By Georgie Bright Kunkel

There is no end to what one can accomplish in life. Just this week, I sat down and filled a whole page with my plan of action for the coming year 2014. Here’s just a few of the things on the list.

• Try out for a part in a play.
• Keep doing comedy to keep my spirits high.
• Update my family tree.

Since the West Seattle Rosie the Riveter group has diminished to only three of us I sent out a call to any women who worked during WWII and invited them to join our group. Yippee, I already have located three more Rosies. You can’t imagine the stories they have to tell. As you already know, I give talks about my Rosie experiences and Veteran’s Day is always a great time for reminiscing about WWII. I recently heard a talk focusing on the art of interviewing so that the older people in our community will not be forgotten. Hope that you are interviewing older family members for your family history.

And I have a new book to write and plans to continue marketing my late husband’s life story including his ambulance driving during WWII. Speaking of WWII, I certainly will follow the progress of the book UNBROKEN which Angelina Jolie is producing as a film to be released by December 2014. The book mentions my brother Norman Bright and I have just contacted Angelina Jolie to remind her that my brother had red hair in case she hadn’t realized that in researching his character for the film.

After making my debut as a featured reader of poetry at our local poetry reading night I intend to start writing poetry again. You should hear me read my angry feminist poetry from the late sixties and you would know what a tempestuous era that was in my life. Things have improved somewhat but the story of what women did to protest and bring about these changes are not always appreciated by the younger generation who may take such perks for granted.

Another resolution is to get better acquainted with all my neighbors. Halloween was a great time to meet all the children who trooped from door to door with their parents. Even my former neighbor came by with her two girls in costumes that were beautifully hand made. One pranced about in her cat costume with a wonderful curving tail held up with string fastened to her waist. Her sister was an eastern princess in gold edged brocade. It all brought back memories of my own childhood when I dressed in a sheet and knocked on the neighbors’ doors. No, I didn’t dare soap windows but I cut notches in an old spool and wrapped it with string. I could pull this cord making the spool thump on the neighbor’s window causing quite a racket.

What else is on my yearly agenda? Hopefully I will gather up all the genealogical material that I have accumulated to bring to a local museum. Then I can update the family tree by adding all the new births, marriages and deaths. The family tree is a continuous process and hopefully my family will continue adding to the tree as time goes on.

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at gnkunkel@comcast.net or 206-935-8663.