Grace Hughes Chappell says, over the years, she’s been a mom, a daughter, and a sister, has taken care of ‘things’ (house repairs, car repairs, relationship repairs), worked as a private tutor, an English teacher, a travel agent, a receptionist, a telephone book delivery-person, a house cleaner, a reader to the visually impaired, a caterer, a snow-shoveler, and she has written. Her work is widely published and she is the author of ten mile creek almanac. Grace lives in northern California near the Eel River, where she and her husband maintain a garden and an apple orchard. Her advice for a good life is be as kind as you can be (and maybe a little more than that), enjoy your family and your friends, don’t be a drag (laugh a lot, sing, dance, do anything that involves music), read a lot, learn to cook a decent meal, watch sunsets and birds and dogs, and—last of all—find something to do for which you have some aptitude. “You don’t have to be a genius,” she says, “just work!”