“Live each day like it’s your last ’cause one day you gonna be right.” ~ Ray Charles
Sometimes I meet people and feel like I’ve known them for a long time. Katie Hoffman is one of those people. Before today I had only talked to her on the phone. She was kind, of course, but just talking business was like talking to anybody about business. It was just business. Then she came to my office. She resembles my old friend Kitrina Kelly, and that instantly put me at ease, but it was after we got past the business talk that I began to feel unusually familiar. Katie runs her own business called Appalworks in Gray, Tennessee near Johnson City. After teaching college-level English for 20 years, she’s now a writer that also does oral histories. She concentrates on what I would call the building of cultural legacy collections of and about Appalachians. As if that wasn’t enough to warm my heart, she’s also a musician. She said she prefers hanging out with people who are a little unusual because they’re the most interesting to be around. That’s when I knew she was a kindred spirit. If every nine a.m. meeting came with making new friends like Katie, I’d be early to every single one.
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