Write Early, Write Often…Write Something!

Teresa Fannin, reader, writer, gardener, chocolate fan & tea drinker

Category: Musing (Page 7 of 31)

Mind How You Go

11/07/2020 /

Mind how you go.

It’s a phrase DI Thursday <ENDEAVOUR– INSPECTOR MORSE, the early years> uses regularly as a departure comment. We are now up to Series 5 but this week this statement has been like an ear worm. Mind how you go.

I have always been a political junky. I blame the Hughes’s, Lou and Gloria. Friends of my parents, they lived not far from Villa Cabrini in Burbank in the 60’s and they were part of the Young Republicans. In the election between Kennedy and Nixon, even though they were Catholic, they campaigned for Nixon. Had nothing to do with Kennedy’s religion, but they disliked his politics, I couldn’t tell you why, I was thirteen and a freshman in high school.

I am still that political junky and I’ve been reading political books for as long as I can remember, from the the Federalist Papers to the ‘Camelot’ series 🙂 through to Primary Colors and beyond, newspapers with bents both right and left, pundits both right and left and posts and tweets both right and left. I unfriend no one.

Mind how you go.

Recently a letter writer to the WSJ commented that the essence of morality is the willingness to forego pursuing one’s self interest if it may be detrimental to the interest of others.

So it is worth noting that over the past four years there has been a general call of resistance within the democrat party. Democrats proclaim their willingness to forgo their own self-interest and that they are the party of morality, proving it by being for system-altering issues that encompass women’s rights, human rights, black lives, love and peace. And they have pithy maxims that exclaim these positions on posters, streets in some cases, flags and memes plastered all over social media. In their moral exuberance they declare Mr. Trump, his family, his administration, his supporters, and anyone who votes for him to be immoral. There is very specific language used if you disagree. You can be any number of -phobics as well as any number of -ists. It’s not important to name them here.

Mind how you go.

For me it is difficult to give the high moral ground to those who push morality without actually having small moralities. The letter writer commented on the shopping cart theory. To return a shopping cart is an easy task. The “Shopping Cart Theory” posits that an individual’s moral character and capacity for self-governance faces its ultimate test in supermarket parking lots. Do you return your cart even in pouring rain? When you are running late? I have no idea if it truly is a valid test, but it always has felt to me if you pack up your purchases and leave the cart in the lane, or adjacent to the spot you are careless and ill-mannered. The question is if you are so careless and ill-mannered as to not give a care to those who come into the lot after you, when and where else are you careless and ill-mannered?

Mind how you go.

There is a video of a military higher-up who claims that success comes from making your bed each morning. I do that! Why? Because I learned that competence and growth come from a place of organization. Order encourages care, care encourages thought and thought encourages understanding and understanding seeks to be good and moral.

The WSJ letter writer states that we are no longer a moral people. I suppose because s/he sees the world as a series of etiquette blunders– not saying thank you when you are handed your change at the store, not opening doors for others, not keeping your space clean and neat in your neighborhood, not being aware of your responsibility to the common space by using trash cans.

Mind how you go.

There are many on social media who do not denigrate, declare other opinions wrong, swear, call names, or attempt to do harm to other by accusation or innuendo. Perhaps we have every right to think less of someone because of their politics, but if we are a moral and just people we have no right to act on that thought.

Mind how you go.

The letter writer concludes that we are no longer capable of self-governing. I think that is too pessimistic. I think many lost their way and been blinded, treating every detail as consequential, falling into a bubble that is comfortable and pleasurable. There are big issues that require resolution. I get that. Before you can solve the big moral issues, you must have small moralities. Before you can have social justice you need law and order. Please and thank you. Before you can establish any group rights you need individual rights. Respect for others beliefs and opinions.

Being politically moral is the not the right to rule, create obstacles or tell others what or how to think. To be politically moral is to take on the a commitment to serve, not just the greater good, but the rights of each person.

Mind how you go.

PANDEMIC LIFE

04/27/2020 /

Terrifying unless you are surrounded by your own family, in your own house, eating all your favorite foods. We are fortunate, and so are our children and their children. And we are lucky to be able to ‘see’ our children and grands.

In a recent FaceTime conversation with E, a happy and securely loved five year old, told me about social distancing. I thought that was funny. Then I wondered if I should be sad. After all, these are the sort of experiences that impact and affect our growing up lives.

We hear regularly about the last couple of generations, sigh, I can’t keep track, Gen Z? Millennials? and how dramatic their lives have been…. 9/11, the Great Recession, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now the Pandemic shutting down the economy and impacting jobs. And it’s ‘okay, boomer’. Like our lives were perfect and wonderful. LOL.

I clearly remember the kindergarten room at Villa Cabrini Academy. A large room off the upper quad, windows on two sides, black chalk boards on the other walls surrounded by bulletin boards, backed by color, overflowing with pictures that were thought, I suppose, to be beneficial to the eye of a kid. There were low square tables with two chairs to each side, brown, I distinctly remember brown and hard. I can’t remember if there were lots of us or a few. I do remember a short sleeved baby blue uniform, pleats across the front from shoulder to hem, a matching belt with a silver buckle, and white collars and cuffs. We wore white anklet socks and Buster Brown shoes. Mine were always a mess. It was 1951. I was four. I had thrown a temper tantrum, of apparently epic enough proportions, demanding to be part of the class. So there I was. The M.S.C. nuns were nothing if not accommodating. Besides, with my curly red locks and cubby cheeks, I was considered adorable, although I am sure Mother Amedia’s ah, brigantine! did not mean angelic! A tall thin nun, with an almost impenetrable Italian accent, perhaps she saw me the best of any of them.

I remember one of the things we learned was ‘duck and cover’. This was California during the cold war. Burbank, where Cabrini was located, was a major part of Eisenhower’s defined military-industrial complex, the major players, Lockheed, Raytheon, Grumman, to name a few, close by. The assumption was that we would be a target. I now think, HA!, like folding up like a turtle, knees tucked under, head down, hands around your head, would protect you from an atomic bomb!

My high school and college years were filled with assassinations, JFK in 1963 <my high school senior year> and MLK and RFK <at the Ambassador on Wilshire Blvd> assassinated in 1968, civil rights protests, Vietnam war protests, the Watts Riots of 1965, the violent political protests of ’68 Democrat Convention in Chicago, the bombings by the Weather Underground from 1960 into the 1970’s , and the Kent State shooting in 1970. In my college, CalState Northridge, Black Power was active and more than once attempted to block students from class. The administration building was set on fire, LAPD Swat Teams, in full swat regalia, visited campus more than once surrounding the Free Speech quad.

I am sure that my parents could list the impact on their generation. Born in 1911 and 1913, before the 1918 pandemic, I never heard them speak of the horror of it, but it must have been. From Scranton PA, my dad lived in town on Pittston Avenue, my mom in Blakley on the main street. We all have historic happenings that somehow shaped us, colored our thinking, enhancing our fears. My hope is that this experience will be one that makes E stronger, not now, but in the future. That it will not be the fear of the virus that holds her imagination, but the fact that she was loved, protected and cherished. And that it is her responsibility to continue to love, protect and cherish her family and friends. Sappy, I know. But it is my wish that the fear not be the overriding memory. That laughing about social distancing, playing with CH and Zooming with other pre-K classmates be the memory that keeps her in the future.

Got a comment? That’s fine. Be nice. No flaming.

Renewal

02/20/2019 /

It’s not enough to want to write. It’s not enough to write in your head–although that is usually very good writing.  Why do I write?  I’m not a good speller. I am a lousy proofreader.  My English methodology is sketchy at best.  And Latin did not help.

 Attending the NYC mid winter conference last weekend was that push to sit down and write.  New York in February is not my ideal trip.  It’s cold. Sometimes blizzardly cold, no clean air….

I’m late in doing this. The conference was 10 days ago. And yet. I had things to get done before I could, shoot, I hate that word–process, but yes. Turn it over in my mind, figure out how and what to say.

This I know. I must write. I am not a huge fan of the inspirational keynote that lets us in on the successful writer’s/illustrator’s life.  I have no connection with how they get there and where they started. I want the keynote of the person who looks at writing and brings their passion to the fore

This is my year of renewal. No. More repurposing.  I’m at that place between getting a request for a full and hearing nothing afterward. I have this character, a cozy mystery.  I was told that mysteries are a ‘dime a dozen.’ Definitely not what I wanted to hear.

Keynotes. Intensives.  Seeing friends. Discussing writing. Let me tell you what I get out of the international conferences.

Depends.

This year a lot hit home. While it was interesting to hear the story of Jarrett Krosoczka, and to hear Christopher Paul Curtis cruise through his childhood but it was the passion and fire, the language and oratory of Elizabeth Acevedo that took my breath away.  

I have no connection to her story, her history, the society in which she grew up. But I was stunned by the acuity of her phrasing, the depth of her commitment to her writing life, and the confidence by which she communicated.  Would that we could bottle all of that and give it to those kids who don’t get that whatever—love, support, or just plain belief in oneself tattooed on her spine.  What a gift! 

This year, more than in those past, I got a lot out of the intensives. I learned about the four faces of a character. I re-learned classic POV, tropes. Revisited Aristotle. About tent pole moments, the diagram of narrative nonfiction. To discover what is at stake in a nonfiction story, using prologues and epilogues. and Zotero and sprinting and the Pomodoro method of writing.

and I signed up for a mentorship program. “About time”, said Tom. And I agree.

The swallows….

03/20/2018 /

Yesterday was the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker. A little research led me to the fact that it wasn’t until 1955 that Pius the XII declared March 19 his feast day. Hmmm, right smack dab in the middle of the twentieth century. How about that!

Besides fond memories of Capistrano in March (usually cold, well cold to a southern Californian)   I always thought of this as my dad’s feast day. There is a Saint James, the Apostle. His feast day is in July. But Mom always said this was dad’s. I think it was to drill into our adorable little heads that it was dad’s work that brought us all that we had. His dedication to the ethic of providing for his family was important, this was a way, as catholics we could honor dad. As a matter of fact when dad retired, none of us had a clue what he was going to do, until he told us he was going to fish. We were amazed. We had never seen dad fish, heard him talk about fishing, zip, nada, nothing.

And then he told us that as a child, his grandfather taught him to tie flies, wrap a rod and then go fishing in one of the lakes near Scranton PA. And that’s exactly what he did. He went to fishing camps in New England and in Northern CA.  He made his own pole rest so he could wrap a rod. Used the down from a duck I shot in the bay off Provincetown to make flies. He was, as always, meticulous, exact, tidy and patient.

When I was young the swallows returning to Capistrano was considered a miracle in honor of St. Joseph. They probably have a very scientific explanation for it now! Me? I prefer to think of it as a miracle–one that continually reminds me of my dad and how incredible he was!

from…..

01/15/2018 /

Think on it: Ireland in the mid 1800’s ruled by English overlords as British plantations assaulting the Catholic religion and Irish culture. Congo, at the turn of the century, the personal fiefdom of the despot Leopold II thoughtlessly annihilating  the native civilizations that already existed. The economic and cultural failure of the Weimar Republic giving rise to the totalitarianism of the National Socialist Party and almost consuming western Europe in death and destruction. The rise of communism enveloping eastern European countries oppressively almost wiping out previously thriving nations. The dictatorships of Idi Amin and Joseph Mubuto in Africa. Today, the dysfunctional government of Yemen, the civil war in Syria, the socialistic driven collapse of the Venezuelan economy, the drug cartels of Mexico, the graft and corruption in Haiti.   And, none of this includes the impact of the sometimes unnamed apartheid systems western civilization imposed during the Empire Era and continued to impose  on countries that provided them with goods and wealth.

Are you saying, wait, what, Ireland? I know, I know,  rolling green country side, lovely castles, quaint villages. Not a country you would think of as awful, but it was.  My family is from Co. Mayo, which was a British stronghold.  I like to think of it as a ‘rebel’ county. My greats and grands, like many of our ancestors, immigrated to the US because they were denied their basic freedoms; individually, culturally, religiously, ethnically. America looked like a place they could be Irish and more, or for others, be Jewish and more, or be Indian and more. Mine came during the Great Potato Famine, no history lesson here. One million died, one million emigrated.

I love that I am an American. I am grateful that my ancestors sought a different place that would provide a different outcome than the one they faced in Ireland. I have always hoped that I would be that brave. That I could, would, leave behind the gawd-awful aspects of my home country and forge a new life under a new set of rules, one that provided more of, well, of just about everything I cherish about being human. And I am proud that I still love my Irish heritage. My heritage is different from the country, think of it as its soul!

I want this sort of realism to imbue my writing. Middle grade should be a time to understand charity. Not the charity of gifting, donating either time or money. The charity that is love, a love of a better future. That’s what our ancestors did, in love they left behind all they had known for the unknown. All that was familiar for the unfamiliar. Maybe they had to learn a new language. Maybe they were discriminated against when they came here. The Irish certainly were! But they held on. They made it better. I want it to ring true as much for me as for readers. 

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