Welcome to My Official Blog
My Beginnings
I was born Lotta Vesta Jenvey in Wheatland County, Montana, in 1926 (always called “Lottie”). My first home was a 4-room log cabin that housed many relatives. My father and his brothers were wheat farmers and sheep ranchers. My second home, age 4-10 years, was an abandoned 2-story structure on an open prairie with barn and brooder house; and I now had a baby brother. My first school was but one room with a full basement in Living Springs, but there was no spring anywhere close; the other students were mostly my relatives. Significant to me was my first teacher, grades 1-4. I believe that Anne Benson had much to do with my becoming a perennial student, and she remains one of my heroes today. . . . Every Christmas time we did a big pageant for the wide community, even with just four students; and the community gave back, usually in something like oranges. I remember one year playing the witch in “Hansel and Gretel” and getting pushed through the oven door into the arms of someone there to catch me. . . . Another year I kept calm and quiet on stage a real live sheep. How did I do that? I don’t know. . . . Years later I had the good fortune to spend Anne’s 99th and 100th birthdays with her. In 1936 my family returned to the log cabin on Careless Creek, this time as the sole residents. Our neighbors were a family with nine children, my grandparents, and two of my uncles and their families. Here I had another one-room school, this one housing the teacher. I liked Miss Carpenter, too, and much enjoyed her special invitation to spend some time at her home in the City of Harlowton (the County Seat of Wheatland County) the following summer. My last Montana teacher, my 6th grade teacher, Miss Jewel, coached me to a first place in the annual county-wide declamation contest.
A Dramatic Life-Changing Move
By this time in 1938 my father and his brothers had a house-building business in Sacramento. With the other relatives all preceding us, my family and I witnessed the final sale of belongings on the ranch and then left in a pickup truck with our remaining things and my brother and baby sister. This was the beginning of many changes for me—physically and emotionally—a very big city, a huge classroom of students all my own age, my mother’s rationalizing any action she wanted to pursue, a school district problem which I tried to handle myself to remain in the same school (but failed), and within a few months the death of my cousin Arlene, my constant childhood playmate and closest friend. . . . My mother’s need to keep changing houses brought me to Stanford Junior High School to begin the 8th grade. Here my math and homeroom teacher soon suggested that I would do well to skip the low 8th and transfer to a high 8 accelerated class. I made the move without consulting my parents, and junior high school was a breeze, even my capturing the girls’ scholarship cup (best grades) upon graduation from 9th grade. (It took a few years for me to learn that now I had to sign my name “Lottie” in order to be called “Lottie”.)
High School and College
School was now very much the center of my life. I planned a combination college prep and business program and had a wild dream of becoming a foreign correspondent. A fast typing speed plus shorthand always got me a nice summer job with the State. Straight A’s in everything but U.S. History! The high school’s blackout rules during the war years required our having all our club and activity meetings in members’ homes—a good way for me to be able to socialize—and I got lots of practice with the science club, math club, Latin club, and scholarship club. I participated in the Girls’ Athletic Association and received my letters; in my senior year I was Student Body Historian. Extra-curricular activities at my junior college, however, were non-existent during the war years. My favorite classes there were German, psychology, zoology and badminton. . . . My high school class gave me a cash scholarship, and I was graduated from Sacramento JC “with great distinction” and an AA degree in one and one-half years. I was eager to transfer to UC Berkeley for my junior year, and here I emphasized fun and friends—which not unexpectedly resulted in a year of declining academics. . . . I chose to go to the University of Texas for the 1946 summer session. However, my being away from home during my parents’ divorce seemed a good idea; so I stayed a year and received my BA in zoology in June, 1947 (8th decile).
More School and Soul Searching
For the next 10-12 years I traded hours for dollars in many jobs trying to get clear on my values and just who I was. I worked for attorneys, for the patent department of a pharmaceutical house, as lab researcher in UC parasitology, and for the county probation office for a few examples. I was always ready for more course work. There was more schooling to earn two teaching credentials; but classroom teaching wasn’t my thing. I enjoyed doing physical education, but I didn’t enjoy my relationship with my students doing academics. Being a hospital pathology secretary connected me with my science background; so I took the med tech courses to become a medical technologist and added a cytology course at UCSF to screen smears for cancer cells. I found an apprenticeship in San Francisco—not a good one, but I filled in with help from other med techs, studied, took my State boards and landed a great job at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley.
Marriage and Children
Through my role in organizing some weekend activities for the singles groups in the Unitarian/Universalist Churches in Northern California, I met and married a Canadian school teacher, teaching in Sacramento. I soon had two beautiful children—but not a happy union A neighbor cared for my 2-year-old daughter, Judy, while I went to deliver my son, Ted, at the same hospital in which his father had just had critical brain surgery, followed by a paralytic stroke. My husband went from private hospital intensive care, to behavior-based ejection to the County Hospital, to a special rehab center for therapy that led to full recovery from his stroke. This was certainly a time for soul searching. After a year and some therapy myself, I concluded that my raising two children would be much easier than raising three, and I ended the marriage. In 1968 I managed to buy a home with a huge back yard. Fortunately, with my background, I was able to secure good full time or part time work at will. This eased the management and care of my children and their activities. At this time my interests included my children’s nursery school, their growing activities, camping, gardening, reading, many local theaters, home crafts, photography, political groups, environmental groups, and the California Native Plant Society. . . Both children excelled in school—their high school teachers telling me at Ted’s graduation that they’d be missing not having a Jenvey to teach.
Getting Creative with My Own Life
Getting creative started with my sitting with my three-year-old daughter through several creative dancing sessions for her to be ready to participate; I got turned on to the teacher’s methods and signed myself up for her adult class. (This was Gertrude Knight, another one of my heroes.) and this ended up with my teaching creative dancing to the “Almost Kindergarden” in San Mateo that year. I continued to enjoy Gertrude’s classes for many years. I turned creative again with quilt-making, doing more than 100 projects. And while my kids were working on their advanced degrees, I found my creative side again through competition in many camera clubs. I had a keen visual eye for photography, particularly wildflowers; so I planned that after I retired, I would spend six months of each year, as long as it interested me, traveling all over the Western States, Alaska and Hawaii photographing wildflowers. I wound up my job as bookkeeper at Silicon Valley Printed Circuits on my birthday in 1991; then that is what I did. Real freedom! Truly a dream! – The entire summer of ’93 in Alaska and around and around the Western States until ’96 (when an undiagnosed disability hit my son). I do consider myself a professional wildflower photographer. The following Squidoo article describes my first dream: http://squidoo.com/MyWildflowers.
What Will Tomorrow Bring?
I am now an octogenarian with a full-blown interest in internet marketing and a life-long passion for living in harmony with Nature, helping others along the way. A former medical technologist, I remain a member of the Women’s Health Initiative, having been a participant in their research for many years. In February 2012 I received their invitation to join the WHI Long Life Study. Now I have the opportunity to meld my two major interests, occasionally mixed with some stories of personal development along the way. I have had well over a year’s exposure to Attraction Marketing and a 45-year + exposure to Shaklee, the #1 natural nutrition products company in the US (which has only gotten better). I am learning every day. I am particularly interested in writing articles on different aspects of health for this blog and shorter articles for article directories and my new blog: http://lottievjenvey.com. Then I can use this fascinating internet as I benefit from Shaklee’s anti-aging supplement, “VIVIX” and write about anti-aging and health.