A Woman With More Backbone Than You Can Shake a Stick At!

Harper Lee, one-hit-wonder author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning “To Kill A Mockingbird” displayed the kind of gusty, gritty fearlessness which makes me proud of my gender (stick those fingers in your suspenders, jut your chin out and throw those shoulders back!!) and all those who share it.

Early in the 1960’s, Virginia area school board attempted to ban “To Kill A Mockingbird” from their school, calling it “immoral literature”. My first reaction when I read that was, WTF?????

Well, it must have been Ms. Lee’s as well, because, amazing writer that she is, she penned, back in 1966, a clear, concise, cuttingly beautiful letter to the nincompoops which was, in my opinion, a thing of beauty — and this is what she said:

“Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board’s activities, and what I’ve heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.

Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that “To Kill a Mockingbird” spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.

I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.”

Bravo for Ms. Lee!! You have always had my respect and admiration. This makes me want to buy you a beer, slap you on the back and give you a hug!!



Copyright by Pamela S. K. Glasner © 2010, All Rights Reserved

Authors and Arachnids

I’m thinking about doing a series of blogs on all the sleazy predators out there who have no particular talent themselves beyond the ability to zero in on their preferred victim: an up-and-coming hopeful with wishes and dreams, someone who possesses a sacred, God-given gift to write or paint or sing or act, but more importantly, possesses a wallet. I've heard those predators referred to as sharks, snakes, vultures, leaches, creatures lower than whale dung, but in my mind’s eye, I see a being whose body is dominated by one simple body part: the open hand. And who’s got more hands than a spider?

If you think about it, the arachnid really does conjure up the perfect image. It can sit down beside you, cross its legs and still have six appendages available to dangle carrots, rifle your belongings, stroke your ego and feel around in your pockets all at the same time — and still have two hands left-over: one proffering the pen with which to sign on the dotted line, the other covering its mouth so it can simultaneously hide the drool and the gluttonous smile.

And where’s the harm? After all, it’s not asking you for all of your life savings, just a portion of it — in advance, please. But it’s okay, it croons, as it begins spewing platitudes and sugar-coated venom, it’s such a pittance in comparison with the jewels I will one day lay at your feet: ten minutes on Oprah, sixteen column inches in the New York Times, a Hollywood contract, the Nobel Peace Prize and, on your way to the Pearly Gates, nothing short of canonization.

Now I want to ask you a question: has the following ever happened to you?

You go to the dentist and he informs you that you need a lengthy, expensive, invasive procedure known as a root canal. You’re in pain so, obviously, you agree to go ahead with it, but you’re apprehensive. You’ve never had one, you don’t know what it’s going to be like, you don’t know what you’re going to feel like. Of course you’re going to do it, you’re just nervous. And then it happens.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry, every butcher, baker and candlestick maker in your life and dozens of them who are not in your life are suddenly in your face telling you that they, too, had a similar experience. When you got out of bed that morning, you didn’t know anyone who’d ever had a root canal but by suppertime dental patients were crawling out of the woodwork.

You know what I mean. Even if it’s not about the dentist, it’s still happened to you, right? An insurance claim, a car accident, a delayed flight, a bad meal at a good restaurant. Whatever the circumstances, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We’ve all experienced the same phenomenon: If it’s happened to you, it’s happened to a dozen others who never once thought to mentioned it before, but suddenly have an overwhelming need to tell you all about it now.

That’s how I know I’m not alone when I say I spend a good portion of my time dodging the sharks and the snakes and the vultures. In fact, I’m in very good company. “Everywhere you turn,” sings Sarah McLachlan, “there's vultures and thieves at your back.” Wannabe’s — people who wannabe nothing more than in my checkbook.

And it really is a shame. It’s a sad commentary on humanity that no matter how much we evolve, we will always be divided up between the predator and the prey; we will always have to contend with shallow, hollow, miserable leaches who have nothing to give and therefore nothing to lose and therefore no problem devastating the dreams of the talented, the dedicated, the idealistic — as long as they get to line their pockets.

I've been up most of the night thinking about one such predator in particular, a person working overtime to ooze their way into my life with brazen demands of unfettered access and dubious promises of silver and gold and riches beyond imagining. I’m grateful I've been blessed with this gift worth coveting, and I’m equally grateful I've been blessed with the wherewithal to recognize a well-disguised arachnid when I see one, and I know that I will, along with the rest of us who have something of value to offer the world, spend the rest of my life en guard. I just can’t help but sigh in frustration when I think about it. Such a waste of good energy.

Oh, one final thing: Yes, I know — the way an arachnid’s body is structured, it cannot actually sit like humans do, but it makes a heck of a good image, doesn’t it?

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved

The Arrival of Mia Rose

May I present my granddaughter, Mia Rose, just an hour old - my future little empath!

Rocks, Walls and Epiphanies

A friend of mine, a film producer, recently asked me in an e-mail what was going through my mind when I wrote “Finding Emmaus”. He said, “I meet so many people who confidently tell me that their book or play or film is going to change the world. Invariably their works are boring and pedantic. My take is that we need to tell the best story we possibly can. If, after being exposed to our work, people are inspired to make positive changes in themselves or their communities, great. But that's a happy by-product. Story matters above all.”

People who know me now but did not know me just a few years back may be surprised by this but, prior to this huge ‘epiphany’ of mine nearly two years ago, I was about as unemotional a person as one could get. I didn’t cry at tear-jerker movies and I CERTAINLY never cried in front of anyone - ever. I used to be envious of my friends who COULD cry on their way out of the movie theater, friends who could then tearfully, joyfully, tell the people waiting in line what a wonderful film it was and how much they’d enjoy it.

These same high school friends, and then, later on, my co-workers, firmly believed I was hard as a rock and twice as strong and everyone loved to lean on me ‘cause I never shed a tear. I was the one to go to. I was Wonder Woman, Underdog and The Rock of Gibraltar all rolled into one. I resented, BTW, that everyone automatically assumed I was so strong that I never needed arms around me, but I kept my mouth shut because I was like that.

I clearly recall a time in my late 20’s when an incredulous friend said, “…YOU need help? But Pamela, you’re so strong. It never occurred to me you’d be weak.” One of those memories which pops up occasionally in living color and brings with it anger and resentment in waves.

I was NOT a rock, I was behind a wall. But I had no idea and neither, apparently, did anyone else…

Something changed one day - August 8th 2007 - and I don’t know why. I can remember the exact moment, where I was, what I was doing, and the photograph I was staring at which is now indelibly etched into my brain as the foundation - and the starting point - of this “Dream Quest” I’m on, this path of mine which I am now certain ‘has a heart’ (thank you Don Juan and Carlos Casteneda!).

From that moment on, I've become a different human being. At first, and for a long time thereafter, I thought I was losing my mind. ALL I could do was cry - over anything. A GE commercial could reduce me to a quivering bowl of Jell-O. I still cry easily, but at least now I’m not afraid it’s a sign of impending insanity.

That said, I can now answer Burt’s question.

The only thing on my mind when I created the town and the people of Duncaster / Weavers Bridge, CT, and then the story and then the book “Finding Emmaus” was an almost frenzied need to write it with everything I had in me.

That’s all I knew: just tell the story.

And the way I knew I had written a phrase or a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter just right, the way I knew I had ‘nailed it’, was my emotional response to it as I wrote. If I didn’t cry, I put what I had written aside and started again. And I’m not just talking about the sad or emotional parts of the story - I mean EVERYTHING. If it didn’t touch my heart, even if was only a paragraph to describe how the early Puritans identified which plants they could use to dye their cloth blue, it got rewritten.

I didn’t write “Finding Emmaus” to be famous or change the world or to impress anyone. I wrote it because I HAD to. Seven hundred and fifty pages came pouring out of a part of me I did not know existed and still have yet to locate.

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved