Are You Guys Writers?

 Are you guys writers?

I know you are readers, for you are here. Thank you. I appreciate you immensely.

I am encouraging reading and writing. Don’t let either go away. Ray Bradbury said, “You don’t have to burn books, you just have to get people not to read them.”

Don’t do that. Keep on reading. Keep on writing. Both are good for that beautiful brain of yours.

“In times of crisis,” I read this morning in the Epoch Times: “it’s easy for your mind to feel bombarded—notifications, headlines, endless scrolling. It feels like information overload, but science shows it’s worse: shallow, fragmented content actually changes your brain, training it for distraction.”

I know that extended, focused reading is good for the brain. A study published in Neuroscience News shows that consistent cognitive engagement such as reading can even delay cognitive decline by years.

“What you feed your brain defines how it performs. Shallow content trains distraction. Deep, quality reading trains focus and insight.”

We need to delve into something of substance once in a while, immerse ourselves. Perhaps I should write longer blogs. But people have little time, so they want to get through information quickly. I suggest you use your precious leisure time to read a book. Savor it. Devour it.  And after that, write out your feelings, frustrations, blessings. Your life has meaning; it deserves your attention.

I was so excited yesterday after completing Suzanne Redfearn's novel Where Butterflies Wander, especially after she explained in the author’s comments following the book how she came to write it and how it morphed along the way. It fell in step with a discussion I had with my grandson the night before on what a theme is, a plot, should you write the ending first, those sorts of things. As she was writing her novel, she found an article in a magazine about a man in a cabin, squatting on someone’s land, and used that idea in her book. It gave her story backbone she said. And it gave her an ending. I wanted to tell somebody, but it was met with crickets, and I realized, once again, that discovery gives its gift to the one who finds it. Plus, you must jump on an idea while it’s hot; otherwise, it flies away with the wild ducks.

 It seemed pertinent that the two books I completed in the morning, that is not normal for me, were by the same author, Suzanne Redfearn. In April I mentioned Walking the Camino, and now I am talking about Where the Butterflies Wander.

When my girls were starting school, and I was reading about alternative education, I came upon the book, Education and Ecstasy. The author asked if we had ever, in our 12,16 or 18 years of schooling, had a teacher who believed learning was ecstasy. That’s the way learning ought to be, but mine wasn’t during those early years.  (That book is on Amazon; by George B Leonard, I just looked it up. Yep, printed in the 60s. That sounds right.)

That book just popped into my mind. That’s the way the brain works, and the way I wrote my memoir, like a mountain stream that splashes against rocks, beavers dam it up, the water breaks free, logs fall into it, but I trust the river knows where it is going and will take us there with it. (To the Source.)

It may sound ludicrous to say I’m writing a memoir, I'm not illustrious. I’ve never been to Mars. I’m not a celebrity, had a near-death experience, or chewed off my arm stuck on a mountain. However, I trust Natalie Goldberg when she said everybody ought to write a memoir, and it doesn’t have to be your life story. It can be any moment. It can be for those moments that take your breath away.

I wanted to visit my little girl self again, the one who could jump rope and run, and fearlessly jump onto a horse’s bare back. I wanted to visit my father again, who left for the Second World War, but I didn’t see him again until 38 years later.

I wished my ancestors had been more expressive. That way I would know how my grandmother responded when her 16-year-old daughter informed her that she was pregnant.

They had their thoughts and the right to privacy, but then those thoughts and feelings died with them.

I’m up to 70,000 words.

  

I agree that these are tough times, so was the war. However, then we didn’t have a society built on fear. We didn’t have a would-be dictator. We believed that our President was pulling with us. We still believed in democracy.

Now, there are many Americans who ought to be ashamed of themselves.

 

A moment of Reprieve:

Let us be as gentle and loving as this Momma Goat protecting her baby at the Lane County Fair in Eugene, Oregon. 

 

 

"The Miracle of Deliverance."

I would volunteer to drive a car full of ballots from Oregon to Washington, D.C., and dump them in the Oval Office if that were possible, and I bet there is someone in every zip code of the United States who would do the same.  

Fill that office with the words of the citizens that we do not want a dictator to run our country. Period.

Think of it:  trucks, armored vehicles, and private cars making a run to Washington. There would be so many, highway patrol, Homeland Security, whoever has jurisdiction, wouldn’t know who carried ballots and who didn’t. Maybe Amazon Prime could do it.

This fantasy came to me the other night when I went to bed fearing we would not have a fair and honest mid-term election. I saw that the President is taking whatever steps he can to ensure that as many voters who would vote against him are stymied. Of course, there are other means at their disposal.

I thought of all the escaped slaves who saved other slaves. They didn’t wait for permission.

We No-King-Marchers have our little marches, and what happens? The more the light shines, the more the harbingers of evil have their hissy fits and clamp down on whatever freedoms they can get their hands on.

We, the people, take to the streets in our "No King" marches, some 9 million strong, to protest the happenings coming out of Washington, D.C. But he’s still there.

We try to obey the laws, to be courteous, to speak our piece, only to see it trampled. We are playing by two separate sets of rules.

Remember the WWII Dunkirk, France rescue? Oh, you don’t remember? Neither do I, but I read about it, in a novel, can you believe, how the Germans cut off and surrounded 338,000 soldiers, forcing the British, French, Dutch, and Allies into a narrow corridor of sea in Dunkirk. There they were, stuck, either to perish or to be captured.

The harbor was too shallow for the big ships to navigate it. Winston Churchill thought they could evacuate maybe 20,000 of the men.

The British civilians rallied.

People who owned pleasure crafts, dinghies, fishing boats, lifeboats, and yachts navigated the harbor back and forth to pick up soldiers who were standing in cold shoulder-high water waiting to be rescued. Those civilian pilots drove from May 27, 1940, to June 4, 1940, through the harbor of Dunkirk stopping only for petrol, until all 338,000 men were delivered to the big ships.

 

 

 

 

This rescue was called “The Miracle of Deliverance.” or "The Little Boats." 

It was not a military victory, but it was a human one.

 

 

 

  

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”—Margaret Mead