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Joyce A. Miller
149 Plays3 years ago
When Joyce A. Miller turned 60, her curiosity fueled the writing for her debut historical fiction novel, Joe Harris, the Moon, based on her granduncle’s life at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Her cousin, Bob Harris, who is a huge baseball fan and cares deeply about their family history, did most of the research for the story. It was a joy for Miller to piggyback on his research and dig deeper into the history of southwestern Pennsylvania and the baseball world. She wanted to unravel the truth of Joe Harris’ story through fiction.
Miller retired at 60 and moved to the Church Hill section of Richmond, Virginia. She moved to Richmond to be closer to her adult children, who went to college at VCU and never returned home. She lives in renovated, red brick building that was once a 1910 industrial brush factory. Miller can almost see her Uncle Joe as a young man leaning against the massive twelve-inch by twelve-inch oak wooden pillars in her living room.
Miller lives with her husband, Alan, and her retired racing greyhound, Coheed. Coheed, like all racing greyhounds, was registered with a racing name. The breeder gave him and his littermates the names of rock and roll bands, and he became CoheedandCambria. Miller just kept the Coheed part. Miller wonders if Coheed could name her, would he keep “Joyce” or name her something else.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56621068-joe-harris-the-moon
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Transcript
Introduction: 'Something Rather Than Nothing' with Joyce A. Miller
00:00:03
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing, creator and host Ken Vellante, editor and producer, Peter Bauer. This is Ken Vellante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast, and we have as a guest Joyce A.
Early Artistic Interests and Childhood Memories
00:00:24
Speaker
Miller, who
00:00:25
Speaker
wrote a book, Joe Harris, The Moon, a baseball book, a life story book. Joyce, welcome to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure and
00:00:44
Speaker
I've enjoyed the book and I'm leaving the contents of the book largely in your hands about what to reveal. But prior to getting into your writing, your art, I wanted to know when you were born, were you an artist when you were born?
00:01:04
Speaker
So I don't know if I was an artist when I was born, but I always loved, as early as I can remember, I loved to draw, to paint, to write.
From Art to Drafting: Joyce's Career Path
00:01:21
Speaker
So when I, I mean, there's a story of when I was a little girl,
00:01:29
Speaker
that I would sit on the bookshelf where the World Book encyclopedias were, which were our Google at the time. And my dad would ask me, you know, what are you doing? And I would say, well, I'm a city book, you know, like sitting, but city. So that was, you know, that's kind of the first
00:01:56
Speaker
memory I have but um so I always like to write stories and draw pictures and I would write stories about inanimate objects around our house and bring them to life. Of course then then I went down a
00:02:18
Speaker
a different path in a way. When I got to high school age, my parents weren't really crazy about college. My mother owned a bar and my dad was a
00:02:38
Speaker
a blue collar worker. He worked for a company that made sheet metal kitchens for fast food restaurants. And so neither one of them were crazy about college and didn't really think it was the way to go. And so my dad told me that I should
00:02:59
Speaker
learn a trade. And so I was really good at math, even though I liked art and drawing, so I decided to become a draftsman.
Science Meets Art: Creativity in Nuclear Physics
00:03:13
Speaker
So I went to school and at that time we worked on a board with
00:03:21
Speaker
pencil and a straight edge and a compass and a triangle. We didn't have the computers that we have now, but I started down that path. The first couple of places that hired me mostly was because I had
00:03:40
Speaker
pretty writing. I grew up in Pittsburgh, so one place in Pittsburgh. I worked at a company that had had its drawings destroyed in a flood, and I spent most of my time retracing them. Then I ended up working
00:04:05
Speaker
at a nuclear physics laboratory. I don't know if I was born an artist or just kind of followed a path and ended up where I ended up. I was just wanting to ask one general question about that, Joyce.
00:04:26
Speaker
You know, I'm really fascinated by different types of knowledge. And I think a lot of times we end up talking about, you know, science and art in very distinct ways. But I do find that within science and folks who do science, they end up talking art a lot, particularly around some of the speculative aspects of that. Could you give us a little bit of insight since your mind has operated in creating and in that, did you have some thoughts about
00:04:56
Speaker
you know, maybe the conjunction or how that works for you?
Writing 'Joe Harris, The Moon': A Blend of History and Family
00:05:00
Speaker
Well, I think for a lot of the scientific fields and for me, you know, I worked at a physics laboratory, nuclear physics. A lot of the physicists also were musicians and many of them were also artists, you know, did paintings, did etchings, those kinds of things.
00:05:26
Speaker
And I think that, I mean, in all of science, I think there's a beauty. If you look at, I think it was Richard Feynman, he was a famous physicist, and he said, most people can look at a flower and see the beauty in the flower. But he said, I can look at it and see
00:05:54
Speaker
the beauty in the cells, I can see the beauty. It goes so much deeper. And I think for me to do design work for the physics laboratory, you had to be creative. You were working on cutting edge technology.
00:06:17
Speaker
things that maybe had not been done before. And you would have to think outside the box and think, I can give you an example. We had a target one time that the physicists wanted it to go up over 800 degrees Celsius.
00:06:41
Speaker
But at the same time, they wanted it to be non-magnetic. So as we're designing this target, we have to think about, well, okay, we can't use metal. We have to use ceramic because it has to go to a high temperature, but it can't be magnetic. So there were always cases like that where you would have to be really creative to think of the things that you needed to do.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate that. And it's one of the things that I've noticed and I particularly enjoy. I think for myself, my interest becomes in those creative and speculative aspects of physics. Now, but let's jump over a tiny bit and say, okay, so
00:07:31
Speaker
now you're figuring out that problem, now we get a different problem, now you got words, right? And you're trying to reconstruct and write a wonderful human life baseball story, your book that you published, Joe Harris, The Moon. Can you tell us about that book and a big reason why we're chatting about
00:07:57
Speaker
your decision to kind of tell that history and tell that story and how that worked for you.
Art as Connection: Stories of Transformation
00:08:04
Speaker
Sure. Sure. Um, so, uh, you know, I believe that storytelling is an art form, um, in its own right. And, um, so, uh, you know, I, I always liked to write when I was younger. And then of course I went down this path and, and, um,
00:08:26
Speaker
and had to make money to support my kids and my greyhounds. And so when I retired, I retired in 2019 and I decided I wanted to get back to writing. And so I had this story in my mind that I had heard at our family
00:08:54
Speaker
family gatherings and things like that, that we had this Uncle Joe, who was my grand-uncle, so he was my grandfather's brother, and that he played baseball, and that he was kind of a hometown hero that went on to play in the World Series. And so I thought when I retired, I'm going to tell his story.
00:09:22
Speaker
And so my, one of my cousins was really a major factor because he, he provided the, the research. So he was a member of SABR, which is the Society for American Baseball Research.
00:09:43
Speaker
and he had done a lot of looking up old newspapers and following old box scores and so he had kind of pieced together the baseball parts of it and then so I took those parts and then I kind of filled in the gaps and I really didn't want to make it a
00:10:10
Speaker
a true biography, although it does follow his life, pretty much he had a fascinating life. So I didn't have to make up too many things, but I went back and kind of filled in the blanks of things that were happening in the world at the time, which was really interesting for me to go back and find out all those things and to tell his story.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah, it was that piece there too. And I've had a few guests, you know, with baseball books and around baseball. And for me, as far as the book itself, for my attraction to it, I mean, I work every day on workers issues. So like that kind of working class options that people have, like, how do you have a big dream?
00:11:05
Speaker
as a working kid, you know, like, what do you do about that? And, and how you navigate and what accidents there are along the way that bounce you right in the other, you know? Right. And, um, part of the whole part of his whole story was, you know, when the, when the major leagues were first organized, they were, um,
00:11:30
Speaker
the baseball players really got the short end of the stick. They needed you Ken. And they got traded around. They hadn't really know say so in any of their lives. And so that's, my cousin and I talked about this, that's kind of the reason that he went off to play in this
00:11:57
Speaker
um, outlaw league, you know, what they called it an outlaw league. So, you know, he came back from the war and in this, in, he went to play in Franklin, Pennsylvania for the town team in a two team league. And he made the same amount of money that he would have made playing for the Cleveland Indians. But it was a risk because, you know, he knew
00:12:24
Speaker
that he may not get back into the major leagues if he did that and it didn't work out. So he took a big chance there. And I think at the same time, you know, Babe Ruth was trying to like do these barnstorm leagues, barnstorming when he wasn't playing for the major leagues. And they didn't like that either. You know, they wanted him to just, you know, play, play in the
00:12:54
Speaker
in the leagues like we have them for you, you know, don't go off on your own. Don't go trying to make any, any extra bucks without us getting a piece of it. I think kind of, well, yeah, it was kind of the rise, I think of the, the play of personality. And there's a huge piece of that within the Negro leagues where you would have these stars, right? That nobody would be able to see. And actually many times you had some,
00:13:22
Speaker
compadres on the white player side being like let's rock and roll let's do our tour let's play some ball out there and let's make our money because the bosses ain't gonna give it to us yeah exactly exactly amen amen amen to them i'd still pay for one of those exhibitions myself um well thank you for me it is it is quite um
00:13:49
Speaker
fascinating history and in terms of labor and just workers trying to make a go of it, you know, playing baseball. I got a big question for you, Joyce, because I know you're nimble having done, you know, having done worked in a nuclear plant and writing baseball books and doing the different things that you do. But going back to the big conceptual question is, what is art? What do you think art is?
00:14:21
Speaker
Well, I think art is, I want to call it creativity.
Influence of Upbringing on Creativity and Independence
00:14:31
Speaker
I think art is like an intentional creativity. I think it gives you a path to
00:14:42
Speaker
to where your energy comes from. So whether you're writing or painting or drawing or dancing, whatever it is, I think that it's that pathway. It provides a pathway to your energy, your own energy.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah. And I enjoy you saying creativity as well. I bounced back on this the whole time, right? Creative processes and art. And related to that, Joyce, what do you think the role of art is for you as an artist or for us who consume it? You got art out there. You got creativity out there. What's it supposed to be doing for us when it's out there?
00:15:31
Speaker
Well, I think it's to provide a connection. I think it's to provide a connection to one of us, to each other. I can give you a huge example from last year here in Richmond. We have a street here in Richmond, which is called Monument Avenue.
00:15:56
Speaker
And on Monument Avenue, at every intersection, there was a statue of a Civil War general or soldier, hero. One has Robert E. Lee and one had Jackson and one had A.P. Hill. So anyway, last summer,
00:16:21
Speaker
during these protests, those statues and their pedestals were turned into
00:16:33
Speaker
pieces of art, really, for lack of a better term, they took the statues away, all except for Robert E. Lee, because that one is owned by the state, so it's still in some negotiations, lawsuits, and things like that. But the base of the Robert E. Lee statue last summer
00:16:54
Speaker
was spray painted. A couple ballerinas danced on it and every night they had a spotlight on it that they changed the artwork in the spotlight every night and it really turned from
00:17:15
Speaker
a symbol of hate to one of hope, I want to say. After the initial protests, which were very painful and very violent, but afterwards, they left the spray painting up and
00:17:33
Speaker
Um, people go there and have picnics now and it's a peaceful place. And, uh, but a place where, you know, again, I feel that connection, you know, the connection to people, the people who, who did the protest and the people who, you know, came out and said, you know, this isn't right. We shouldn't do this anymore. And the, these statues need to come down and that kind of thing. So that, um, that, that.
00:18:02
Speaker
that transformation of it. And, um, yeah, yeah, I, um, I, one of, one of the things, um, one of the things that, that, that I hear within that too, is that around, you know, I've seen around, around like, whether it's social upheaval and change of that sort, there's always this like expressive element either that comes from folks or to try to reinterpret something to like,
00:18:30
Speaker
make it a source of inspiration, I guess, maybe, rather than the role it served, I guess. Yes. So that's what art, you know, I feel like it connects people. It just brings people together. I think the connection word has been big for me. It's also been big in another context. I remember hearing a surprising definition by a Russell Brand of the
00:18:59
Speaker
You know, he's talking about things like sobriety and suffering and saying that, you know, the opposite of those things is connection. We're all just like thirsting for connection and, you know,
00:19:14
Speaker
sobriety is really just this attempt to be able to connect with other humans. And like art has a lot of that as well as like, I put up this wild, crazy thing that no other person in the entire world could even like connect to. Somebody sees it and be like, Oh my God, that's my nightmare. I feel better. Somebody put it out there and they connect to it. And it means something. You're like, Oh, I'm not that wild and alone at the moment. Right. Um,
00:19:42
Speaker
So we got the art in the role of art. I do have a couple of bigger questions for you, Joyce. And one of them is, in your life, in you doing things creatively and living, who or what made you who you are?
00:20:07
Speaker
So, I don't want this to sound sad or like I need pitying or anything like that, but I told you that my mother had a bar
Creativity Beyond Art: Greyhound Adoption and Dog Dancing
00:20:22
Speaker
And so she became an alcoholic and my dad was the like classic enabler. And I was the middle child and the only girl growing up in the sixties, late sixties, early seventies.
00:20:43
Speaker
when the girl was the one who did everything. You took care of the house and you cooked and that kind of thing, which fell to me since my mother was not going to be doing it. And so I kind of feel like that.
00:21:04
Speaker
is what made me what I am kind of self-reliant and like I had this I had this creative juice flowing and
00:21:21
Speaker
And so I just would use the art and what I felt to kind of get me through, get me through and that's what made me who I am. When I had to go to work and I just would
00:21:41
Speaker
get the work done and and I use the artwork as you know kind of a therapy I think in a way so I think that's what what did it and it wasn't the easiest way to grow up but I think it made me who I am yeah there's some of those I don't know I see sometimes harder habits that we like
00:22:07
Speaker
we pull in when we're younger, I could see them too. I don't know, something around hard work, taking care of it myself. There's a problem. I get to scramble around and fix it. So there's this behavior that ends up getting ingrained. It ends up being very meritorious, I think, but also it tends to be very, what? Exhausting. Yes. Yes. And you know, maybe if we had an easy path, we wouldn't,
00:22:36
Speaker
be the way we are, you know? I don't know. We're speaking with Joyce A. Miller, and earlier on when I was talking to Joyce, I was telling her one of my great loves is literature. I enjoy comparative lit, studying literature, self-taught, taught at the university. Love, love books. Joyce, you love books as well. I just want to ask an open-ended question. You got another
00:23:06
Speaker
book or books in you or is there a style and type of books that are coming out now where you're like wow some this is really happening so what about books so so I do love books I have a big pal my to be read pal is huge but anyway so so yes I've now I've and
00:23:28
Speaker
I'm retired and I've endeavored on this writing path and the first book was Successful a lot of people like Joe Harris the moon. So But my next book what I've been felt called to do is to write a Memoir about my time and greyhound adoption for the past 20 years I
00:23:57
Speaker
worked with several different Greyhound adoption groups. And the reason that I chose the Greyhound was I did this dog sport called dog dancing, which is also known as canine freestyle. And it can be compared to pairs ice skating.
00:24:24
Speaker
When you compete, you get an artistic score and you get a technical score and you train the dog to do different behaviors. So you train them to spin or you train them to back up or come to you, weave through your legs, all kinds of tricks. And then you choreograph that to a piece of music
00:24:53
Speaker
And the looks like the dog's dancing. He isn't really dancing, but you cue him at certain points in the music. In the magic, the dog is always dancing. In the magic, the dog is dancing. So I wanted to write this
00:25:09
Speaker
a memoir of just how I started out. I wanted to get a Greyhound because I'm a big woman and I wanted a tall dog and I thought, well, the Greyhound will look good in this dog dancing thing. Of course, I didn't realize how hard they would be to train to do that because
00:25:33
Speaker
When they're trained to race, they basically run or they lay down. Not much in between. But anyway, so the past 20 years I've had, I'm on my sixth Greyhound now. And also during the course of those years, I did the home visits for the Greyhound adoption group.
00:26:02
Speaker
And you wouldn't believe there, maybe you would believe the things that people tell you and show you when you go into their homes for just a half an hour to talk about dogs. Well, uh, absolutely. And one of the things I wanted to say Joyce about this particular topic, and it's just, you know, I w where I grew up in Rhode Island and there was, um, a
00:26:28
Speaker
you know, the legalized form of betting at that time, primarily in the 1980s, was really on Greyhounds. And in Rhode Island, it was, well, there was always questionable business interests involved, including the mafia and otherwise. And so even as a kid, I was aware that, you know, I went to it, it was something culturally that he did, but as I watched and I heard stories from
00:26:57
Speaker
What happened to the dogs, I as a young kid was horrified.
00:27:03
Speaker
And so that's closed down now, and that's kind of part of the past, at least
Art, Sobriety, and Human Connection
00:27:10
Speaker
there. But I've always held on to those who reach out and help Greyhounds, Whippets, and others, particularly from that racing scenario. So I want to tell you, I know personally, or I've had that caring for me personally when I was a little kid, and I want to personally thank you,
00:27:28
Speaker
for doing that because each time I've thought about adopting or I've been with somebody I care about in a relationship, you know, Greyhound's always come up. So I've been talking about them as maybe as an adoptive. So I just wanted to point that out and thank you for that Joyce. Yeah. And you know, it's, it's, it's just like in, it's just like baseball or any other industry that, you know, you have good
00:27:53
Speaker
people and bad people, right? And there's always a few bad apples that spoil it for the rest. The Greyhounds love to run. I mean, they love to run. And if it was all
00:28:10
Speaker
Um, where everyone did what they were supposed to do and took good care of their dogs and kept the tracks in good shape. You know, Greyhound racing would be a wonderful thing, but you know, it just, because of a few, a few bad apples, it's just been ruined for everyone. And now there's only three States in the United States where Greyhound racing is still legal. So one is.
00:28:38
Speaker
West Virginia, one is Iowa, and one is Alabama. And so the people who adopt them for pets, and they make wonderful pets. They're just docile and so easy to take care of. They're like cats. They're the dog version of cats. It would be a good in-between for me at the moment.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah, so there just won't be greyhounds to adopt anymore going forward. So I thought this is a prime time to write this story, to say what it was like when I started and what it's like now. Yeah, and I appreciate that too. And like I said, for that particular breed in,
00:29:27
Speaker
some of the particular abuses that a breed, that breed, you know, suffers in some of the kind of, you know, the better part of the story, you know, of chances afterwards. We're going to jump from greyhounds to the big, big question, Joyce. I mean, it's the way the show goes. We just go from one thing to the next. So the big question is, why is there something rather than nothing? So, um,
00:29:57
Speaker
So stories matter and we see ourselves reflected in the stories that we tell.
00:30:09
Speaker
Um, you know, when someone, when someone gets one of my books, I always write in it, um, show up and shine because, uh, I think that's what my uncle Joe did. You know, I think that he showed up and I think when you show up, that's, that's something rather than nothing. Yeah. I, uh,
00:30:35
Speaker
That stood out to me. The inscriptions show up and shine and meant a lot because for me it sounded like just right off the bat. Be there. Do your thing. Say your thing. Play your baseball. Write your book. Sing your song. Do it, right? Do it. Just chill up. It's 90% of the battle, I think. I love it. Just chill up.
00:30:58
Speaker
I love it. Thank you. Thank you, Joyce. Everybody, we've been talking to Joyce A. Miller. And Joyce, I want you to properly lead the audience to your creativity, to the book, to the website, however you'd like to be able to connect.
Connecting with Joyce A. Miller: Online Presence
00:31:17
Speaker
I love folks if they have an interest in great stories and history and baseball.
00:31:22
Speaker
working-class heroes and fighters Joe Harris the moon, but Joyce where do folks go to find you in your creativity? Right so they can go to my website which is www.joisamiller.com and on that website you can connect with me either by signing up for my newsletter or where you'll get things every month or
00:31:53
Speaker
There's connection to my Instagram page, and they can follow me there. So, but the easiest way is just to go to the website. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. And I want to be deliberate about it, too, is particularly I know the effort you put into this work and trying to get it out there and get it into readers hands.
00:32:16
Speaker
It's also for folks listening. For me, I crank up my baseball reading during the summer and it started in about April, May, and it goes through about July, August. So it's there for me. But I wanted to thank you, Joyce, for coming on to the podcast for pretty much all the different type of things that we talked about. I appreciate you in what you do and just wanted to thank you for coming on to something rather than nothing.
00:32:46
Speaker
Well thank you for having me. Have a great day Joyce. Thanks. This is something rather than nothing.