Rusty LaGrange

Shoving a microphone in someone’s face may get you a response but interviewing takes a bit more finesse. Rusty LaGrange offers her years of interviewing, gaining information from her subjects in a corporate setting, family research for a memoir, and spontaneous “Man on the Street” instant interviews. And what do you do when facing a mic? Do you back away and act as if the microphone is the muzzle of a gun? In fact, that’s her book title: A Microphone is Not the Muzzle of a Gun. She loves exploring the situations that make interviewing the art of conversation.

For 18 years, the time spent travelling and exploring on the historic Mojave Road with members of Victor Valley 4-Wheelers gained Rusty LaGrange the expertise to share its fascinating stories. Based on annual off-road trips with three or more families to as much as a caravan of 23 adventuring vehicles, life on the 220-mile Mojave Road gained the club over 10,000 volunteer hours and a plaque from The Department of the Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan. They offered guided trips for those who helped keep up and repair the trails. Rusty also became the historian storyteller sharing tales of the road by CB radio. She and her husband Jeff, are also trailblazers in the Guide to the East Mojave Heritage Trails, written by Dennis Casebier in 1986.

Newsletters are the easiest way to send information to a group of likeminded people. Crafting a good, readable newsletter can be tricky. Rusty LaGrange highlights the best design and layout methods to grab attention and make your newsletter a classic draw for your club or civic group. Not all news arrives in your email, yet the number one way to reach members is naturally a printed or digital newsletter. She’s crafted print newsletters for American Red Cross, Victor Valley 4-Wheelers, and Victor Valley Amateur Radio Club. Recently she completed five years producing California Writers Club’s The Bulletin for its 22 branches, CWC’s High Desert newsletter, The Inkslinger, for ten years, and is now pursuing a commercial digital imprint, VintageWest Magazine. As a newspaper layout artist and editor for many years, Rusty still loves the cut-and-paste techniques of graphic design but not the smell of hot wax and those all-night sessions “putting a paper to bed.”