A Little Bit About Me!

Hello, everyone out there in cyberland. I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself. If you already know or don’t want to know, just ignore this.

I was raised in Los Angeles and in elementary school I was dancing and writing plays about historical characters like Thomas Jefferson, Davy Crockett and George Washington. Of course, I had to actually produce, direct and star in these classroom productions. (I was on my way to Hollywood already…….Sigh! )By the time I was in high school my best classes were English and History. I could write but don’t ask me to count past my 10 fingers.

When I went to Lockwood Elementary School for summer school one year, I was the editor of the one-page, mimeographed “newspaper.” I remember writing a story about an egg but that’s about all.

I always thought I’d go into teaching. My father was a teacher for 40 years, 39 at the same junior high school. However, I got into college, got my A.A. degree, fell in love, quit college and became a preschool teacher. I married my longtime love, Peter Moseley, when I was 22 and he was 23. We were married 13 years and in that time we moved to Running Springs. Sadly, we ended up separating and divorcing but we remained friends. Our two children, John and Amanda (now Amanda Aberg) atttended Rim Schools. John is married to Tasha, his high school love and Amanda is married to Gary Aberg who she met when he was my husband’s caregiver. My husband was totally paralyzed in a terrible traffic accident in 1993 but it put our lives into perspective and we re-married the following year and it was a wonderful decision for both of us. We had both changed so much and that accident put our lives into perspective. We belonged together. Peter died in 2007.

I started my mountain journalistic career in 1979 when I worked for the long-defunct Timberline Journal. I then worked several years for the Hilltop Messenger in Running Springs. It, too, stopped publishing long ago but I’m sure it had nothing to do with me.

I started my own newspaper in Running Springs in 1985 and the first edition came out on March 28. I owned it and ran it for 12 1/2 years. At first we called it The Mountaineer but then changed its name the following year to The Alpenhorn. I ran it in Running Springs and it is a very different newspaper today than it was when I owned it.In the interim years Peter and I had remarried and due to his paralysis I sold the paper in 1997 and we moved off the mountain to lovely Newport Beach because it was simply too hard to operate my own business, tend to him and drive back and forth to the hospital so much.

We moved to East Highland from our little enclave in Newport Beach in August 1999 so we could be closer to the mountains we both loved. I took a job at the Mtn. News where I worked until this past spring. I loved what I did and loved the people I worked for but it was time for me to move on.

I am enjoying the freedom of this blog to write like I do and cover what I do and I know that at this stage of my life this is absolutely where I belong. I send huge “thank you’s” to those of you who have loved, supported and encouraged me all these 30 plus years I have spent reporting mountain news.

I have loved my long writing career and I just know that Thomas Jefferson, Davy Crockett and George Washington will be so proud.

Please feel free to contact me with news, the good, the bad and the ugly. Thank you. My e-mail address is: joanmoseley@verizon.net.

Joan