Shining Light: Revealing Conversations with Dedicated People
Shining Light is a collection of 22 revealing conversations, including black and white portraits, with people who share amazing stories about their lives. I have often wondered, “What a fascinating story. How come I’ve never heard of this person or their work?”
“No one ever asked,” they usually reply, shrugging
I think the real answer is they never sought the spotlight. They are completely engaged in their work, not seeking publicity for their efforts.
In all of the 22 interviews published here, I felt I have developed a certain friendship with the other person. That is not simple journalistic fact gathering. And when the other person began to share very personal life details, I was uncomfortable at first, but learned that was why I had been called to this work -- to be a confidant, and with their permission, to share with you, the reader, what they had told me in their story.
You will meet people such as:
John Shaffner - cowboy poet and chuck wagon cook
Will Morton - carousel conservator
Marjorie Lansing Porter - Adirondack ballads collector
Dr. Bonnie Clarke - Japanese Relocation Camp archaeologist
Badger Puthoff - Mountain man re-enactor
Mike Keefe - Pulitzer prize winning editorial cartoonist
And so I would have to agree with Muriel Rukeyser who said, “The universe is made of stories, not atoms." Ms. Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism.
BEST DEALS
About the Author
Charles always planned to be a photojournalist. After graduating with a journalism degree, the Army tried to divert him from his quest but he wrote stories and shot photos of the soldiers around him from wet, cold, and desolate places for the Army Times and Pacific Stars and Stripes.
After four years in the Army, he went to work in the publishing industry, first as a journalist, then marketing copywriter and later as a publisher. During his career, he produced marketing collateral and publications for the National Cattleman’s Association, Children’s World Learning Centers, Ski Card International, Metropolitan State College, Allied Jewish Federation of Denver and Manville. He was the publisher of Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine and owned the Mountain Commuter, a monthly newsmagazine serving the residents of Evergreen, CO.
In 2012, he started an online interview magazine called Tributary. One Flows Into Another. In 2014, he published a book of those interviews entitled Shining Light. Revealing Conversations with Dedicated People. And in 2017, he published a historical fiction novel entitled Ineke’s Mitten.
Chas, as his friends call him, is a member of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and works with other writers weekly at their gathering at the Aspen Grove Tattered Cover Bookstore in Littleton.
He is available to speak to book clubs throughout Colorado.