Jo Ann Parsons

Jo Ann Townsend Parsons has been writing articles for the “Jottings” column in the Lake Oswego Review, (a weekly Lake Oswego, Oregon paper) for 22 years. As one of a dozen members of the Jottings Group at the Lake Oswego Adult Community Center who take turns writing the column, this amounts to four or five articles per year; after 20 plus years, it adds up to a voluminous collection.

My Life in Review—Volume I came about because readers of the column often told her she should put them into a book; her grandkids asked when she was going to write her memoir. Since most of the columns tell segments of her life, Volume I begins her Memoir in Essays with 28 stories written from 1997 through 2003. The first 27 were published when she was Jo Ann Townsend, and the 28th tells of her marriage and becoming Jo Ann Parsons.

The book’s format shows the article as printed in The Review along with the story and pictures that were included with some of the essays. Subjects include her move to Oregon from Iowa in 1992, experiences involving her antique shop, stories of family, friends, dogs, her first husband and feelings on becoming a widow, travel adventures during her single years, growing up on an Iowa farm, attending a one-room country schoolhouse in the 1930s, and one entitled, “Mother-in-law Mayhem” and those chaotic two-week mother-in-law visits at their home every summer.

In opening windows into her life, it’s a nostalgic read laced with humor and poignant memories.