The Write Journey

What I did today...

Today I had a cool experience. I attended a festival for African-American authors at my local Barnes & Noble. I'd heard about it through author Brandon Massey's newsletter. I didn't know until just this morning that it was an entire festival of authors, and not just his appearance alone. There were twenty authors there, including Cliff Chandler and Judge Glenda Hatchett from the Judge Hatchett television program.

I'd never attended this sort of thing before, and basically my Mom and I just wandered around, collected info from several authors' tables, and said hello. I bought both Brandon's latest book, Dark Corner and Cliff's first book The Paragons. Judge Hatchett's book was geared toward parents raising kids, so I didn't buy hers. Unfortunately, I didn't get to meet her either.

There were lots of people, but not overly so. It was a fun experience, and Brandon seemed as cool in person as he did in his newsletter. I even gave him a copy of my book. And also I now have an idea what to expect if and when my turn to be involved in something like that comes around.

Now back to work. Bestsellers don't grow on trees after all! :)

- The WheelMan

Thin lines

I think we forget sometimes how truly thin the line is between death and life until something happens to remind us of that fact. On Saturday morning my mother received a call from a close friend who's always been like an aunt to me. In that one phone call, my mother learned that not only had the nephew her friend was expecting had been born, but also that a couple of hours later, the friend's sister, who lived nearby, had died in a house fire. Death and life so closely entertwined that it almost sounds like a contrived and sappy Hollywood plot.

And then this morning I watched a special on cable TV about children in broken homes who suffer from abuse and neglect. Some of the children could be the sweetest things one minute, and yet turn so violent and uncontrollable the next that you have little hope for their futures. To hear a parent actually admit they're afraid of their 8-year-old is both heartbreaking and terrifying.

Some may think of it as Fate, or the Grace of God, or just the random outcome of the universal course of this thing we call Life. Either way, we tread upon such a fragile path, such a wild and wonderful, beautiful and frightening line. Perhaps if we appreciated all of the blessings and good things in life a bit more, we'd miraculously find ourselves living in a far happier and less tragic world. Or is that just a pipe dream by an eternally optimistic sentimentalist? Either way, it's an experiment I wish the entire world were willing to take part in.

I pray that both the newly born and the dearly departed find peace and happiness, wherever their journey from here on takes them.

- The WheelMan

Random rants

Why is the world seemingly coming unglued at the seams?

First off, any sense of moral values are being ripped to shreds from both the left and right. The "left" wants to send us back to the repressed society of the 1950s when the word "pregnant" couldn't even be spoken on television and a husband and wife could not be shown in the same bed because it might suggest they were also engaged in an act that should be considered natural and beautiful and done by everyone, including the self-proclaimed judges of our moral standards.

And yet, the "right" side seems to believe that anything goes, that it's totally appropriate to bear breasts in performance stunts (that would be considered a crime if done in public) during a halftime show that should have CLEARLY been thought of as a family hour. Did NO ONE have the few brain cells required to consider the implications beforehand? And to top it off, no one wants to take responsibility for either the horrendously poor judgment in pulling this off in the first place, or for teaching their kids right from wrong early enough so that they don't have to learn about puberty through what now truly has reason to be called the "Boob Tube." No, what happened should not have been the public fiasco it's been turned into. But neither should it have been such a difficult thing to take some responsibility to the young viewing audience and show restraint and respect because of them. Freedom is a responsibilty to be respected, not a inrestrained right to be abused.

On other fronts, gay rights have been thrown on the battle field. People are clamoring to outlaw the legal union of persons of the same sex. Honestly, I can't say that homosexuality is the "way things are supposed to be" merely based on the biological fact that humans were created with two sexes for the express purposes of procreation. Obviously, if everyone were attracted to the same sex, the human race would indeed dwindle and die. If it were intended otherwise (either by God, Allah, Mother Nature, the random yet organized course of the universe, or whatever deity-based or non-deity-based belief system you prescribe to), then humans, (like other creatures such as frogs, I believe?), would have the ability to naturally change sex when the time for procreation came about. That's just the way I see it from a purely logic-based standpoint. Sue me if I've got it all wrong.

HOWEVER, this is the most incredibly stupid, disgusting, hypocritical, insane excuse for choosing to pass laws. Sexual preference in no way determines a person's true character any more than a priest's collar. I don't think anyone truly understands the implications of what a law like this could be. You're not legislating against immorality, you're legislating against what consenting adults have the right to do in the privacy of their own homes. I can't help but wonder, if you can pass a law against people getting married based on their gender, then why couldn't you pass laws against people marrying based on their race (oops, I just remembered that we've already been there, done that)?

Or, with the rapidly increasing genetic knowledge we're acquiring every day, why couldn't you pass laws against people carrying certain genetic markers predisposing them to cancer, or other diseases, or violence, or low intelligence? It's easy to say that there's a clear line and that you know where to draw it, but it's been my experience that there are very few clear lines in nature. You can't draw a line between two things if those things are inextricably entertwined. Just because you choose to ignore this fact, does not make it so. We're not talking about terrorism, or a plague, or an invasion force descending upon us from the stars to destroy mankind. We're talking about a part of human nature that has been with us from the beginning of time.

Meanwhile, religion, which I'm a firm yet broadly openminded believer in, has been used as an excuse to repress women and minorities, to justify terrorism, to perform all sorts of heinous crimes against children by some who are supposed to be the very pillars of morality and good. Doesn't anyone see the hypocrisy there besides me? I firmly believe in standing up for what's right, but sometimes I think we think of "right" as being that what suits our own personal agendas. In a world where people come in all flavors, only those things that serve to uplift us all can truly be right. Hate, violence, refusal to accept other opinions than our own personal ones, never leads to anything but to weaken the foundations of our world just a little bit more.

We're ALL part of this biological machinery, and until we learn to see the beauty in our uniqueness and start pursuing a common goal, children will continue to die of hunger and violence and wars will continue to rage. Do we have to destroy one another before we can start getting along?

-The WheelMan