About


Josette Plank is a writer, humorist, and general life enthusiast living in the deep suburbs of Central Pennsylvania. When she's not blogging, Josette is most likely putting another 20,000 miles on her minivan driving her three children from one activity to another and back again. Or she's fretting about the state of her incomplete home renovation projects. Or she's watching movies while folding laundry and ignoring her ringing telephone.

Occasionally, Josette figure skates - a sport she's recently taken up in spite of her threadbare pocketbook and glass hip. To make a little extra scratch, she works part-time at an enormous bookstore and tries to convince at least one customer a week to buy something by Tom Robbins or William Sleator. (Check 'em out.)

A native of the Pennsylvania Coal Region, Josette grew up in the Appalachian mountains in a small town with a name too ridiculous to believe. She spent her formative years running barefoot through strip mines, praying the rosary in Catholic school, and pretending to mix highballs in her grandmother's bar. Her childhood was something of a cross between The Waltons and a Frank McCourt book, except with more Led Zeppelin. And Polish food.

After high school, Josette skedaddled from the middle-of-nowhere and headed to Boston University where they gave her a degree in English even though she insists on using the past perfect tense way too much in her writing.

Upon graduating, she moved to Philadelphia and took a day job at Huge Pharmaceutical Company so she could support her theater habit. A star of stage and screen, Josette was a writer and actor with the infamous DQD Comedy Theater, graced the boards at local theaters in productions of both classical and contemporary plays, and she was even cast in a few commercials. The highlight of Josette's career on celluloid (kind of) came when she played an extra in a straight-to-video movie that starred Sean Astin, Patty Duke, and Gabrielle Anwar. Josette was seven months pregnant with her first child during filming, and over a lunch break Sean Astin asked to feel the baby move. She now adds "Hobbit rubbed my belly" as a resume line, and you wouldn't believe how something like that can get your foot in the door.

In 1991, Josette met her to-be-husband, Michael, at the birthday party of a mutual friend. She helped put him through law school, and they were married five years later. The adorable couple bought a rowhouse in South Philly next door to a restaurant owned by Italian mobsters, and they lived there very happily and procreatively until 2002 when they moved to the Harrisburg suburbs, where they procreated once more.

Josette and her family now live next door to very lovely people who aren't mobsters. In fact, her suburban neighbors regularly offer to trim back Josette's meandering shrubbery, whereas the mobster neighbors in South Philly burned down their own restaurant in the middle of one afternoon in order to collect insurance money. Josette still very much misses living in the city with all its art and culture and hustle and bustle and mobsters, although she can understand why folks with kids move to the suburbs: good public schools and lots of Applebees franchises.

All of the above will be covered in this blog.



There will be a test on Monday.

2 comments:

Jack said...

nice to meet you, Josette....glad to read that you enjoyed my home-town Philadelphia...(though SouthPhilly is kind of its own world in itself)...(and even though the city of my birth and earlier-than-aged life hasn't been my 'home' since not long after the civil war or something)...but since I live 'here' ("H-Burg") now....maybe you might wanna come down-town (like, around our Midtown neighborhood) for that sorta-city-life vibe.....Anyhow...I stumbled across your name and eventually your blog-thing...while reading PennLive posts and tripping over endless ellipses...and appreciate the pleaseure of having had the chance to make your acquaintance

joeyfortman said...

I found you through PSMM blog. Such a fun site! Love your 'story'. ;)

Warmly,
Joey Fortman
Http://www.JoeyFortman.com

Blog Ping