Observations

At the end of 1997, my wife Beverly and myself moved into Del Webb's first Northern California retirement community, Sun City Roseville, just outside of Sacramento. About two years later I was interviewed by someone from the Sun Senior News, a paper mailed to Sun City residents at the start of each month, because I'd started a New Yorkers club. When the interviewer found out I was a freelance writer for the Neighbors section of the Sacramento Bee she suggested I write something for the Sun Senior News. I wrote a piece called "Observations after Two Years in Sun City," which was printed, then a few more "Observations," then it became a monthly feature and is still going on.

This book is a collection of ten years of "Observations," from 2000 through 2009. As I put it together, I saw that I had gone from columns that were mainly about Sun City to columns on what was going on in the outside world. "Observations' allowed me to express my opinions on a number of matters. I enjoyed doing them, and hope readers will enjoy reading them.

Martin Green is a retiree/free-lance writer living in Roseville, California. Starting in 1991, he started writing articles and for a time was a columnist for a weekly alternative newspaper in Sacramento, the Suttertown News. In the same year, he began free-lancing for the Neighbors section of the Sacramento Bee, contributing over 100 articles until Neighbors was discontinued. Since 2000, he's been writing for a monthly newspaper, the Sun Senior News, which goes to over 10,000 households in two retirement communities, Sun City Roseville (where he lives) and Sun City Lincoln Hills. He contributes two features each month, one called "Observations" and the other called "Favorite Restaurants."

In addition to his journalistic writing, Martin has had over 200 short stories published in online magazines, plus a few literary and "senior" publications. He has so far self-published three collections of these short stories (2006, 2007 and 2008) and has also self-published a longer work, "One Year in Retirement" (2009).

Martin has been married to Beverly (a water-color artist) for 45 years, has three sons (David, Michael and Christopher), three grandsons (Logan, Mason and Morgan), one granddaughter (Stephanie) and two cats, (Bun-Bun and Shandyman).