Homemade Gifts

This year, I've decided to make gifts for my mother and sister.  I've never done that before, usually I just get them gift cards to some store that I know they shop at, like Barnes & Noble or Sephora.  This year, I decided, it would be more meaningful to put actual effort into the gift and for me, the best way to put effort into a gift is to make it.

I learned how to knit when I was 10 years old, my mother taught me.  I also learned how to do counted cross-stitch (at the age of 8) from my mother.  The only craft thing my mother did not teach me was how to crochet, I ended up taking a class to learn that craft (age 33).  My mother has been knitting and crocheting since she was a little girl, learning how to knit from her grandmother and crochet from her kindergarten teacher.  My own grandmother sewed, making all kinds of outfits first for her own children, then for her grandchildren.  My great-grandmother spent much of her life crocheting small things like doilies and edges on pillowcases and handkerchiefs; when she died in 1988, we found drawers full of boxed handkerchiefs she was planning on sending out for birthdays and holidays.  So, women in my family have been making things for several generations.

I find knitting and crocheting to be very relaxing.  I can let my mind wander, for the most part, as I sit and work my needles or hook, creating something for myself or a friend.  This past summer, I completed a baby blanket for a friend of mine.  It was knitted with a very soft pink yarn and turned out to be very lovely.  I will admit, I'm no longer a fan of pink, but it was very lovely.  I have also made scarves in both knit and crochet patterns.  My current projects include knitted socks, crocheted socks, knitted afghan, and knitted cardigan sweater.  Since I've decided to make gifts for my family, I've put those other items on hold for the time being.

I'm going to be knitting scarves for my mom and sister out of a very thick, and warm, yarn from Berroco.  The thickness of the yarns necessitates the use of needles size 35, which is about 19mm wide, depending on brand of needles.  I've never worked with needles that big before, the largest I've used were size 12 (at this time the millimeter size escapes me).  Compared to 35, 12 really isn't that big.  My size 35 needles look like large orange crayons, they're definitely not hard to miss and I don't think I'll need to be worried about losing them anytime soon.  Each scarf pattern calls for one skein of the Berroco Link yarn, so I bought 3 skeins.  This way, I can make one for all 3 of us, but the scarves will not all be matching.  All 3 skeins are dark, wintry colors -- black/grey/white, green/brown/yellow, tan/brown/dark green.  The ladies at the local knitting shop where I purchased the yarn and needles told me that this particular yarn was very popular.  I have to say, it has quickly become one of my favorites to work with.

I am always open to trying new types of yarn and there are a wide variety to choose from every time I go to my local knitting shop.  The owners of the shop are lifelong knitters/crocheters and love what they do.  I find this store to be a "safe" place, I feel right at home whenever I walk through the door.  All of the yarns in the shop are from companies within the USA, and many of the creators of the yarn are small businesses -- family owned companies that started in some one's great-grandparents' barn or something and managed to flourish into a family owned small business (I have to say I like that aspect quite a bit as well).  This shop even carries yarn from businesses located right here in Colorado, which is really great!

Most people, when they think of yarn, immediately think of either wool or cotton.  Anymore, it seems that yarn can be made out of anything.  Here in Colorado, there are businesses that use sheeps' wool for their yarns but there are also a lot alpaca farms, and every year (in time for the warmer months) the alpaca are shorn (much like sheep, but they look a little more odd "naked" than sheep do) and their coats are then washed and brushed and washed etc. and then spun into yarn.  Actually, the process for both sheep and alpacas (I am led to believe from talking to the professionals) is very lengthy as the shorn coats are processed into the variety of yarns I purchase at my local shop.  I bow in respect to our Colorado sheep and alpaca growers (breeders? farmers?) and thank them for the lovely yarns that come from their animals.

I rarely use wool yarns, as I haven't had a project that required it yet (I have used blended yarns where wool is one of three materials listed).  I have used a lot of cotton yarns, as well as blended yarns.  I love working with alpaca yarn, in many ways it reminds me of wool, but is lighter in some ways.  I've made scarves out of it and they turned out very lovely.  I have used yarns made out of nylon, acrylic, silk, mohair and bamboo.  Now, the bamboo yarn was the most fascinating and fun to work with.  It was flat, unlike most yarns which are round.  I made a crocheted scarf with the bamboo yarn, which turned out very lovely.  The bamboo did not need to be washed and stretched upon completion of the project (which is done with some projects, especially large ones like sweaters and blankets).  I'd like to make something else with bamboo yarn, but I'm not sure what it will be yet.  I have not worked with linen yarn yet, but have several patterns that call for linen.

The yarn I'm currently using for my gifts, Berroco Link, is 50% wool and 50% acrylic.  It's very soft and is going to result in very warm scarves.  I decided on making scarves because, to be perfectly honest, I decided a bit late on what I was going to give for gifts this year.  Scarves are the easiest and fastest thing I can make, knitted or crocheted.  I would have liked to do something bigger, possible a mitten/hat/scarf set but will definitely need longer than 39 days to get the sets completed, so I'm going with scarves.  Next year, I can do the bigger projects.

I'm hopeful that they will love their scarves!  Once the holidays are finished, I'll go back to focusing on my other pending projects and hopefully end up with new socks and a new sweater to wear.  Cheers to that!

Thoughts on Captive by Clara Rojas

When I am in a bookstore I have a tendency to just wander around until a book jumps out at me.  On occasion, I will go to the bookstore with the intention of purchasing a specific book, but most of the time I just like to wander and see what jumps out at me.

That's how I came across the book Captive by Clara Rojas.  I was wandering around the bookstore, drinking some wonderfully pomegranate flavored tea when I came across this memoir.  I kind of run hot/cold on memoirs, finding some of them to be really quite wonderful and others to be really quite self-centered, but I grabbed this book from the shelf and looked at it.  At the bottom of the front cover it says "2,147 Days of Terror in the Colombian Jungle".  Well, that made me flip the book to the back cover to read about this book, which I promptly added to my growing stack of books.

Captive is the story of Clara Rojas' kidnapping by the Colombian guerrilla army, FARC, and the years she spent held as their hostage.  Rojas was kidnapped in 2002, along with her then friend Ingrid Betancourt, and was held until 2008, when a negotiation mediated by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba resulted in the release of Clara Rojas, Consuelo Gonzales and Rojas' young son, Emmanuel (whom she conceived and delivered in the jungle while held in captivity).  This book was translated from Spanish to English by Adriana V. Lopez (I don't really know if that makes any kind of difference to a reader, it certainly doesn't make a difference to me, I love reading works by authors from all over the world and I am greatly appreciative of the fact that there are people out there who can translate their works for me to enjoy).  Rojas lays out the details of her captivity with clarity and, in my opinion, honesty.  She is very real about how she felt during those years as a hostage of the FARC and in many ways I think this made her perseverance more amazing to me.

The book begins with what she was doing the day before she was kidnapped and then moves forward to her life after release.  Unlike some memoirs, where the author takes you on a daily or even weekly trip with them, Rojas tells her story according to the theme of the chapter.  Each chapter is titled, things like "The Day Before the Kidnapping" or "Doubt and Anxiety" or "Pastimes", and within that chapter the story followed the the idea presented in the title.  I liked that presentation of her story, it presented her story on several layers and gave a good picture of what the hostages did at each camp they were held at.

After finishing this book on July 20, 2011, I felt a lot of things.  I was glued to this story, Rojas' is a very strong woman, I think.  I don't know if I'd be able to hold up as well if I were to be in that same situation.  I guess you never know just how strong you are until. . . I don't know, I guess until that's all you have.  Clara Rojas was strong on many levels while in captivity.  I definitely believe her faith and belief in God helped see her through days that could have resulted in a weaker person taking their own life to end the pain.  Hope, she had a lot of that.  She hoped to one day see her mother and brother and the rest of her family.  She hoped to one day be free and away from that hot jungle.  I believe that faith and hope can get a person very far in this world, it's when you lose all hope and all faith, that you're soul dies.  That's my own personal belief, and I think in some ways reading about Ms. Rojas' captivity, it made me look at my own beliefs in a way.

I believe she is strong, and as a strong woman she was able to survive her ordeal by remaining hopeful.  There were definitely points where she fell into a depression, who wouldn't?  In her case, I think those times of depression only resulted in strengthening her resolve to remain hopeful and believe that God was with her and would take care of her.  That's some pretty strong belief right there.  I admire that about her, actually.  I admire that her faith figured so strongly for her during the 6 years she was held by the FARC.  I honestly don't know if I would be able to find that strength in my own faith.  My religious beliefs waiver on many occasions and at this point in time, I'm rebuilding my own beliefs and figuring out what where God is in my life and quite possibly where I am in His/Hers.

Clara Rojas' friendship with Ingrid Betancourt fell apart while they were captives, which is unfortunate, but maybe it was also for the best.  I wonder if, in some ways, if this was a friendship that fits in the "reasons, seasons, lifetime" type of process.  Possibly this was a friendship for a reason -- Rojas was an attorney who worked on Betancourt's political campaign and they were both from the same party?  Possibly this was a friendship for a season -- political allies traveling together through FARC controlled territory to discuss party issues with allies in another Colombian city?  I don't know, but I don't think this was a friendship that was meant to be a lifetime one.  The way Clara describes the discussions she had with Ingrid leading up to the day they were kidnapped, it did not seem to me that these were two women who shared a sisterly type of love and friendship for one another.  I could be wrong, of course.  Although I think it is for the best that their friendship ended, I was saddened by the pain that Rojas felt as their friendship fell apart.  It is always painful to lose a friend and I can sympathize with Rojas as she lost the only friend she had in the jungle.  Overall, by the end of the ordeal, Clara shows herself to be the bigger person when it came to Ingrid.

I was curious about the fact that she gave birth to a son in the middle of the jungle and wondered for most of the book how it happened.  Not so much how she got pregnant, I know all about the birds and the bees, but more wondering if there was going to be some kind of love story wrapped into this captivity story.  I couldn't really imagine falling in love with someone in the middle of something so stressful as a hostage crisis, but stranger things have happened to people and since I'm not in her shoes, I can't really say I know anything about it anyway.  The thing I have to say I respect and admire about this particular part of her story is that she chooses to keep it private.  She does not, as she relates the story of her pregnancy and harrowing delivery, go into detail about how she came to be pregnant, she does not reveal the identity of the father, does not indicate if he was a guerrilla or a fellow hostage.  What she does is say that she has decided to leave the details of her pregnancy for a time when her son, Emmanuel, approaches her and asks.  I like that.  It makes sense, because, honestly, it's none of my business how she came to be pregnant, what is my business is what is on the page and I respect that she is choosing not to tell me anything more.  She manages to survive an unexpected pregnancy at the age of 39 in the middle of the Colombian jungle and delivers with little medical comfort -- a male nurse, a female nurse and a group of guerrillas providing light and support.  Here's the kicker -- due to complications, her son is brought into this world in a hut by Cesarean section while she is heavily sedated, and a single 100 watt light bulb shining over them.  I realize there are people out there who will say "women have been giving birth much longer than there's been doctors and modern medicine and hospitals" but really?  No woman should have to be delivered by C-section by a nurse in the middle of a jungle while being held against her will, and yet that's what happened to Clara Rojas and it's pretty amazing that she and her son survived.

At that point in the book, I had to go online and see if I could find a picture of her and her son.  I was curious to see them.  On the cover of the book, there is a small picture of her, but I wanted a better one.  I actually wanted to see her smiling, I thought "I bet she has one of those smiles that feels like the warmth of the sun upon your skin".  I was right too.  She does.  There are several pictures of her alone as well as pictures of her with her son and her family (the family ones are from when she arrived in Venezuela after her release).  She does have a warm smile.  The birth of her son is a miracle really, given the little medical resources that were available.  After his birth, she continues to push forward, wanting to live and survive for her son and her mother, because she knew one day she'd be with her mother again.  Hope.  Faith.  Strength.

Unfortunately, young Emmanuel becomes ill and after attempting to deal with the parasitic infection he gets from a bug bite, he is taken away from Clara to be treated.  He was only 8 months old when they took him away from her, and she wouldn't see him again until close to his 4th birthday.  Now that's what I call heartbreaking, and she definitely was heartbroken but she still had that strength of spirit or strength of will, but she knew that she'd see him again.  This is a woman that the word "pessimism" is not in the vocabulary for.  Neither is "skepticism".  Through the efforts of President Hugo Chavez and Senator Piedad Cordoba, the hostages discovered that Clara and Consuelo would be released to the Red Cross International, as well as Emmanuel, and they would be sent to Venezuela to be reunited with their families.  Her hope and faith and strength saw her through to the day she'd been praying for, but of course it was going to take awhile for her to actually taste sweet freedom, but not once did I get the impression that she didn't realize this either.  She was practical and realistic, while remaining hopeful in the knowledge that she would soon be out of that jungle and safe with her family.  How can someone not lose their mind at the thought of being free?  I think I would have gone crazy in the days leading up to my freedom, especially since there was no specific date set.  But, she remained calm outwardly (she does admit that she rejoiced inwardly, thanking God repeatedly), and she just made sure she was prepared because at any moment the Commandante could tell her she was leaving to go home.  The days leading up to freedom coincided with the Christmas and New Year's holidays and each day, as people around the world were eagerly looking forward towards opening presents and welcoming in a new year with new possibilities, she was looking forward to a day when she would see her son and mother again, and be able to taste the sweetness of freedom.

I am an emotional person and, while I was able to maintain most of my calm while reading her story, I have to admit I fought back tears as she related what it was like seeing the Red Cross International helicopters and flying out of the jungle towards the Colombian/Venezuelan border, leaving the copters and getting on a plane to be reunited with her family, scanning the crowd to find her mother as the plane taxied to a stop.  All of that just made my heart leap and tears came to my eyes.  I think she probably downplayed just how wonderful she felt as she landed and was able to actually touch her mother and her nieces and brother and cousins.  She was surrounded by media as she was reunited with her family, but it doesn't seem like they were suffocating.  Maybe that's how she chose to report it, maybe they really weren't all that suffocating, I don't know.  I mean, I've seen on the news how the media can rush at someone to get comments, but I've also seen how the media maintains a respectful distance in some situations, so maybe the media did it that way, remained at a respectful distance and just snapped pictures and waited patiently for her to give a press conference.  I kind of think not though.  Anyway, it was the way Clara was greeted by her family that tore at my heart.  She said she saw her mother who was now using a walker (she hadn't been using one the last time Clara saw her, so I'm sure it was a shock) and her mother took her face in her hands and looked at her.  Oh, tug at my heartstrings, why don't you?  I will admit, tears fell when I read about being reunited with her son, who thankfully had been delivered into the hands of the Colombian child welfare services organization and had been treated for his infection and was well fed and healthy by the time she saw him.  This is just happy ending all around, really.

Based on how Clara Rojas ends her book, where she talks about being able to forgive those who held her and her son captive, and being able to move forward with her life and returning to a normal life, I have to say she came out of this remarkably intact.  Her soul was not destroyed and she has learned something that so many of us don't always truly learn -- how to forgive those who have hurt us.  It's not easy being able to forgive someone for a wrong they have done against us, and I would think that being held captive for 6 years and being separated from your own child for 4 years would qualify for an unforgivable act, yet she has forgiven her captors.  She has dedicated her life to fighting for what she believes is right, working to release more hostages from the FARC, as well as working to improve child welfare and the environment.  I admire her, on a lot of levels.  If I could end up with a tenth of the strength this woman has, I'd consider myself pretty lucky.  I am adding Ms. Rojas to my list of people I admire and who have had an impact on me.  I don't think her story is one that I am going to forget, ever, but I think it will stick with me for quite some time.  This is an example of strength of the human spirit, and I'm glad to have been able to learn about it.

To Ms. Clara Rojas, I am humbled by your story and wish to send my thoughts and prayers to you and your son, Emmanuel.  I hope your continued efforts to release more hostages are so successful that one day you won't have to work so hard because there won't be any hostages!  Bless you, Ms. Rojas!  I hope one day, I may meet you and tell you in person just how remarkable I think you are.

Life's for Sharing -- UK T-Mobile commercials

I enjoy watching videos on YouTube.  I find them fun and entertaining and there's such a large variety that it's never really boring.  I usually watch fun videos, like the baby that dances to the Beyonce "Single Ladies" video (I never get tired of watching that), or music videos, like Lady Gaga's "Born This Way".  I even subscribe to video channels, which is a great way to keep track of newly uploaded videos from some of my favorite celebs and amateur film makers.

Well, one of the Channels I subscribe to is Life's for Sharing, which is the T-Mobile UK ad campaign. In case you haven't seen these Life's for Sharing videos, they are very creative.  They involve a flash mob style of activity, usually large groups of people spontaneously joining large dance numbers.  There are some fun ones.  I have two favorites: T-Mobile Welcome Back which was shot at Heathrow Airport and The T-Mobile Royal Wedding, which debuted in the UK about a week before the Royal Wedding of Price William to (now) Princess Catherine (there's also one that takes place at a train station in London, but I don't think it's Victoria Station; that video is a fun one too!).  In addition to the actual videos, there are a lot of uploads from Life's for Sharing of behind the scenes footage, showing how they put the singers and musical performers and dancers in the two videos I mentioned above together.  The behind the scenes videos are almost as fun to watch as the actual ads.  I really wish T-Mobile did ads like this here in the USA, I would completely audition to be in one; it just looks like so much fun!

This post is specifically about the Welcome Back video.  It makes me cry.  I love it, so I watch it a lot and every time, at the end, I cry.

The way Heathrow Airport is set up, all people waiting for disembarking passengers are located in a specific area outside the security doors.  Similar to here in the US, if you don't have a ticket you can't go past security.  Well, anyway, there are a lot of people waiting for their loved ones, friends, etc to appear.  The first thing you see is a young couple greeting one another and a blond woman with a single white rose approaches the couple singing "At Last" and suddenly a few other people are making sounds like instruments (a violin, an upright bass, drums) and this couple is serenaded.  That's the beginning and it just continues to escalate.  There are singers and music performers of all ages and races, and they approach disembarking passengers and airline staff, singing a wide variety of songs.  The last song is "Welcome Back" and images begin to fly across the screen of passengers greeting their loved ones.  More and more people begin to join in and clap for the performers and there are hugs and kisses as people greet each other.  That makes me cry.  I cry the moment these performers break out into that last song and I can't help it.  I just get that stinging feeling in my eyes and tears begin to flow.  I'm not sure what it is about that song, or possibly that segment of this video.  I smile and tap my feet to all of the other songs and I enjoy the expressions on the faces of people as they are greeted and sung to, but "Welcome Back" hits me, it hits my heart.  I just get so emotional.

I think it is wonderful when passengers are met by their friends or family when they get through security at an airport.  It's a great feeling to see someone waiting for you as you head to baggage claim.  I, personally, have not had that kind of experience, a loved one waiting to greet me on the way to baggage claim, but I do smile every time people call out to a passenger who has just made his/her way to baggage claim.  I definitely love when family and friends are at airports to greet their military loved ones who are returning from the Middle East, oh that just tugs at my heart strings.  I think something like the Welcome Home video being actively done at airports where military service men and women are arriving would be so great!  These men and women are fighting a very long war and, even though I do think many of them know how much the American people appreciate the work they do, I think being sung to and welcomed home by a crowd of singers and music performers would just go that extra mile to really let them know "Thank you for your service to our country".

That's not why I cry when I see the video though, at least I don't think that's why.  These songs are fun and poignant and the expressions of disembarking passengers are priceless, yet I cry during "Welcome Home".  I don't really have anyone to welcome home, I guess.  I don't have a loved one in the military who is returning home after serving in The Desert.  I no longer get to welcome my dad home from his trips.  So, who am I going to welcome back?  I don't know.  I just think the last segment of the video is so beautiful and heartwarming, I have to cry.

I really recommend the Life's for Sharing videos (all of them) but here's the link to the Welcome Back video filmed at Heathrow Airport in October 2010 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB3NPNM4xgo (hopefully it plays for you).

~ TLN

My Hair

I have had a love/hate relationship with my hair.  I had long hair, well somewhat long, until I was 11 years old.  Up until my 11th year, my hair rested nicely about 2 inches below my shoulder blade.  Then, when we moved to Spain and it was time for us to go to the salon on the Air Force base, the stylist cut my hair to just about chin level.  It was shorter than I had ever had it and at first I really liked it, but as years went on and my hair just never returned to its original length, I began to not like having "medium" length hair.

Now, I have done all kinds of things to my hair as well, as far as styling is concerned.  My mother found my hair difficult to deal with in its "natural" state, so she started getting it relaxed.  Chemical relaxers are very popular among African-Americans and my mother was told that it would make my hair more manageable so I started having relaxers done.  I don't know how old I was, but I do remember going to see the stylist my grandmother went to in Madera.  Miss Kelly, I think her name was, and she had 2 daughters who were teenagers and helped out at her salon.  I remember that there was this soda machine that dispensed sodas in glass bottles and the bottle cap opener was in the machine.  I always got a strawberry soda out of there, usually my mom or one of my Aunts would buy it for me and I was always really excited for that.  Miss Kelly would make me sit on a stack of phone books and, when my hair was dry, she'd always style it the same as one of her daughters, cause I thought her daughters were oh so pretty.

When I was in 6th grade, I decided to have a Jerry Curl done.  I don't think I spelled that correctly, but I don't know if that really matters.  Anyway, if you've seen Eddie Murphy's movie, Coming to America, you may remember the Soul Glo hair products that his rival, played by Eriq LaSalle, sold.  Well, the hairstyle that used the Soul Glo products is a Jerry Curl.  Yeah, I had my own wet looking curly hairstyle that I put rather smelly (in a bad way) products on to make it look wet.  I had that hairstyle for 2 years and then when we moved back to US and before 8th grade started, I went back to the chemical relaxer and I've been doing those ever since.

So, here we are all these years later and my relationship with my hair hasn't really changed.  I continue to get chemical relaxers (which, by the way, if you've seen Chris Rock's documentary, Good Hair, well there are definitely pros and cons to getting a relaxer done but ultimately, I think it needs to be a decision that is made by the mother in regards to her daughters, fathers truly have no idea how the relationship between women and their hair works, so while I respect that Mr. Rock does not want his daughters putting something on their hair that can eat through a soda can, well, until he has the kind of relationship with his hair that women have with theirs, he truly will never understand why we do what we do to our hair).  There are other options, in regards to what I do to my hair.  I could get a weave or braids.  I could chop it all off and go natural.  Or, I could choose to continue having relaxers done.  I'm just not the type of person who can sit in a chair for 8+ hours getting braids put in and I'm not really sure about the weave aspect either.  A weave (and braids) would make my hair longer, absolutely, but there are pros and cons to them as well.

So, my relationship with my hair.  Stress started turning my black hairs to white when I was 26.  It was a strand here and a strand there, not a whole lot.  There was a time when I could actually count all of the white hairs on my head and tell people exactly how many I had, but now I have more than I can count.  I have a lot at my front temples.  I think they look nice and make me seem wise (now whether I really am wise is up for debate at this time).  When my father died, I started having major breakage.  I was combing out a lot of hair.  More than usual, actually.  We all lose hair on a daily basis, but it's just a couple or few strands, not enough to really make a person freak out or worry.  Well, after dad died, I got a lot more white hairs and I started combing out clumps of hair, from all over my head.  My stylist suggested I start using these hair/nail/skin pills to help rejuvenate and strengthen the hair follicles.  I am not sure if it did anything for my hair but I will say that I've noticed that my nails are a lot stronger than they were before I started the supplements.  So, hmm.  I did notice that my hair wasn't falling out quite as much and that there weren't as many hairs in my comb, so I thought "yay, my hair is no longer grieving".  It made sense, to me.  After 5 months of grief counseling, I felt better and was able to talk about my father's passing without getting choked up or crying, so I thought my hair was also at that acceptance stage.

I think I was wrong.  I had a hair appointment this past Friday and well, my hair was still grieving or stressed or feeding off the negativity that stress generates cause it was breaking off, a lot.  I had a lot of damage, a lot of areas where the hair had broken off and frayed.  So, I had to get my hair trimmed, more like cut.  It's in significantly shorter sections.  I have never had my hair cut like this before.  I have to kind of comb it out with my fingers to make it volume-y.  I need to get used to that.  I bought this hair-goop-molder-stuff, something I know absolutely nothing about and have never used before, but I got it to try to help me fluff up my short lengths and help with styling.  I am about to learn about hair products that I've never actually seen used in the real world.  I put hair/scalp cream on my hair and scalp after I wash it, I put a nighttime moisturizer on my hair before wrapping it in a silk scarf at bedtime.  I put a lightweight hair oil made out of macadamia nuts (or the Tui tree or avocado or any other moisturizing type of oil recommended for African-American hair) on a daily basis to keep it moisturized and soft and frizz free.  In a dry climate, like Colorado's, African-American hair needs some extra TLC to keep it from drying out and becoming damaged, especially if it's in in a natural state (it takes work to maintain an Afro or locks, they need to be moisturized, same with the relaxed, weaved and braided/rowed).

So, I'm not sure about it being this length.  I am worried.  I am concerned that I'm not going to be able to style it properly.  I'm worried that it makes me look too hip or not hip enough.  I'm worried that halfway through the day it will drop down and go completely flat (which is why I bought that goop-volume-styling product thing).  It does look kind of cool though and I do kind of look more my age, I think.  I bought these really cute hairpins to decorate my style, since I don't think I'll be wearing headbands with this style.  They are cute hairpins and in different colors, cause I need to be able to accessorize.  Right now I sound so freaking girly!  Oh well, they are cute and I am not at all ashamed of how girly they make me sound.  With the way it is cut though, I think I'm going to have to curl it everyday, rather than having a day where it just goes without styling.  It doesn't look quite as nice flat and unstyled/uncurled.  My boyfriend said he's getting used to it and thinks it's cute.  My mom didn't really say much, other than noticing that it was shorter.  My sister didn't say anything, but that's in her nature.

I'm not usually a vain person, and I never really thought my hair was my greatest feature or anything, but now that it's shorter, I miss what was cut off.  It just doesn't seem like me anymore, it's like I'm a different person now or something.  I mean, I know I'm not, I'm still Tara, but it just makes me feel like I am different with shorter hair.  It's not as short as it could possibly go, definitely not as short as Halle Berry, but it's shorter than what I'm used to.  So, it will take some time and some practice and I'm sure I'll get used to it and figure out how to use that styling product stuff that helps make curls more voluminous.

Well, here's to trying new things!  Cheers to you all!
~T

Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

I first read this book in the Spring Semester of my junior year at Pacific Lutheran University, which was sometime between February and May 1997. At the time, I was 21 and still reeling from the beauty and power of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. My American Literature Professor introduced this book to us with fervor and excitement. He was a big fan of Zora Neale Hurston and was very excited to introduce his students to this book he loved so much. He feverishly called this novel a great masterpiece of African-American literature and said it belonged with other great authors like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. By the time we finished the book, I was disappointed in it. I did not agree with my Professor about the greatness of this novel. In fact, I hated the book and did not like any of the characters. It was my opinion, at the time and for well over a decade, that this book could not hold a candle to Beloved or The Color Purple.


Over the past couple years, my 1997 opinion of this novel has been challenged by people I know (family) and people I don’t know, but wish I did (the Goodreads community). I greatly appreciate the challenges put before me by book lovers on Goodreads and have found their arguments, both in support of my original review as well as against it, were enough to convince me to give this book a second read.

I have reread books after a decade (or longer) has gone by, mainly to see if my opinion of the story has changed. I have been surprised at times, but for the most part, my opinions rarely change. I still love The Diary of Anne Frank (first read in 1990, age 14), To Kill a Mockingbird (first read in 1990, age 14) and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass (first read in 1988, age 12). I changed my mind about Catcher in the Rye (loved it in 1993, age 17, but loathed it in 2007, age 31). I changed my mind about Julie and Julia (disliked at end of first read; liked after second read).

Which brings me back to Their Eyes Were Watching God – the question is: have I changed my opinion of this book?

The edition of the book I read is a copy I purchased in a rather wonderful used bookstore in Boulder, CO. I bought this book during the summer of 2009 with every intention of reading it at that time. The copy I purchased had an attractive cover, a cover that I have stared at quite often while rereading this book. This particular edition has a foreword by Edwidge Danticat and an afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I have to admit here that I am not familiar with Ms. Danticat, but I enjoyed her foreword. I learned a lot more about Zora Neale Hurston from Ms. Danticat’s foreword than I remember learning in my American Lit class at PLU. It was in this foreword that I learned that Ms. Hurston was in Haiti doing research when she wrote this novel. I also did not know that Ms. Hurston was an anthropologist; my Professor told us that she was a relatively unknown author who became famous posthumously, but I have since learned that Ms. Hurston was pretty well known during the Harlem Renaissance and slowly disappeared from the literary landscape until being rediscovered by Alice Walker in the 1970s. So, I’m not trying to say he was wrong, but maybe he didn’t do enough research about his “favorite” African-American author before teaching us about this book. Just a thought. Anyway, after reading Edwidge Danticat’s foreword, I was actually looking forward to rereading this book.

As I proceeded into the actual story, there were several things that I had forgotten about the basic story. I forgot that Janie was married twice before meeting Tea Cake, I only remembered one marriage. I did not remember her marriage to Logan Killicks. What an odd marriage they had. To be perfectly honest, after 14 years the only thing I remembered about the plot was that Tea Cake is bit by a “mad” dog while trying to save Janie from the same dog and I remembered that there was a hurricane. So, in some ways, I felt like I was reading this book for the first time.

I have to say I really liked the way Ms. Hurston described the scenes, settings and characters. One of my favorite descriptions is of Mrs. Bogle; although Mrs. Bogle is a grandmother, she “had a blushing air of coquetry about her that cloaked her sunken cheeks. You saw a fluttering fan before her face and magnolia blooms and sleepy lakes under the moonlight when she walked. There was no obvious reason for it, it was just so.” (Page 69) and “She was a wind on the ocean. She moved men, but the helm determined the port.” (Page 70). Whew! That’s definitely a woman who turns heads. My other favorite descriptions lie on page 84: “Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the West. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it, and without a roof.”, and “Rumor, that wingless bird, had shadowed over the town.” Mrs. Bogle is something beyond human in her appearance and walk, while Death and Rumor become flesh, one a man and the other a bird but both perplex those around them.

Hurston does more than write, she paints. Whether it is through the conversations of the characters or the narration between conversations, each scene is painted in a way that lets the reader see and feel and experience the same thing as the characters. As the reader meets Janie in the beginning of the novel, we clearly see her walking by all those eyes, ignoring all the noises coming from those poisonous mouths. We hear the women as they talk about her, hissing like a pit of vipers, wondering where her man is and if he robbed her blind and ran off with a younger woman. There’s nothing like hateful, catty women who will say anything to break down one of their own in order to make themselves feel better. Hurston couldn’t have described them better when Janie calls them “The Mouth-Almighty”. I’m actually going to adopt that phrase for the frenemies in my own life.

As much as I would love to continue my praise of the way Ms. Hurston writes and her use of imagery and authentic vernacular (which I enjoyed immensely) I think I should move onto the characters and my thoughts of them.

In 1997, one of my biggest complaints was about the characters. I recently reread the review I posted of this book on Goodreads back in 2007, and in that review I stated that I did not find the characters to be likeable nor did I feel any kind of sympathy towards any of them when I read this book in college. In 1997 (and still today), I was a fan of the following African-American female characters: Sethe (Beloved), Miss Celie and Shug Avery (The Color Purple), and Edana “Dana” Franklin (Kindred). My American Lit Professor put Janie in the same category as these characters and I protested that decision at that time. I have changed my mind about Janie. Janie is a strong woman with a certain amount of independence and stubbornness that sometimes could get her in trouble. I think the best decision she made was when she left Eatonville to be with Tea Cake down in the Everglades. Of course, if she hadn’t left Logan Killicks to be with Joe “Jody” Starks, she never would have met Tea Cake but that’s not really the point. Tea Cake was her true love, not the other two men.

Joe Starks = big talker. Now, here’s a man who could convince paint to peel itself from the wall. He is definitely a man with a plan. I didn’t dislike Joe, I think he knew what he wanted and how to be a leader when there weren’t any, but I didn’t really like him either. I was bothered by his attitude toward Janie when he got sick, but I do think it made sense (in a way). Joe had spent so much time telling Janie what to do and how to do things and how to act, that it caught him completely by surprise when she finally talked back to him (which she did in a public fashion, in front of several men who hung out at Joe’s shop/post office). In some ways, it makes sense that he would concoct this idea in his head that Janie had jinxed him or made him sick in some way because her comments that day in the store were not a common occurrence. Of course she would suddenly have the courage to speak up and speak out if she was poisoning him in an effort to kill him, except that Joe Starks has it all wrong. His illness had nothing to do with Janie, but unfortunately, once your heart has gone cold towards someone it’s very easy to blame them for every wrong you’ve experienced. In the end, as big a talker as Joe Starks was, he wasn’t really as big a man as he tried to make others believe he was.

Tea Cake: well, I’m a bit torn on this character. I can’t say I liked him much, actually. I do believe that Janie made a good decision when she decided to leave Eatonville with Tea Cake and live her life elsewhere. Tea Cake was very good to Janie, which I don’t think she was prepared for but it made her love for him all that much more genuine (and same with his for her).

I felt that Tea Cake’s reasoning behind why he beat Janie (pages 147-148) made me dislike him some. He felt it was important for Mrs. Turner to know that he was in charge and that Janie was his, so why beat Janie? Why not just tell Mrs. Turner? She is a busy-body type of person with hurtful opinions about Tea Cake, but hurting Janie isn’t going to make Mrs. Turner think any better of him or be discouraged from trying to convince Janie to leave Tea Cake because he’s “too black”. Tea Cake explains why he did it in a conversation with Sop-de-Bottom, one of the men from the town, “Janie is wherever Ah wants tuh be. Dat’s de kind uh wife she is and Ah love her for it. Ah wouldn’t be knockin’ her around. Ah didn’t wants whup her last night, but ol’ Mis’ Turner done sent for her brother tuh come tuh bait Janie in and take her away from me. Ah didn’t whup Janie ‘cause she done nothin’. Ah beat her tuh show dem Turners who is boss. Ah set in de kitchen one day and heard dat woman tell mah wife Ah’m too black fur her. She don’t see how Janie can stand me.” (page 148). Obviously, he was hurt and offended by Mrs. Turner’s actions, but it just doesn’t make sense to me to beat Janie for Mrs. Turner’s insensitivity and self-imposed superiority towards him. I’ve been insulted and offended by the ignorance and insensitivity of others, but I’m not going to beat my best friend or my boyfriend as a way to show others who the boss is. Thing is, life was different for Tea Cake and Janie, and things that seem logical then may not necessarily be so now. I accept and appreciate that and it does make me understand why he did what he did (I just don’t like that he did it).

Overall, my favorite part of the book is the period that begins with Janie and Tea Cake leaving town because of the hurricane and ends with the deliverance of the verdict at Janie’s trial. This period of the story is, in my opinion, the biggest show of how much Tea Cake and Janie loved each other. There are several times, during the flooding, where Tea Cake saves Janie from drowning, even though each rescue leaves him a little more drained. Janie also makes an effort to care for Tea Cake as they escape the floods; she tries to protect him from the wind but the piece of roof she finds flies off, almost taking her with it, which results in her almost drowning (again). Thankfully, a cow comes swimming by, with a wet and angry dog riding its back. The dog. I saw a picture once of a dog floating on a piece of furniture, waiting to be rescued from a flooded area and it didn’t look mad or angry at all, actually it appeared frightened and sad and miserably wet. As it was rescued from the water, it wagged its tale and licked the face of its rescuer. There is definitely something wrong with the dog in this book, and possibly under different circumstances Janie would have had warning bells going off in her head. I don’t think she took the dog’s actions to be those of a “mad” dog but rather as those of a dog protecting its territory – the cow.

The dog first attempts to attack Janie and then ends up biting Tea Cake as he wrestles with it. Growling and snarling and attacking are definitely things a dog does when it is trying to protect its territory. The dog is wet and miserable, so it does make sense that he would be growling and it would even make sense that he growls and barks at Janie as she grabs hold of the cow’s tail. It gets more frightening when the dog starts fighting and bites Tea Cake as he tries to keep it from biting Janie. The thing is, I think Tea Cake knew that the dog was sick; he wasn’t trying to calm it down when he grabbed it, his intention was to kill it but it struggled against him which he wasn’t expecting. I don’t think Janie knew that the dog was sick, not until three weeks later when Tea Cake became ill and started acting strange.

Janie loves Tea Cake so much that she is willing to spend every penny she has to cure him, which isn’t possible. She also loves him enough to end his life and put him out of his misery. I admire her very much at this point in the novel. She knows that the day will come when she may have to either kill him or put him in a hospital and she begins to mentally keep track of all the changes that Tea Cake goes through as his illness gets worse. She sees him turning into someone else, a stranger. The kind man she fell in love with is no longer home, and is replaced by a jealous stranger who is a danger to her and himself. She took precautions with the guns in the home, making sure she knew where they were and if they were loaded or unloaded. I think she knew that the day was coming when she’d need to protect herself. When she does finally take action against Tea Cake, I think it was out of her love for him that she was able to kill him. It was both an act of self-defense and an act of love, and I do think that the jury saw that during her trial.

Janie’s arrest and trial raised several questions for me. The arrest and trial happened on the same day, shortly after Doctor Simmons told the Judge and sheriff “how it was”, which I took to mean he told them about the rabies and the bite marks Tea Cake left on Janie’s arm as he died. Get her tried quickly so she can be treated as soon as possible? Was that the driving force behind why the trial happened so quickly? The trial itself was also very interesting to me. I found it interesting that neither the District Attorney nor Janie’s defense attorney called any of the members of the Black community forward to testify. They all wanted to, that was obvious, and it was obvious they all were standing in judgment of Janie’s actions, but in accordance with the laws of the time, it was a jury of twelve White men who sat in judgment of her. These jurors knew nothing about Tea Cake or Janie, and they knew nothing about the loving and wonderful relationship that the Black community had seen between Tea Cake and Janie. In the eyes of her own community, she was a murderer and an ungrateful woman, yet it was up to the White community to pass judgment. I found it interesting that the District Attorney, Mr. Prescott, had no interest in calling any members of the Black community to testify about Tea Cake or Janie. He made it very clear to Sop-de-Bottom, at one point, that he didn’t need or want the testimony of him or any other member of the Black community in this case. Why? Weren’t they perfect witnesses for the prosecution? Weren’t they the best ones to speak out against the character of Janie, the accused murderess, and on behalf of Tea Cake, the loving, angel of a man who devoted his life to Janie?

Actually, I think the trial was a farce committed to keep an angry community from growing angrier and causing harm to the larger population in the form of an uprising. I am under no impression that the Judge, the Sheriff, the DA or the jury truly believed that Janie acted in malice or with ill intent towards Tea Cake. I’m sure Doctor Simmons told the Judge and sheriff that Tea Cake was in the downward decline attributed to untreated rabies and it had only been a matter of time before he killed Janie, or someone else; she was acting in self-defense when she fired upon Tea Cake, nothing more and nothing less. I don’t think any member of the White community, who was sitting in that courtroom, thought Janie was guilty the way the Black community did, and I base that first on how long it took the jury to deliberate. I’ve worked in the Judicial system for 12 years and, usually, when a jury deliberates for less than 15 minutes, there’s a pretty good chance the jury already knows how they are going to rule and knew their decision long before testimony was completed. It doesn’t always mean they come back with Not Guilty verdicts, there have been many times where our jurors deliberated for 5 minutes and came back finding the defendants guilty. It just means that they already knew what they were going to do and the testimony gave them the justification they needed for their verdict. In Janie’s trial, the jury was out five minutes before finding “the death of Vergible Woods to be entirely accidental and justifiable, and that no blame should rest upon the defendant Janie Woods.” (page 188). The farce worked, the Black community is appeased (and somewhat ashamed of its actions towards Janie) and Janie was acquitted of any wrong doing.

In the end, when Janie returns to Eatonville, she is a woman who has grown and lived a full life. She discovered there were things that she wasn’t willing to do just because a man told her to and she discovered there were things she loved doing cause the man she loved, loved them. She found true love, the kind that keeps you warm on a cold day. She learned about the power of love and how it can not only save those you love the most but also save you. She returned home a changed, and seemingly, better woman.

So, time for the answer to the question – has my opinion of this book changed from when I first read it in 1997? Yes, it has. In 1997 (and in the review I put on Goodreads) I said this book was okay, but not good, and I said I hated it. Well, I’m changing that comment. Zora Neale Hurston’s writing is beautifully descriptive and her characters are engaging. Through the strong narration of Janie, the reader is taken on a journey of growth and self-discovery. For me, the bigger question is did I like this book more now than I did in 1997? Yes and no. I liked Janie a little more after rereading this book, but I didn’t like Tea Cake any more (or less) than when I first read this. I like books where a character perseveres and overcomes some situation, and I think Janie overcame quite a bit in this book, and I do like her more now than I did in 1997, but she is not one of my favorite heroines. I still really like Sethe, Miss Celie, Shug Avery and Edana “Dana” Franklin more than Janie. This book, still, is not one of my favorite pieces of African-American literature, but it does have an important place in the literary history of African-American writers. I’m willing to change my rating from 1 star and give this book 3 stars. Maybe in another 14 years, I’ll see this book differently and give it 5 stars (or put it back at 1 star), we’ll see.

Trains & Comics

I am a huge fan of trains and comic books.  I have been a fan for as long as I can remember and I don't remember what my first experience with trains or comics was.  I have a feeling that it was my father's influence, but I could be wrong of course.

My father would build model railroad towns and landscapes and spend hours running his trains through these towns and landscapes when I was very young.  I believe he used HO scale.  I remember standing in the garage of our house in Vacaville, CA at the age of 3 and staring up at the plywood that the railroad, towns and landscapes were built on.  I'd stand on my tiptoes until he picked me up.  His railroad had everything: a depot, track switches, people, trees, grass, mountains, tunnels.  It was so great!

When I was 4 or 5, my mother and I took the train from Vacaville to Madera to see my Nana and Papa.  I think that was my first train ride.  It wasn't a terribly long ride, although it seemed like a huge journey for me.  I don't really remember much about sitting on the train, but I do remember my mom pointing out my Uncle as we pulled into the station.  Maybe I was younger than 4.  I know I talked about the train ride to whoever would listen for several days after.  I can't remember if my parents ever showed that they were tired of that story.  Sometimes, there's something really magical about the stories children tell, because they experienced something new and exciting.

Well, the love of trains has been with me forever.  Which is the same length of time that I've been in love with comic books.  My father had this huge steamer trunk full of comic books when I was a child and occasionally, he'd open it and pull out comics and I'd sit on the couch and look at them over his shoulder.  I was young enough that I didn't know how to read, I don't even think I was in any kind of school.  So, he'd tell me what was going on and who the characters were.  He was always very patient with me as he explained Batman, Spider-Man, The X-Men and Fantastic Four and others.  In the early 80s, Super Friends was a Saturday morning cartoon that I watched, and on the occasions he was home, he'd watch it with me.

I knew the names of several comic book heroes and villains by the time I was 6.  On a side note, I also knew all about Luke, Leia, Hans Solo, Obi Wan, and Darth Vader by the age of 6, but that's a different story as well.  I wanted super powers just like the heroes I saw on the Super Friends show.  I also watched, as a young child, the Super Woman show and the Batman show.  I loved how Batman had animated words whenever Batman or Robin hit Penguin, Joker or Catwoman.  Pow!  Kaboom!  LOL.

When we moved to Europe, I was able to ride trains again and was so very happy.  We had to leave dad's comics in storage in the US, but I think riding trains in Spain, France and England was a pretty fair trade.  We rode on the Metro a lot when we lived in Spain and one year we took the night train to Paris from Madrid.  That was pretty fun and it was also my sister's first time on a train ride like that.  It was my first overnight train ride too.  When we went to London, we rode the Tube frequently.  I rather like underground railroads, subways, metroes, tubes or whatever they are called in each city they operate in.

When we moved back to the US, I still enjoyed trains and comics and by then there were new cartoons based on comic books on Saturday mornings.  I especially enjoyed watching The X-Men cartoons.  Then, the 90s brought Batman cartoons, Batman movies (Michael Keaton was pretty darn good as Bruce Wayne/Batman), X-Men movies, X-Men cartoons, Justice League cartoons and all of these continued into the new century, 2000 and beyond.

I'm still a huge fan of trains.  I ride a light rail, which is a nice way to commute.  I love watching the cargo trains that go by the light rail station.  I am also a huge fan of comics.  It is pretty much a given that I will go see any movie based on a comic book.  I love Batman and X-Men and Spider-Man and Superman.  I hope they do a Wonder Woman movie, but I have no idea who would make a good Wonder Woman.  Linda Carter was so great as the 1980s Wonder Woman, that I'm having a hard time picturing someone else.

I hope one day, I'll be able to share the joys and excitement of trains (both real and model) and comic books with my own children.  I think that will be a really fun thing to do together.

Book Review: Reading Women by Stephanie Staal

Review of Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life by Stephanie Staal

I received this pre-release book free through the Goodreads First Reads Program (www.goodreads.com) on December 2, 2010 and immediately proceeded to the first page.

The plot of this book interested me when I read about it on the Goodreads First Reads page, so I was looking forward to hearing how a fellow thirty-something's life had been changed by the books of feminism.

In her thirties, Stephanie Staal decides to return to her college alma mater, Barnard College, after experiencing what I would call a moment of lost identity. This self-proclaimed feminist, who wanted to be a career woman suddenly found herself as a wife and mother working as a freelance writer on occasion. Staal suddenly felt like a traitor to the feminist movement she had studied and read about as an undergraduate, asking the question that thousands of women ask everyday -- "What the hell is happening to me?"

So, in an attempt to figure out what happened to her own feminist ideals, she audits the year long Feminist Texts course at Barnard College, reading 42 books/texts and 20 selected essays, by numerous writers including Ida B. Wells, Elaine Pagels, Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, Simone de Beauvoir and others.

Rereading these texts gives her the opportunity to examine, and re-examine, how her own reaction to the works has changed since she was an undergraduate as well as remark on an obvious generation gap between her thirty-something self and the 18-22 year old women in the class.

While I found the writing very open, honest and personal, I found the story somewhat bland. Staal has an identity crisis because she feels as if she hasn't stuck to the feminist ideals she was raised with and adopted in her college years. She finds herself, at 30, a wife and mother. She changed aspects of her career (from full-time journalist to freelance writer/journalist) to be able to stay home with her daughter. She has also adopted a more domestic lifestyle, taking care of the house on a full-time basis. These changes lead her to wonder if she has stopped being a feminist and if she has stopped upholding the ideals she once had.

I did feel sympathetic towards Staal as she began to struggle with changes in her life brought on by turning 30, getting married and having a baby. Staal says "The age of thirty, as nineteenth century French novelist Honore de Balzac once noted, is one of the most dangerous periods for a woman, and indeed, it was at this particular juncture in my own life, the turning from one decade to the next, that I -- somewhat predictably, somewhat ashamedly -- started to unravel." (Page 5)

As a thirty-something myself, I have felt that sense of "now what?" as I transitioned from one decade to another. There is something that happens when a person turns 30 and, in my case, I will say Staal was not alone in that sense of lack of accomplishment. That is also where our similarities end.

I myself am not a wife nor am I mother. I have not had to make the decision of many working women who become mothers -- do I stay home or do I go back to work? One day, I will face that question and will have to decide if I can afford to stay home or if I will have to return to the workforce after becoming a mother. I know that is a difficult decision thousands of women make everyday, but does it say something about what kind of feminists they are? At this time in my life, I guess I am upholding the ideals of the feminist movement -- I'm an educated, independent career woman. Does that make me a better feminist than Staal, than other women who choose to stay home with their children? I don't think so, but maybe she would disagree with me.

I admit that I am unfamiliar with about 90% of the feminist texts Staal read, both in the Feminist Texts course she took, as well as the 25 additional books she read at home, so this book was a bit of an introduction for me to feminist literature. My basic understanding of feminism comes from what little I learned in my history classes in junior and senior high school. I knew about the Suffragettes and their fight for the right to vote. I also know that ever since women were given the right to vote, there has been an ongoing fight for equality in all areas of the workforce and respect in all aspects of life.

I know that women have been fighting to be able to work and be mothers without suffering backlash or consequences, and I also know that the corporate world still hasn't quite adjusted itself so that women don't have to choose between being a working mom or a stay at home mom. I hope that one day, a woman will be able to work from both home and office and not have her career negatively impacted because she is a mother and that the same woman will be able to be home as much and as often as she wants with her children without having to step off of the corporate ladder. I hope one day, the demands of the working mom can reconcile with the demands of the stay at home mom, and they both will feel like they are living up to, and fulfilling, the ideals of the feminists who came before them.

I get the impression that Staal feels inadequate on many levels. She isn't like the other neighborhood mommies, who discuss their babies’ nursery themes and carry designer diaper bags. She isn't that "perfect" mother who can get her daughter's breakfast made to her liking, dressed in a "pretty outfit", and out to school on time and happy. The thing is, she's not alone. There are a lot of mothers who want to be that "perfect" mom like June Cleaver or Mrs. Brady was, but find that they aren't quite on the same level as those perfect TV moms. Even while working as a freelance journalist, she feels like she's somehow not being a good mom or a good feminist.

As her studies progress in the Feminist Texts course, she explains what each text is about and how the class reacts to the message of each. Based on her explanation of each text, I do not think these texts changed Staal's life. I do think they gave her the ability to create and develop her own feminism. I do not think Staal is turning her back on the feminist ideals she was raised with, she isn't a traitor. I do think that being able to take this course as a thirty-something, working-stay-at-home-mom (she is a freelance journalist which seems to be a fitting example of working-stay-at-home-mom) gave her some insight into who she was, who she is, and who she will become as a woman, a wife and a mother. She also got to find out what a younger generation thought of feminism and the feminist movement, which was mainly a feeling of disinterest and lack of enthusiasm.

By the end of the book, I felt like I had been given a very quick and interesting introduction to feminist literature and feminist authors but I did not see any type of significant change in Staal based on the ideals presented in the texts. At the end of the book, it was unclear to me how these books actually changed her life. I do think the books showed her how feminism has developed, changed and grown over the century, and how it continues to change with each new generation of women.  I think these texts also showed her how to change and grow as a woman.

On a 5 star rating scale, I give this book 3 stars. This book will be available in bookstores, from Public Affairs Publishing, on February 22, 2011.

Pathetic, am I?

Pathetic (adj.) -- (1) causing or evoking pity, sympathetic sadness, sorrow, etc; pitiful; pitiable; (2) affecting or moving the feelings; (3) pertaining to or caused by the feelings; (4) miserably or contemptibly inadequate

I use self deprecating humor a lot.  I put myself down more than I should and I find ways to use myself as the butt of a joke or humorous story that I am telling to others.  I'm not really sure why I do that, but I do.  At least once a day, I state to whomever I'm talking to "Well, I'm fairly pathetic", and then continue with the story I'm telling.  I say that all the time actually, that I'm pathetic.  Deep down that's how I feel about myself, I guess that's a horrible thing to admit but I've been suffering from self-esteem issues most of my life, so there you go.

Looking at the definition, I'm kind of thinking my patheticness (not sure if that's a word) falls into #3 or #4.  Hm, definitely #4 now that I get to thinking about it.  Feelings of miserable inadequacy = pathetic.  Okay, I just changed around the #4 part of the definition, but still that works.  I do feel  fairly inadequate, and I know that is caused by feeling like I am not doing anything with my life.  It's that feeling of not doing what one was born to do.  I, personally, have no idea what I was born to do.  When I was younger, elementary school age, I wanted to be a teacher or a ballerina or an astronaut.  By the time I got to high school, I had settled on lawyer.  In college, I wanted to change from pre-law to education, but for one significant reason (different story for a different time), I did not change and remained pre-law but didn't go to law school.  So, maybe I'm meant to teach.  I volunteer with youth at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver and have been doing that since Fall 2007.  I really enjoy it and always look forward to the beginning of the new school year because then I can return to the Club.

I feel pathetic cause I feel like I am living a purposeless life.  There, I said it.  Out loud even.  Of course, now I feel even more pathetic, so there you go.

I rarely read memoirs, mainly because I am not interested in what that person has to say about his or her life.  Now, there are a handful of memoirs that I thoroughly enjoyed and was glad that I read.  I LOVED The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan!  Part of the reason I loved it was because her particular story was something I could relate to, partially.  She was fighting cancer and her father was also fighting cancer.  I am not a cancer survivor, but my own father fought cancer 3 times.  I could relate to her stories about her relationship with her own father when she was a child, as well as how she related to him as an adult.  I enjoyed Pretty is What Changes by Jessica Queller because I found her very brave to face the BRCA2 gene in the manner she did and thought she was really level-headed with all of the decisions she made.  She was very personable, I thought, and I really liked her.  Then there are memoirs that I do not like, and I think the first word that comes to my mind in regards to those memoirs is PATHETIC.

I was watching a movie today, that was made from a memoir (there are numerous, I know).  It was Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep (whom I love) and Amy Adams (whom I also love).  I read both Julie & Julia by Julie Powell and My Life in France by Julia Child before the movie came out but never made it to the theater to see the actual movie.  I found Julie Powell both pathetic and intriguing.  I thought she was intriguing because she strove to make every one of Julia Child's recipes in one year, which is pretty freaking ambitious.  I am developing my cooking skills and I am not at all that ambitious, so I tip my hat to Julie Powell for doing all those recipes.  I found her pathetic because she expresses her own inadequacies and feelings of patheticness in the beginning of her book.  I will say she grew by the end of the book, but there was still part of me that just thought she was a pathetic person.

Which brings me to the movie.  I was, sporadically, watching the movie this morning and thought Amy Adams did a remarkable job of showing Julie's pathetic and inadequate side as well as showing how much she grew by the end of her journey cooking Julia Child's recipes.  Then, I had an epiphany (well, that might be an exaggeration, more like an "aha" moment).  It occurred to me that I was also a bit jealous of Julie Powell: as pathetic as she was, she put herself out there with a goal and she accomplished that goal and ended up growing as a person and people loved her.  People loved reading her blog everyday and seeing how each recipe came out.  People sent her things and supported her and cheered for her as she worked her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  So, here was a woman who felt pathetic and inadequate when she heard about the successes of some of her other friends and ended up becoming a much loved blogger who achieved a great feat -- she mastered the art of French cooking.

So...who's the pathetic person now?  Well, that would still be me.  So, what am I going to do to not be so pathetic?  Hm, that's a damn good question.  The phrase "put on your big girl panties and deal with it" comes to mind.  Well, I honestly don't know how to combat feelings of inadequacy within my own life.  It doesn't matter how much education I pursue, I don't think I'll be any less pathetic with a second Master's or a PhD.  It doesn't matter how many groups, clubs or organizations I join, either.  Those just keep me busy but ultimately, I still end the day feeling unfulfilled and inadequate, pathetic and lowly.  I'll continue to use self deprecating humor because it seems to make other people laugh and makes me appear to be more humble than I really am.  Self deprecating humor is a great way to disguise a lot of things about myself, and I'm pretty damn good at it.

Julie Powell is my hero!  Cheers to you, Ms. Powell, wherever you are.  And I apologize, if you ever read this blog.  I originally found you pathetic, but actually I think you're pretty fabulous.  You felt you were sinking and you saved yourself through a passion you didn't know you had.  I admire that!  I'm sinking, but maybe one day, I too, will find my passion and rise to the surface a better person.

Thoughts as we near the end of 2010

I haven't been a fan of Christmas since I graduated from college.  It was just a day to me, really.  When I was in college, Christmas was more fun because I had been away at school, studying for and taking finals and was returning home to a family that actually missed me.  By the time college was over, I had returned (in hindsight, unwisely) back to Colorado and my family no longer missed me.  I liked being missed by them, cause it made me feel important and wanted.  I know that sounds horrible and desperate, but that's how I felt at the time (and, sometimes, do still feel).

As the oldest child of "perfect" parents, I worked very hard to prove myself.  I was a horrible math student.  I was a fantastic English and history student.  By middle school, I had established myself as an A/B student who regularly received a C in math (didn't matter the type of math, I got a C in it).  By the time I graduated from high school, I had a 3.4 GPA, which certainly isn't something to be ashamed of.  At least, I didn't think it was anything to ashamed of.  It was the kind of GPA that would aid me in getting into a good college and it showed that I was, if not a perfect student, at least a dedicated one who worked hard and turned in her homework assignments.  Unfortunately, it's hard to be proud of your accomoplishments, when your parents make them out to be less than acceptible.  My grades in math usually sparked a significant ass-chewing and I was either sent to my room to work on math problems with orders to "do them right or else" OR mathematic video games were purchased for me to play on our Nintendo and that's all I was allowed to play (while my younger sister was able/allowed to play the more fun games).  Problem was, I just didn't get them; I didn't get mathematics.  The point I'm getting at is that it didn't matter if I got As and Bs in history, English, Spanish, and science.  The fact that I wasn't getting anything above a C in math made me a failure, which in turn made me feel like an extremely insignificant and unwanted member of our family.  So, heading off to college, as the firstborn child, was an opportunity for me to feel somewhat important.

I did feel important too.  I went out of state for college, to a small, private liberal arts college in the very green (and very wet compared to Colorado) Pacific Northwest.  I went away for several reasons, that I don't think my parents have ever been able to understand or appreciate.  I went away because I wanted to grow up and become an adult.  If I stayed in-state, like my parents wanted, I would have come home every weekend and never truly experienced all that is COLLEGE.  I went away because I hated my parents (at the time, I no longer hate them, in case anyone is wondering); my parents had ruined my life more than they could ever understand.  They not only took me away from a place where I was immensely happy, but they didn't really care and they never showed any interest in really listening to me and hearing what I was saying.  I think they heard my complaints, but I don't think they heard me, which there is a definite difference and distinction.  I went away because I was used to moving around as a military child and I wanted to go someplace I had never been.  I was hoping to go someplace that would appeal to me enough that I would want to remain there for the rest of my life.  Unfortunately, as beautiful as the Pacific Northwest is and as much as I loved spending time in Seattle, it was not the right place for me to spend the rest of my life.  I'm still searching though.

I do believe that going away was really great for me.  I only saw my family at Christmas, Spring break and summer breaks, with the occasional Thanksgiving.  We talked every Sunday on the phone and it sounded like they missed me.  They actually showed interest in what classes I was taking, what my roommates were like, what the dorm folk were like, and what fun places I was going to and exploring in Tacoma and Seattle.  Also, for the first time, I didn't get yelled at for getting a D one semester.  I took an Economics class and it was a bit difficult for me to understand, even with the help of a fellow classmate and I ended up with a D.  It was the only class I did horribly in; all my other grades during the rest of college were As and Bs (with the typical Pass grade in all of the Physical Education classes I took).  I was more upset about that D than my parents were, which was actually a huge relief!  My father even said not to worry about the D cause it was one class and overall he knew I was a good student and he knew I had great grades in all of my other classes, at least I tried taking a class that challenged me and I could always take it over or take other classes that might balance out the D.  When I graduated from college, the look of pride on my father's face was enough to make me want to cry (but I didn't cause I didn't want to ruin my gown with wet spots or make my makeup run).

Then, I returned to Colorado and the excitement over my accomplishments wore off.  I don't mean to detract from the things my sister did, but the way my parents talked about her, you would have thought they only had one child.  Actually, the women that worked with my mother didn't know she had two children (I know this because when I went into the store she worked at and asked for her, they asked me who I was and I told them I was her daughter and they asked if I was the one attending CSU and I said I was her oldest daughter and they said "Oh, I didn't know C had another daughter".  That's a true story, I'm not making that up).  I just lost interest in spending Christmas with my family because it appeared that none of them were interested in me.  When I would start to talk about things going on at my job or things my friends and I were doing, I was interrupted and talked over by my family so I just stopped talking.  I waited until one of them asked me something, then I answered and that was it.  I even stopped giving detailed answers.  I didn't see the point.  None of them were interested in anything I had to say.

By the time July 2009 rolled around, I was pretty fed up with my family and was ready to make a significant and, possibly dramatic, change.  I wanted to get as far away from them as I could and cut them out of my life completely.  Okay, that's a horrible thing to actually say outloud, but it's how I felt at the time.  So, because I had always wanted to work with children and was disappointed I didn't change from Pre-Law to Education while in college, I decided to find alternative ways to teach.  I started applying for Teaching Fellows Programs back East.  The first program I applied for was the NYC Teaching Fellows Program and had just found out that I was invited for an interview when my maternal grandfather passed away.  It was November 21, 2009.  His memorial service was in early December, and we flew out as a family.  I got to see all of the Aunts, Uncles and cousins I had been missing since we left California in 1992.  I was able to see and spend time with my remaining 3 grandparents and even see/meet second cousins I either hadn't seen since they were under the age of 5 or had never seen except in pictures.

During the reception, I think several of my Aunts and Uncles could detect that I was miserable beyond mourning the passing of Papa.  After speaking with a couple of them, the recommendation that was given to me was to get as far away from my mother and sister as I could because they were "putting out my light"; "they are the kind of people who need to be the center of the universe and can and will completely douse the light that is me".  The opinion was that it was probably a good idea that I was applying for those programs in other states, that way I could go someplace where my light could shine and people would be able to know me as Tara rather than daughter of C and sister of A.  That was, in my opinion, a brilliant recommendation and completely made me feel better.  I had been fairly miserable as the daughter of M and C and the sister of A since I was about 23, so knowing that my Aunts and Uncles were able to sympathize with how I was feeling and could relate to how difficult it was being the daughter of C and sister of A (C and A, according to my extended family, are the exact same person, just different ages) was a really, REALLY great feeling.

My interview in NYC was in mid-December, right before Christmas.  It was an interesting experience, and I learned a lot at my interview (my interview skills were pretty rusty).  NYC is a place I would definitely want to visit again, but cannot see myself living in.  The nightmare was the flight back from NYC to DIA.  Long story that can wait for another blog post, but I got home on December 23, pretty close to Christmas when my original return was supposed to be December 21.  Well, at Christmas dinner, when I tried to tell them about my interview and the hostel I stayed at, I was interrupted and talked over and, essentially, silenced.  No one cared.  So, I just shut down.  Their lack of interest reinforced my desire to move as far away as possible and cut them out of my life.

When I was invited to interview with the DC Teaching Fellows Program in March 2010, I didn't tell my parents until 3 days before leaving.  The only reason I told them was because my grandmother mentioned my trip to my mom.  I had told my grandmother cause she was excited that I was looking for an opportunity to teach; it didn't occur to me that she'd tell my mom and, in hindsight, I wouldn't have told her until after my trip so then I never would have had to tell my parents.  I had a great trip to DC and the interview was really good.  I can easily see myself living in the DC area, it just FELT like the right place!  Unfortunately, I didn't get a position (10,000 applicants, 3,000 interviewees considered, 100 positions; I'm lucky to have gotten an interview).  It wasn't until April 2010, that anyone in my family showed any interest in what I was doing with my life (my job, my church and my interests in the Teaching Fellows Programs) and that interest was shown by my father.  I would like to think that the reason he suddenly started to show interest was because he could tell I was pulling away, and he didn't want me to pull too far away because he knew his time here on Earth was limited.  In actuality, I think he asked because I hadn't shared anything with him in several months and that was not normal for me.

Up until my father's death in July, I was more than ready to apply to other Teaching Fellows Programs and try to get jobs back East.  My plan, before he died, was to get a job out of state, move away and cut my family out of my life.  I felt unwanted and uncared about.  I believed that my family just didn't want me around, that they spent so much time glorifying my sister because they thought I was a failure.  I had never really believed my parents were proud of me or my accomplishments.  I hoped, that if I moved away and stopped speaking to them, it would make them wonder what they did to drive me away.

Then my dad died.  Now, Christmas sucks for a whole different reason.  Even though I have not liked and enjoyed Christmas for awhile now, I REALLY don't see the point this year.  I bought cards that have been sitting on my couch in the shopping bag for about 2 weeks now.  I didn't put up any of my lights or my tree.  I haven't even pulled out my Trans-Siberian Orchestra CDs to listen to and I listen to them every December.  I was trying to figure out what to buy my sister for Christmas this year and that led to me thinking of what to get my dad.  Then I remembered, I can't get him a gift.  As the daughter of an Air Force officer and an airline pilot, I'm used to my father not being home for holidays, but he ALWAYS called from wherever he was to wish us a Happy Thanksgiving or Merry Christmas.  I'm fine with him not being home for Christmas this year, it's the fact that the phone won't be ringing that breaks my heart and really makes this a sucky year.  I'm not going to lie and say I'm not still upset with my family, cause I am, but my hurt feelings are lessened.  Now I wonder if he died because I was angry with him.  Realistically, I know my anger didn't kill him, it was a micro-embolism caused by cancerous liver cells (that's a different, long story), but I did stop talking to him, which I know hurt his feelings.  I did hurt his feelings.

My family isn't perfect, but we are family.  I'd give up all of my holidays if it meant we could all be together this year for Christmas.  It will just be my mother and I.  My sister, who is a flight attendant, will be flying.  My boyfriend (who hurt my feelings by doing this) informed me he didn't want to go to my mother's for Christmas dinner and would rather just stay home alone.  And, my father is in a box at the USAFA cemetary.  So, it will be mom and I, watching TV and eating a nice ham for dinner.  I'll give her the gift I ordered (assuming it's here in time, boy will my heart break if it's not here in time; I ordered it December 8 and it still hasn't arrived; I'm trying very hard NOT to panic) and we'll just hang out.  I'd give away all of my books and my knitting (anyone who knows me, knows that my passions are reading and knitting) if dad could be here for Christmas.  I'd be a better daughter if it meant he could be here.  I would rewind the clock and go to law school like he wanted, if it meant that he could be here this year for Christmas and not dead from cancer.  I guess I'm in the bargaining phase of my grief?  "Dear God, I'll go to law school and become a lawyer if you'll make my dad not dead anymore. Love, Tara".  Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.  I would have been a good daughter, stayed in state and gone to CU for college and then go to law school if it meant that my dad wouldn't get cancer and die.  Yeah, I'm in the bargaining phase.

This year, I just want Christmas to go away.  I admit, I'm a Scrooge this year.

Natalie

I was lying on the couch, not feeling all that well and found my eyes wandering around my small yet quaint one bedroom apartment, when my eyes fell upon Natalie.  Natalie holds the title of Tara's First Baby Doll.  I got her as a present for my 1st birthday and she's been with me ever since.  For a doll that is 33 years old, she's held up wonderfully.  Natalie has a plastic face and hands with "real" hair.  Her body is a soft material.  She has a sweet smile on her face and big brown eyes.  The vast majority of my childhood memories contain Natalie.  I remember carrying her around the house and having her beside me in bed.  What is it about children and that first toy they latch onto?

I have every intention of keeping Natalie and passing her on to my own daughter.  She's been part of my life for what seems like forever.  Natalie moved everywhere with me, except for college.  I wasn't allowed to take her to college with me, but that was okay because when I came home for holidays and breaks, she was there waiting for me.  I shared all of my secrets with Natalie.  If she were a real person, she'd have tons of dirt on me.  I guess it's a good thing she's not a real person, but rather a doll.

Now, as a 34 year old, I don't really do much with Natalie.  She sits in the lap of my winter bear that I received back in middle school around Christmas; Mr. Winter Bear sits in the rocking chair my Papa made me when I was very small.  They sit together, staring at me.  I think part of me thinks it would be completely odd for me to just sit on the couch with Natalie sitting in my lap.  Of course, I could still tell her my secrets, absolutely, but I don't think I need her now the way I needed her when I was younger.

When I was a small child, we moved around a lot.  My father was in the military and I think, through all of our moves, she was the one thing that remained the same.  Especially as I got older, when the moves became harder for me to adjust to, Natalie was the constant in my life.  I think my parents had a hard time understanding why the moves were difficult for me, which I can understand why.  I was a very shy child and my parents were definitely not shy people.  So, Natalie helped me adjust to those moves.  She helped me feel not so alone.  We always moved during the summers, so I would spend that first summer in the new city alone, without any friends until the school year began.

Natalie helped me through a lot of lonely moments in my life.  There are days when I do wish she were real.  She probably knows me better than anyone, even better than my own family.  Sometimes I wish she would actually respond when I ask her a question.  I could certainly use her advice with a lot of things.  Since she is only a doll, I will just continue to tell her my secrets, knowing that she will always be the only person who truly knows and understands me.

Youth and bullying

This morning, my church did a special service about GLBTs and their straight allies.  This was a moving service, we had a very large choir performance and several wonderful lay testimony presentations and I found myself thinking about my own stance on the GLBT community.

When I was in 9th grade, I met the first of many openly gay men who would impact my life -- my English teacher.  Everyone at school knew he was gay and many of the students made ridiculous comments like "if he touches you, you'll turn gay".  My parents also knew of his sexual preference but never made a big deal out of it.  When asked by neighbors whose sons and daughters were going to be in the same English class with me, my parents would respond that it didn't bother them that he was gay and they didn't think who he slept with had any impact or made any indication as to how he was going to teach 9th grade English literature and composition.  I think since my parents didn't make it an issue, it wasn't an issue for me.  I loved his class!  He was a wonderful teacher and really engaged the class in discussions about the books we were reading, and he encouraged debate and reflection.  He was my favorite teacher in 9th grade.

I am sure I met other gays and lesbians throughout high school, but I don't think they were open and "out of the closet" yet.  I am not at all shocked about the various classmates from high school who are now out and open about their sexuality.  I'm just sorry that they felt they could not be their true selves when we were in high school.  When my family moved to Colorado Springs in 1992, I was a junior in high school.  By this time I had formed a very clear opinion of gays and lesbians.  They were people like everyone else and what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their own home was none of my business.  It was not my place to condemn someone for who they loved, just as I didn't want anyone to condemn me for who I loved.  In high school, I faced a lot of ridicule for dating outside my race.  I didn't think it was a big deal, dating boys who were white or Hispanic, but other people did and I was made fun of and picked on for it.  It hurts and I didn't want to be the kind of person who hurts others, so I accepted the right of another person to love, no matter the color or gender of their heart's desire.

In college, I met a lot of gays and lesbians.  It wasn't an issue for me, I actually appreciated that these men and women felt they could trust me with who they really were.  There were a couple of times when dorm mates came out to me, which I thought was really awesome.  I saw it as an honor that they saw me as someone they could confide in.  My college also had two support groups/clubs for students and professors who were GLBT and their straight allies/friends were invited to participate.  I never actively participated in these groups, and right now I don't know why.  I did support the members of those groups, I guess I just didn't do it openly.

Now, it's 2010 and GLBT tweens, teens and young adults are killing themselves because of the bullying they endure on a daily basis at school and on the Internet.  When I was a teen, there was no Internet and the world wide web was just something we saw on shows like Star Trek or the movie 2001.  Bullying occurred in the hallways of school and, less frequently, at the mall on the weekends when kids decided to hang out there.  There was no Facebook to post hurtful messages on and no Twitter to tweet mean things about.  Just the typical school day, as the students walked through the halls between classes and in the lunchroom.

I was a victim of bullying when I was younger.  It started when we moved to California when I was in the 8th grade.  This was the first time I had been bullied and it caught me off guard.  I'm black, or African-American for the politically correct folks, and I always knew that there people out there who wouldn't like me because of the color of my skin.  I just didn't expect to be hated by other blacks.  This black girl, Mandy, in one of my 8th grade classes started calling me "Oreo" and "bitch".  I would go home after school, upset and bothered by this and my mother explained to me that the word Oreo was meant to describe what this girl perceived me to be: black on the outside and white on the inside.  Just like the cookie.  I have never been able to wrap my brain around that idea -- that a person can be a color on the outside and a different one on the inside.  How exactly does that work?  When you are a certain "color" are you supposed to act a certain way?  What way was I, as a black person, supposed to act and why did she think I was acting white?  I never knew the answer to those questions, but the bullying and name calling didn't stop.  Mandy, and other black students continued to call me an Oreo.  My mom told me I should ignore her and she'll lose the desire to continue to make fun of me.  Well, ignoring Mandy didn't work.  She kept at it, even calling me an Oreo in front of our P.E. teacher who reprimanded her and gave her detention.  Even that didn't stop Mandy from making 8th through 10th grade miserable for me.

It's hard being different.  It's hard feeling like you don't fit in.  I've felt that way for a long time, ever since we moved to Colorado Springs in 1992 when I was 16.  Race is an issue that has always been part of this country's history, and I fear, it will continue to remain a huge issue that either unites or divides this country.  No matter how hard people fight for racial equality, there will continue to be people who believe there is a superior and several inferior races.  Now the fight has turned towards the GLBT community.  This is a new fight for equality.  It is being waged in reality and in cyberspace.  We are losing our bright, vibrant GLBT youth because of the bullying they face everyday for being themselves, for being who they are.

I worry about our youth, our young GLBT.  I wish they knew that the nightmare that is high school will end and then they will find themselves out in the larger world, surrounded by people from all walks of life.  Surviving high school can be very difficult, there are so many cliques and groups and clubs, that it can be difficult to find where you belong, where you fit in.  The one thing I know is that life can and will get better.  There will be a day when you meet people who don't care about the color of your skin, about the religion you practice, about the person you choose to love.  I certainly don't care about someone's color or religion or lifestyle.  This is what I believe: God created love; God created humans in His/Her image and these humans are colorful. God loves all humans, no matter their color.  God is colorblind, therefore love is colorblind.  I recently decided to add this: God made some of us Two Spirited and He/She loves all of us, equally.  Love cares not who or what you are, it just cares that you are loved.

To all the youth -- the colorful, the straight, the GLBT, the young and the old -- it does get better and you are loved.

Writing Contests

I entered a writing contest through Writer's Digest back in July.  It's actually a pretty big writing contest, the 79th Annual Writing Competition.  There were 10 categories you could submit in and there were going to be 1,000 winners announced.  I don't know when exactly they were going to notify people that they had placed, but the website said "in October".  Well, October is 31 days long, so now I wonder -- should I wait until November 1 before accepting that I am not one of the 1,000 people whose story placed, or should I just accept it now?  It's only Sunday, October 3, 2010 so the month is still young.  There is a possibility that I could hear something anytime between now and October 31.  So, I've decided to just put it to the back of my mind and focus on upcoming writing competitions.

Since I was 13 I've wanted to be a writer.  I consider myself a writer, absolutely.  I keep a journal and have been keeping one since I was 16.  I started the journal as a way to cope with being a newly transplanted 16 year old -- my father had just retired from the Air Force and moved the family from beautiful, sunny Southern California to majestically mountainous Colorado and I was starting my junior year of high school.  I was not happy, which is a huge understatement.  So, the journal writing was my way of coping with a new high school and new students and a new "culture".  Colorado and California are very different places and, at 16, I considered myself a Californian head to toe.  In college, my dream to write continued but my father said I had to have a "real" goal so I decided I wanted to be a lawyer.  I had always been fascinated by the law and anything to do with the law.  I knew I'd need a college education to become a profiler with the BAU at the FBI and I figured a law degree would look good on my application to the FBI.  I majored and received a BA in English Writing in 1998, still dreaming of being a writer but I did not go to law school.  My father was extremely disappointed that I didn't go to law school and it showed in the way he treated me until his death.  He loved me, but he was extremely disappointed in me and that never changed.

I still have keep a journal and now I have this blog.  I don't write in this blog as much as I write in my journal but I find the blogging to be cathartic.  I've heard arguments for and against blogging and I know that, in the age of social media, you lose some amount of privacy when you decide to create a blog, create a profile on Facebook or MySpace, and relate the interesting and mundane in 140 characters on Twitter.  I have nothing against any of those sites (I have a blog, FB page and Twitter page).  I don't tweet multiple times a day but I do tweet multiple times during the week.  To me, it's all a form of writing, some are just more public than others.

So, I'm a writer.  I'm not an author.  As of today, I don't have any written pieces that can be found in bookstores or on sites like Amazon.  I dream of one day walking through a bookstore, like Borders or Barnes & Noble, and seeing a book with my name on it sitting on the shelf, waiting to be purchased.  I love walking through bookstores.  I love walking through libraries.  I love anyplace where a large collection of books can be found.  I love books.  I want to see my name on a book, with my picture on the back.  I want to greet fans and sign their books and have my picture taken with them.  Now, that might be selfish or something like that, but it's my dream.

Writer's Digest has two more writing competitions coming up that I can submit to.  There are other contests on the Writer's Digest website, but they are poetry contests and I don't really enjoy writing poetry.  I love reading poetry, but not writing it.  So, I figure the more writing contests I enter, the better I will get at the art of written storytelling.  I love telling stories, but sometimes I have difficulties transforming my verbal stories into written stories.  I'm still going to follow my dream and one day I know I will walk into a bookstore and see my name on the front and my smiling face on the back.

Now I wait.  I'm waiting to hear from Writer's Digest to see if I placed in the 79th Annual Writing Competition.  I'm writing too, working on two different fiction stories, one to be submitted November 1 with a max word count of 4,000 and one due December 1 with a max word count of 1,500.  The story I submitted for the 79th Annual competition was a max word count of 4,000 and that was difficult.  I'm not very good at telling short stories, but I'm learning.  I definitely need to work on perfecting my craft.