Meet the Team:
Your hosts:
MANDY ALLEN
Visit my blog at Mandy Allen.com
My name is Mandy Allen. I am 47 years old and live in North Norfolk, UK.
My working life started in banking, moving into accountancy after that. It was at this point that I realised life is for living and I went to Paris for 3 wonderful years. On my return I went into insurance, then worked as a secretary (with a difference!) for a kitchen firm. When I say ‘with a difference’ it was very different to the office based roles I’d had previously. I was often found in the workshop up to my elbows in wax, or helping one of the carpenters with some woodwork, I drove the lorries loaded with equipment and fittings to jobs all over the country, helped the fitters to fit the kitchens, and even painted or wax finished a good number of them! For the rest of the time I took responsibility for the office work, wages, letters etc, and I went out to photograph kitchens once they had been finished for our portfolio. After 10 years in this job I went to Derby and took my degree in Youth Work, then moved on to a PhD. I never finished the PhD (I still say it is ‘work in progress’!).
I now own two antiques centres in North Norfolk, work part time for the local council as a youth worker, and spend a fair amount of time on the internet. I am a moderator on an internet marketing forum, have a blog, and am a partner on a number of information and internet marketing websites.
In my spare time I sing in a church choir that I have been part of since I was 11, I run the local spritualist church and I am a part time life coach. I like walking on the beach, holidays abroad, and cooking for myself and friends.
I hope to bring to The Silver Scene my business experience, my life coaching skills, and I hope my extensive religious background will help people with any spiritual matters.
Enjoy the journey.
Links to my other websites:
PAT GRAHAM
The Silver Scene has been living in my heart and mind for several years. It started perking with me when I couldn’t find other senior membership sites that offered more quality for the members than ads for other services or resources for sale.
Fully realizing that this project was more than I could handle alone, I offered a partnership to several marketers I respected, but no one accepted my offer to join me. I kept looking for partners very well-versed in Internet businesses and finally found the perfect business partner to make the Silver Scene come alive.
Mandy Allen is well-qualified to provide rewarding resources and experiences for our members. You can meet her on this page.
As for me, I’ve been a dreamer of possibilities all my life. While others usually see problems or difficulties to sidestep or avoid, I often see “what could be” with a little TLC and some technical applications. I’m not the techie…Mandy is.
I am a ghostwriter for Internet marketers and write ebooks, short reports and articles for my clients constantly. My major interests are digital photography, graphic design, spiritual exploration, and creating new content for The Silver Scene.
My daily passion is snapping digital photographs of Nature’s beauty that exists all around me. I live in a senior complex and the other residents are used to seeing me standing on the walk at sunrise, barefoot and in my pajamas, snapping shots of a gorgeous sunrise or an interesting set of clouds. Every flower that blooms around me has been captured by my camera. Selections from my photo archives will be available in several forms for the members of The Silver Scene.
You can see two of my favorite photos right here. I took both of them in the apartment complex in Anaheim, California, where I lived for several years. 
I was on the way to the mail boxes after a rainstorm had subsided and I noticed the small snail 
staying out of the puddles while napping in a daisy. As I was trying to get just the right angle for the photo, my foot slipped off the wet pathway and I fell into the Kapok tree in the other photo. My left arm got stabbed several times as I snapped the photo before shrieking and removing my arm from those very sharp tree-bark daggers. Dedicated photographers try not to pay too much attention to incidental problems when snapping photos!
In real life, I’ve created a technical hot line for a major sales force and designed training sessions, been a system designer and traveled the State of California teaching parolees to begin new lives without drugs.
Enjoy your visit to The Silver Scene. I hope to see your name on our membership list soon.
We are not your average membership site!
Pat
Visit my other websites:
Our contributors:
ALEXIS HALLOCK, M.D.
Yeah, well, I’m the doctor. As in “Trust me…” I do believe you can–trust me, that is–if I don’t know something I’ll find out, send you elsewhere, or just tell you I don’t know. I am licensed in my state of residence as a physician and surgeon, but am a shrink by trade.
Not the hand-holding, tell-me-about-it type, the here’s-the-drug-and-you-will-feel-better-NOW type. Not that I don’t believe in therapy–I do–but you have to have a certain level of functioning and emotional comfort on deck to get to the office. I also believe that psychologists are usually better therapists than MD’s, but that’s another essay.
About me, yeah. I am Board Certified in my specialty (that’s as good as training and credentials get). Before I was a physician, I was an English teacher, an embalmer, a hippie, a bartender, a lab tech, an EMT, and a stable hand. I can still conjugate a verb, face a corpse without screaming, roll a joint, make a margarita, sketch out a little organic chemistry, start a couple of hearts, and hot-wire a John Deere. I also ran marathons for 18 years, and miss it tremendously.
Med-wise, I’m a fairly good diagnostician and a better-than-average pharmacologist. Personal-wise, I don’t believe in God, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Krishna, or Santa Claus. I believe in physics. The laws of physics accurately describe what we know of the universe and allow for all that we don’t know. They even allow for religious beliefs (internally contradictory as that may seem–but, again, another essay) and for existence after what we call death.
I love: my dogs, horses, the desert, scuba diving, kayaking, the Eagles, historic cemeteries, stacks of good books, muscle cars, watermelon, silk shirts, cowboy boots, drive in movies, and Cristal. And my few best friends, all of whom seem to be named Lois or Pat. (I’m a baby boomer.)
Seems to me this about covers it. I suppose I should emphasize that as irreverent as I sometimes seem, I am irreverent. (Yeah, you read it right.) Why not? Life is short, and I do have reverence for life in its many forms (I used to resuscitate the ants from the bottom of the pool every morning), or I wouldn’t be doing what I do. If you don’t get that, well, read something else. But the smothering details of political correctness have nearly exterminated the humor of irreverence, so that’s where I’m staying. Politics left of center, reverence in place but tucked up under my hem.
And, evidence to the contrary, I am pretty damn smart. That’s about enough of that, and I included it under duress. My dress. Whatever.
Ask me questions if you have them, please.
Here we go. Let’s rock.
PATSY ROBERTSON
Hi, everyone. I’m Patsy. I have been a breakfast cook for over 20 years and loved every minute of it. Wasn’t always that way, though!
When I was 18, newly married and prego with my first child, I went kicking and screaming into the kitchen. I did not know how to cook. I could make soup and sandwiches, but my husband wanted something more after working all day. So, between my Momma and my sisters, and my daughter’s Godmother and father, who came over from Italy, I slowly started cooking. Kinda like the movie, “Julie and Juliet.”
Once I learned how to make some tasty recipes, I really started enjoying cooking. I think I got really good at it once the last of my four babies got in school. I started cooking in restaurants and did that for the last 20 or 25 years. I’ve worked in deli’s, swank restaurants, a Nifty Fifties Restaurant, Pita Pockets and in Gary’s Bar-B-Que.
We moved to Texas and I worked in Subway’s Deli, Cedar Tree Restaurant and my favorite, Harveys Family Restaurant. I cooked breakfast there for 10 years. My daughter owned it, so I loved working with her. I had to retire early because of a bad back from standing on concrete all day and having four kids riding on my hips. Now its 4 kids, 12 grandkids and 10 great-grands. Yes, I’m still carrying them and yes, I’m still cooking. I love to cook for family and friends now.
I hope you will enjoy the recipes I post on The Silver Scene. I am truly blessed with a family and friends that enjoy my cooking and that I am still able to do it.
I think many of you will think being a cook in a restaurant in a small town might be just filling customers orders and slaving over a hot stove. Actually, my years spent cooking in small restaurants had some pretty funny moments.
One of those moments started right after my daughter bought the restaurant and I was cooking breakfast every morning. We had a bunch of old men that met every morning for coffee and to talk about the weather. Old men gossip more that women. One old guy, Kenny, wanted me to go by the donut shop and get him a donut. He didn’t consider that the donut shop didn’t open until I had been at work for an hour. He bugged me for a week about the donuts. I finally got tired of it and told him that I would make him a donut myself. He didn’t think I could do it.
I took a biscuit, put a hole in it, fried it and rolled it in cinnamon and sugar. He was surprised when I took it out to him. The next day, my ex-husband and I were eating breakfast when Kenny walked in and told my Ex that I made the best donuts in the world. He never knew that I just made him a biscuit donut. I made them for him for the next 5 years. R.I.P Kenny! I still love and miss you.
Another morning, one of my regular customers came in and asked if I wanted a free watermelon. I said I did and thanked him. The next morning, Ronny came in again and brought me another watermelon. He continued to do this every morning for over two weeks. I was giving melons to the wait-staff, the owners, all my breakfast customers and anyone I could find who would take one.
One day Ronny came in and said, “No more watermelons, Cookie. The farmer was waiting for me this morning and said that, if I took anymore, he would have me arrested.” “OMG, Ronny, have you been stealing those watermelons?” He said very quietly, “Yes, Ma’am.” I laughed and said, “No wonder they tasted so good.”
Small town restaurants are far from boring.
SUE DAVIDSON
My name is Sue Davidson and I live in a very small town in North Carolina called Stovall where I have now lived for 16 years; population 378. Prior to moving here I lived in Fairfax, VA, 24 miles from the heart of Washington DC for 29 years. I still visit Fairfax because my son lives there but I can tell you right now that I’m staying in Stovall.
I have been married to my husband for 38 years. We have a son, a daughter and three granddaughters with the youngest being born January 17, 2010. It really is great being a grandmother – you can send them home.
I have known Pat Graham, the founder of The Silver Scene, for over 20 years. We met when working together in technical support for software and hardware installations and support. She was at the end of a hotline and I was in the field. When the problems couldn’t be solved over the telephone based on input from the user I would go there in person. Pat called me her “eagle eyes” and “spare brain.” I am looking forward to continuing in these capacities with The Silver Scene.
I am a Sunday School Teacher and a Youth Group Leader at my church. I have the youth (ages 13 and up) because no one else seems to have the patience for them. Having spent most of my career in technical support spending hours looking for a misplaced letter, invisible space, wrong number or other such tiny things that can ruin everything, what is a few hormonal teenagers that need someone to give them the straight truth and good guidance for life? I love seeing the absolute shocked looks on their faces when they discover that the Bible says “six days ye shall work” because they definitely only planned on five or less. In our group we take life down to where the rubber meets the road (a saying that they also were unfamiliar with.) Oh well, wish me luck with these teenagers!
Additionally, I produce the church monthly calendar and monthly newsletter (remember I live in a SMALL town) so I am always proofreading. Therefore in the capacity of chief proofreader for The Silver Scene everything should come naturally. And it is my hope that everyone out there who joins this site will truly enjoy it and find its contents most useful. Remember we will always value your comments and insight if you share it with us. To the Future!!!
