquet.

Life was not all rosy for The Pie Man before 2012. The main family house had been destroyed years before, so he had moved into “the Creamery” building behind the homestead. A fire in the fall destroyed that kitchen in his little house on his family’s original plot of land, but he fixed it up himself, added additional space under a new roof. Now he has more baking ovens and freezers ready to help with his growing pie-making business next summer.

For Christmas he got a new cookbook.  These cold days and nights have kept his home kitchen experimenting and “improving” as many of the 200 Award-winning Pie Recipes, he can, and attempting to make all 200 pies while helping others in the community.

This 55-year-old bachelor is one of those long-time, hard working neighbors who are taken for granted for his help and kindness, until something happens in his life that brings out a hidden talent that he has been doing all his life.

If you go craving a traditional pie, “just like Mom used to make,” or wanting to try a new version customized “like no other you’ve ever had” remember there are no signs of advertisements or directions pointing to Donnie Bishop’s kitchen. Check at the local fruit stands or orchards, ask for “The Pie Man,” and place your order.

Donnie Bishop has to make and bake your pie personally.

He’s that kind of a nice guy.