6 posts tagged “harlots sauce radio”
Hello Vox Neighbours!
Remember me? I sort of live here still... when VOX gives me permission to post, and when I'm not working endless hours on Lord-only-knows-what. (In fact, right now, VOX is not letting me change font sizes. I have come to loathe this software)
One of the things I've been up to, is the epic-making of this four minute vid, badly shot by me, using my computer, (a first) with my intern's help. It took all day, believe it or not, and it's still awful. I take full responsibility. It's through no fault of my intern, honestly. She showed me how to work all the buttons, how to "redirect the folder" (which I know I won't remember a second time), and she was cheering me on from off-camera. She shall remain publicly unnamed however, because - as you will see - she's amazingly publicity-shy.
Anyway, this is the Drawing Result for the contest we held on the Harlot's Sauce Facebook Fan Page and which I posted here, also, a while back. I know some of you were entered, and I was super-stoked when I realized that the winner is someone we all know and love. It took about thirty seconds to make the connection between her real name and her VOX name.
I admit that of all the things we've been doing lately to promote my book, running this contest was one of the fun ones. But discovering who the winner was really put it over the top on the enjoyment scale for me.
Congratulations to one very special human being.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-fEArRxYYQ
Also, for those who might be interested - (though my guess is by now, you're probably not, since I'm getting pretty sick of all this stuff, so I can imagine how you feel - here is my just-about-ready new book cover. I know the designers worked very hard on it, and I think it's a lovely work and a job well-done. The interior however, remains pretty much the same, except for the routing out of a few more typos; credit for the detection of which goes to my old pal, SNOWY. ('Sidney' indeed. I never spelled it like that - that was some sort of copyediting software, I swear!)
And now, back to work! : )
Now that you have your newly-edited manuscript down to 143,122 words, (not including the 36,310 words of the ‘Back Section’ which includes recipes, a guide to additional reading, a history lesson, a wine list, and other information you deemed pertinent to your readers as addendums to your manuscript), you start looking for a book publisher. The only problem there is that you have no idea how to find a book publisher. Someone wiser than you, or maybe someone who just overheard someone else talking to another someone about this, suggests you get a “literary agent”. But you’ve no idea how to find one of those, either. So:
1) You go into your husband’s office and ask him, “Have you any thoughts on how I can get an agent for my women’s empowerment memoir?”
Your husband, a stockbroker who reads the financial pages, baseball biographies, and P.G. Wodehouse, and is at that very moment trying to make an important stock trade, replies (quite flippantly, you think), “None whatsoever.”
2) Unreasonably irritated, you leave his office, go back into your own, and type, “How to Get A Literary Agent” into the search engine on your computer. This is when you discover that Google has approximately 818,000 articles on how to find a literary agent, and amazon.com sells more than 50 books on the subject.
Surely you don’t need to read a whole book and all those articles? After all, how hard can it be to get an agent? Aren’t they like realtors? Don’t they want to sell your work? That’s how they make their money, after all, isn’t it?
Thus, assuming that selling a work of literature is like selling a house, you choose to follow the directives in a concise, one-page article you find on ehow.com.
3) The ehow.com article says that you need to first write a ‘query letter’ to an agent. Again, you are clueless. So again, you rely on Google, typing in, ‘what is a query letter?’ to find out on Wikipedia, another of your ‘unfailing’ information sources, that “a query letter is a formal letter sent to magazine editors, literary agents, to propose writing ideas.”
This seems simple enough, so you sit down and write your first ‘formal’ query letter, which goes something like this:
Dear ____________:
My name is Patricia Volonakis Davis, and I have written a women’s empowerment memoir called, “Amerikanaki”, which is my story about being raised first generation Italian-American, marrying a Greek national, and moving to Greece with him.
I hope you will be interested in reading my manuscript. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,
Patricia Volonakis Davis
Address
telephone number
4. After formulating your concise query letter to match the concise instructions which you followed to write it, you make a list of the top ten agents in the United States, finding their names through Google, too, of course.
You go to the agents’ individual websites and discover the particularized instructions on each. Some want you to post your query letter, along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Others will only accept queries submitted by email. Some ask you send the first 30 pages of your manuscript, to also be included in email, pasted, not attached, in “WORD format only”, or “RTF format” (a format you assume is an anachronism for RUT the F*ck?!). Some want you to include any three random chapters, to be sent along with your SAE. And yet others ask that along with your query letter, you send the x-rays of your teeth your dentist took during your last exam.
Following all these instructions diligently (you were a teacher, after all) you send out your ten query letters/emails to your ten top choices of agents, and expect to hear from them all within a week or two at the most.
5. Three months later, you’ve written and emailed over fifty literary agents and received two replies detailing further instructions, and after having complied with those, you never hear from those two again. You now have six of those fifty available books sitting on your desk, with one more on order from amazon.com, and have taken five writing courses. One of those includes a three-day class given by a literary agent, (who shows no interest in your manuscript at all, by the way), simple titled, “How to Write a Query Letter”.
It was during this class that you learned how pathetically inadequate your first query letter was, and you rewrote it so many times that it actually took longer to complete than the manuscript itself. You also learn that apart from your manuscript and your query letter, you need to write something called a “book proposal”, and you have a new list of books written down and ready to order on how to write one of those.
You’ve spent hundreds of dollars on postage, photocopies, books, and classes. Additionally, you suspect your husband is seriously considering moving his office from home, so that you can’t barge in every day to cry over the latest rejection or out-and-out disregard from literary agents. You know these suspicions are well-founded when he suggests that you go to a writers’ conference where you can meet agents in person.
“But, writers’ conferences are very expensive,” you point out to your beleaguered husband.
“True, but a lot less expensive than my having to move my office,” he replies.
(You see? You were right.)
6. And so, you register for BEA (Book Expo America) in New York. You need to pay the conference fees, flight, hotel, meals, and transport to and from BEA, so that once there, you, along with hundreds of other hopeful writers, will have two hours to meet with as many agents as you can, who will give you three minutes each to pitch your manuscript to them. You have no idea who any of these agents are, you only read a short blurb description of them, and of whether they are looking for ‘fiction’ or ‘non-fiction,’ ‘children’s’ or ‘adults.’ You can also clearly see, as you stand on a queue waiting to speak to them, that all of the ones you’ve chosen are already annoyed at and/or bored with the writer who’s talking to them at the moment. And you’re up next.
7. You’ve spent thousands of dollars and another three months up to now, but guess what? ─ you walk away from the conference with seven business cards from agents who have told you to send them your manuscript! A month later, of the seven, two actually offer you a contract! Once again, you have no clue which of the two you should choose, so you go with the one who shows the most enthusiasm for your work. She turns out to be the less experienced of the two; as a matter of fact, you learn that you are her very first client, but no matter. You have an agent! You’ve done it!
8. You run into your husband’s office again, this time with excitement, kiss him and thank him for his brilliant suggestion. You then ring your best friend joyously, informing her that you finally have a literary agent! You will be published within weeks!
Or so you think.
(To be Continued.)
Note: Please remember that comments and replies are now at http://patriciavolonakisdavis.wordpress.com. I am really sorry for this inconvenience. I hope VOX fixes the bug on my blog someday.
Chicago, 1976
The 15-year-old boy was tall for his age, very dark, and rather skinny. Wearing a cheap, ill-fitting suit that only emphasized his gangly frame, he stood in the courtroom facing Judge Joseph Gary’s bench. His court-appointed public defender, Robert Klein, of the law firm Fielden, Neebe and Scwab, stood beside him.
The judge spoke, “Mr. Klein, your client is accused of armed robbery at Giordano’s Pizzeria downtown. How do you plead?”
“Guilty, your honor,” replied Mr. Klein, “but with a request for a commuted sentence.”
“On what grounds?” demanded Judge Gary. “He shot Leo Spizzirri right in the leg. Leo dropped a five gallon container of tomato sauce. It splashed all over the red checkered tablecloths. They were cleaning that stuff up for weeks. Leo’s still walking with a limp.”
“Your honor, this is my client’s first offense. And he’s had some mitigating circumstances,” continued Mr. Klein, smoothly.
The judge sighed, “Let’s hear ‘em.”
Clearing his throat, Klein began his impassioned defense. “Just look at this kid’s skin, your honor. It’s black, but not really black. His mother was white and his father was a foreigner, born somewhere in Africa. Not only that, his father left him. And then his mother married some Indian guy or something, and dragged this poor kid to another godforsaken foreign country. And he suffered there, your honor. He was poor. To top it all off, his mother left him to live with his white grandparents. What must that have been like, for a black kid to live with two old, white people? He could never belong. What kind of a mother would do that?”
Mr. Klein looked at Judge Gary pleadingly and continued, “Your honor, my client didn’t have his mother’s love, and hardly knew his father. He’s a half-breed. A mutt, really. He doesn’t know where he fits in society. He has low self-esteem because his parents abandoned him. No wonder he committed a crime. It was a cry for help. This kid needs our assistance, not our prisons.”
After Klein’s defense, Judge Gary had tears in his eyes. Even Leo Spizzirri, despite himself, was moved. He sat in his courtroom seat, shifting his bad leg uncomfortably.
The judge looked at the defendant silently for a moment, thinking.
Finally he spoke directly to him, “Okay, kid, I’m gonna give you a break, because I see something in you. You get a second chance and I hope you use it wisely.”
He banged his gavel down. “Sentence for Barack Hussein Obama commuted. Court adjourned.”
----------------------
Obama was smiling his megawatt smile as he left the courtroom. He couldn’t believe his paid-for-by-the city attorney had managed to pull this off. He thought he was a goner, for sure. But that ‘victim' act had worked great. Though that bothered him on some levels he couldn’t figure out, he’d remember that in future. Just in case.
Since he was just shy of his 16th birthday, he was still a minor, so the court set him up to live as a foster child. They found a family for him in Marin City, California, which was one of the most exclusive areas on the west coast of the country. He got an upscale education at Tamalpais High School, taking many poetry and literature classes. He had teachers who cared about him and nurtured his talents, which he discovered, were in the area of writing lyrics and performing. His musical abilities eventually led to him being signed with an up-and-coming rap group.
Despite this success, he still felt like an ‘outsider,’ still felt cheated. Instead of reveling in his talents and his good fortune at being placed with the Shakur family, he resented everything about himself and his upbringing. He changed his name from Barack to Tupac, and performed onstage as Tupac Shakur. He made his first album, the lyrics of which were aimed at the problems facing young black males, but it was publicly criticized for its graphic language and images of violence by and against law enforcement.
Though he’d never actually lived the ‘ghetto life,’ he embraced the lifestyle of the real underprivileged and uneducated. He had himself tattooed with street gang symbols. He got in trouble with the law, sometimes severely, but always managed, as he had that first time back in Chicago, to find a white, liberal lawyer who felt sorry for him, and pleaded his case in court as “a victim of society.”
In fact, Tupac glamorized victimhood to the point that many of his worshipful, young male fans, who’d been truly forced by circumstances of birth to grow up in the ghettoes, began to believe poverty, violence, and criminality was the preferred existence to which they should aspire. Not only that, but since Tupac had moved from Chicago to the west, it’s believed that he may well have been one of the defining forces in the so-called “East Coast –West Coast” rivalry that still exists in the hip-hop industry today.
(Fans insist that it wasn’t that Tupac didn’t like the extra sunshine and healthier lifestyle that he was able to enjoy in his new home in California, it was just that he never got over the fact that he had to leave behind that really fabulous Chicago pizza.)
Shakur made album after album, with names like Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. and Thug Life: Volume I. He became enormously popular, so much the dangerous, yet dashing face of the outlaw, that he dated Madonna, as every man who is famous in this sort of fashion eventually does. She is reported to have wanted to bear his child. (And that part’s not a joke.)
Not even 25 years old, Tupac sank deeper and deeper into a life of too much fast money, too many drugs, and crime after crime. He was surrounded and encouraged by an entourage of men and women who wanted that same exclusivity that he did, and were willing to sell their souls as hangers-on or sex-objects to be near it.
And always, always, he maintained that his race and his circumstances of birth should excuse him for his desires and activities. He went to prison several times on charges from sexual assault to manslaughter, always insisting on his innocence, always managing to get through, and always remaining the most successful rap artist of all time. Shakur is the only artist ever to have an album at number one on Billboard 200 while serving a prison sentence. The album stayed at the top of the charts for five weeks, selling 240,000 copies in its first week, setting a record for highest first week sales for a solo male rap artist at the time.
His bad habits eventually caught up with him, however.
On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur attended the Mike Tyson - Bruce Seldon boxing match at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. After leaving the match, one of his associates spotted 21- year-old Orlando “Baby Lane” Nelson, a member of the Southside Crips in the MGM Grand lobby, and informed Shakur. Shakur then attacked Anderson, with his entourage assisting. The fight was captured on the hotel's video camera. A few weeks earlier, Anderson and a group of Crips had robbed a member of Shakur’s entourage in a shoe store, precipitating Shakur's attack.
After the brawl, Shakur went to meet up with some friends, riding as a passenger in a black sedan. At approximately 11:15 p.m., a white, four-door, late-model Cadillac, with an unknown number of occupants pulled up to the sedan's right side, rolled down one of the windows, and rapidly fired at Shakur. He was struck by four rounds, with bullets hitting him in the chest, the pelvis, and his right hand and thigh. One of the rounds apparently ricocheted into Shakur's right lung.
While in Critical Care Unit on the afternoon of September 13, 1996, Shakur died of internal bleeding; doctors attempted to revive him but could not impede his hemorrhaging. The official cause of death was noted as respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest in connection with multiple gunshot wounds.
Shakur's body was cremated. Some of his ashes were later mixed with marijuana and smoked by members of his band.
Throughout all his misspent life, not anyone could deny that Shakur was full of talent and intelligence. He remains one of the best-loved artists, and sales of his records continue posthumously. We will all always wonder, especially his lawyers who defended him, and others who emulated him, what his life achievements could have been.
If only he hadn’t had the misfortune to be born Black.
As I roam around VOX, I notice that though I don’t know many of my neighbours real first and last names, I do know that they are “Christian” or “Atheist,” “Conservative” or "Liberal.”
It seems important to many that others know what bunch they’re part of, and certainly that they are part of a bunch---any bunch. It’s also important to many to know which bunch others are a part of, because in this way they can gauge that other person based on whatever that other person's particular bunch signifies to them.
For example, if someone states, “Hi, my name is Such-and-Such, and I’m a Christian,” or, “Hi, my name is So-and-So, and I’m a Liberal,” there’s bound to be someone hearing either of those introductions thinking, “Uh Oh,” or, “Thank goodness.” So, without knowing anything else about this new person, we experience either a warm mental welcome towards that person, or an uncomfortable wariness.
Declaring oneself part of faction serves two other purposes for some, too: It allows them to cheer for their particular faction, just like we do with sports teams. Most of us, when we have a favourite sports team, don’t really care much about what that team does to win. As long as it does. After all, that’s the one purpose of team sports these days, isn’t it? To win… regardless of how that’s achieved?
Choosing to be part of a group also means to some that they can let their group do their thinking for them. Let’s face it ─ mulling over our country’s foreign policies, or which candidate we should vote for, or where we stand on each individual issue is hard work. To start, we have to find the hour in our already busy days to read about what those issues are, and from more than one source in order to get a balanced view. Then, we have to analyse all that information and decide what we believe regarding every issue on a one-by-one basis. But, most of us have to work eight hours a day, at least, then come home and take care of chores, houses, kids, maybe even a pet. Much easier to let our group simply tell us what we think. That saves us a lot of trouble, doesn’t it? At least in the short term, it does.
So, in the interest of fair play, because though anyone who reads my blog knows my name, my occupation and even where I live, they don’t know my affiliations, because I’ve never openly declared them. Now I will:
I am a follower of Patrichism, which makes me a Patrichist. Below, I’ll list the basic principles by which Patrichists live:
1. Patrichists strive to be pro-active, not re-active. Meaning, we don’t take action based solely on our emotions, we try to think rather than just feel. Let’s say that something ‘feels’ wrong to us, like, for example, abortion or gun control. I pick these two issues because Liberals are ‘for’ both, and Conservatives are ‘against’ both. But not all Patrichists have an identical opinion on either. What all Patrichists do agree upon, however, is how we deal with our feelings on these two issues. The first thing we do not do is re-act in a knee-jerk way, by issuing hysterical demands to deem them both unequivocally unlawful.
Instead, a Patrichist will think – what might happen if all abortions or all gun control were to be outlawed? What good could happen as a result? What bad could happen? What might the long term effects be? How would those effects spill over into other areas we might not expect or anticipate? Patrichists think the same way with, say, offshore drilling. Or declaring war on another country. Whatever the issue, a Patrichist acknowledges his/her gut feelings, but does not act upon those feelings, by immediately banding with a group that supports or opposes. A true Patrichist thinks everything through thoroughly before holding an opinion. A true Patrichist entertains all perspectives on every issue in his/her mind, openly and without fear of where his thoughts might take him.
Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a concept without necessarily accepting it.” Patrichists keep their minds educated by using them and holding their emotions at bay, until such time as their thoughts can be formed coherently.
2. A Patrichist never worries about what others will think if the stance they hold on any particular issue is different than theirs. She doesn’t worry about being ostracized, even from her own group. A Patrichist is unafraid to stand alone.
3. Patrichists are also not afraid to change their minds on an issue if new information comes to light. This does not make them ‘wishy-washy,’ this makes them intelligent. Since Patrichists believe that opinions should be formed based on knowledge and not emotions, it stands to reason that the more knowledge one gains of an issue, the more complex that issue becomes, and the more one needs to think it through, possibly causing a change in perspective. In simpler terms, Patrichists are not blinded to one idea and one perspective only, but are always open to new ones. This is what makes them so powerful. Politicians cannot manipulate Patrichists, because politicians can never get a consensus on what a Patrichist may or may not be thinking about any one issue. Since Patrichists’ thoughts are individually and not grouped-based, that means that the only way any politician has a chance of getting the vote of some Patrichists, (though not necessarily all), is to tell them what he really thinks. Which no politician will ever do, of course, for fear of losing the surer votes of Liberals or Conservatives, or whoever he’s after who can be counted on to have a more predictable mindset.
4. Patrichists use the word ‘faith’ carefully. They never say they have “faith” in a politician, as though that politician is God. Yet, a Patrichist can have faith in their God, if they choose to believe in one. That’s right—some Patrichists believe in God, others don’t; but whether they do or don’t, they recognize that blind 'faith' in a politician is the way to loss of free thought and will, but faith in a God is an acceptable choice, as long as it harms no one. No matter what any religious person or any atheist will tell you, there is no clear-cut proof that any god exists or does not exist, there is only each individual’s idea of such. And because religion is an idea, a Patrichist respects every human being’s right to a different one. Even so, all Patrichists recognize that there exists good and evil, and that any killing done in the name of any idea of any religion is evil, pure and simple.
5. Lastly, one of a Patrichist’s main motivations in life is to leave every place she or he enters a little bit better than it was before. But, Patrichists’ thoughts are global when they think in terms of ‘place.’ A Patrichist counts the entire planet, not just one particular state or country, as the place to strive to make a positive difference.
So, that’s the entirety of Patrichism. Five very good points. I try my damndest to practice these every day. In fact, I’ve practiced Patrichism for so long, that I’ve earned a PhD. in it. “Dr. Davis”, that’s me.
Of course, my doctorate is self-proclaimed. How? Because ‘Patrichism’ is my very own ‘ism’ that I made up myself, my personal 'ism' by which I try my best to live. This should explain the match of the first six letters of this particular ‘ism’ to those in my first name.
Up until now, I’ve been the only member of my "Society of Patrichists.” But today, I’ve decided to begin awarding ‘honourary degrees in Patrichism’ to those who, by reading their blogs, I’ve come to believe follow (or, like me, try their best to follow) the principles of Patrichism.
Those who receive an honourary degree are under no obligation to accept it, of course. In fact, they can even refute it for any reason at all, and no hard feelings. But for those listed below who feel they have earned a degree in Patrichism and would like to accept it, I’ll happily send you your diploma via email, signed, sealed, and flourished for you to place on your office wall, with my very best wishes:
Honourary Bachelor’s Degree in Patrichism Awarded To (Alphabetically):
All of these ‘Under Thirties’ above have the wonderful ability to think outside the box or group of circumstances they happen to be born into. They are all, in their own way striving to do something special with their lives. I highly recommend their blogs. They have wisdom beyond their years and always teach me something or make me think.
Honourary Master’s Degree of Patrichism Awarded To (Alphabetically):
With all the madness going on in politics these days, reading these two, knowing they’re out there, thinking and caring, makes me sleep better at night.
Honourary Doctrate Degree in Patrichism:
You know, there just has to be another Dr. of Patrichism out there, and this one feels especially right because he discusses so many issues and he’s (I hope he won’t mind my telling ) even older than I, thus earning ‘experience’ points. I could have picked snowy938.vox.com, too of course, but last I heard he’d already had a reader declare him a ‘Snowy God.’ And being a god beats earning an honourary doctorate any day.
More honourary degree listings coming in future months. And for anyone on this list who wants to accept his/her diploma, on my honour as a Patrichist, I promise I will send you one. To those who accept, I guess I can say, ironically, “Welcome to the bunch!”
It’s good to be back. My garden, after weeks of neglect, is once again blooming. Having a garden is just like having a life. You have to attend to it every so often, pull out the weeds, expose it to more sunshine and nourishment where needed, in order for it to flourish. I also had a remarkable visit around my growing VOX neighbourhood. It was impossible to leave comments everywhere, but I so enjoyed reading about everyone’s activities, seeing all the photos and artwork, hearing the music and musing over the poetry and stories. I’ve said it before ---what an extraordinary group of people, what a wealth of talent we have at our fingertips every day. It sure beats reality TV by a long ways.
Here’s something else I discovered whilst reading. Generations X and Y will save not only humanity, but the planet Earth itself. They are politically-involved and astute, they’re compassionate and global-thinking, they are street-smart and tech-savvy, environmentally-focused, entrepreneurial and optimistic. They have endless imaginations and boundless enthusiasm. They embrace their lives and their loves. They’re not easily defeated by the state of the world the way we’ve older generations have left it, either. I’m really, really thankful that we Baby Boomers didn’t completely screw things up for them. And let’s face it--- we’ve sure come close.
I don’t know what happened to many of us after we hit 40. We suddenly stopped worrying about our legacy to the younger generations, and instead focused on not getting wrinkles. We focus on our weight and our portfolios and not at all on our children and what they might be missing from their lives-- our leadership, our support, our encouragement and most of all, our respect for who they are and who they want to become. There is that portion of us who are that selfish and self-absorbed. The word “parenting” to many of us is a verb no different than “networking,” “exercising,” “investing.” We expect our children to be reflections of our achievements, rather than individuals with needs and dreams of their own.
Then there’s the group of us who sit around in metaphorical rockers and shawls, worn-out, remembering our youth and our one ‘big claim’ to immortality---Woodstock---wondering what happened to it all. That portion of us sighs and says, “We were so young,” as though having any values at all besides a longing for long-term health care and social security benefits, is naïve foolishness that disappears with the onset of menopause and swelling prostate glands.
What a picture we present to young people of their future ---shallowness or uselessness. No wonder so many of them feel anxious or depressed. And instead of addressing what they’re feeling, we quickly and remorselessly diagnose them---ADHD, bi-polar, social-anxiety disorder, etc. etc. Then we medicate them and continue with our heads in the sand, just waiting to die, hoping it will be quick and painless.
We let Gen X and Gen Y down. A good portion of us stopped worrying about wars when it would no longer be us specifically who had to stand in the way of the bullets.
I remember asking my husband about the invasion on Iraq, “Where are the musicians this time around? How come they’re not protesting?”
It was a fair question, I thought. Some of the same musicians from the 60’s and 70’s were still commanding huge audiences, so why were they not rallying as they’d done back then?
His to the point response made me cringe, “Volunteer army, Clear Channel.”
And even though the older generation retain most of the financial power in the world, we’re the ones whinging the most about rising fuel costs and real estate busts. Yet did we do anything to prevent either? Or were we as myopic as ever? Did we ever take the younger generations seriously as they protested and tried to educate us on what we were doing to the environment and to the economy? And ultimately, to them?
Furthermore, if I hear one more old fart professor bleat on about how hooked up Gen Y is to technology and how adversely it’s affecting his university classroom, I think I’ll hit him over the head with my new laptop that I’m just now figuring out how to use.
What alternatives have we left our young people? Where else can they find answers to their questions? They’ve come to us in the past and we haven’t helped them. So they‘re seeking guidance elsewhere, using technological advances as they should be used, for the most part—for the greater good. Oh, there are exceptions. There is the occasional young sociopath who wants to use YouTube to record the beating of a classmate. But the youth I encounter on a daily basis through VOX and through interacting with my own children is seeking knowledge and/or creating their art through the internet. They, like my unattended garden, are finding their own way to grow, but with just a little encouragement from us, they’d be able to thrive.
And those of us older folk who acknowledge them and embrace them, not only for what they are doing, what they are trying to accomplish, and for what they can teach us, are earning their respect. Yes, that’s right- earning it. (Read this blog to see what I mean.)
Youth asks us, with open hearts and open minds, to be both their mentors and their friends, and I for one, am eternally grateful to be invited to do so. Because like this man, this man, and this woman, (all admittedly over fifty) there still exists a portion of us of ‘a certain age’ who will go to our graves believing that idealism is not just for the young.
The flame of a visionary never flickers with time. In fact, it burns taller and steadier the closer it gets to the candle’s end.
(This post is dedicated to all my Gen X and Y neighbours, my sons, and my writers at Harlots Sauce Radio.)
In 2002, the man I love lost his 19-year-old son to a car crash. Six months later, I had to face the growing evidence that yet another beloved family member was suffering from a mental condition which was causing him and those who loved him a great deal of emotional pain, but for which he was adamantly not going to seek treatment. Two minutes after that, I had still another falling out with my parents; regarding their obsessive control issues that dogged me right up to my mother’s death. A few months later, my 14-year-old son began his rebellion stage with a vengeance. Not to mention that throughout all this turmoil, I was making the slow and unbelievable discovery that a woman who I thought had been my friend for the past twenty years was simply…not. And then, of course, there was the Bush administration’s decision to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some people might wonder how I could possibly include that last sentence in my list of personal woes. But I do, because since I’ve been in my early twenties, I’ve had what some call the annoying propensity to read the newspapers and use my God-given strategic thinking skills to analyse the information therein. And I don’t just read American newspapers. There are all kinds of news reports one can find online, many in English, but if not, I find that if I use a dictionary, I can read the newspapers in a few different languages. And being able to do that gives me a bit of an edge, because world reports are markedly and sometimes, scarily different than American reports.
The reason I go to all this trouble to read whatever I can and think about all of it is simple - I want to know when policy-makers are lying to me. I don’t care what party they belong to, nor what country they’re heading. I don’t join teams and stick with them doggedly to the bitter end, no matter what ‘my’ team does or says, when it comes to politics. In fact, after the dirty play I witnessed by the Italian team during the last World Cup, a team I’ve been cheering for since I was a little girl watching European football with my uncles, I don’t even do it with sports any more. Because I know that whenever anyone who’s been put in power opens his mouth, whether in sports or politics, sh*t happens. And that sh*t usually gets dumped with a heavy hand on the littlest guy.
But reading the newspapers and analysing the news led me to having to face the final personal trauma of the many personal traumas between the years 2002 and 2003, which was that my country was going to attack another country for a reason that I knew to be an absolute LIE.
Five years and countless deaths (of humans and civil liberties) later, I’m proven right. Oddly enough, that doesn’t make me feel one bit better about it.
But I digress.
Regarding every harrowing incident I lived through between 2002 and 2003, well-meaning supporters said, “There’s nothing you can do.”
It was true that there was nothing I could do to prevent the series of events that led to my stepson’s death. Nor could I stop the deluge of grief that followed and that will trickle forever. I couldn’t force my family member to seek counselling, nor my parents to be anything other than what they were. And, like everything else my son does, he did his rebelling so well, that nothing I, his father and his stepfather managed to come up with, would alter his course until he was damn good and ready to alter it himself. As far as my long-held acquaintanceship…well, I thought about it long and hard, and at the end of the day, I saw I was pretty much powerless there, too.
Powerlessness is terrible. It leads to hopelessness. Even though I coped as best I could with these events, I admit to feeling hopeless more than once during them.
But when the President of the United States starting talking about invading Iraq, I heard, “There’s nothing you can do,” once too often. I wasn’t powerless in this situation. I could at least have my voice heard. And so I began writing, writing, writing. I wrote essays, articles and satires. I wrote emails and letters to Congress.
What difference can the voice of one woman make? Maybe not much, but add it to another voice and now you have harmony. Add ten more and it’s a chorus.
There are a growing number of us who are less and less afraid of singing against the norm. We are tired of the different factions sniping at each other and pointing fingers. It doesn’t matter who was playing the fiddle when Rome started burning, it's time for us all to step up and begin to put the fire out.
I haven’t written about the presidential campaign because I am disgusted by it. I am sickened that this past week alone there was devastation in China and Myramar and none of the candidates - one of whom is to be the future leader of the free world - could stop his or her own personal crusade for self-aggrandisement long enough to bring these up in any real context. If I thought that any of the three could sincerely care about anything other than, “I want to be the next president of the United States,” just for a single moment, that in itself just might give that person the one precious vote that is still mine to give.
When I lived in Greece, there was a devastating earthquake in nearby Turkey that rivalled the one China has just suffered. Greek television is not like the television here in the United States. Reality TV in Greece is not who gets picked by the bachelor, reality TV is seeing your Turkish neighbour clawing through the rubble of his village, screaming in agony because he hears his family crying beneath the stone, and he has no tools save his bare hands to free them. When you see the tears and the blood of your neighbour, does it matter then if he is Muslim or Christian, friend or enemy? It shouldn’t and it didn’t to the Greeks. Long time foes of the Turks, with centuries of ill-will between them, the Greeks were the first outsiders to step on Turkish soil to help.
I remember being in my little bookshop in Athens, crying with relief as my business partner and I watched on our telly downstairs, Greek police, Greek firemen, Greek doctors, Greek nurses, Greek university students, all doing their damnedest to help their sworn enemies save their children, their spouses, their parents and whatever was left of their homes. And when just the following month, Greece had its own earthquake, the Turks were there in a show of solidarity that should make every self-proclaimed follower of God or any kind of spirituality here in my country hang his head in shame.
When I asked one Greek why he was able to help so wholeheartedly a people who have been at war off and on again with Greece practically since the beginning of time, his answer made me think. He said, “It’s not the Turkish people we Greeks dislike. It’s their government.”
We are all citizens of the same country here and yet we don’t show the respect for each other that those centuries-sworn enemies did. And don’t think for one moment just because you assume you are on the ‘correct’ side of the “Republican/Democrat, Christian/Non” debate, that it gives you the right to slander anyone else, or feel smug and superior to anyone else.
First off, it’s not helping. What it does is keep us occupied while all politicians- all - screw us. All. We are all in this crappy economy together, we are all in this war together, we are all suffering under the same antiquated health care system, school system, and electoral system. We may all have different opinions on how it should be changed, but the point is we all agree it should be different and the only ones who are benefiting from it as it stands are the ones who set us squabbling about it in the first place.-the politicians.
Here are three thoughts for both liberals and conservatives both in and out of the United States:
1) How is political protest “anti-American” when it was what the country was founded on? There would be no United States of America without someone - or once again, that small chorus of people, who said, “This isn’t working. Time to start over. Let’s start by having a tea party.”
2) Did it ever occur to anyone who criticises those who believed George Bush unequivocally, that they should have been able to believe him? George W. Bush is like my mechanic. He’s hired to fix my car. If my mechanic tells me my transmission is out of whack, how can I argue, unless I take a course in car repair? I have to trust him. And I do. I hired him to do a job. How can a person who believes in the office of the president be criticised for that same trust? It’s this president who violated that trust. It’s this president who should be blamed, not every Republican. Are you telling me there are no lying Democrats?
3) And lastly, there are three hundred million people who live in the US. Can we all be alike? Do we all have the same levels of exposure to the outside world or the same education? I just met a man recently, a good man, who believes fervently that we need to “stop the terrorists.” He is a stone mason, he is out of work, and my guess is he has no clue that the reason he is out of work goes back to Alan Greenspan’s incompetent, partisan fiscal policies and George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. How could he know if he never had an economics class, maybe never even graduated from high school?
Granted, not everyone who is ‘pro-invasion’ is this man. And many people on both sides of this equation are just not nice people who have their own agenda, their own desire for personal gain. And then there are those who simply see things differently.
I see things differently than most people. I believe that we should all be able to learn from each other and that the differences amongst us should not be a threat to any of us, but an opportunity to grow and learn as a species. I want to know how the people in India came to believe in a God with an elephant face, and the ones in Italy believe in a God who was born again as Himself. I’m not alarmed by either of these beliefs, nor do I mock them. I’m intrigued by them. How did they start, and what can I learn from them? Most importantly, what do I believe myself, as an individual, when I gather these facts? Am I strong enough to stand alone if I have to, when my beliefs are different than those around me? Can I also use what I learn to help build a better world?
That is the purpose of my life. To learn and to teach. To help leave the planet just a little bit better than it was before I got here. It will most likely make only a small difference, really, one woman’s voice. But if I can add a chorus to it, well…you never know.
And that’s how I’ll introduce you today to my new online magazine and podcast, Harlots’ Sauce Radio. It still only has a small voice, but the sound is unique and beautiful to me, because the chorus is comprised of people from all different parts of the world, coming from all different perspectives. Yes, we can do that without snarling at each other.
I’ve sent this post as an invitation to everyone in my VOX neighbourhood and in my VOX groups today. Not only do I invite you to read Harlots’ Sauce Radio and listen to our podcast interviews of many extraordinary people who make up this planet, I urge you to add YOUR own voice. There is a wealth of talent here on VOX - writers, humorists, musicians, poets, photographers, and deep thinkers. Please go to the submissions guidelines page and offer up your talents. Then, enjoy the talents of your fellow human beings who have already been published there. If nothing else, we make a pleasant change from Yahoo’s home page daily reports on who got thrown off American Idol.
I hope you will take me up on this invitation. If we sing loudly enough, sooner or later, our song will be heard.
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