Josephine Rascoe Keenan
After spending many years in professional theatre and film as an actress and director, Josephine Rascoe Keenan expanded her writing efforts from diaries and journals, which she’d kept from age eleven, to novels and short stories for young people. In May of 2016, Pen-L Publishing released her debut novel,
In Those First Bright Days of Elvis, Book I, The Days of Elvis series. Book II of the series,
In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis, launched on June 12, 2017. She is currently working on Book III,
In Those Glory Days of Elvis, came out in October of 2018.
Cricket magazine has published two of her short stories,
Mary Greene: The Petticoat Skipper and
Ohoyo Osh Chisba: the Unknown Woman, about the coming of corn to the Choctaw people. Her poem,
A Ride on Grandpa’s Foot appeared in
Modern Maturity magazine in August 2005. Three of her plays have been produced in regional theatres:
Friends and Life’s a Butter Dream, both of which played for a year to tristate school children; and
The Center of the Universe, a three-act play that was chosen as a winner of Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati’s New Play Contest.
Another of her artistic endeavors is oil painting. Josephine had a show in Vevay, Indiana, of her paintings in 2012, and has exhibited in The Art House in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky.
Josephine and her husband Frank are Church of the Redeemer members.
Dorothy J. Martin
In April of 2017 I signed a lease on Apartment 17. On May 21 of that year I discovered Church of the Redeemer as an Easter Sunday adventure. It was simply the response to a computer query, but it has turned out to be the best of discoveries. Like most serendipitous blessings it proved to be the best place to find a choir, to make acquaintances that might someday ripen into friends, and a place to learn about that certain frisson of the holy that haunts my understanding of everything. Phil DeVaul, only a few years younger than my youngest son, was there to show me how it’s not just age that denotes wisdom. He is our priest, even in his Cincinnati Reds hat, and ever ready to replace deficits in my own knowledge with his excellent facts. I soon discovered that while the choir is the place to exult, it is the Thursday Morning Bible Study where the love gets made. Praying for each other, we learn to love each other. Writing is now my only creative outlet, and I appreciate getting into print at church. It makes me feel useful. If I live past Covid, I hope I can still sing.