
	An exciting day in the literary life. I received a check from an international inspirational magazine for my first ghostwritten story, which centers on a woman who had to lose weight in order to donate an organ to a relative. The process has taken over a year, between interviews, e-mail questions, contract, and check. My ego says, "Not fair! I can't put the credit in my publication list!" My heart says, "It's not my story. It's hers, and she deserves all the credit." This morning I received a call from a woman who narrates novels for Colorado Books for the Blind. She wanted to check on a couple of pronunciations (she actually got my maiden name right!) before she starts recording The Secret of Spring Hollow. You can read the first chapter on the "Read Chapters" tab. Two firsts in my writing career. Now I need to get started on my nonfiction inspirational book, Life's Lessons, based on messages I've given at Two Rivers Center for Spiritual Healing. I'll transform my talks into chapters. So far I've spoken on "Life's Garden," "Life's Kitchen," and "Life's Highway." Next in the series will be "Life's Classroom." Then "Life's River"? There are lots of metaphors to be found in river running and flyfishing. So many projects, so little time! OH, DEAR, TIGER! Tiger Woods’ apology was staged like an infomercial and about as sincere, at least according to the local paper. People around the world have weighed in on Tiger’s sins, and it hasn’t been pretty. How many women did he know, in the biblical sense? How often did he cheat on Elin? Will she divorce him? Will he beg her to take him back? Who cares? And why? And why on earth did Tiger let himself be bullied into a public apology? He hasn’t wronged the media or his fans. If they put him on a moral pedestal, that’s their problem, not his. The only one he should apologize to is Elin, and maybe his children. His apology was scripted, written the only way it could be, as a sop to moralistic people making judgments. I’m not a golf fan, but I’ve watched Tiger play occasionally. I appreciated the clean-cut, dedicated golfer who seemed he could do no wrong. Now one of his women, a former porn performer, has the gall to call a press conference to say that she doesn’t appreciate all the publicity that’s resulted from her association with Tiger. Of course, she probably hated the attention she got when taking off her clothes and performing suggestive acts. I’m sure she abhorred his attention/money/power as she helped him break his marriage promise. Which is not to excuse Tiger’s behavior. Whether he’s really addicted, either to sex or his power to attract women, is up in the air. Could he really not help himself? Or was he flying on the adrenaline of being able to attract women who were willing to pander to him? Tiger has ’fessed up, albeit unwillingly. Not until he crashed his car and his life, did he stop doing what he shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. He’s taken the steps he needs to to woo back his fans and sponsors. He’s suffering more than he ever dreamed possible. The loss of millions in endorsements, along with his family, has probably jolted him down to his spiked shoes. It’s time we stopped expecting our heroes to be perfect. Enjoy them for their talents and dedication, and leave their private lives private. If a baseball player uses steroids, he’s cheating the other players and the paying public by taking unfair advantage in a sport that’s supposed to be about strength and skill. But if a golfer uses his non-titanium shaft outside the marriage bed, that’s not our business. We have not suffered in any way by his actions. We can vote with our wallets. Stop spending two months’ rent on season tickets to the ball game. Don’t buy the Nike cap. Don’t turn the den into a blue and orange sanctuary. It’s easy and comforting to jump into judgment about stars—or the neighbors—but don’t get so distracted by the lives of others that you forget to deal with the problems of your own life. Great news! Five Star Mysteries has offered me a contract for my suspense novel, Season of Evil, Season of Dreams. It's been 25 years in the writing, including 59 revisions. Yes, I kept track. It morphed from a cozy, with a retired teacher as the protagonist (good guy), into a police procedural that follows the careers of two men with similar backgrounds. One becomes a policeman to bring order and justice to his corner of the world. The other performs multiple acts of murder (sacrifice, in his mind) in order to become the Aztec Sun God of the Fourth World. Some writers outline. I began to write, hoping the characters would show me why the killer stalked children and how the crimes were solved. Bits and pieces of the story evolved over the years (including a stretch of five years in which I never opened the file) until I knew I had a darned good story. And in 2011 that story will go out into the world. It's been worth the wait. BRIDGE TO NOWHERE (This is my first attempt at flash fiction. I entered it in the May 2007 contest at The Verb and received honorable mention. Find out more about The Verb at www.readingwriters.com) The bridge stands stark and black against roiling charcoal clouds that spit rain in deepening dusk. Iron girders glisten in the headlights as those saner than I rush homeward to warm dinners. We who are not so sane stand alone, feeling rain and wind and haunted thoughts hurl themselves against us as the year slips away. We are the outcasts, the homeless, the good-for-nothings without rules, responsibilities, or remembrance of things past or future. Except one memory. I worry about Mickey. Does his father cook or do they live on trans fats and sugar? Will they find the perfect superhero costume for Saturday’s trick-or-treat? Will they sit together at the kitchen table and carve a pumpkin, yanking out the seeds and strings with slimy fingers and soup spoons? Does Mickey touch my photo, wondering what happened to Mom? Does he weep in lonely midnights when he wakes to find me still gone? Schizophrenia slashed me open and pulled out my heart and brain and everything that made me human, leaving a withering rind to rot and stink of lunacy. The drugs the doctors gave me intensified the split. There are no prescriptions that can bridge the gap between the world’s reality and mine. I found only hopelessness and fear. And finally, numbing indifference. But sometimes, I creep out of madness. I begin to walk. *** I balance on the curb. My once-house stands tall against the storm. An unlit jack-o-lantern balances on the porch rail. One step, and the journey begins. Rain hammers down, spattering drops backlit by streetlights. It fills the gutter, mounting to the broken toes of my salvaged shoes. I don’t care. I can’t get any wetter. I step down. Glacial run-off chills my feet, my ankles, anesthetizing my body but not my mind. Wind-driven leaves, dead and sodden, plaster against me as I slink toward my son. Will Mickey somehow sense me? Will he peer into the night, wiping his breath-steam from the pane as he looks for a ghost? As he looks for me? Those inside cannot hear the creaking porch boards as I creep to the living room window. I peer through the sheer curtains. Mickey and his father kneel at opposite ends of the coffee table, building a toothpick-and-string Golden Gate, perhaps for Mickey’s Social Studies class. They frown in concentration, laugh with delight when the glue holds. They are happy, without me. Darkness calls. I turn away, leaving them yet again. Leaving them to their bridge. Where is the bridge I need to traverse psychosis? The connection to sanity and safety? The night has no answer. Neither do I. The End COYOTE LESSONS Coyote hides hang hard on my neighbor's fence line. In November, the gales rattle them against the barbed wire like the bones of Lakota ghost dancers who believed they, too, could outlast the interlopers. Gray-brown tufts of fur occasionally decorate my doorstep as the edges of the ancient hides disintegrate and the prairie wind sends them swirling on the wind. These dead remnants warn living coyotes to stay away, hunt in the hills, not on his ranch. My neighbor thinks he's doing us all a favor by vaporizing predators. He sets cyanide guns and checks them daily. He hoots and hollers if a bald eagle lies sprawled across the carcass of a coyote it has fed from because he's gotten double duty from one poison cartridge. That the occasional lamb blunders into one doesn't bother him at all. It's worth it, he says, to get the goddamn coyotes. My neighbor also cusses the mice that have invaded his grain stores. He buys DeCon by the case. I make sure that my dog never wanders near my neighbor's land. I herd the old, red Chevy truck down the rain-rutted road that divides my neighbor's land from mine. A speck against the hillside evolves into a young four-legged hunter as I draw nearer. The yearling coyote pounces through the grass, tossing and gulping mice, ignoring my squealing brakes as I stop on the shoulder. I turn off the engine and reach for my .250 Savage that hangs in the window rack behind me. The driver’s door creaks as I open it and step out. A gust of wind grabs the door and slams it. The coyote raises his head as the wind carries the sound to him. He’s a little curious, but unafraid. There’s a belly to fill; he goes back to feeding. I lean against the fender, steady the rifle barrel across the truck hood, and pull the stock tight to my shoulder. I drop the bead into the notch, then drop the barrel an inch as I sight in on this stupid, damn coyote. My finger tightens on the trigger and I breathe out, holding myself still. I don’t want to miss this shot. The air thunders against my eardrums and the coyote leaps high into the air as the bullet thunks into the dirt below his belly. He whirls and runs low to the ground, making his escape. I jack the spent casing out of the chamber and another shell slides home. I drop the gun and watch the coyote as he disappears over a slight rise, and I hope, I pray to every pagan god, that that goddamn coyote has learned the danger of stopped trucks and rifle muzzles. I hope he never gets caught. THE PRICE OF SELF-ESTEEM Professor Jean Twenge, of San Diego State University, has discovered that college kids are more narcissistic than they were in 1982. Could it have anything to do with the fact that the 1980s was the decade of stroking kids’ egos, never letting them fail, praising them for the smallest of tasks? Could we have praised our children right out of close connections to others, even to regarding society as something meant only for their gratification? I began teaching elementary and middle school in the early ‘80s, and as the curriculum broadened to include “Project Charlie” and other activities aimed at boosting self-esteem, I noticed that students became obsessed with rewards. My fifth graders and I spent an hour a week, circled on the floor, tossing a wooden polygon with different emotions printed on each face into the center. Each student got a toss and had to tell about a time when he/she felt the emotion that came up. Then we were all supposed to cheer/console/congratulate as appropriate. Thousands of trees and photocopiers died so that we could hand out endless worksheets to be filled in, colored, and covered with stickers. Most of them ended up in File Thirteen. I handed back a paper to one of my average students and the first thing he looked for was a sticker. When he didn’t see one, he threw the paper in the trash. The B+ at the top of the paper meant less than nothing to him. He looked me in the eye and stated, “If I’m not going to get a sticker, I’m not going to work.” And he didn’t. The worst part is that his parents sided with him. Rewards in the ‘80s became extrinsic; doing something for personal satisfaction became passé. If kids didn’t get a sticker, a “Good job!”, a pizza party on Friday because they hadn’t thrown anyone out the window all week, they felt no sense of satisfaction. They weren’t capable of saying, “Wow! I studied my spelling words all week and I got a 95! Good for me!” Someone else had to hand out the praise. I said then and I say now that self-esteem doesn’t come from a pat on the head. It comes from doing something deemed difficult and overcoming the difficulty. Athletes know this well. No one ever pinned an opponent to the mat or kicked a winning field goal by waiting for someone to tell him how great he is. He practiced, sweated, swore, wanted to give up. But he didn’t. He kept on. It comes from surviving harsh circumstances. The strongest people, the best leaders, take pride in overcoming poverty, prejudice, and abuse. Would Abe Lincoln have survived the political process if he’d come from a wealthy background? If he hadn’t failed at so many things before being elected? Would Maya Angelou have touched so many hearts with her writing if she hadn’t gone to the depths of pain and come back healed? It comes from doing a job well. Doctors don’t last long if they do a poor job of caring for their patients. Mechanics find themselves out of work if the cars they repair break down the minute they’re out of the shop. Poor waitresses watch enviously while their competent colleagues count tips at shift’s end. It comes from making yourself useful. Service, not self-serving external prizes, leads to self-esteem. The heart lifts when you help an old man boost his package onto the postal counter; when you shovel a neighbor’s walk after an unexpected snow; when you let a person with one item go ahead of you in the checkout line. It comes from taking responsibility for your life. If you’re trapped in victim mode, you’ll never think well of yourself. “I have a lousy boss, but I have to stay in this stinking job.” “I could have done it if (fill in a name, any name) had just given me a little more time/help/money/sympathy.” “It’s not my fault the transmission fell out. The boss should have given me stronger bolts.” And so on and so on and so on. Bottom line: You’re the only one who can give yourself a boost. You may need some help from counselors, health care providers, or other support people, but you have to do the work. As for those ego-centered college kids, in about 15 years, they’ll be wondering how their wonderful selves got to be so lonely. CHILD Child -- Cloistered close in Cornfield and creek, Confined in Midwest green And Midwest minds. Child -- Of sandstone buttes and purple mesas, Dry and desert, creosote-breathing, Distant-seeing; Ancient winds stir in your soul. It’s a crime to raise a New Mexico child In Iowa. LAST STOP** honky-tonk chords jump on the air blue smoke dances to a hard hard beat like hard dark bodies and silk made of blood. and the words curve down the honky-tonk sound sliding and slipping like a rollercoaster trumpet riding a riff on the last-stop song.