Happy Birthday to Me Mum

Happy Birthday to Mary Elizabeth Satterfield Ramey, born May 27, 1914.

She was a nut.

Thank goodness none of it rubbed off on me, or anyone else in my family!

Sweet Music is On It's Way

All my friends, all my fans, all my family, I'm so happy to tell everyone, here is the culmination of several years of arduous writing, rewriting, thinking and rethinking, and just having a good old time writing about a special place filled with special people.


This little book will soon be available in paperback, on Kindle and ebooks, thanks to the good folks at Chalet Publishers LLC. It's the story of two adventurous, funny and indomitable children who embark on an adventure of their imagination that leads them to the solution of a real mystery. Coming from a family of eccentric, self-determined individuals, Lily Claire and her cousin Willie T. have a rollicking, magical and musical good time, and steadfastly face a few scary situations, out on Moonlight Ridge, just outside of a little town named Eden, Alabama.

For information about booksignings and appearances,
please contact me at ramey2001@aol.com.

Great Balls of Fire

My daughter Buffy journeyed to Memphis, Tennessee, braving tornadoes, torrential rain and hazardous flooding, to attend the Beale Street Music Festival.

And who do you think she saw? The Killer, himself, Jerry Lee Lewis. Since I didn't accompany her on this adventure, I must experience the thrills vicariously

Here's Jerry Lee in a remarkable performance of Great Balls of Fire in about 1957. I love his hair!

One of my favorite TV memories is a Jery Lee performance I was lucky enough to see as a child, and I've never forgotten my astonished glee. It was the Steve Allen Show, and The Killer was singing Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On, and there was a WHOLE LOT of shakin' goin on! The host of the show, Steve Allen, apparently got so enthused over the song, after Jerry Lee kicked the piano stool across the stage, Allen began throwing chairs and other objects back toward the performer.

While searching for a recording of this event, I discovered two different occasions, both on The Steve Allen Show, in which flying objects are seen zooming across the stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cgKIGu1QqY&feature=related

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIoHwQTUYS0

Now, that's entertainment!

How to Have Fun in Alabama

Here we are, halfway through April, the weather is beautiful and I'm able to relax and enjoy living in Alabama again! For a while there, it felt too much like the scene of a novel I read: The Terror by Dan Simmons, about a hapless bunch of fellows who sailed their ship into the frozen arctic and met with difficulty. And froze.

I prefer to bask in the sun. My whole self is able to relax when the temperature hovers in the 70 to 90 degree range. That's 20 degrees of Heaven, as far as I'm concerned.

And, speaking of Heaven, that's a pretty good description of the setting of my soon-to-be-released book, Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge. We're working on the cover and the fine details of page design. Naturally, I have to have my picture on the back cover of the book, so what did I do yesterday?

I had my picture made with a delightful possum, of course! The possum was so charming, and the pictures all turned out so divine, it's hard choosing which one is the one for the book cover.

I've never had so much fun in my life! My friend, Bino, once had some sage advice, which I will not repeat here, about what to do when you're down in the dumps and life just ain't worth living! May not be politically correct, but those of you who know Bino, you may ask him what to do and who to go see if you need your spirits lifted.

But, it appears to me that having one's picture made with a marsupial clinging to various parts of your anatomy is the best pick-me-up ever! Bino, and all you down-in-the-dumpsters, you need to try it!

At one point he was rummaging around on my head with his tail stuck in my ear, and we were both having a delightful time of it.

Here's what I call The Pastoral Possum picture.

Thanks to my daughter, Buffy, for a great photo shoot. And thanks to Winston the Possum for being such a trooper. He was a sweety!

Watch here at The Painted Possum for updates concerning the release date for Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge, from Chalet Publishers LLC, coming early in May, 2010.

Library Stories

I’m a librarian at Leeds Jane Culbreth Library in Alabama. We’re just a few miles outside Birmingham, and we’re part of the Jefferson County Library Cooperative. Right now we’re working hard to raise money for a new library building.

The building we are in now is on the main street of our small town, and it was a department store when I was a child. We called it “the ten-cent store.” Now it’s the Leeds Library. The roof leaks and every time it rains, we have to place plastic buckets, trays and garbage cans around to catch the water! So, we really need a new building.

The Leeds Public Library began about 1923 in two rooms above a building on Ninth Street. As public interest and financial support grew, the city leased the building at the present location in 1971.
The official name was changed to The Leeds Jane Culbreth Library on April 19, 1998, to honor Jane Culbreth, a champion of city improvement. Her memoir, Hitching My Wagon to a Star, is available at the library.

I was born right across the street from where our library is now, in a building that was a medical clinic, and is now a dental office. While working at the circulation desk, I can look out and see the place where I was born! When I was a small child, there was a blacksmith’s shop right in back, across the alley from the library’s back door.

One of my earliest library memories is the Book Mobile that came to visit our elementary school when I was in the first grade. That was always an exciting day. When it was our turn to go in to visit the book mobile and pick out a book, it was thrilling to step up into the white library-on-wheels and look at all the books inside. The first book I checked out was a picture book called “Pooty”, about a little black and white kitten. I thought that was the funniest name for a cat, but I loved the book!

Now, I’m writing children’s stories, and hope to some day have one of my own picture books in the library for children to check out.

Did Somebody Grease My Calendar?

Look, now I've missed April Fool's Day. What fool would miss April Fool's Day? Is time really going faster and faster, or is it just me?

So, the time has come to make an announcement! My book, my long-awaited book, Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge, is due to come out around the first of May (of this year!) published by Chalet Publishers. It will be available in paperback, Kindle and ebook format! What a perfect time of year for this story!

It's about POSSUMS:

and OWLS:

and the wild shenanigans of a couple of intrepid children in the woods of Dunnavant, Alabama!

So, stay tuned for further information about upcoming booksignings and appearances, and how to find the book on your Kindle, download it as an ebook, or purchase a paperback copy, signed by the author.

Check out Chalet Publishers at http://members.cox.net/chaletpublishers/index.html

National Pig Day?

I've just discovered that I've missed National Pig Day. How did that happen?

It was March 1st. It's hard to believe I have let such an event slip by with neither rejoicing nor celebrating! Nor oinking.

When I was very little, I had a pet pig. My daddy owned a mama pig who had lots of babies, and I picked one of them out of the litter to be my own pet piggy. He was tiny, about the size of a package of Jimmy Dean's sausage! Nah, he was a little bigger, but honestly quite small. I was just about four years old at the time, and he was small enough that I could easily pick him up and carry him out of the pig pen and into the living room.

To my chagrin, my mother was not glad to have a sweet baby pig in her living room! She gave me a spanking and made me take him back to the pig pen every time she found him in the house. Ah, but he was so precious! I couldn't refrain from sneaking back to the pen and bringing him back into the house over and over again every day. He was so much fun to play with, and was an excellent friend.

My piggy was named Red, and that's what color he was: a brownish red. I can't find a picture of a pig the color of my Red, but just look at this face!

How sweet is this! As my friend Chris Whitfield would say, "As happy as a pig in mud!"

So, while searching for a picture of a red pig, I came across something called a Red River pig! Look at these! I was hooked the moment I laid eyes on these little darlings.











I've got to have one of these! I've never seen anything so lovely!


If I had one of these, I would name him Possum!