30-day blogging challenge Today, March 3, 2024, is National Anthem Day I decided today's post will be about my experiences singing The National Anthem at baseball games--and auditioning to sing it at the big league parks. As you can probably surmise, I haven't been...
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A Day in My Life: National Read Across America Day
Today, March 2, is "National Read Across America Day." I wish it were Tuesday, because that's the day I normally go into a school in Schenectady, New York, and read to a couple of students to help them with their reading skills. I volunteer with a local group called...
A Day in the Life, 2024 Edition: Happy “National Write a Letter Appreciation Week”
I'm in my eighth decade of life, and I've come to realize that there's a week or a day to commemorate just about everything. When I worked in a long-term care association, there was Nursing Home and Nurse's Month in May. As a folk music DJ, I'm happy that we still...
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A Day in My Life, March 11, 2024 – Just a Plain, Old Monday
Today is a plain, old Monday. I didn't sleep well last night, so I'm taking things slowly today. The wind was howling so much overnight that I couldn't ignore it. It sounded as it the trees in my backyard were going to come crashing down on the garage. They didn't,...
A Day in My Life, March 10, 2024 — National Harriet Tubman Day
Today is National Harriet Tubman Day. Soon her picture will replace that of Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. So why would the government want to honor a Black woman this way? After all, she was born with the name Araminta Ross into slavery somewhere around...
A Day in My Life, March 9, 2024 — Remembering Claire Milmore MacDonald
I can't let today go by without remembering Claire Milmore MacDonald. Today would have been her seventy-fifth birthday. She passed away in November from pancreatic cancer--a disease she valiantly fought for more than two years. We first met when we were in the choir...
Award-winning Author
Wanda began following baseball in 1956 as an ardent fan of the Boston Red Sox. She made her first visit to Fenway Park in the early 1960s when she was fourteen years old. She parlayed her love of baseball and developed characters based on people she’d met in minor league and major league ball and sent them to play in the minors in western New York. Set in 1972, the novel examines the challenges they face—not always on the baseball diamond.
Empty Seats attracted attention from Minor League Baseball, as well as the (now defunct) nationally syndicated "Only a Game” radio show.
Following publication, Empty Seats won a number of citations, including the New Apple Award and the Independent Publishers’ Award.
Wanda’s love of baseball still lingers to this day. In 2012, she auditioned to become the public address announcer at Fenway Park. Although she didn’t get the position, she had the opportunity to announce a full game between the Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins in August 2012.
Readers can learn about Wanda’s other writing projects by clicking “Writing.”
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A Day in My Life – Friday the 13th Edition – January 13, 2023
Triskadekaphophia is the official word for being afraid of Friday the 13th in any month. How did the number thirteen become unlucky to some, while others consider the number to be lucky? One theory in folklore posits that the unlucky number 13 originated with the...
A Day in My Life – Friday Edition – January 13, 2023
Time for a lookback on the week. As usual, I've stayed busy all week, blogging for the RRBC challenge, contributing to some of my other projects, tweeting (yes, I'm still there), previewing new CDs for my radio show, attending two Zoom meetings for boards of directors...
A Day I My Life – TV Commercials that Drive Me Crazy Edition – January 12, 2023
In my never-ending quest to stay away from politicizing my blog today (which isn't easy), I'm going to complain about something that's driving me crazy: TV commercials that: --feature thirty-somethings complaining about "crow's feet" around their eyes, and, therefore,...
A Day in My Life – Kindergarten Edition – January 11, 2023
Today I volunteered in a local kindergarten class. This is the teacher with whom I first started volunteering in the reading program seven years ago. She is an amazing teacher. She tells me all the time how much she loves her job. She's doing what they call "looping"...
A Day in My Life – School Volunteer Edition – January 10, 2023
I am part of a local program called Reading is Fun. The purpose is to do one-on-one work with students who may not have people at home to work with them on reading, and to instill a love of reading in them. I've been associated with this program for seven years,...
A Day in My Life – Catching Up Edition – January 9, 2023
After a crazy day yesterday, in which I: --sang in the folk group at church --played in a USTA tennis match --attended a party at the home of one of my oldest friends --wrote a blog post --spent two hours editing I figured today would be a day to chill (as much as I...
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Wanda made her singing debut when she was only four years old at a family reunion in southwestern Virginia. From that day forward, she always wanted to make a recording, even if it only meant something for her family.
She made that dream come true when she gathered a number of her professional folk music friends and produced “Singing Along with the Radio.” These were people she’d always wanted to sing with, and they went into recording studios to complete the task.
When all was said and done, the CD was well received by both the public and folk DJs. It has enjoyed airplay in the United States, Canada, and Ireland.
