On this day 55 years ago, Martin Luther King walked his last march.  He was joining a protest by the sanitation workers in Memphis. They were striking for better wages and improved working conditions after two of their workers were crushed by a sanitation truck and their families couldn’t even afford to pay for their funerals. King stopped the march after it started to get violent. He planned a nonviolent protest for April 5. He didn’t live that long. 

            King was shot in Memphis on April 4, 1968, the day after his famous “Mountaintop” speech. He said, “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” This modern-day prophet was violently shot the next day outside room 306 at the Lorraine Motel. 

            Holy Week 1968 started a few days later with the country in an upheaval. Riots and unrest gripped a fearful nation. 

           Once again, we enter Holy Week with a nation unglued.  The mass shooting yesterday in an affluent neighborhood at a private Christian school in Nashville is devastating and yet only adds to the death toll.  As of today, this year 130 mass shootings have taken place, meaning more mass shootings than days this year. At least 57 people have died in 38 mass shootings so far this month. The violence seems never ending and nothing is done.

            If I hear one more politician talk about thoughts and prayers, I will walk out into the middle of the street and scream. I feel so helpless. Democratic politicians call for gun reform, but will background checks and waiting periods really stop the proliferation of the guns? Assault weapons need to be banned. Since the ten-year federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) expired in 2004, more deaths have resulted from the use of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Everytown for Gun Safety’s website reports that of all the mass shooting incidents between 2009 and 2018, assault weapons accounted for 25% of deaths and 76% of nonfatal injuries. Only seven states and Washington, D.C. prohibit assault weapons.  There are many more evidence-based solutions that can be put in place to reduce gun violence, but until our politicians stand up to the gun lobby and the gun-owners, nothing will be done. 

            Our 23-year-old neighbor stood on our porch last night after the horrendous school shooting in Nashville and defended his right to own guns.  He has seven guns scattered in his room, next door to our house. He said the guns were under his bed and in his drawers. He has a little brother, age 14, who lives in that house.  How can his brother feel safe? How can we all feel secure in a nation with unchecked gun owners? 

            After King’s violent death 55 years ago, Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson passed the 1968 Gun Control Act. This was one of the first major laws that legislated the sale of firearms in the US.  Unfortunately, this also led to the modern-day gun lobby that has stymied many gun laws since that time. 

            I understand that most of us feel powerless to fight for gun protections in this country, but Martin Luther King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  As we enter Holy Week, we must speak up and continue to elect brave lawmakers who are not afraid to stand up for gun controls. Families in Nashville and across this nation are fractured and traumatized as they decide whether to send their children to school today and tomorrow.  As King’s nine year old granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, said in a 2018 gun control march in D.C., “I have a dream that enough is enough.”

image in my window for the last 5 years since the Parkland shooting…

As I attempt to make more regular blog posts, here’s an update on books and media that matter to me right now.

What I am listening to: Holy Week: The Story of a Revolution Undone hosted by Vann R. Newkirk II, an exploration of the week following MLK’s assassination and how it impacted civil rights and face in our country.  

Also listening to: Grammy Award winning Madison Cunningham’s new album, Revealer. “I’m a daughter to the mystery but a servant to strain…”

On repeat: The Highwomen’s Crowded Table…”I want a house with a crowded table…let us take on the world while we’re young and able.” 

What I am reading: No Filter: The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful by Paulina Porizkova, a collection of essays by the former model about the beauty industry, feminism, loss and aging.

Also reading: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabelle Wilkerson about the unspoken caste system that has shaped America. Just out in paperbook.

What I am watching: Borgen, a Danish political drama about a female prime minister’s rise to power. 

A One-Day Writer’s Craft Class Via Zoom with Guest Instructor Harriet Riley

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2021
11am–1:30 Pacific12noon–2:30pm Mtn  
1:00–3:30 Central2-4:30 Eastern       $100
Do you want to learn the best way to shape your creative non-fiction/memoir essays and send them out for publication?  Want to understand how to find magazines and journals that might be the best fit for your work? Then this is the class for you! We’re all writers, right? But how often do other people see your writing? Take this time to learn ways to share your written words with a larger audience as a freelance writer. Learn how to get your work published in magazines and literary journals, both in print and on the Internet. You will learn how to find a market for your work, send query letters, submit your work, enter writing contests and even blog for fun and profit. Group discussion and shared experiences will add to the content of this practical workshop. 

 Guest instructor, Harriet Riley, a New Orleans based writer and teacher, will take us through the steps to discover our way to publication and answer our questions about the process. Harriet is a professional writer, former journalist and, as a successful freelancer, she focuses on creative nonfiction. She has taught creative writing for eleven years with Writers in the Schools Houston. Harriet also taught journalism, worked as a non-profit director, and as a newspaper reporter. Harriet recently published articles in Mississippi Folklife, Minerva Rising, and the Wanderlust anthology. She has her MA in print journalism from UT Austin.          wordsplusideas.net
To register, please email Max and ask to be placed on the class roster. Today tuition by Pay Pal visit: https://paypal.me/HollowdeckPress?locale.x=en_USTo Pay by check mail to Max Regan at 1006 Grandview Ave, Boulder, CO 80302.

Have you wanted to submit your writing or start a blog and not been sure how do to either? Do you already publish your work or write a blog, but want some ideas to ignite your writing?

This workshop will be for both the person who has never submitted his or her work and for the already published author. I will share ideas for submitting your work to both online and print publications. I will also give you ideas to start a simple blog to highlight your writing. You will leave with lots of new ideas to jump start your writing practice.

We all have a story to tell and blogging in one way to share your story with others in a relatable and easily accessible way. Blogging is a vehicle through which you can get your story out there and receive feedback and affirmation.

The second half of the three-hour workshop will be about submitting your work, another way to share your voice. Sending off your writing is one great way to get feedback on your work and to share it with a broader audience.  We will discuss how to submit and places to submit your work.  The writer Elizabeth Berg said,

• Have something to say (and you do)
• Say it well (you can)
• Send it out (you must)

Join me at The Spectrum Center this Saturday, February 17 from 1 to 4 pm here in Houston. To register for this $75 workshop, contact rosa235@earthlink.net. She will send directions to the Center (located in the Heights) after you register.

After the election, a friend shared a Facebook post with me about a GoFundMe campaign to bring writers into high school classrooms in Mississippi to inspire young people to think about change. The campaign was created by a native Mississippian “in light of the recent political turmoil and deep historical burdens.” The idea was simple bring writers into all the high school classrooms of Mississippi to to generate poems, stories, and essays around the prompt “What’s a problem in your community? How could you try to fix it?” and then to publish the best of the resulting pieces in a book that could be redistributed across the state.

Disheartened by the climate in our country, this one person believed she could be a force for change beginning with her native state. The fund raising campaign was called, “What Can We Do for Our Country? and Katy Smith, the creator of the project she called, Write for Mississippi, raised almost $5000 online. Then she was able to get many high schools on board and recruit an outstanding group of writers in just a few short months. Just look at the line up of writers she was able to pull together – 39 writers from our state including Curtis Wilkie, Beth Ann Fennelly, Kiese Laymon and Rheta Grimsley Johnson. Students from throughout the state are already submitting their work for the anthology scheduled to come out later this year.

When I heard about Katy Smith‘s Write for Mississippi, I immediately donated and contacted her. Because I believe in the power of the written word and the importance of giving our young people a voice, I wanted to help.  My job with Writers in the Schools here in Houston takes me into schools all over the city encouraging students to write and create.

After several emails, Katy sent me to Baldwyn High School in March. I was already in Mississippi for another event, so it was my pleasure to spend the day in this wonderful high school. The students gave me hope in the future of Mississippi as we talked about problems and solutions. Together with the students, we read an excerpt from Sherman Alexie‘s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. We talked a lot about a quote of Alexie’s, “Don’t live up to your stereotypes.”  Then we made a list of problems they saw in their community.  These problems ranged from bad cafeteria food to interracial dating. The students weren’t afraid to speak up and nor did they hesitate to put their thoughts on the page. The prompt was: “What’s a problem in your community? Where do you think it came from? How could you try to fix it?”

I have not yet seen their work because students revised and wrote on the computer in the days after I left the classroom, but I know they wrote personal essays, fiction, poetry and even a rap song. And many of these juniors and seniors shared their work with me while I was there. Their words were strong.  I know these young people will make a difference in the future of our state. But the most amazing thing is that one writer Katy Smith, a published novelist and a product of Mississippi public schools, created this opportunity to give our young people a voice. Thank you, Katy.

 “Our lives are a collection of stories,” according to researcher and author Brene Brown. Author and poet Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”   Because we all have stories to tell, this spring I will once again offer a four-week evening adult writing class. This is for adults who have always wanted to write, but can’t seem to find the time.  This workshop-style class will encourage you to find your unique voice through discussing the craft of writing, using writing exercises and prompts and sharing with other writers. Whether you want to write informally or to publish your memoir, this class will help you learn to craft your story.

An article in the New York Times pointed out that research has shown that writing and re-writing your personal story can make your happier.  Yes, this writing class can also improve your mood.

This past October I taught a new version of the class to yet another group of wonderful writers through Spring Branch Community Education. They were young and old, male and female, working and retired, mothers, fathers, grandparents. This amazing group looked at their lives and the craft of writing to authentically tell their stories. I will repeat the same MORE TELLING OUR STORIES class this spring. If this interests you, contact SBISD Department of Community Education here. The class will be on the four Monday evenings beginning March 21, 2016 from 6 to 8 pm.  See you there! I can’t wait to hear your story.

 Author and poet Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”  This spring I will once again offer a four-week evening class is for adults who have always wanted to write, but can’t seem to find the time.  This workshop-style class will encourage adults to find their unique voice through discussing the craft of writing, using writing exercises and prompts and sharing with other writers. Whether you want to write informally or to publish your memoir, this class will help you learn to tell your story.

A recent article in the New York Times pointed out that research has shown that writing and re-writing your personal story can make your happier.  Yes, this writing class can improve your mood.

This past October I taught the class for the first time to eight wonderful writers through Spring Branch Community Education. They were young and old, male and female, working and retired, mothers, fathers, grandparents. This amazing group looked at their lives and the craft of writing to authentically tell their stories. If you are interested in the April class, you can contact SBISD Department of Community Education here. The class will be on the four Monday evenings in April 7 to 9 pm.  Next October I will offer a new class for adults who want to tell MORE stories. See you there! I can’t wait to hear your story.

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren’t you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

8.6 million people re-tweeted that line from a poem by Langston Hughes last night after the grand jury in St.Louis did not charge the police officer in Ferguson who shot and killed an unarmed black man last summer. The world seems so unfair. Is there no justice? Will black men continue to be gunned down in the streets of our country?
These are all questions that Jesmyn Ward asked in her most recent book, Men We Reaped:A Memoir. She said, “Demond’s family history wasn’t so different from my own, did that mean we were living the same story over and over again, down through the generations? That the young and Black had always been dying, until all that was left were children and the few old, as in war?”

I just finished reading Men We Reaped yesterday; the same day the grand jury in St. Louis announced their non-conviction.  As I watched the riots in Ferguson and the peaceful protests across the country on television last night, I felt only despair. Like the words by Langston Hughes, I am so tired of waiting. Demond (in the quote above) could be Michael Brown or any one of countless numbers of unarmed black men killed by authorities.

As a White woman from Mississippi, I felt guilt and shame as I read this painful memoir by Ward, just like the shame I felt hearing the grand jury decision last night.  The Men We Reaped was a difficult book to read, not because of dense or confusing writing, but because of the sad, sad story this young woman was compelled to tell. Jesmyn Ward is the National Book Award winning author of Salvage the Bones, one of my favorite books. That novel tells the fictional story of a south Mississippi family living in abject poverty during Hurricane Katrina. Men We Reaped is not fiction as Ward pays tribute to five young men, including her brother, who died within four years in her south Mississippi hometown of Delisle. These beloved young men’s deaths were all separate incidents and had different causes, yet the history of poverty and racism in her hometown compelled Ward to look at why they died and see a connection. “Death spreads, eating away at the root of our community like a fungus.”

In her last chapter, Ward shares some of the statistics about “what it means to be Black and poor in the South.” Thirty five percent of Black Mississippians live below poverty level, compared with 11 percent of Whites. And one of every 12 Black Mississippi men in his 20s is an inmate in the Mississippi prison system. And poverty, lack of education, and poor social support contribute to as many deaths as heart attack, stroke, and lung cancer in the United States. All these statistics don’t tell the story as well as Ward’s very honest tribute to each of these young black men in her community that died between 2000 and 2004. I read the last chapter in tears as Ward said, “By the number, by all the official records, here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty, and economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing.”

Ward describes the despair she felt for years after the death of her brother by a drunk driver was followed by the deaths of four other good friends in her home town. The drunk driver who killed Ward’s beloved younger brother received no DUI, no manslaughter charge, only a conviction for leaving the scene of an accident. He never paid restitution and only served three years in jail.  Is this fair? How long must we wait?

I can only imagine how emotionally demanding it must have been for Ward to write this book. I heard her speak in Houston a couple of years ago and she talked about this book being one she had to write. She said this book was the most difficult thing she had ever written. She is brave and honest in depicting her life and the lives of her family and the people in her community.

Ward writes: “We tried to outpace the thing that chased us, that said: You are nothing. We tried to ignore it, but sometimes we caught ourselves repeating what history said, mumbling along, brainwashed: I am nothing. We drank too much, smoked too much, were abusive to ourselves, to each other. We were bewildered. There is a great darkness bearing down on our lives, and no one acknowledges it.”

Everyone should read Men We Reaped. Unless we try to understand the world these young black men inhabit and acknowledge their darkness, we will all keep waiting for Langston Hughes’ beautiful and kind world. I am praying for Ferguson this morning and for the mothers who lose their children too young and for courageous writers like Jesmyn Ward who shine the light in the darkness.

Also published in my book blog, http://wordsplusideas.blogspot.com