Anderson transplant launches hometown blog ‘Anderson Orb'

BLOG ON: Lita Gail Coulthart-Villanueva (just call me Lita) recently launched her blog "Anderson Orb," which will include personal observations of things in and around the community that she finds to be of interest.

Recent South County transplant Lita Gail Coulthart-Villanueva loves to write and has launched a personal blog about her newly-adopted home town that she calls "Anderson Orb."

"I used to do one in Redding called ‘Redding Life' but that name was already taken for Anderson. Since I enjoy writing about things on my planet, things around which my life revolves, I looked up the word planet in the thesaurus and fell in love with ‘orb.' It's such a cool-sounding word," said the 50-something blogger who prefers to be called by her first name, Lita.

A former Redding Area Bus Authority driver who suffered a back injury, Lita sees her personal blog as a "license to explore."

"I have an excuse. I can tell my husband or my grandchildren, I'll be out and about gathering grist for my blogging mill," she told the Valley Post.

So far, since June, Lita has discovered and written about several murals freshly painted at Anderson Union High School by her good friend Raette Meredith, the annual Paesano Days Celebration and bocce ball tournament in Anderson River Park, discovered disk golf enthusiasts who described to her the rudiment rules of the game and managed to spook herself and others with mysteriously missing photographs of ‘unknown' grave markers seen at Anderson's Pioneer Cemetery.

Most recently on her blog, she writes about a private visit to the Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation facility at Anderson River Park. It seems she spoke so enthusiastically about wildlife with one of the caretakers that Lita was allowed to see a bit of the training required to teach an immature baby crow how to eat grubs and other things.

"I usually try to find the positive in a negative situation," Lita says about herself. "I am an award-winning artist, a writer, a hobby herbalist, a grandmother and a wife," a portion of her blog states. "Currently, much of my life is spent dealing with life after a fairly severe spinal cord injury. I am so grateful to NOT be paralyzed after surgery that I can't whine about the ‘chump change' without feeling guilty!"

When it comes to the new technology, Lita said, "Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur traipsing around. Usually after I end up struggling to learn something new on the computer, like how to upload photographs, my 14-year-old grand-daughter Christina will tell me that she could do that for me, but I want to learn how to do it."

Why does she do it?

"I just love to write," Lita quickly responds with a devious twinkle in her eyes. "I think I say on my blog that my hope is not that I will ever be famous, but to have someone read my stuff," said the former chair of the Northern Valley Arts League.

To read Lita's blogs about Anderson, go on-line to http://andersonorb.blogspot.com