Nonfiction / Entrepreneur / Business Memoir
Date Published: October 25, 2023
Publisher: MindStir Media
Observe Possibilities.
Entangle Possibilities.
Create Possibilities.
Throw spaghetti against the wall of life and see what sticks.
Multi-business entrepreneur Linda Rawlings is perhaps best-known as
co-creator of California-based Otis Spunkmeyer, Inc. Her debut book
“Improbable Possibilities”, reveals other entrepreneurial quests
through childhood, a business career, a dance career, and three
marriages–in twenty episodes of you-can’t-make-this-up and
you-can’t-put-this-down true stories.
Diverse San Francisco entrepreneurial adventures include Robert C. Brown
and Company, investment advisors; Triple 888 Manufacturing, the sheet metal
company purchased created to manufacture ovens for baking Otis Spunkmeyer
cookies; and Sentimental Journeys, the DC3 airline that promoted Otis
Spunkmeyer Cookies. Her other entrepreneurial activities include founding
and producing New Shoes Old Souls Dance Company, producing Yoga Garden
Dancers, and working with Heterodoxy Magazine and George Magazine. Rawlings
helped develop MANA!, a food brand in Hong Kong.
Praise for Improbably Possibilities
Reading “Improbable Possibilities”, is like catching up with your
most adventurous and entertaining friend.
Carolyn Wyman, author: “The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie
Book”
“The author, who describes herself as a baby boomer with an old soul,
opens with an account of her youth in Connecticut, and in a series of
chapters filled with quotes from rock music . . . these chronological
self-portraits unfold with a wonderfully readable combination of inner
exploration . . . A lively, colorful memoir of corporate and personal
growth.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS
EXCERPT
I like this—I can’t decide where to cut it:
Particles of sunlit dust ethereally floated just outside my window seat. The atmosphere that entangled these sparkling flecks emitted a light, soft, gentle glow—a glow that had never enveloped me in New England. Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, and somewhat disoriented, I didn’t know whether I was coming down to meet the ground, or the ground was coming up to meet me. Ascending or descending. Floating above the Bay. Mired in the past, anticipating the future, currently in a limbo, floating and suspended in time through a space of—neither. Neither “then”, or “when”.
Looking out my window—first— I witnessed the flat azure water below, reflecting the sky above. Dropping closer. Blues mixing with beiges. Dropping further. Water turning into waves. Waves wearing diaphanous froth. Seafoam. For an instant, I am the seafoam. I could hear the echo of a long-dead Einstein influencer from Ancient Greece—Anaximander, c. 500 BC:
“That which you see beneath your feet,
is only the same sky you see above your head.”
I was clutching my past and emerging into my future. Ready to leave my limbo, shimmying through a space between. Rather like that seafoam. Not completely water, not completely air—just a unity of bubbles. Floating in a netherworld. Neither and either. Aether. My thoughts were propagating through Einstein’s aether.
My anxiety detached. I kept watching the waves as the jet’s wheels dropped. They would soon touch the tarmac, and—the waves would be behind me. I knew those waves would still be there, although I wouldn’t be able to see them. But I could not shake my mental image of that seafoam.
I still can’t.
About the Author
Linda’s entrepreneurial endeavors include the improbable creations of
a start-up investment firm, Robert C. Brown & Co., Inc.; a cookie
company, Otis Spunkmeyer, Inc.; a sheet metal company, Triple 888
Manufacturing; a DC3 airline, Sentimental Journeys; two dance companies,
Express Dance Company and New Shoes Old Souls Dance Company; and–producing
the Yoga Garden Dancers and two daughters.
Linda has a BA in Mathematics and a BFA from Bates College in Lewiston,
Maine, and an MBA and an MA in Journalism from UC Berkeley. Past board
memberships include Bates College, Mark Morris Dance Group, UC Berkeley Cal
Performances, Yoga Journal, and she has been a member of the Young
Presidents’ Organization and Dancers’ Group in San Francisco. Her writing
has appeared in Heterodoxy, the Oakland Tribune and Newport Life Magazine.
This is her first book, inspired by theoretical physics.
She believes in “observing, entangling, and creating possibilities,
and throwing them against the wall of life to see what sticks”. Linda
lives life as a quest, not as an algorithm.
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