Biography

Carol Foreman was born in a village in New York State back when it was still quaint and the GM plant was still there. She was graduated from Washington Irving High School when it was still a high school, and she earned a B.A. from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, that was MacMurray College for Women when she enrolled.  MFA? No such thing. So much has changed.

Her first job out of college came through the help of Pete Akers, the Managing Editor of the Chicago Sun Times.  She became a Research Assistant in the editorial department at Field Enterprises in Chicago and left the company as an Assistant Editor on the staff of World Book Encyclopedia. As Project Editor at Science Research Associates she directed the publication of three Reading Labs, hiring and supervising editors, artists, and writers and hounding the production department about schedules.

As Carol Brockfield (marriage chapel in Reno) she served as  Developmental Editor at Educational Development Corporation in Palo Alto, California; Freelance Editor in the S.F. Bay Area, and Consulting Editor at Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich in San Francisco. She was Director of Communications for a national seminar company when she began dealing in paper memorabilia.

Going to Europe to buy business inventory and setting up at the occasional East Coast trade show to sell seemed more like pleasure than work. As a  regular on the  West Coast paper show circuit in large cities from Seattle to San Diego, she enjoyed meeting people and finding treasures for customers. (See Postcards & Ephemera.)

It was family research that took her nose-to-the-ground across the state of Pennsylvania and to southern Poland. Long before the days of  internet  “armchair genealogy” she did it in person–writing letters of inquiry and haunting east-coast county courthouses for pertinent records. She’s now hit a “brick wall”  somewhere in the 1600’s in Poland and Germany. (See Genealogy.)

She has always written poetry. For years writing took a backseat to wage-earning. While a member of the Napa Poets’ Collective, she gave local readings and saw her work published in Napa Valley College anthologies. Now she reads in Oregon, has self-published three poetry chapbooks and her work has appeared in a number of journals. (See Poetry.) In 2007 she became the chair of the Rogue Valley Chapter of the Oregon  Poetry Association,  which  strives to promote the appreciation and creation of poetry by everyone everywhere. Her poetry resolution for 2011 was to submit more.

Home is a hundred-year-old Craftsman house. There is a garden to tend, birds to feed (see Birds) and an old cat to let in and out. (See  Bil and Friends.) There is a partner, very familiar after fifty-five years,  thirty-three years under the same roof. (So much has changed while so much has stayed the same.)

Son Bill lives with Ana and three children (grandchildren!) in Modesto, California. Daughter Anne recently moved from Santa Cruz, California, to Portland. The author has lived in  Pennsylvania, New York, California, Illinois, Washington State, and now Oregon. She has gone through two careers and now works pretty hard at a  third.

More: She raises meal worms to feed wild birds;  her closest childhood friend was a blonde Cocker Spaniel; she used to study serious piano, but words (English French, Spanish, German, creative writing) won out over music.  She posted a daily photo on Face Book for a full year from fall 2010 through summer 2011, does not cook anymore but relies on fresh or frozen entrees and the microwave, goes to bed too late and  sleeps too much whenever she can. She grew up in the country, seldom does laundry or housework, and enjoys gardening, though her yard is too large to keep up with. Also has an answering machine with caller ID but does not own a cell phone.