Now that I have already accomplished the first goal of having a company site for Emma Blogs LLC, I can actually spell them out.
At the beginning of 2015 I wrote my goals on a white story board under the title, “Goals 2015.”
First I listed my fiction goals to complete the memoir “Greenwich Meridian” in 2015 for 2016 publication. Second, I posted on the white story board: Write short story for Writer’s Digest contest in May.
Then followed: market fiction, publish fiction and sell screenplay.
Well, one month into the new year I have barely touched any of these, except for some marketing and putting together the short story in my head, before I set out to write it. So, what have I been doing I ask myself?
“Blogging, my friends,” I answer.
So, I flip the page of the white story board to Blogging Goals and go deeper yet into my writing/blogging diary because the goals on the board are more long-term.
And there it is, pure and clean in the diary:
A dam in Czech Republic to me resembles a surge of ideas.
1) Have a company blog/website for Emma Blogs LLC. Well, I can mark this one off. Once I read Michelle’s post on goal setting I just started working on the site. Got it done in three hours, drifting back and forth between themes Radcliffe and Twenty Fifteen. It tells the company story and introduces the staff.
2)Get an E-Newsletter out for February along with creating a mailing list. I started mind work for this in the wee morning hours when I cannot sleep.
3) Hook up with affiliates. I already started with Learn to blog and I need to post their logos. I also want to hook up with PR Web and Wild Technologies.
Goal setting does work. I am a living proof of it. I falter when I don’t set goals.
Note: This is the first installment in a feature series about Inspiring Women. It is dedicated to all women who are trying to make a difference and better other people’s lives, as well as their own. In putting together this feature series, I was inspired by several moments in life that in particular stand out.
No.1 A dedication of a Relax, mind, body & soul book by Barbara Heller from my son Jake: “I dedicate this to my inspiring and motivational mother.” Kuba
No. 2 While on a story prior to Mother’s Day, I dropped in at Ace Bernard Hardware to talk about the prizes with owner Charlie Bernard. We talked also about the Lowell Area Chamber and its director Liz Baker.
“You know what I like about Liz, she keeps re-inventing herself,” Bernard said.
No. 3 Again on a story prior to the International Women’s Day I talked to Sow Hope president Mary Dailey Brown.
“If you want to make a difference in this world, seriously consider helping impoverished women. Helping women is the key to unlocking poverty.”
No. 4 At a parents teacher conference at Cherry Creek Elementary in Lowell in mid 1990s: “Mrs. Pala, we do not give up,” teacher Karen Latva said.
Vestaburg woman leads in trail development
Carolyn Kane received an award in Washington DC for trail development in 2011.
Name: Carolyn Kane
Position: chairperson of Friends of Fred Meijer River Valley Trails
Residence: Vestaburg, Michigan
Family: husband Dale, daughters Carol, Kim, Connie, and 14 great grandchildren
Hobbies & Interests: snowmobiling, family
By Emma Palova
EW Emma’s Writings
Vestaburg, MI- Working frantically on a $300,000 grant application from the Natural Resources Trust Fund with an April 1st deadline, Carolyn Kane can get a little stressed out.
Kane’s official title is the chairperson of the Friends of the Fred Meijer River Valley Trails. But her multiple tasks reach far beyond the title, along with the awards for spearheading the development of mid- Michigan trails since 1993.
“I was fortunate enough to retire young,” Kane said. “We planned well and had luck with our investments.”
Kane retired from GTE/Verizon at the age of 52 with an entire space of opportunities ahead of her. As a passionate snowmobiler, Kane was upset when she found out that the Heartland Trail didn’t go anywhere except from Elmdale to three miles outside of Greenville.
“It was a wonderful opportunity to have safe trails,” she said.
At, first, she was elected as secretary of the Friends of Fred Meijer Heartland Trail, and later Kane got involved with the Montcalm Economic Development Alliance.
“I’ve always been interested in recreational corridors and economic development,” she said.
Other than snowmobiling, Kane with husband Dale were avid motorcyclists riding through all but five states.
“Summer after summer we traveled in small groups and we had a wonderful time,” she said.
They also had a fifth wheel and a boat on Burt Lake at Indiana River.
All these were driving forces behind Carolyn’s extensive involvement with West Michigan Greenways Coalition.
“I am a person with a lot of interests,” she said. “I enjoy different things. I’ve never focused on just one thing.”
So, Kane made a natural switch from snowmobiles to trails.
Growing up on a farm near Owosso as the oldest of seven children, Kane learned to be an administrator responsible for her actions.
“I turned into a workaholic,” she said.
Since, Kane learned to take on responsibility early on in life, she also learned to plan for the future.
“When I say I am going to do it,” she said. “I do it. It still boggles my mind that I invite all these managers along the corridor and they show up.”
As a project coordinator, Kane has no qualms about calling people up whether for a meeting or for money.
One of her biggest achievements in spite of its delay was a trail project around St. John’s.
“We stayed the course, but there also has been a lot of interest in trails,” she said.
One of the biggest challenges was naming the trail from Lowell to Greenville because of the many municipalities involved.
“It took us three years. We had to come up with a compromise,” Kane said. “Greenville finally relented the Flat River in the name and it became the Fred Meijer Flat River Valley Trail.”
Today, Kane has four-drawer file cabinet full of trail stuff. It was donated by the Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce. In spite of numerous setbacks, she is motivated by the passion to get the trail done.
“People are so appreciative of what has transpired,” she said.
Over the years, the inflation has taken its toll on trail projects as well.
In 1994, the 42-mile Heartland trail corridor was purchased for $245,000, as opposed to the 37.5-mile corridor from Ionia to Greenville for $2.3 million.
The 82-mile long trail from Greenville to Owosso with a price tag of $12 million is all but complete except for 26 miles.
However, there are still gaps between different communities that would complete the 7th longest trail in the USA. The 125-mile long Fred Meijer Mid-Michigan Trail Network will ultimately connect Greenville to Owosso going through Michigan heartland and farmlands.
These unfinished gaps have become Kane’s biggest fear. When asked what she is afraid of Kane responded:
“Failing to complete this project! Just imagine 52 miles from Owosso to Saranac and from Greenville to Alma at 42 miles, a gaping hole from Greenville to Belding which is 2.2 miles, and Belding to Lowell another BIG gaping hole 14 miles. My image and/or reputation would be destroyed! Certainly, I would not be inspiring!”
Now, that response is typical for hard-driving Kane. Often, she comes into the meetings hauling in binders of trail documents in mid- winter, when others fail to show up. At other time she runs into a deer on her way to an evening meeting 90 miles from home.
Kane also faces chronic complainers with unsubstantiated whining:
“Oh, the trail will bring in crime and trash,” many complained.
“What about the deer on the trails,” others worried.
And then came the biggie: the Federal Lawsuit over the easements of the adjacent owners of the rail trail.
“Michigan has never dealt with something like this,” she said. “Going through the process was fearful. Other states lost the corridor.”
After a long battle, the trail group was able to preserve the corridor and the adjacent land owners were compensated for taking of the property, but they had to have deeds. A handful remains to be resolved.
“It’s amazing what you can do when you say I can,” Kane said. “My husband always says, if there is something you can’t get done, give it to Carolyn.”
Carolyn is amazed at the recognition she received for more than two decades of trail work.
2009 Mid America Trails award for trail work
2011 DNR Partners in conservation award for advancing Rail to Trail work
“I’ve made up my mind, if it’s going to happen,” she said. “It’s going to be up to me. I’ll stay with it until I get it done.”
But, other factors such as health come into play as time goes by.
“I am not going to put my health at risk to get it done, even though I am anxious to complete everything.”
Kane puts in anywhere from 25 to 30 hours a week, and that is without pay.
“How about goals and role models?” I asked.
“As you get older, the long term goals are not as important as they used to be,” Kane said.
“My immediate goal is to get the funding in place and go back to the Belding project,” she said.
Barbara Nelson Jameson with National Parks Service has always been a role model for Kane.
“When I grow up I want to be like Barbara,” Kane said to herself at the first meeting of the Heartland Trail. “She was eloquent in anything she did.”
The other one was Roger Sabine with Kent County Parks.
“He is really someone I can trust,” she said.
Kane is especially proud of being chosen as the National Rail Trail Champion by Rails Trails Conservancy in Washington DC in 2011.
Carolyn Kane, the woman behind the superwoman
Emma: What makes you feel good about yourself?
Carolyn: Making time for grandchildren and great grandchildren, just doing things with them. They all have snowmobiles. Pulling them around and getting some chocolate.
Emma: What do you do for yourself?
Carolyn: My family has always been number one. I enjoy spending time with them, picking them up from McDonald’s.
Emma: How do juggle work and family?
Carolyn: Balance. There are things that you have to give and take. You have to make decisions. The clean house doesn’t seem as important as 50 years ago.
Emma: Do you prioritize?
Carolyn: I manage to set priorities, but they change, when grand babies come. Life changes you get a different perspective and you have fun with it.
Emma: What keeps you going?
Carolyn: I am very happily married. At this stage in life it makes a difference. I am blessed with a wonderful family.
Emma: What is your inspiration?
Carolyn: The Lord wanted me to do this, he has directed me and helps me stay the course. I don’t get to give up. I keep coming back to the target.”
Emma: Tips and advice for other women.
Carolyn: The key is balance and keeping things in perspective.
Lowell, – I make my home in Lowell, a small town in the Midwest. It lies at the crossroads of two major waterways, the Flat River in the northeast and the Grand River in the southern part.
What I’ve always liked about this hometown is the people who live here. They are down to earth folks who earn their living the hard way. Many of them work two part-time low paying jobs with no benefits.
The median family income is around $40,000.
Lowell rowing team on the Flat River.
But, what is most fascinating about Lowell are the people who care about each other. They get together to rejoice and celebrate their successes as in the annual Lowell Area Chamber membership gathering that awards the Person of the Year.
They mourn together when a great citizen passes such as recently Ray Zandstra, and many others who have made a difference in the community.
And in order not to forget community giants like Ivan Blough, the people of Lowell establish foundations and scholarships. The one that honors this truly down to earth man is called the Ivan K. Blough Vocational Scholarship.
The KDL Engelhardt Library in Lowell sits right on the Riverwalk.Being fortunate enough, the town has received bequests from local philanthropists such as Mr. E., that is Harold Englehardt.
In May of 1996, Englehardt’s will set into motion a legacy that benefited the Lowell area community forever. Known as a low-key, humble man who lived his life simply and without fanfare, Englehardt was a self-made millionaire who chose to give back to the community he loved.
Another area philanthropist was late Peter Wege who donated money for farm preservation and nature education in the Wittenbach Wege Agriscience Center.
Wittenbach/Wege Agriscience nature center
The community also fights together; in the fall it is the annual Pink Arrow Pride game that spreads awareness and raises money to fight cancer.
The community honors its veterans, late and alive, in the annual Memorial Day parade.
Main Street before Pink Arrow game.
It stepped up in an uprecendented effort to fight hunger and poverty when local churches created the Flat River Outreach Ministries (FROM) in 1998.
The community collects food for the FROM pantry throughout the year in different food fights like the north side against the south side of the town. Residents bring cans of food to the annual Riverwalk parade in July.
“Can you imagine, all these people bringing cans to the parade,” said former pastor Roger LaWarre of the First Congregational Church of Lowell.
The community loves the arts and it has named the gallery inside Lowell Arts after another philanthropist King Doyle.
It preserves history as local businessman Greg Canfield saved three buildings on the bridge from demolition and turned them into the Main Street Inn,
People of the past, present and the future make up the fabric of this resilient community that is bound together by love and caring.
Lowell, MI- They inspire us. We look up to them. We admire them. We grow stronger by emulating them.
In the “Inspiring Women” series, the EW team will be talking to some of the influential women in the area.
Mystic orchids
How do they handle stress, illness, fame, hardship or multi-tasking in light of daily activities?
What makes them strong and resilient?
They keep reinventing themselves, they assimilate or stand out. They’re comedic and serious. They range from trail coordinators, founders of women’s organizations, chamber directors, ministers to local authors, actresses and artists.
What keeps them going in face adversity, controversy and lack of funding? How do they overcome everyday obstacles that bind or deter us?
They never give up until they reach their goal. Call it determination, passion and love for what they do.
But, most of all they’re wives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters and friends.
They have families and never-ending domestic responsibilities. The husband is waiting for dinner; somebody needs to wash the dishes and do the laundry.
Social pressures require they look good and fit, and up to speed with changing times. Sometimes they have to put on a mask of happiness, while deep inside they’re burning like a candle. They don’t give into gossip and lies, deceit or danger.
A strange engine inside keeps them humming.
Read about them over the next weeks and celebrate with them the International Women’s Day worldwide on March 8.
About the featured photo:
Artist Kathleen Mooney painted this picture influenced by Gee Bend’s quilts.
Lowell, MI- Two years ago, on this day, I published my first post on WordPress. It was my author’s bio that I had later moved into About section. I introduced myself in a story with an author’s photo.
One hundred and ninety-six posts later, I am grateful that I had chosen the WordPress platform. It was a pure coincidence. I wanted to like and comment on the Hawkins Chamber of Commerce in Texas, and I was directed to the press site.
I wanted a blog anyways after Writer’s Digest suggested that every writer should have a blog or a website. At the time I started writing memoir “Greenwich Meridian” and I needed the exposure.
Rediscovering treasures on the Mississippi River
And I fell in love with WordPress for its finesse, sophistication, the variety of themes and the community in general. I found Rumanian colleagues Valeriu dg Barbu and Cristian Mihai, French photographer redstuffdan and many others, whose work I admire. They inspire me in my writings.
I started learning the ropes. Coming fresh from the print media, it was very different. I must say that I like new things, and this was right up my alley.
The constant challenge of change, new themes, new ways of posting, the speed and the prompts delight me.
I feel like I am being pulled deeper and deeper in. Like today’s prompt in The Daily Post “Connect the Dots,” Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow.
100 Posts on WordPress
While sitting in a folding rocking chair in front of the wood stove, I reached into the library and grabbed “The People’s Chronology” and the third sentence on page 82 is entertaining in itself. For once I got lucky.
It reads: “Canon of Medicine by the Arab physician Avicenna (Abu Sina) follows the thinking of Aristotle and Galen but is so well written and organized that it will be a major influence on medical thinking for centuries.”
I couldn’t ask for a better prompt.
EW blog on Gatehouse Media 10 million reader market
Ironically in my Internet discussions, I asked, “Where will the Internet take us?”
Today I realize the real question is, “Where will we take the Internet?”
I took it to the next level. In July, I started my writing and blog design company on WordPress, Emma Blogs LLC. It is a portfolio of 10 blogs that covers a range of topics from health, outdoors, homes to brides and farming suited for advertising, whether affiliate or traditional.
I have great writers like Sarah Harmon who bring their unique style to the blogs, and salesperson Ed Donahue.
EW writer Sarah Harmon in Paris
EW Emma’s Writings also feeds into the Gatehouse Media, a 10 million reader market including the Ionia Sentinel-Standard.
What I like the most about writing on WordPress is that it does have an impact on people and it gets the message out.
Friend Tina Sicialiano Cadwallader asked me when is the book coming out at a Christmas party at the Fallasburg Historical Society.
“We’re going to take a selfie with the book at the Lowell museum,” she laughed.
Last Saturday, I ran into Betsy Davidson, owner of Addorio Technologies, LLC.
“Have you been travelling?” she asked. “I am really enjoying your stories because I don’t get to go to places like that.”
Vizovice, where old meets new.
Longtime friend Ruth Hall said, “I absolutely love reading your posts.”
Comments and advice on the posts are also very gratifying and informational. Following is a comment by Herbal Weight Loss Remedies & Tips at http://url.darkillusion.us/weightloss748972
“Great articles you post on your blog, I have shared this article on my twitter.”
I find the happiness engineering support team very helpful at times when I pull her from my head.
And as I ask in my story interviews, “What don’t you like about so and so?”
Off the top of my head, I really can’t think of a single thing that would stand out that I don’t like about WordPress. I might think of something later as I toss in the bed in the wee morning hours with my chronic insomnia.
Editor’s note: This is the third and last part of the 25th anniversary mini-series “25 Years in the USA.” I published the first part on Dec. 22 on the exact date of the anniversary of our arrival to the country. I published the third part on Jan. 9th.
By Emma Palova
EW Emma’s Writings
Lowell, MI- While working the second shift at Meijer, I wrote the most short stories in the morning. People working at the store inspired me.
My husband Ludek and I started looking for land to build a house in 1994. We found Lowell, a small town in West Michigan. And as we drove past the old Parnell store in the middle of nowhere, I knew I was going to like it here.
25th anniversary of arrival to the USA
“This is it,” Ludek said as he showed me the land. He built the house himself with a few contractors.
Hometown Lowell before the annual Riverwalk Festival.
Once we had the house, I started feeling more at home. I got us two dogs. On top of the job at the store, I started selling real estate for Westdale. That was a unique experience where I met my business guru late Larry Combs.
“How many sales phone calls did you make today?” he asked.
I lied when I said 50. I actually made more like seven or 10.
“Call whenever you can even if you’re waiting for food in a restaurant,” he advised. “I want to write a book “My friend Emma.”
I wrote for American Lists, a Czech newspaper based in NYC.
Larry never wrote the book. He got Parkinson’s disease and shot himself.
I was homesick and every Christmas drove to the Gerald Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids to watch the planes take off.
I was still writing for American Lists, former Czechoslovak Newsweek based in New York City out of nostalgia. I was writing in Czech. The paper does not exist anymore.
The first time I went back to Czech Republic was in 2000, and that was a mistake. It brought back memories and old friends even though it was a different country than the one I had left.
I vowed never to go back again.
“Never say never,” told me the store manager.
During my five-year long stint with the Ionia Sentinel-Standard, I finished my first book “Fire on Water” about the communist experience in 2001. Because as they say, “There are three big experiences in this world: communist, capitalist and catholic. I lived them all.
I dropped the store and real estate and commuted daily 80 miles one way to Plainwell to first paid journalism job for Kaechele Publications. It was a one man office with zero training. But, the editor was an avid photographer and taught me how to shoot.
“Don’t go into a shoot with a mindset,” he said. “Keep your options open.”
Since, 2000 I went back home three times.
“Why do you still call it home?” asked my daughter Emma. “You have lived longer in the USA than in Czech.”
Yes, I will always call it home. That’s where I was born, got married, graduated from Technical University of Brno and had our two children.
And that’s just the tip of an iceberg. I am now penning our family immigration story in “Greenwich Meridian where East meets west.”
It’s like reliving all those years since 1968 when the former Soviet Army occupied Czechoslovakia. Sometimes I struggle with it, sometimes I cry, and sometimes I laugh. Just like in life.
About the featured photo: Ice sculptures in hometown Lowell, Michigan 2014
Editor’s note: This is the second part of a mini series about the 25th anniversary of arrival to the USA.
By Emma Palova
Lowell, MI – The early years in the USA consisted of me packing up my luggage and kids and wanting to go back home to former Czechoslovakia. Once it got so far that my dad Vaclav said he was going to buy me airplane tickets.
I unpacked and my mom Ella with a German neighbor friend Mrs. Gunnell brought over a fortune teller.
“You got yourself in a mess,” she said. “You don’t know where you want to be.”
25 years in the USA
I was torn between the old and the new. The new didn’t seem so great. I remember dad teaching me how to drive on a short stretch of a freeway between Big Rapids and Reed City. Both “holes” terrified me with their nothingness.
“You came unprepared,” he said.
When I think about it today, he was right, like most fathers are. I was unprepared. I didn’t have a driver’s license or a license to practice civil engineering in America, or a desire to do so.
All I could do was listen to the band “Chicago” and cry.
Everything took a turning point when my husband Ludek found a job in Grand Rapids and we could move to an apartment in Kentwood. I took writing classes at the Grand Rapids Community College.
But in the meantime I worked as a clerk in women’s department at a Midwest chain Meijer. Most people have. That’s where I started the store’s newsletter X-Files with a friend. We wrote it on a box from bras. Since Twitter or Facebook were not around, we wrote messages to each other on that same box until finally someone threw it out.
I also wrote for a Czech newspaper former “Czechoslovak Newsweek” that later changed names to ” American Lists.”That was the first time I got into trouble for writing. The article had something to do with religion. Ever since then, I follow the two major pillars of journalism; if you don’t want to get into trouble don’t write about religion or politics.
The kids were doing well in the public schools. Jake went to Challenger elementary and Emma to Kentwood High.
But, then something else transpired. Family members back home started dying. That meant flying to funerals painful flights.
When you emigrate, you don’t think about these things. You are never completely separated from your past, and never fully integrated into the present. You lose old friends, and don’t find new ones.
Gabrielle Garcia Marquez wrote in his “100 Years of Solitude:”
“You’re not home in a new place until someone close dies there.”
authoremmapalova 