A Bit of Earth Blog Tour
A Bit of Earth
By Wendy Crisp Lestina
Genre: Memoir; humor
A Bit of Earth, published by Lychgate
Press, an independent press in Corvallis, Oregon, is a memoir that begins in
1980 with the theft from a car parked on the streets of New York City of my
father’s Silver Star medal, which was awarded to him for his heroism during
World War II—heroism that resulted in his death. The book ends,
22 chapters later, with its unlikely recovery, 34 years later, in 2014.
The story in-between, life stories that begin before I
was born and take place in various settings (farms in northern California and
tiny towns on the Minnesota prairie; Los Angeles and New York) is a
kaleidoscope of stories about a life—mine—influenced
by a dead father’s spiritual admonition to "life a big life, as big as you
can make it, big enough for both of us.”
A Bit of Earth is both a personal story, filled with
details of people and places and things that are unique to my experience, and a story about everyone whose
childhood and adult life began in the atomic age and wove through a world in which
long-standing rules were subject to revision or dissolution. Everyone seeks
ways to survive, cope and—occasionally—master this challenge by finding a home,
something to hang on to, a piece of earth. My way is humor. This is, mostly, a funny book.
About the Author
Wendy Crisp Lestina is the author of five books: When I
Grow Up I Want to Be 60 (Penguin/Perigee, Spring 2006); Do As I Say Not As I Did
(Penguin/Perigee, 1997); From The Back
Pew (2003); Old Favorites From
Ferndale Kitchens (1994); and the best-selling 100 Things I’m Not Going to Do Now That I’m Over 50 (Penguin/Perigee,
1995).
Her career has
been as a magazine editor (Savvy, Datamation, among others) and a public
speaker (as the spokesperson of the
National Association for Female Executives). She has appeared on dozens of national television programs, including Oprah!, The McLaughlin Group, the Today
Show, and Good Morning America. Her
op-ed pieces have been published in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Portland Oregonian, and heard on Oregon Public
Broadcasting.
Since 2004,
Wendy has directed over a dozen documentary videos, including Saving the Queen, produced under a grant
from CalHumanities; and Letters Home,
which won the Western History Association’s Autry Public History Prize in 2011.
Her weekly newspaper column, “From the Back Pew,” has won three national awards
for both “most serious” and “most humorous” from the National Newspaper
Association. In 1997, Middlebury College (Vermont)
awarded her an honorary doctorate for her work “on behalf of women and
children.” She holds a B.A. (English) from Whitman College (Washington).
As a volunteer, Wendy
served eight years on the national board of directors of United Methodist
Communications (Nashville). She was a seminar leader in Bedford Hills
Correctional Facility (New York); she coordinated nonprofit fundraisers in New
York and Humboldt County. She is now the president of the historic Ferndale Cemetery Association.
Wendy and her
husband, John live on the family farm outside of Ferndale, California where
they are hosts of an Airbnb that serves dinner.
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/1947WaldnerFarm/
On Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2h0WrLu
On
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2hXjXcg
On
B&N: http://bit.ly/2hJNPWG
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