writing

I love raspberries. Decades ago, I was deciding what kind of raspberry bushes to plant in my garden. I talked to my Uncle, Ed Mickelson, and he said yellow raspberries had the best flavor for eating fresh. He told me he couldn’t grow them in their Cambridge, Minnesota, garden because it was just a little too far north. My garden is in the City of Minneapolis where we have the advantage of a heat-island, and they do grow here. I took his advice and now I have a patch of yellow raspberries that yield their delicious berries up until the first frost.

Ed wasn’t technically my uncle. He was married to Wilma Wilkins. Wilma was my father’s double cousin. Her mother, Annie Otten, and my father’s mother, Jennie Otten, were twin sisters. They were married to brothers, Wilma’s father, Walter Wilkins, and my father’s father, John Wilkins. Annie died very young leaving Walter with four young children. In those days, there were no day care centers for single parents who needed to work. So Walter asked for help from relatives and my grandparents took Wilma and raised her along with my father, William, and his brother, Gerrit.

As a child, I was aware of this arrangement. When I was older, I told Wilma that I was confused about our relationship. I knew she was Dad’s cousin, but she was also his sister. I was never sure whether she was my cousin or aunt. Wilma responded, “I’m your aunt.” And that was that.

Wilma had her two brothers in John and Jenny’s home. She had a brother and two sisters from Walter and Annie’s family. Years later when Walter remarried, Wilma told me of visiting another sister because Walter’s wife, Margaret, had a daughter. When she married Ed Mickelson, he became my uncle. And that’s the story of how I got those yellow raspberries.

When I left my last position, I did not retire. I determined to pursue my lifelong interest in writing. My B.A. degree was in Communications and Labor Studies. I started out as a journalism major and ended up writing my own degree program.

I received the Human Resources Professional certification at one point, and I began a blog “Working in the 21st Century” in which I gave career advice, commented on current employment issues, and listed resources for job seekers. I wrote columns like “How to Make $100,000+ Without a College Degree” and “Bad, Bad Boss.” I took courses at The Loft Literary Center and began writing creatively in earnest. The more I worked on my creative writing, the less I was interested in giving career advice. I ended that blog.

In 2015, I got my first piece of work, fiction, published in Work Literary Magazine. It was based on a down-sizing and restructuring experience at a former empoyer and titled “Passed Over.”

An essay was published in The Commonline Journal, “I Didn’t Speak Up,” about a bullying incident on a city bus. http://www.thecommonlinejournal.com/2015/09/i-didnt-speak-up-by-bonnie-wilkins.html?m=1

Since then, I’ve had many essays published in various online literary journals.

My current project is a book. It’s about District 32, a school district in Milo Township, Mille Lacs County, Minnesota. I attended the one-room country school from 1st through 5th grades. District 32 was more than a school district, it was a community. In a world where community seems to be disappearing, documented in books like Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam, I wanted to document what that community meant to me and my family. My mother wrote a newspaper column, “District 32,” for the Mille Lacs County Times newspaper for many years documenting the lives of the people in District 32. The people of this farming community had rich social and civic lives. I watched the women of District 32 finding them to be strong role models, who lived life on their terms, and helped shape the world around them.

Bonnie Wilkins Overcott

Yellow Raspberries

My Writing Life