Author’s recognition

 

Writers spend a lot of time out of the limelight, in the shadows of their worlds on the page, and then often struggle to get their words noticed.

But thanks to a small, closeknit group of local writers, including William Brower of Coral Springs, the City of Coral Springs realized the importance of acknowledging a vital, creative part of their community.

The city council, representing perhaps the first municipality in the area to do so, recently recognized 24 Coral Springs-based writers whose works range from self-help to fantasy tales.

“I have a special respect for authors,” said Mayor Scott Brooks before the meeting. “Because most authors have courage and conviction to do what they do.”

Brower brought the idea to the mayor a couple of months ago. Brower, in the midst of working on the second book in his Dragonsbane series, wanted to get the word out about the many local writers who continue to produce poetry, short stories, and self-published books — writers who may not have widespread aclaim.

Brooks quickly latched onto the idea, and Joyce Campos, the city’s community relations manager, wrote up a letter that she sent out into the community, asking for writers to come forward. Word spread like wildfire. She had to turn down writers calling from other cities, much to their disappointment.

“It’s word of mouth,” Campos said, looking at the crowd of writers packed into the small city council chambers. “It’s amazing.”

She said she hopes this sort of acknowledgement opens up a dialogue with a segment of the city that could diversify the community’s cultural offerings.

“I think it’s overdue that we recognize the literary talent that is in this community,” she said.

Writers certainly appreciated the gesture.

Joyce Sweeney, a local young adult author, poet and writing coach, helped with the email chain that resulted in the crowded council chambers.

“Everybody from all around the country was saying, ‘My city doesn’t do that, my city doesn’t do that,’ ” she said.

“This is a great thing for the city to recognize the fact there’s authors and poets in the city,” said Helen Marie Daly, who has written two books of poetry. “It shows Coral Springs has culture. We could use that here. It’s not as acknowledged here.”

Margate writer James Bhumi understands the frustration. He sees the need for local libraries and bookstores to bolster their local writers just by increasing their visibility. He notices that the lobby of the North Regional Library has enough room to prominantly display local literature.

“With all that space standing unused, I can’t see why a stand with books by local authors is not put there permanently,” Bhumi said.

Brooks wants the city’s recognition to become a city mission, with the hope of revealing more creative types that live here and give them the acknowledgement they deserve.

“My gut (instinct) is that we have three times as many authors in our midst,” he said.

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Authors recognized at the Aug. 18 Coral Springs City Council meeting:
Zelda Becht Author
Jack Bloomfield Author
William Brower Author
Helen Marie Daly Poet
John Dennison Author and Poet
Cheryl Devlin Poet
Piero Falci Author
Jim Flood Author
Alean Ford Author and Poet
Adriana Gray Poet
Betty Housey Author
Michael Katzenberg Author
Stephanie Krulik Author
Andrea MacVicar Author
Leigh McDonald Author
Joe Moore Author
Roselle Orlando Author
Stephen Oyer-Owens Author
Cindy Papale Author
Richard Ryal Poet
Lucille Gang Shulklapper Author and Poet
Roxanne Smolen Author
Joyce Sweeney Author
Wendy Wangberg Author
Dan Zachofsky Author

Ticki tocky…

I filed my last week of unemployment today. I will be getting more money, thanks to Obama, but it’s made me pause to reflect.

So, about nine months have passed since I went unemployed. Since then I’ve had: a couple of interviews (which if forces of evil didn’t exist in the land, I would have gotten the jobs, damnit); a lot of free time in which to clean out my closet; an affair that ended badly with someone not worth my time; a new relationship that has grown strong in a short amount of time; a move that made me place my wordly possessions in storage 2 hours away from me; a reconnection with my family which makes me love them more, but also makes me want to find my own way again.

But most of all, it’s allowed me to realize something powerful.

We are not defined by our work.

Men might have trouble with this, as society dictates that they be the breadwinners or else they’re losers. Women might have trouble with this, especially those feminists who believe work gives them the independent money-making ability that makes them less likely to be dependent on men.

But work really doesn’t define us.

I found myself within my period of unemployment. I came back to me, who I really was, without the deadline pressures and office politics.

I know I can survive emotionally without a fulltime job to subsist me or give me meaning. I know my personality doesn’t derive from work product or what my bosses say or what my colleagues complain about. I know human relationships really fill my world with light and joy. I know now that sharing my gifts and my passions, regardless of pay or employment, is really the only happiness there can be.

Now that I know this, I still need a job.

And I ran..I ran so far away…

You don’t want to concentrate too hard on the undulating crowd of runners ahead; or your feet encased in those recommended running shoes; or the wind buffeting you. You don’t want to look beyond to see the end, because it will always seem too far away and the easily discouraged may just want to lay on the asphalt instead, regardless of the pounding, sweating crowd that may trip over your carcass.

You don’t want to pay too much attention to the burn that travels from your feet to your backside; your breathless attempts to regain some semblence of breath; your pounding heart as it tries to keep up with your newfound purpose to reach the finish line.

But you do want to take some pleasure in your surroundings, as I did (somewhat) on Saturday as I ran my first 5K, a three-mile sojourn that took me over a bridge and back, “competing” with adults, children, adults with children on their back, adults with children in strollers, championship runners who took enviable long strides, old women with walking sticks, old men who looked like they’d be better off playing checkers in the park.

I woke up early enough, about 6:30 a.m., with barely enough sleep to open my eyes in the dark. I pulled on my new running capris and shirt, laced up my nifty New Balance running shoes (which I hoped, against hope, wouldn’t be the death of my feet halfway through the race), put my hair up in a ponytail and jumped in the car to drive to lovely downtown Melbourne. No sarcasm there. It was lovely — beautiful just-right weather and a teeming crowd of energy.

They organized the crowd into groups according to how fast you could run a mile. The last time I timed my mile, I was 13, and I did a mile in 8 minutes. With walking. Figuring 20 years would only increase my slowness, not improve upon it, I joined in with the group at the back, who seemed pretty good-natured about their admitted slowness.

With a loud cheer, the race began. Having been told to take it easy at the beginning, I tried to do so, but found myself with the need to pass people. Sort of like driving. Then I quickly found the need to slow to a walk, because, well, I didn’t feel like passing out a minute into the race.

It took me about 14 minutes to reach one mile, according to the sign at the end of the upslope of the causeway bridge. Ugh. Why I cared, or why I thought I could go faster, I don’t know. I’ve always had this weird competitive streak when it came to things that I know I’m no good at. Like sporting-related activities. Good thing folks were around me with whom to be competitive — if I were by myself, I may have stopped right there. Maybe I just need to imagine a horde surrounding me in order to get my butt moving.

You’d think going down the slope would be easier — gravity and all. But no. The whole thing felt about the same to me — a heart-pounding journey with no perceivable end. Which, in a way, was kind of exhilerating. Perhaps I was lightheaded. Or those endorphins were kicking in.

Regardless, coming back up the slope, I found I shaved a minute off my mile, because at the two mile mark, I was at 27 minutes. A man running with his son told me that’s a good job for a newbie. Of course, not good enough for the front-runners, who passed me about 15 minutes ago.

Every so often I glanced back, relieved that I wasn’t last. Of course, I’m guessing that lady with the cane probably stumbled in last. Maybe.

And then I finally finished, pretty much stumbling across the line like a goof, my legs wanting to keep moving and not happy with such a quick stop. Darn inertia.

The result: 37.45 minutes to run three miles.

Now, as soon the ache subsides, I may try three miles again. On flat land.

Job searching = insanity

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I’m supposed to be calling prospective employers. Considering the state of affairs in the newspaper industry, does it make me look proactive to call or just ridiculous to ask if they have job openings? And there are so many newspapers out there, how to pick the ones I want? By circulation? And most of the papers I want to work for just laid off a bunch of folks. I’m pretty sure they’re not hiring.

I’m supposed to drive to prospective employers and knock on doors. Considering the fact I’m collecting unemployment, gas money is a premium expense, especially when, wherever I want to drive is beyond the borders of this county.

I’m supposed to make my resume stand out. Considering that what makes it stand out to one person doesn’t to another makes this proposition hard. I don’t have specific achievements that I can lay out, like they say to do. I didn’t raise sales figures.  I’m not sure how to translate my journalism experience into quantifiable accomplishments. Does that make my experience invalid? And I’m supposed to reduce this all to one page. Argh.

I wish I could outsource my job search, have some guy in India with a charming Bollywood style cull my good work from my bad, caress my resume into something special, make the inevitable phone calls to the important people who can offer me employment and then present me with a report each week with his findings.

All for free.

The kindness of strangers

I drove to Cocoa today to run some errands. Cocoa sounds exotic, like there’d be chocolate and palm trees and white sand. Nah, it’s just another scrubby neighborhood in Brevard County.

Anyway, I eventually park and exit my vehicle, only to realize that the used bookstore doesn’t buy books, they only trade, and I wanted some dough. So, planning a trip over the bride to Merritt Island (another exotic sounding locale, but yet another scrubby town in north Brevard), I inserted my key into the ignition.

Whir, whir, click.

That didn’t sound promising. I tried again.

Whir, whir, pop! That was my trunk opening. Yeah, that doesn’t help me get anywhere.

Hey, it could need gas. Even though the tank gauge read there was ample enough gas. Filled my 2-gallon emergency fuel storage unit at a nearby gas station (actually, a semi-homeless looking man kindly did that for me and carried it back to my car.)

Whir, whir, click. Pop! There went the trunk again.

Get out of my car. Traisped next door.

“Got any jumper cables?”

“No, try across the street,” the woman answered without even looking.

Across the street: “Nah, just took them out of my truck.”

Yeah, not helpful.

“Try over at Autozone,” he said. “It’s right where you see that American flag, across the railroad tracks. Not sure if I’d walk it, though.”

I’m a  walker, it was cool out, so I saw no problem with this.

(In between all this, I frantically called my father to calm my nerves).

I went over to the Autozone, where they hooked me up with jumper cables. Actually, I paid them $15 for the honor of letting me walk out the door with them.

Immediately after leaving the store, two African-American gentlement in a van offered me a ride. Since one had a cane, I figured them to be harmless.

“You’re not going to kidnap me, are you?” I asked, half-joking.

“Nah. I’m a God-fearing man,” he said.

Good to know.

They drove me over to my car, where the one with the cane promptly announced that I needed water in my battery as the acid was low. As he poured water in, the other pulled up next to my car and hooked up my newly-purchased jumper cables, and jumped my car.

I turned the ignition, and my engine whirred to life immediately. The best it’s sounded all week.

In all, the entire operation cost me $15, a nice walk on a nice day, and about three hours of my time total.

Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers. Otherwise, I could still be stranded in Cocoa right now, instead of hurrying this post to get to work.

I give up

I’m done.

I’m done with this worrying about every dime I spend. I’m done with owning a vehicle that breaks down every few months. I’m done with not having a full-time job that pays my worth. I’m done with having to compete for jobs with every laid-off person on the planet. I’m done feeling guilty about being annoyed, confused, angry and upset because of my current situation. I’m done with feeling annoyed, confused, angry and upset. I’m done with living quietly, for fear of confrontation.

I’m done with being by myself, feeling that I’ve got to make these decisions all on my own. I’m done with worrying about worrying others with my problems. I’m done with feeling like crap when I ask for help. I’m done with having to ask for help in the first place.

I’m so tired. I’m tired of hearing about job creation when none of those jobs will come to me, because I don’t build roads and bridges. I’m tired of waking up in the morning and trying to figure out how to fill my day, and how I can’t drive anywhere because I can’t afford too much gas. I’m tired of watching television and escaping, because it makes me feel like a deadbeat. I feel like a deadbeat. I’m tired of feeling like a deadbeat loser.

Yeah, I’m not alone. Thousands of people don’t have fulltime work. Yeah, I could blame the economy. I could blame President Bush. I could blame the newspaper industry, who doesn’t know how to keep its employees employed. But I don’t. The blame lies with me choosing an industry doomed to fail.

I’m done. And no amount of counseling and friendly worry can help me. What can help me? A full-time job and a financial advisor. Now.

He Who Shall Not Be Named

He’s the devil incarnate, the one who led us path strewn with imaginary weapons of mass destruction. He coddled the rich, leading thousands to lose their homes, their jobs, their self-worth. He led an unpopular war that sent thousands to their deaths over oil and money.

If you’re nodding your head along with this, you might be an angry liberal, blinded by what you see as a government’s failure to act responsibly and ethically toward the poor and middle class by bolstering ”the rich.” You writhe in hate for a man who you’ve compared with Hitler, ignoring the irony that you railed against the same man for preaching hate and fear.

Even at the end, you could not let go. You had to boo him at Obama’s inauguration. You had to strangle a wax statue of him. You had to chuckle knowingly at Obama’s veiled references of failure. You mocked his notion of evil in the world, yet refer to him in the same way.

Perhaps it’s a natural part of human existence to have something to villify. It happened during the 1950s with the Communists. Perhaps it’s easier to rage against a simple Texas man who made some bad decisions than to worry about shadowy figures bent on our destruction.

With our anti-Bush rhetoric, we’ve created a man, not unlike Hoover, on whom to blame all our troubles. Isn’t it great we have someone to blame other than ourselves?

Job search questions

1. Why post on a national job search site when you’re only looking for local candidates?
2. Why ask for a masters degree and other degrees of mastery and only pay $25,000?
3. Why must I know everything to get a job that pays $25,000?
4. Why must I need a masters degree to get a blogging job that pays $8 an hour. Seriously. What the hell.
5. Why can’t I get excited about sales or tech jobs?
6. Why must I pay about $100 just to qualify to be a substitute teacher? I’m unemployed, people. I don’t have $100 to be spending on an off chance of something.

Bro!

My memory sucks. This morning’s events have already gone to that fuzzy, in-between world, where lost pen caps and loose change go. That’s why I write things down for posterity. Otherwise – gone, poof into the magic mystery place, in which images, verbs and nouns reside, leaving behind simple feelings of time and place with no definition.

Thank goodness for my brother.

He’s defined my growing up. I don’t remember much before he came into the world, I imagine very perturbed at being awoken from his slumber (things don’t change much). And since then, I can determine my age from circa 1980s photographs by remembering his. I don’t know if it works in reverse.

We liked building stuff. We’d create entire cities out of large erstatz Legos, crouching and leaning across the cement floor of our porch. A huge dirt pit in the corner of the yard (left from a failed above-ground pool experiment that went awry) became a railroad construction zone. We explored my grandma’s backyard, placing wood planks across trickling streams, crunching across pine needles. We set up a tent — something I don’t remember, but a picture shows us both, heads together, intent on a tent stake.

When young, we’d do fashion shows for my parents, in typical sibling fashion. Although I don’t remember really being in charge of these events. I think he was. Typical, because he always was more of the entertainer and knew what he wanted from the show.

Our relationship hasn’t changed much from those hazy, endless days of building and playing and fighting and making up. We still have those moments where we forget we’re grownups and start flinging pillows at each other, or attack each other with tickling fingers. We have many moments of laughter, where we both break down for nonsensical reasons, just because we find each other so darn amusing. We have deep involving conversations on philosophy and religion and politics and television, where sometimes I stop for a moment and wonder when this little boy became a man.

I am most myself when in the company of my brother. He reflects me back to myself, helping me define my place in the world, making me remember.

If only all my human relationships were this honest.

CBS “News”

Here’s a couple of reports from the nightly news, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009 and why television will never bring the masses what newspapers could:

A woman in a small California town is fighting City Hall because of a new law that prohibits her from smoking in her apartment. The only city official quoted (not the mayor, city manager, health guy, but some random council member) spouts off that second hand smoke is “very dangerous,” although she quotes no studies, and says if the woman has a problem with it, she could move.

Missing: second hand smoke studies, interviews with neighbors to see if they care, interview with the apartment complex to see if they care, interview with the person who brought this ordinance forward, interview with health officials to see if this would make a difference, interview with people who know the woman fighting city hall (to establish her credibility), interview with ACLU to establish whether they think rights were trampled….etc. But you can’t do all that in a 30-second report. So it just makes both people interviewed (yes, only 2 people) look stupid.

A small town in the Rust Belt, near Pittsburgh, (or at least the mayor) thinks that Obama’s plan to revitalize the economy, specifically infrastructure improvements, will bring it back to its former glory. Video images of a ramshackle downtown, exploding mills, and an empty community dominate the report.

Missing: context on how exactly building roads will help the community, how many people could use this work, would they want this work, economic development officials talking about how infrastructure improvements could bring in business, how infrastructure improvements may not do ANYTHING to help this community, etc…so basically it comes off as pro-Obama propoganda.