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  1. An Opportunity to Give to Moore, OK

    June 10, 2013 by admin

    What happens to a school library when a town is devastated by a ravaging tornado?

    It finds itself in desperate need of books.

    That’s why the Moore Public Schools Donation Center is now accepting book donations for its school library.

    Copyright www.servemoore.com, via Flickr

    Copyright www.servemoore.com, via Flickr

    I learned about this request for donations via a terrific community of women writers to which I belong, Women Writing the West. While the message on our community board called for books we as authors had written, my immediate thought was that anyone could donate a book, author or no.

    My second thought? If we can give books, what else can we give?

    As artists, we always want to share our creative genius with others. You may not be a writer. You may not have the finances to send off a check. But what of yours – a craft, a homemade card, a kind word – can you give?

    Go ahead, be creative! It doesn’t take much to send along a smile in some form. The worst that can happen is a “No, thanks.” But my bet is that the people in this torn-up community are so open to receiving anything from the heart that they will be grateful for any gesture of kindness, however big or small.

    One colleague of mine organized a publishing auction to raise money. A group of women from Austin, TX, loaded up books and drove to Moore, where they read to children during an event they called “Stories after the Storm.” Each child who attended received a free book, and the remaining books were left as donations to the school library.

    A side note: Did you know Moore is home to the state’s fastest growing school district?

    According to the message from Women Writing the West, the Moore Public Schools Donation Center will accept donated books via UPS or FedEx here:

    Moore West Junior High School
    9400 S. Bryant Ave.
    Moore, OK 73160

    and it will accept donated books via other means here:

    Fairview Elementary
    2431 SW 89th Street
    Oklahoma City, OK 73159

    If you are an author with a book to give, consider this, from the request: “Any author that might want to provide any information along with their books, about the book and why they wrote about that subject, etc., it could be used to inspire a whole new crop of writers and make their donation mean even more.”

    You never know where one simple, kind gesture could lead.

    For other ways to serve, or to read stories from the storm, visit www.servemoore.com.

    From the donation center: “Thanks again and please know that we really appreciate your heart!”

    *How can you use your creativity to serve those in need? Reply via the “Comments” below.

     

    Category Books, Feel-Good Stories, Ideas, Life, Life Stories, Nature, News | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 4 Comments

  2. Boston: Talk About It.

    April 16, 2013 by admin

    I don’t know how to pray.

    I start, “Dear Lord Jesus,” and then the words don’t come. It’s as if I’ve arrived at a cliff and am staring off into a wide, empty chasm.

    How do you pray for the people, the situation, engulfed in the tragedy in Boston? How do you find words that mean anything, to reflect the deep, probing questions and sorrow and confusion that arise like smoke out of the horror?

    We’ve all said it. Our thoughts and our prayers are with you. But what does that really mean?

    Photo courtesy of Creative Commons, Vasanthakumar's photostream.

    Photo courtesy of Creative Commons, Vasanthakumar’s photostream.

    If someone were saying that to you, what would you hope it would look like in action?

    To me, because I am so removed from the situation (our lives went along quite as normal yesterday), my vow is to pay life forward in love. To not shield my family from the violence and terrifying realities that are shaking our world, but to talk to them about it and stress how important it is to, every day, keep on loving fiercely. And not loving just our family and friends (that’s easy), but showing love to those who need it most.

    “Be careful … how much of the news your children watch today,” I read in a Facebook post. “Be informed, but be mindful of the fact that there’s not much about today’s events that our children need to know. Repeated news reports will be fresh each time and young children especially will think the bombings are happening over and over again.”

    I gnaw on this thought for hours, not sure what to think of it. Because I won’t shield my three-year-old from this. He will come downstairs with his lamby and his angel blanket and ask to snuggle on the couch like he does every morning. He will see the news on the television and wait patiently for a cartoon.

    “Oooh, look at that smoke,” he will say. Then, when a reporter interviews a woman in a hospital bed who has a broken leg and is awaiting a skin graft, he’ll say, “She got hurt when she was running.”

    She was a spectator who was near the finish line to cheer on a friend. Her husband was “lucky” because he only suffered a shattered ear drum.

    But I won’t shield my little boy from this. Instead, I will wrap my arms around him and snuggle. I will tell him that there was a very bad explosion yesterday and that lots of people were hurt. I will tell him I love him and I will say it over and over again. And I will pray that he grows to have a heart for God and a heart to love and serve others, because I can’t ask for more than that.

    IMG_5021In our home, we will talk about why people do bad things. We won’t profess to have answers all the time. We don’t want to shatter innocence, but we do want to teach our little ones the raw beauty and importance of loving, above all else.

    In New York, an artist projected these words from Martin Luther King, Jr., on the side of a building:  “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”

    How do you cope? Be the light.

    How do you reflect your thoughts and prayers? Be the light.

    How do you respond? Be the light.

    Natasha Clark of the Huffington Post listed 8 ways that people are showing strength among darkness in Boston’s aftermath.

    However you process tragedy, I pray you will choose light over darkness. That’s the only way we as a human race can win.

     

     

    Category Life, News, Parenting, Quotes | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  3. Win a Book – or Just Have a Little Fun

    April 15, 2013 by admin

    Exercise a bit of creativity for your chance to win a copy of my book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood – or just have a little fun with the creative process.9781932636956-Cover

    Either way you look at it, it’s sort of a win-win deal.

    http://www.writingstrides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/4.png

    Image courtesy of www.writingstrides.com.

    Today, in celebration of the launch of her new writing business, Writing Strides, a dear friend of mine is asking readers and writers and creative gurus to help her write a story. She’s got the first paragraph already down. (And she warns, it’s a bit dramatic.)

    Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to read the continuing story (posted by other readers in the “Comments” section below the post) and add to it. Participants will be entered to win a free copy of my book (a work which Johnson knows well, as she played a crucial role in critiquing and editing the chapters from the ground up).

    I am so privileged to call Johnson a fellow writer and a close friend. Her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Mountain Gazette and Green Woman Magazine, among others, and she has won awards from the Colorado Press Association and Funds for Writers. Her mission is to help people take their writing farther, via writing classes, one-on-one coaching and writing prompts. She is full of inspiration and compassion, and I am so excited to share in the beginning of this journey with her.

    So whether you’re ready to start something, need a creative writing prompt or just want to be a bit silly and let loose, head to the Writing Strides blog for some fun and ambition. You won’t regret it!

    Category Books, Creativity, Ideas, Inspiration, News, Social Media, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | No Comments

  4. Stealing Newtown (a tribute three months later)

    March 14, 2013 by admin

    Three months ago today, an armed young man walked into an elementary school classroom in Connecticut and started shooting. The story that unfolded was one of the most unthinkable, devastating narratives ever to sweep across our nation’s news.

    Two days later, I cracked open my black leather journal, as words pounded on my heart to escape. My writing through tragedy was certainly no attempt to make sense of what happened – seeking sense in such a situation seemed and seems impossible. But the words were, in the very least, some meek expression, some watery form of communication from a distant outsider looking in.

    As so many of us held our own children tight in the days and nights following the nightmare, asking those unanswerable questions, this poem emerged. If you are here today, I ask that you say a simple prayer for those families still reeling from their unexplainable losses. Then, be intentional about treasuring your own loved ones today. Pause for a hug or a simple “I love you.” Because so often, it’s the little things that mean the world.

     

    Stealing Newtown

     

    The shooter is dead.

    The words roll off their tongues

    like stones.

     

    BriggsPhotoWorkshop12.29.08 020

    “The media is descending

    like wolves.” A distant

    friend posts on Facebook,

    the sentence buried

    in a flurry of words –

    what to do, how to help,

    how to love.

     

    Twenty children dead

    eleven days before Christmas.

     

    The shooter is dead.

     

    At bedtime,

    my son plays with my hair

    while in my head I compose

    a poem about guns.

     

    Once he asked me,

    what does “die” mean?

    I couldn’t answer. Not to

    a three-year-old,

    let alone

    a thirty-year-old.

     

    Still

    images and wrong words clang

    in my head like steel:

    Children shot

    in a Kindergarten classroom.

     

    A horrible dissonance of words.

     

    The shooter is dead.

    That much rings clear.

    Category News, Poems, Poetry, Writing | Tags: ,, | No Comments

  5. Stories in the Super Storm

    November 29, 2012 by admin

    We write to move.

    We read to be moved.

    How many of you have followed the stories coming out of Super Storm Sandy?

    Credit: Phil Plait, www.flickr.com

    The heartache:

    2 boys wrenched from their mothers’ arms.

    A father and son who drowned together in their home, their bodies found clutching each other, the father’s hand over the son’s head, as if trying to protect him.

    It aches to even type the letters.

    But then, the heart warmth:

    The 50-year-old neighbor man who brought a newborn to safety by placing the baby on his shoulders and wading through rising waters to higher ground.

    The man who showed up to a neighborhood with a stocked food truck, one day after losing his job at a soup kitchen.

    I can only imagine how stories of both heartache and heart warmth continue to come out of the wood work, one month after the monster storm delivered its enormous lashing.

    Reading the few stories listed here, I was in tune with my emotions. Why do these stories matter? What pulls people to read them?

    The answer I find: Each of these stories represents a thread of human experience. Loss. Adrenaline. Selfless giving. If we can’t empathize, we can sympathize. We grieve, and how much better to grieve together. We celebrate the kindness of strangers, and how much better to celebrate together.

    Somehow, all of us are in the tapestry of this story making and story telling. Even if you were not personally affected by Sandy’s devastation, chances are you tried to imagine yourself in someone’s shoes who was, or thanked God for those things we so easily take for granted: electricity, dinner plates, heat.

    Chances are that, in some way, you were moved.

    What will come of these stories of extreme heartache and heart warmth? Will they somehow be captured and bound and memorialized? Or will they be lost along the Jersey shore, swept away by time?

    Somehow, I want to cement these stories. I want to see them speak to the world. I don’t know how to do that directly, but I can start here with a conversation.

    We write to move.

    We read to be moved.

    What stories are coming your way? And what are they doing to you?

    *For every new follow and new like on my Facebook page through Dec. 15, I will donate $1 to Sandy cleanup efforts. Thanks for your support!

     

    Category Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Nature, News, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 1 Comment

  6. Rejection: An Art?

    July 10, 2012 by katemeadows

    Recently, a family friend shared a story with me from the Huffington Post about 26 publishers who got it wrong.

    In other words, it was a report of 26 now wildly famous writers who endured hefty rejections earlier in their careers.

    Rejection.

    Is it a topic to which you can relate?

    California Pacific Coast. Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

    Stephen King collected his rejection slips on a nail, until he received so many the nail would no longer hold them. Then, he switched to a spike and kept on writing.

    Sylvia Plath, one of the country’s most renowned poets, once said, “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.”

    I shared these insights with a friend this week, who had just undergone a pretty grisly rejection of her own. An essay she had been tirelessly working on was met with a hefty dose of harsh criticism at a writer’s conference. It made her mad; after all, she had poured a lot of work into her piece. She was determined to not let it get her down, she said. Quite the opposite: the criticism made her more determined to get that darn essay published.

    The beauty of it is that rejection is a universal story among all good writers. If you haven’t encountered a snarly rejection, a “No thanks” that at least momentarily stabs you in the heart, I submit you’re not working hard enough as an artist.

    Look at Sylvia Plath. Her rejections were reminders that she was, at the very least, hard at work.

    I heard the story of a salesman who gloried in the numerous rejections he encountered. For every 10 or so rejections he received, he reasoned, he was met with one success. That meant that by the time he received 100 “no’s,” he would have received 10 “yes’s.” And 10 yes’s were all he needed to be a wild success.

    How’s that for attitude?

    Every time I receive a rejection for a piece – be it via a literary journal, a magazine, or elsewhere – I do a little dance. Because each rejection is, for me, a reminder that I am at least putting myself out there.

    Think about it. The only way to guarantee a “No” is to not try at all.

    And you never know what doors might open if you simply give your work a chance.

    When a popular writing newsletter sponsored a writing contest with the prompt “Why I Write,” I decided to give it a go. I knew the chances of winning any contest were slim, but I found the topic so compelling – and I felt I had much to explore under that umbrella – that I sketched out an essay and sent it off.

    It didn’t win.

    However, a year later, I pitched to Writer’s Digest. And you know what? They said “Yes.” The piece, “Artmaking,” was published in March.

    I used to (nerd that I am) keep a tally sheet next to my computer with two columns: “A” (for “Acceptance”) and “R” (for “Rejection”). I’ll give you one guess which column racked up the colorful strike marks.

    I don’t do that anymore, but I do hold on to every rejection I receive. For me, like Plath, they show me I try. And besides, they might just make some really intriguing bathroom wallpaper someday.

    What is your best tale of rejection? How do you handle rejection? Is it something you fear?

     

    Category Books, Inspiration, News, Quotes, Self-doubt, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,, | 7 Comments

  7. The Full Time Tightrope

    April 19, 2012 by katemeadows

    Every day, I ask myself if I’m doing the right thing.

    Being a stay-at-home mom AND writer.

    Not working full time.

    Copyright 2007, Kate Meadows, Indiana.

    Last week, my dad called me to ask if I had been watching the news. I told him I hadn’t – I am knee-deep in final revisions on two books, and the day he called happened to be one of my two work days a week. I was swamped.

    Of course I assumed the worst. An earthquake? A bomb exploding in a school?

    No. He was calling to tell me about Hilary Rosen, the Democratic strategist who attacked Ann Romney’s integrity by questioning her decision to stay at home to raise five boys.

    Rosen’s by now well-known comment that Romney “actually never worked a day in her life” set off a pinging fire inside me. But what got me more than that was her assertion that because she stays at home, Romney – and thereby all stay-at-home moms – is clueless about the deep economic issues that ripple through our country.

    If anyone knows better than a mom how to put food on the family table each night, show me. If anyone is more familiar with the rise and fall of milk prices at the grocery store, show me. If anyone in the family is more conscious of the family budget, show me.

    Isn’t that what these economic issues boil down to?

    Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows, Anaheim, CA.

    I get that Rosen is probably not out to attack stay-at-home moms, that questioning the integrity of a woman’s decision to stay home with her kids is not a key focus of her agenda. For the most part, I cast Rosen off as a talking head who for just a moment got herself in hot water on national television, being expected to, well, say something. Attacking a political candidate’s wife for her “work” choice is akin to attacking a player on an opposing baseball team for his color of underwear. The attack has nothing to do with the competition at hand.

    But I still can’t let Rosen’s comments slide without taking a stand for the hard work I and other at-home parents do every day.

    Being a mom is the hardest work of my life. Throw writing into the mix – because I can’t not do it – and that work becomes a delicate balancing act, focusing on two fierce loves at once. All the time.

    The million-and-one decisions that come and go, the moment-by-moment living that being around a two-year-old requires, no matter how organized or structured a person you are, the absolute crucial importance of maintaining confidence day in and day out. Why?

    To always have your family’s best interests at heart.

    Copyright 2010, Kate Meadows, Omaha, NE.

    In his book Spirituality of the Cross, Gene Edward Veith, Jr., refers to the family as the most fundamental aspect of our vocation. Martin Luther calls us to a life of service, saying, “Each one ought to live, speak, act, hear, suffer and die in love and service for another.”

    My husband the other day referred to stay-at-home moms as one of the most selfless jobs. Not the most glamorous, he says, but the most important. I am grateful to him for saying that.

    President Obama called mothering the toughest job. I am grateful for his acknowledgment.

    I strive to serve my family every day. Whether it’s taking time to feed my son a scrambled egg, read just one more book to him at his request, let him play by himself while I wash the dishes or muster up the energy to run errands and still have time to squeeze in a trip to the library before a certain 2-year-old’s nap time, I am working.

    I strive to tend to my writing every day. Whether it’s brainstorming topics for blog posts, capturing memories from the life of a 2-year-old, reading a literary magazine or making final edits on a book, I am working.

    I can’t not be a mom. “Mom” is the highest calling that has ever been placed on me.

    I can’t not be a writer. Writing is the indisputable gift God has given me, to serve others outside my family.

    Give up one for the other, and I am no longer a whole person. I am a better mom because I still make time to write and feed that fire. I am a better writer because I am living the daily challenges of motherhood.

    Two loves. One life.

    I work. Every day. Full time.

     

    Category Creativity, Family, Motherhood, News, Parenting, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | 6 Comments

  8. Ordinary Struggles Through Extraordinary Writing (Part II)

    April 5, 2012 by katemeadows

    The second of a two-part review of Rick Bragg’s Somebody Told Me. New York: Vintage Books, 2000

    Bragg’s is an extraordinary brand of journalism, because it is not rushed, yet it still manages to tell a complete story that digs beneath the news aspect to peel back the human element of a real-life situation. He writes with a quiet, awe-inspired tone, unveiling a story little by little but still managing to pack in plenty of meat. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, “what the armed thugs have left behind is the dried-out husk of a country that offers America little except leaky boatloads of desperate people and, for a few enterprising American businesses, people who are willing to work like dogs for $3 a day” (56). In “Band Plays on for Class of ‘39” (109-116), he writes:

    The survivors are 67 to 69 years old. Most completed careers. They are old enough to draw Social Security. They drive big cars made in Detroit. Most vote Republican. They are fond of bright green pants. And there is more life behind them than ahead of them (110).

    Image courtesy of www.shopping.com

    One tight paragraph gives me such a complete idea of who these characters are, making even the trivial details enticing, that I want to keep reading. By packing seemingly inconsequential details into tight sentences, Bragg makes the people and situations more real.

    I notice the way he brings out contrasts to make a story more compelling. Thomas Gurley was once a kidnapper; now he has trouble holding a spoon (24). “The Smith case pitted a man who wants children against a woman who threw hers away” (240). “Marquee signs that once advertised fried catfish promised prayer” (248).

    With this technique, Bragg effectively grasps the irony of every-day situations, adding yet another layer of depth to his feature reporting.

    Bragg has made a living telling other people’s stories, and in that sense, I want to emulate him. I don’t just want to make a living telling stories; I want to do so with the same sensitivity and emotion Bragg does. As I read about life in the Hamilton Prison for the Aged and Infirm and come to know one of the prison wards, Mr. Berry (23-28), I think about feature writing as a way to express recognition to those who live in the shadows, those whose jobs we take for granted yet depend on for the good of our society every single day.

    The final sentence in a story about shootings in New York bodegas is: “No one has figured out a way to put the bullet back in the gun” (52). Here is journalism with a purpose at its best. Bragg exposes me to a terrifying problem and walks away with his hands in the air, compelling me to do the same.

    We ask, together, “How do we, as human beings just as ordinary as the victims and the survivors, solve this?”

    It is a question I want to make my mission as a writer, as one who makes a living telling people’s stories. And it is a question I want to instill in my sons, as they come and burst into the world.

    *See Rick Bragg on writing and the South here.

    Category Books, Life Stories, News, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 5 Comments

  9. Ordinary Struggles Through Extraordinary Writing (Part 1)

    April 2, 2012 by katemeadows

    A Review of Rick Bragg’s Somebody Told Me. New York: Vintage Books, 2000

    I was seven weeks pregnant, and I was reading about teenagers who kill people with guns. The fears and insecurities I had of bringing a baby into this suffering world were magnified by each horrifying story I read in Rick Bragg’s “Schoolyard” section of his collection of newspaper stories, Somebody Told Me.

    Image courtesy of www.shopping.com

    This is not fiction. It is real. And Bragg has a way of penetrating each story to probe at the heart of just what is going on and what is at stake.

    That, though, is what makes Bragg a top-notch journalist, a writer I only wish I could emulate in the human interest pieces I have dug up with my own pen and notebook over the years. While many of his stories are vivid illustrations of pain and suffering in the real world, the bigger truth about Bragg’s writing is that he so adequately paints the struggles and joys of ordinary individuals.

    I first heard of Bragg and his book from a small-town newspaper editor I worked for in Frankfort, IN. The editor lent me her copy of the book, praising it as superb journalism. Several weeks later, I had finished the book, and my own writing was noticeably stronger. I wrote with much more authority and stepped out of the canned reportage I had become so used to, tightly packing more details into sentences and boldly portraying the emotions of the people I interviewed. Bragg had inspired me to dig deeper, and to seek out the details in the stories that truly mattered. He showed me it was okay to infuse passion into journalism, to make others give a rip about the world around them, as he had done (1).

    As I read the book a second time, as a graduate student and aspiring freelance writer rather than as a journalist for a small daily newspaper, I found myself asking similar questions as I did the first time around, only this time probing deeper. I think about things like how Bragg finds his subjects to interview, how he establishes trust with his interview subjects, and how he effectively communicates a whole story so passionately yet keeps himself removed from it. How, for example, does he come across an office worker at Mount Olive Baptist Church for insight into the KKK march in Jasper, Texas (197)?

    I pay more attention to the beginnings, asking how and why they suck me into the story. “Maybe it will unfold this way,” he begins “A Sugar Bowl Lacking a Certain Sweetness” (135).

    The story, “Emotional March Gains a Repenttant Wallace” begins this way: “The marchers swarmed around the old man in the wheelchair, some to tell him he was forgiven, some to whisper that he could never be forgiven, not today, not a million years from now” (140). Beginnings like these hurl me into stories where I realize I could just as easily be a character as any of the faces Bragg comes across.

    At the same time, I find myself asking what these stories are really about. The piece, “Tried By Deadly tornado, An Anchor of Faith Holds,” (4-8) is not about a big tornado that ripped through a small Alabama town; it’s a story that chronicles how ordinary people suffer and shoulder each others’ pain in the face of an inevitable tragedy.

    “Inmates Find Brief Escape in Rodeo Ring” (28-32) is not about prison inmates who ride bucking bulls in front of a bunch of spectators; it’s about hardened men who long for an escape, who do not feel they are being sacrificed or exploited for the enjoyment of a crowd (30). Bragg spends the time he needs to get to know the fabric of each character and how they are molded by their situations. In a sense, he makes himself one of them in order to most effectively communicate the story.

    *Read Part II of this review on Thursday, April 5. Until then, happy reading, and cheers to digging up and living your own stories.

    Category Books, Life Stories, News, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,,, | No Comments

  10. News Generation (As Political as I’ll Ever Get)

    January 20, 2012 by katemeadows

    This week I have been thinking about how I read news. Or, better yet, how I get news. Especially in light of the PIPA (Protect Internet Piracy Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bills that have been circulating the Senate and House, I have felt scrupulous toward myself, asking myself how I stay educated about the world.

    Truth is, I do a pretty piss-poor job.

    Why? Because I find that every news-related thing I read I take with a grain of salt. There are too many agendas out there: some news sources lean left, others right. I mention the term Fox News and what immediately pops into your head? Do you roll your eyes? Do you give it an atta-boy because your political views align with theirs? What if I say I listen to National Public Radio every morning? Or watch CNN? Are you going to assume I am a flaming liberal? That I support gay rights?

    I don’t know if the world is becoming more polarized, or if I am just growing up and finally getting a reality dose of the world’s news sources. Most sources, I think, strive to be objective – take LA’s own public radio station, KPCC, for example, with its slogan, “News with no rant and no slant.” But what is objectivity, really?

    As a journalist and former newspaper reporter, I am going out on a limb here. But I don’t know that it’s possible for objectivity to even really exist. Because we are all human, with unique brains and opinions and filters with which we see the world. When I wrote an award-winning feature story on a rape victim for an Indiana newspaper a few years ago, I met the victim face-to-face. I listened to her story. I sympathized with her struggle, deeply believing she was telling me the truth. And I wrote the story.

    I first learned about the PIPA and SOPA bills via a handful of writing blogs I follow. All of these blogs were advocating for free speech, first amendment rights, yada yada. Anytime someone starts spouting off political jargon like “civil liberties” or “protest” or what have you, my mind puts up a black screen. It’s a weird way of protecting myself against any skewed agenda that might come my way, a subtle way of me saying, “Give me all the facts first, then let me make my own decision.”

    The other night my husband came home from work and told me how frustrated he was with USA Today, his primary news source these days. Articles in USA Today were explaining the potential setbacks these two bills could cause with regard to freedom of speech, but never once, my husband said, did the publication actually explain what the bills were.

    I wonder if, as a writer, I should jump on the bandwagon with Google, Wikipedia, and writing-related blogs like Seth Godin’s, railing my fists at Congress and claiming Congress is threatening my personal rights to free speech and freedom of expression while not giving a darn what the majority of the American public thinks. Am I just another dumb clicker if I hesitate to immediately buy in, because other writers are doing it? Imagine how lost you would be without Google, Wikipedia …

    I will laugh at an image a Facebook friend posted on his page, showing The Whitehouse in all its glory with the words: “Says China and Iran Shouldn’t Censor Internet … Introduces Bill that will Censor Internet.” But then I will read the LA Times about how “Hollywood unions blast Google and urge Senate support for PIPA.” I will learn that, according to screen and actors’ guilds, the bills are meant to put a stop only to illegal foreign Websites, meaning the threat to sites like Google and Wikipedia are zilch. Then I will read about how a backlash against the SOPA bill has sent it spiraling back into congress for further consideration …

    … and on it goes.

    Sometimes, I get frustrated that when it comes to major issues and politics, I am so slow to form my own opinions. I often sit in silence while people around me duke out the debates – illegal immigration, gay rights, first amendment freedoms. I feel like the dumb one, the shy one, saying nothing while others spatter on. But then I remember: there are two sides to every coin, and I happen to believe in looking hard at the entire artifact, with a small brush and a toothpick, before I decide which side is more beautiful.

    *One more reason why I take news with a grain of salt: This week, actor Rob Lowe tweeted that Indianapolis Colts Quarterback Peyton Manning was retiring this year. Lowe, who stars in the NBC show, “Parks and Recreation,” which is set in Indiana, is a friend of Colts Owner Jim Irsay. A flurry of tweets and news stories followed, of course. But then Irsay stepped in, via Twitter, with this: “My sources tell me Rob will star in an epic remake of ‘Deep Throat’ with aging porn stars and 4 finger circus clowns.”

    *What’s your take?

     

    Category Ideas, News, Writing Life | Tags: | 2 Comments