Let's make Newtown the Last Town to Suffer the Deaths of Children

This is enough. Not that it wasn't enough with Columbine, Virginia Tech, the day last week when my niece texted me that she was in lockdown on her school's campus, not that it isn't enough any time any killer points a gun in a child's face, but this, folks, is it, and we cannot rely on the Fiscal Cliff People, the politicians who we've been begging to protect our children from murder. 

Somehow this shooting feels heavier than all of the other school shootings, or maybe it is the culmination of all of the school shootings, but it looms large, bigger than the murder of JFK, MLK, it hurts more than the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, the Columbia, because it is enough. We have to stop this and I think that must be done at a community level because we can no longer wait for the politicians to get their shit together.  

If you don't get your back up today, well then you're probably a boneless chicken.

Erma Bombeck wrote a column called, "The First Day of School," on September 3, 1981, which she said could also be titled, "Confessions of a child entering school for the first time who according to the adults has "nothing to worry about."  Bombeck narrates the child's fears through a child's voice--Donald--where he says, "I'm just a little kid, but maybe I'm smarter than I think I am.  At least I know better than to tell a five-year-old kid with a loose tooth who has never been out of the yard by himself before that he has "nothing to worry about.""  What would Erma Bombeck write today?  What do we now tell our children before we send them off to school?

We are going to have to solve this one ourselves, each community, with our time and our presence and our prayers.  Communities all over the United States must come together to protect their--OUR-- children.  Maybe we need to establish a neighborhood watch-style volunteer security system for each of our community's schools.   

And for our children's sake, and especially for Newtown's children, let's get rid of the automatic rifles.

Good Reads

Just in time for Christmas and all December holidays, Deb's Book Recommendations!  Ta-da!  Recently I found myself prescribing books like nutritionists prescribe supplements to under-nourished people, under-read folks I've met at holiday cocktail parties or at my yoga classes.

One corporate exec said he hasn't read anything but The Economist--for years!  He looked gray and worn, so I prescribed some colorful reading, Jimmy Buffett's Tales From Margaritaville.  My friend and poet Tom Wayman recommended this awesome book of fiction short stories to me a few years ago.    I took it with me on vacation; it was a great read and has become one of my treasured books--still has beach sand and margarita salt in it!  Buffett is a great story teller, the essence of a good writer, I think.  And, it's FUN.  Remember?  Reading is FUNdamental?

Another gentlemen, same party, told me that he secretly wants to write romance novels.  No, he was not hitting on me.  So I told him that I secretly want to teach a writing workshop, foster the writing talent of people like him, folks who have that writing urge nagging at them.  He said he likes Nicholas Sparks and after I threw up in my mouth a little bit, I told him I think he should aim higher than Sparks' novels (though I have to admit the last romance novel I read WAS Nights in Rodanthe, which was pretty good--oops).  I think I recommended Buffett's Tales novel to him, too, for its fun and quirky romances and great characters.

I recommended When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams (TTW) to my journaling yoga group.  TTW writes prose that sings like a song bird, and her meditative, almost journal-writing style makes for a breezy, spiritual experience and some good meditative thinking on women's voices.  Maybe we are all songbirds.  A line from a Nushu poem reads:

Beside a well, one won't thirst;
Beside a sister, one won't despair.

When Women Were Birds, pictured below, has a white cover, so its image doesn't show up well, but here it is.

Three people recommended the same book to me, and in my haze of end of term writing and reading work, I kept forgetting about it.  However, the day before I left to go on a retreat, I made a stop at the bookstore.  I wandered aimlessly, with no specific hunt in mind, only wanting a book to take with me for the weekend's downtown.  I stopped in front of a book case and there in the center of the shelves I saw a book titled, The Artist's Way.  Something about it seemed familiar, so I bought it.  Turns out it's that three-times recommended book.  Turns out it's a course on finding, restoring, embracing your creativity.  It requires a commitment to writing 3 pages a day.  I've knocked that back to one or two, and am trying to be open minded about some of its concepts.

Learning New Things Makes All Things New

The Japanese say that even the other side has another side.  I heard this somewhere along the way, maybe in a Yoga class.  Very interesting, especially when you think about the underside of things, or maybe how we look back at the end of a journey.  

I'm trying to do that now, turning things over and over to find the highlights from my journey deep into the heart of writing.  I'm presenting on my creative work in January and while I go about putting up Christmas decorations, I'm mining for remembrances, things I've learned along the way.  

The biggest lesson I've learned is that there is so much to know about writing and music and science and art and everything; we can never know it all.  The process of learning is continuous.  It's infinite.  

And I love that.  Learning new things makes all things new.  Maybe that's the other side of any achievement.  That's why I love learning.  

(yes, I decorated the birdie cafeteria!) :)  

If A Tree Falls ...

Middletown's citizens, residents and shop owners, gather to save their trees.  They have already lost funding for their local library, and now their trees have been cut to make room for more asphalt.  The woman activist is Louise Sukle, publisher and editor of the local paper, a second generation small business owner in Middletown.  See Monday's blog post for commentary.

Don't It Always Seem to Go that You Don't Know What You've Got 'till It's Gone

"... They took all the trees, put them in a tree museum.  And they charge the people a dollar and a half just to seem them ..." -- Joni Mitchell

     So when I heard that my editor, Louise Sukle, performed an act of civil disobedience--chained her tall body to a tree, probably the tree that sits outside her office's picture window, a tree that's been there since the 70's, a tree that across the years becomes a welcome friend, a carbon dioxide exchanger that provides oxygen, a color changing work of art that displays the seasons, a place of birds and squirrels and shade--I said, "What the hell is a "Shade Tree Commission?""

      Middletown's Shade Tree Commission, three people who are in charge of, um, shade, voted 2-to-0 (where was the third member?) to act upon the advise of a tree expert who said the trees were the wrong trees:  those trees just weren't downtown trees.  Maybe the Shade Tree Commission is a branch of the U.S. Forest Service, a government "land management" agency, government institutions that give away mountain tops for coal and forests for lumber.

     So the not downtown trees that have survived downtown Middletown for years and years got the ax.

     This really is a trees for parking lot story.  I did not give you a Joni Mitchell earworm just to haunt you.  From what I've gathered on my own out here on my frozen rock in Calgary, Middletown wants to restructure the downtown to make way for "streetscape improvement."  They want to add more parking to Middletown's downtown shopping district.

     I am not a Middletown native, nor do I live there, but Central Pennsylvania is my Homeland.  I've visited the Press and Journal's office, and had lunch at pretty Alfred's.  I've walked the formerly tree-lined street and thought it lovely.  I've admired Middletown's charms while waiting for the train to take me to NYC.  I think Middletown is one of the last middle-America small town jewels.

      I've also lived in other places, boom towns, Houston and Calgary (Alberta, Canada), over-urbanized, concrete cities that offer plenty of parking.  In Calgary I've watched bulldozers smash thousands of Aspen trees and then name the development "Aspen Woods."  Apparently, they find the idea of Aspens more appealing than the actual trees.  During the worst part of the housing market implosion in Houston, the subdivisions that held value were wooded.  One is called, "The Woodlands,"and it really is wooded and beautiful.  A piece of shade is worth more than money on a one-hundred degree day.  A shade tree is a thing of beauty forever and ever.

     I think we have to look out for shady terms like streetscape, land management, and Shade Tree Commission.  I think towns like Middletown are keepers, with their local businesses and their trees, concrete splitting tree roots and all.  I like the idea of neighbors conversing on a summer's day under the canopy of shade offered by a mature tree.

    I am proud of my friend, my editor, Louise Sukle, for making a stand.  Her activism is no less than that of people like David Suzuki, environmentalists who stand for a cause. Part of freedom is the right to speak truth to power.  Our small towns, with their charms and unique heritage are at risk of turning into an every-other-town.  I'm glad there are concerned citizens in Middletown who aren't afraid to get their back up over an issue that effects their town.  And anyone who knows Louise will agree with me when I say she is a force of nature.

"One today is worth two tomorrows." Ben Franklin

      I saw this quote, one day is worth two tomorrows, printed on a tiny notebook, part of a notebook 3-pack, the kind you find at a discount department store.  Reading it made me think of the day The Rock (hubster) and I held hands and floated on top of the water, enchanted by the sea turtles swimming gracefully through the blue, blue water below us, and how much that one day was worth to me in the moment, and how much more that day is worth in memory.

   

"I Can Do Anything Good"

My friend, Jenn, sent me a short email:  "Help me get that evil witch out of my head!" she said.  Then she probably dashed off to do the very thing the mean ol' shrew told her she'd never do, stepped into the light, where all of the magic that is my beautiful friend, Jenn, sparkles.

I have my own witch.  I wake up to her daily lecture.  She raps on the lectern with her #2 pencil while I push off the covers.  "Ahem, let's review," she says, and then she recites the list, my failings, a very long list.  I listen and walk to the sink.  "You will never be a real writer," she says while I brush my teeth. I spit the toothpaste into the sink and say, "Yeah, well I'm leading an interesting life, and I write about it." Then she suggests some kind of liquid in a needle or plastic intervention for wrinkles while I wash my face.  I smile into the mirror just to piss her off.

She rants on, shouts, "You will never get it all done!" while my dogs lead me down the stairs to the door, to the backyard, into the morning and the birds' songs.  I follow the dogs, my guides, their wavy fur and alert ears.  "To hell with her," I say to myself, and step into the heart of my day.

Balance Life and Cycling Training for the Bone Ride | Bike in Balance by Mike Magnuson

Here's an amazing essay by one of our best writers and a terrific human, Mike Magnuson.  I hope it speaks to you and encourages some dream chasing.

Balance Life and Cycling Training for the Bone Ride | Bike in Balance

Forgive me, Reader, for I have sinned.  It's been three months since my last blog posting.  I'm living my life, pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone.  I'm in a grad school writing program and working on a book.  My reward for hard work?  I'm working with my favorite writer, Pam Houston (happy dance!).

The writing program is like a two-year marathon--how much can you read and write in two years?  Eighty books and we'll see how many pages.  I've dreamed of applying to a creative writing MFA for years.  Ten years.  The thing that held me back was my own thinking that I wasn't good enough, and lots of time wasted, rather than lots of time spent writing and reading.

I don't like it when people say, "Cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me." It rewards the illness.  I do like to hear people talk about their journey, how it made them dig deep, find that inner strength that's always been there like an underground stream.  Cancer's not the only situation that forces a personal journey;  life offers many and various circumstances that propel us into unknown territory.  We have all wandered in the desert.

On this day, I'm recommending two books.  I hope they will become your new best friends.  Contents May Have Shifted, Pam Houston's new book, a collection of 144 stories about seeking your place in the world, finding faith in a faithless age, the things we do for men, and BFF dogs, specifically a Russian Wolfhound named, Fenton.  Though the book is fiction, there's lots of Pam in the stories.  Her voice is the best friend who will never betray you.

Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams.  Williams speaks from that intimate space that lies between spirit and bone. Her memoir is one about how breast cancer affected her family, a meditative journey through grief, and Williams' determined spirit, her strong connection to nature, and the Great Salt Lake. She has a new book coming out in April:  When Women Were Birds.

So there you go.  As my writing friend, Amy, says, "Get crack-a-lackin'!"