Rosie O'Donnel, Oprah Winfrey and Imagination

I've been thinking a lot about callings and destiny today. Unless you’ve been living under a rock you know that Oprah's last show is today and although I've only watched her show a few times I have admired her. Her impact on the world is undeniable. She believes she had a calling to do what she does, and I believe she is right.

I spent a day at my gram's house when I was twelve. I was sick and laid on her couch all day. I channel surfed into an Easter special on The Rosie O'Donnell show. There was a precocious child doing an art project with Rosie. Rosie was known as "the queen of nice" at the time. This was before she came out, before she became a controversial, butt of jokes. She was handing out scholarships to teens and sending foster children to Broadway plays. She was making dreams come true. I was immediately drawn to her.

Rosie was also living a dream come true. A poor, motherless teen had become a celebrity. She imagined she could change the world and she did just that. She inspired me. She still inspires me. We did not have a lot when I was a child with a disabled father and four younger siblings, but it never stopped me from believing I could change the world. It never slowed the power of my imagination. Rosie fueled that fire within me.

I believe I was destined for the job I am doing now. I don't believe I will do it forever, but I believe that at this point in my life this is my calling. These children have come into my life for a reason. I have come into their lives for a reason. I've spent nearly a year teaching one child to tie his shoes, and the feeling I got in my stomach when he did it successfully for the first time last month was indescribable. It seems so small, but anyone who knows and loves a child with a disability understands how huge something so simple can be. He has the opportunity to grow up to be a productive member of society, and I've got the beautiful and humbling responsibility of helping him on that path. I've never felt better about the work I was doing.

I lived in my daydreams as a child. This is why the word "imagine" is so important to me. My imagination has always been my greatest asset. I believe I've written before that I worry I can't make all of my dreams come true because life is too short, but that won’t stop me from trying. I want to write, I want to inspire, and I want to change the world for the better. Cliché? Maybe. I don’t care. The key is that no one has ever shot down my daydreams, and I won't allow them to now. Never once in my childhood did my family tell me my dreams were too big. When I said I wanted to star on Broadway, they watched me sing in the kitchen. When I said I wanted to become a famous author my gram drove me to a camp in New York state for a writing competition. I’m not rich and I’m not famous. Who knows if I'll be published. But I still dream and I love that I’ve been given the opportunity to dream. No one can take that away from me.

Yesterday on NPR I heard someone say "how can we take away a child's opportunities just because of their parent's flaws?" This person was talking about a child who was slipping through the cracks of the education system because of lack of parental support, but that sentence can go for so many other children in so many other circumstances. The video below shows a young girl who could have easily been lost to the world, and instead she is changing the world. All because Rosie stepped in. Because just one person gave her a chance. Because one person allowed her to dream.

There are so many children that people believe will never amount to anything simply because of where they come from or how they are being raised. “Lost causes.” I believe in these children. I love these children. I want to help them believe in themselves. I want to inspire their dreams and make them believe they can be anything they want to be. Because I truly believe they can. Some people have told me I'm simply idealistic and naive, but imagine the difference in the world if everyone shared my idealistic views. Imagine the impact that could have on society.

Rosie and Oprah were both born into poverty. Both women suffered some sort of abuse and neglect. Both women have made mistakes in this world and been slaughtered by the media for them. Both women could have ended up very different people. But both women have touched countless numbers of lives and the world will never be the same because of them. I would never flatter myself into believing I could be what they are to the world, but I do hope I can change lives in small ways. I hope I can inspire at least a handful of children to imagine a better world. To rise above their circumstances and become better than others expect them to be.

I’m not sure what the future will bring, or if I’ve found a true calling. I’m not sure I will be a published author or that my dreams will come true. But I sure do love where I am right now in the world and I hope to continue on this path. I hope I can change at least one corner of the world. I hope I can inspire people to imagine a better future.

Just a Silly Poem I Wrote

Just because I like
To write poetry
Doesn’t mean I have
To wear scarves
And hang out in coffee shops
Drink red wine
And wander art galleries
It doesn’t mean
I have to read books
About Mary Cassatt
And use superfluous diction
In everyday speech
Just because I like
To write poetry
Doesn’t mean I have
To wear silly hats
And shop in dusty
Bookstores
And eat pretentious food
And walk alone in the rain
Daydreaming about Utopia

But you know what?
It sure is fun

The Sounds of My Home

You know how when the power goes out you notice the silence more than anything else? The silence overwhelms the space. The house somehow seems louder without the hum of the refrigerator. My home has some rather unique sounds. Some noises you notice more when you are caught in the tension of a Stephen King novel than you do at other times. As I was sitting on my couch reading Dolores Claiborne I was thinking about those noises that can become so familiar and get lost in the background of our lives. Kind of like people talking about the end of the world, and how it all is just blahblahblah at this point. Background noise.

My computer is nearly always turned on when I am at home. Elizabeth's computer is always turned on. I believe this is the same in nearly every home in America. I rarely sit at my computer for more than ten minutes at a time, unless I am deep in a project, but I return to it frequently throughout the day. The low hum of it is steady, though.

My big fish tank in my living room has its own noises. The bubbling of water of course, but that happens in most of my home due to all of my tanks. One can also frequently hear the tat-tat-tat noise of my fish redecorating. My Oscar fish, who measures about ten inches long, is very particular about his home environment. Behind his big blue castle he digs out all the rocks and spits them off to the side. I smile every time I hear them tapping against the glass of the tank.

My upstairs neighbor vacuums obsessively. Normally noise from neighbors drives me nuts, however I've grown accustomed to her vacuum and most of the time it is just the comforting background noise of my home.

My chinchilla has nightmares. Often. Chinchillas are nocturnal so maybe she has daymares? Whichever. In the middle of the day with her eyes squeezed shut she starts to grunt. If I have company their eyes will often open wide as they try to figure out what that odd noise is coming from my office. I go in and pet her a little on her head, tell her she's safe, and she goes back to sleep, but it's so familiar to me I don't think about it unless I have company.

I know, I'm crazy about my animals. Particularly my fish and my chinchilla. I bet I have readers rolling their eyes thinking "oh gods, she's talking about her damn fish again." I hear you. I can't help it. Some people have kids, some people have politics, some people have obsessions with the Zombie Apocalypse. I have a chinchilla and fish.

And frankly I'm so sick of hearing about the end of the world that I wanted to post something completely off-topic and flippant. How did I do?

Zen masters teach you to sit and just listen. To yourself, to your environment. Spending so much of my time with a child who doesn't have the use of his eyes has made me even more aware of the noises around me. So much of our lives become background noise and sometimes I think it's worth taking a minute to pay attention to it. To just listen to our surroundings and know our world.

Unless, of course, the world is gonna end in two days. Then I wouldn't suggest wasting your time.

The Way We Never Were

I often think I should create a blog entirely on this topic. This topic of nostalgia. Life was somehow better for the generation before us, apparently. "The good ol' days" reaction to things people do. In the good ol' days kids listened to their parents. Really? Did they listen? What about all those college students who threw tomatoes at the returning Vietnam soldiers? Were their parents all happy about that? How about the fathers and sons who ended up on opposite sides of the Civil War?

And of course, in the good ol' days kids were allowed to be kids. There was never a problem with child labor, right?

Michael Moore recently wrote a blog post about America's reaction to Osama Bin Laden's death. His claim in the post is that Americans weren't partying and celebrating after Hiroshima, nor were they celebrating after Hitler's death so the parties after Obama's recent announcement are evidence that Americans today are on a downhill path.

I completely agree with Moore that the celebration in the streets was less than stellar. I can't bring myself to celebrate any death, no matter who it is, though I did feel a sense of relief when I turned on CNN that morning. However I'm not sure this is an "America today versus America of yesterday" kind of problem. I'm not convinced we are any better or worse than the generations before us. There was the transgender woman who was beaten in a McDonald's recently while people taped it with their cell phones. Then again, if humans had cell phone cameras during the great depression or before the women's rights movement what may we have seen?

This next story is not for the squeamish.

That was your warning.

I am trying to find the book this story came from. As soon as I do I will credit it. There is a story I've recently read about a group of soldiers making their way through Japan during WWII. The author of the story specifically mentioned the dehumanization of the Japanese that had occurred during the war. A quick look at the propaganda sent out to American citizens demonstrates this. Propaganda Americans would not put up with now. The ACLU and Civil Rights organizations would be in an uproar and protests would occur all over the country. I can just imagine the tweeter feeds. However, during WWII this propaganda was everywhere, including comic books, cartoons, and magazines. Japanese were depicted as beasts, rats, nothings. When this particular American soldier and his troop came across a dead Japanese soldier seated upright at a gun, with the top half of his skull removed by a fast-moving weapon, they decided to set up camp there. They set their fire in front of him, sat around joking and laughing and pretending he was part of the conversation. They never once considered his lost life. During the night it rained. His skull was wide open, remember. It filled with water. The next morning they proceeded to play a game. Who can throw the most rocks into this man's skull?

Just pause now to take that in. This human being was turned into a game prop for these soldiers. This is one example out of many of the dehumanization of the Japanese by Americans. Of course, there are the concentration camps that our high school history books prefer to pretend didn't happen. Even my college history book says very little about them. Looking Like the Enemy is an eye-opening memoir of life in those camps if you're interested.

Watch interviews of the people who were on the Enola Gay the morning it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The man who flew the plane named it after his mother. The people they were about to kill were not spoken of. In the presidential speech about Hiroshima the city was simply referred to as an "important Japanese army base." Never mind the thousands of children attending school that morning. Never mind the chefs and the bankers and the florists. Who knows, maybe there were people in that crowd who were secretly against the war and hating their leaders for involving them at all?

Now think about that. America did that. And we are somehow worse now?

Now take a moment to think about the support Americans have given the Japanese since the tsunami.

On the other hand, Osama did something similar to humanity on September 11 that America did in Hiroshima. Complete disregard for human life. I don't know about you but I remember the terror of that day. I remember the horror. The ash being wiped off the journalist's news cameras. The people jumping from the windows. I still can't watch the specials on the history channel because I feel like I am reliving the moment that my country, the country I had been raised to believe was impenetrable, became vulnerable for the first time in my life.

These are all horrible things. Every one of them. The genocide of the Jews was horrific. Even worse than horrific. There aren't really words to describe it. The current genocides and murders going on around the world are just as horrific.

But that doesn't mean we, as human beings, are better or worse now. People talk about the words of violence between congressmen and senators today as a sign that our humanity is failing. Does anyone remember Preston Brooks, the South Carolina senator who severely beat Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the United States Senate in 1865 and then was regarded as a hero for it by much of his state and was re-elected?

History is too subjective and I am too optimistic, a lifelong glass-half-full girl, for me to say for sure that we are better beings now. But I would argue that it is worth more examination and thought. More objective examination. Americans have made huge strides on civil rights and our treatment of others and we should be proud of this. The champagne dumped over the heads of our citizens in celebration of Osama's death was excessive, yes. But I am remiss to say that it is a sign this generation is actually worse than the one before. I would simply argue that maybe we are different.

Edit: The book the story from WWII came from is titled "The Good War" by Studs Terkel. That particular story was told to him by E.B. Sledge.

The Pit Orchestra

If "all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players", as the Shakespeare quote goes, who is in your pit orchestra? Who has created the soundtrack to your life?

I started thinking about this question while listening to a podcast today on my way to work. I began to break my life down into sections and name the musicians who were part of the soundtrack of each portion.

As a child my father was it. My mother usually sang along with him and my grandmother never stopped singing, no matter how hard we tried to stop her. They were dad's background musicians in that pit. For the first twelve years of my life my father headlined, though. Whether he was singing or playing drums or some other instrument he got his hands on, he was all I heard. "Daisy a Day" and "One Tin Soldier" come to mind easily, though hundreds of other songs are right behind those two.

Then I became a teenager. Teenagers tend to love pop. I don't know why that is, because I can't listen to the local pop radio stations for more than a few minutes now without wanting to throw a guitar at that Kei$ha chick. But as a teenager I probably would have loved her. I, like nearly every other teenage girl in the late nineties, loved boy bands.

I claim brainwashing.

And quietly mention that I still listen to some of The Backstreet Boys European releases when I'm alone in my car. Shhh.

Over the last ten years my list of musicians has grown exponentially. The deaths of my grandmother and my uncle made huge contributions. Gram's death put a lot of gospel on my soundtrack. I've discovered one does not need to be Christian to find religion in Santana performing "Amazing Grace" or Amy Grant doing "It Is Well With My Soul". My uncle's death brought on a whole different genre. With his passing came AC/DC, Alice Cooper and Aerosmith. Though I had been a fan of all three bands for years, his death created an obsession. And a tattoo of "Back in Black" lyrics.

There are a few sections of my soundtrack that are all my own, though. Not influenced by others. Music that has spoken to my soul since the moment I first heard it. The music that I listen to alone, when I write or paint. Elton John, Billy Joel, Beatles, Ellis Paul, Fleetwood Mac. This music is the closest to who I am. And there is so much of it I can't find one lyric, or even one song that truly describes me.

What music is on your soundtrack? Who plays in your orchestra?

If I Wasn't Writing... what would I be doing?

Today was my last creative writing class. I have really enjoyed that class this semester. Some of the other students are really good writers, the teacher is a doll, the stories we read were relatively interesting (though some were really sad) and I feel like I grew and was inspired. However, during workshop I kept hearing the same phrase from some classmates, "well, I didn't know what to write but I just needed to write something."

This has been playing on my brain since a fellow student said it in our first workshop in February, and I heard it again this morning. For the class we were only required to complete one fiction story and one non-fiction story with a short poetry unit in the middle. I completed ten sestinas, four short stories, and began a novel. On top of that I write here, I wrote numerous essays for other classes and I still faithfully keep a paper journal. I never stop writing.

Even when I'm not thinking about writing, I am writing. I travel with a digital recorder to speak my thoughts while I'm driving so I can write them later. I love how words look on a page. When I have nothing on my mind to write about I doodle song lyrics into the margins of my notebooks. My history notes are covered in the names of people I love written over and over.

I have hobbies that have nothing to do with writing, of course. I have my fish tanks and gecko terrarium that I love playing with, and I have art, photography and cooking. But for as long as I can remember I have loved to write.

As a child I worked tirelessly to perfect how my letters looked, playing with the way I curled the lowercase g and how I signed my name until I found my own style. School shopping day was the best because I got new notebooks and pencils. In the fourth grade I wrote a twenty-four page biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I won my first writing contest at the age of 12. I was the youngest person in the competition.

So when I hear someone say, "well, I didn't know what to write but I just needed to write something," I am confused. I know that not everyone feels the way I do about writing and language, but it still catches me off guard. How could you not come up with something to write? I had to narrow down which stories to pass in for the final project and still wish I could have included more.

Hearing my classmates say these things really made me think about myself, my own writing, where I want to go with it. What I want to use my love of writing for. Feeling so differently about the assignments than some of my classmates felt made me feel like I was different. Like there was something separating me from my classmates. I am old enough, and confident enough, to know that these differences between us aren't bad differences on either end. Just differences. The diversity of life.

I'm looking forward to getting into upper-level writing/literature classes, where the other students share my passion for the written word. Maybe I won't be the only freak who loves working on these assignments, and who is sad to see the semester end?

Let The Conspiracy Theories Begin

Last night President Obama announced that U.S. military forces killed Osama Bin Laden. This morning the conspiracy theories are already running rampant. Did they really kill him or is it a lie? When will we see photos? Is this just to make the President look good for the upcoming election?

We Americans are skeptical people, aren't we?

Why are we so untrusting?

The individualization of Americans has played a huge part in this. We tend to rely on ourselves. We struggle with believing something when our only evidence is the word of others. This is something engrained in the American spirit, and in the democratic spirit.

We have also been given many reasons to distrust the U.S. Government. I recently watched a documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers. With history like that behind us how can we, as an educated and free people, trust what we are told? We have been forced into skepticism. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Right?

I've already seen a photo floating around the internet claiming the U.S. government released a photoshopped image of what is supposed to be Osama's head. CNN just said moments ago that the Obama Administration hasn't decided yet if they will release the photo of Osama... Kind of intriguing to watch the process as conspiracy theories are created.