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Editor’s note: I would like to introduce you to Judy Cools, our newest contributing community blogger.
Judy Cools
By JUDY COOLS
mcp blogger
Hello, Mason County! It’s nice to be back writing a column again, and I’m looking forward to some great exchanges with you, my friends and neighbors. The Cools family has been kicking around Mason County for about 20 years, and I expect that more than a handful of you fine folks have crossed paths with me. For those who haven’t, here’s a bit about who I am and where I’ve been.
My husband and I moved to west Michigan as more-or-less newlyweds in the 1970s, and have been here ever since. We’ve owned a couple of small businesses, adopted a son, rescued a half-dozen dogs, and had a rich and colorful life just chock-full of entertaining and educational experiences.
I was a writer for the weekly Manistee Observer for about four years – a column called Peace of Mind, and I wrote the occasional news article or community interest piece.
After that, I worked several years for an inspirational magazine based in New Zealand, sending most of my work on the Internet, in the earliest days of Internet writing. They had a major shift in format at the same time I had my hands full here in Michigan, and I declined their invitation to continue with them.
Somewhere in the late 1990s, my husband Gary and I ended our five year practice of daily commutes to our Manistee County jobs and focused on work here in greater Ludington. I’ve worked at Pere Marquette Township for nearly a dozen years now, where I manage and write most of the website material and try to make the daily writing of things going through my office anything but ho-hum. I also manage the geographic information systems department, which does computerized mapping for the Township and those affiliated with the township, and I assist the supervisor.
Gary has a healthcare office in Ludington where he offers the ancient skill of acupuncture as well as the leading-edge technology of digital thermographic imaging – and a number of other disciplines in between. He drew the short straw, though, when it came to the commuting thing. I get to stay in town, and he commutes weekly to offices in Suttons Bay and in Fruitport where he is an associate. I occasionally travel with him, helping with the patients (did I mention I’m a certified thermographer, too?) and just having a great time enjoying the drive and the company.
We’ve been involved in the community with our faith, with school things, job fairs and health fairs, Special Olympics, Lions Club, Rotary, Mensa, and the Write People. I worked for years on our Interfaith National Day of Prayer observances. We’ve been in the cheering section for our friends in Optimists and Hospice and their projects. And we’re pretty dedicated lighthouse walkers when the weather will allow it.
We’re looking forward to Lighthouse-Walking weather, and I’m looking forward to “Moonlighting”. I hope you are, too.
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