Calamity at the Festival

It has been a long time since I posted here and I am sorry. You might have thought I had "kicked the bucket" as my father used to say. But no. I have been quite busy with my writing group events and helping writers who call or email for assistance. This week I was asked to help someone who wanted to know how to self-publish a memoir. I gave her my best advice. Another writer wanted my help in finding an illustrator for her children's book. I am working on that.

My largest project that took lots of time was our booth at the Festival on the Square in Hayesville NC where I live. 

For a number of weeks, I asked for volunteers and organized a schedule of when they would arrive to sit at the tables and promote our writing organization as well as sell their own books. The festival lasted two days, Saturday and Sunday from 10 AM until 4:30 PM. 

Writers, Carroll Taylor and Joan Howard in pink

Saturday all was fine. We left with the tables cleared and all our stuff put away in a large plastic tub. I worked the morning shift on Sunday. When I arrived, I found our booth in shambles. The storm on Saturday night had filled the canopy of the tent so full of water that it broke the frame and the tent was almost on the ground. I stood there fighting tears not knowing what to do. I knew I could not physically move the broken tent frame. I could not reach the volunteers who had put up the tent on Friday. I just said out loud, "I don't know what to do."

Suddenly a young couple appeared and without a word to me, they began taking down the broken frame and sodden canopy. I didn't know them and stood in wonder at their ability. I kept saying thank you, thank you. 

Within a few minutes, the woman in charge of the festival, Joan, appeared and said I have a frame you might be able to use with your canopy. I wanted to say to her, I can't put up a frame. I had watched two men set up the poor broken thing that was now on the ground, and I had helped them by holding one corner.

But to my amazement, more people showed up and in no time, the old broken frame was taken away, the borrowed frame was set up and my blue canopy tent was stretched over it. It did not fit perfectly, but a man who owns an Alpaca farm jumped in to help. With duct tape, he and the young couple had a tent up over my tables and I was ready to man the booth by ten o'clock when my cohort arrived.

The young couple turned out to be vendors who had a booth near me. They were from Jupiter, Florida, and the sweetest people. At the end of the day, I took them a copy of Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers, and Fins and thanked them for all their help. They then insisted on giving me a beautiful shell from the beach.

No matter how often I hear about this terrible world we live in today, I don't believe it because people are so good to me. Somehow I always find, without even looking, good and kind, caring people. Now there were many other people who saw my problem, but the young couple and Joan and Reba who had the frame they gave me, and the Alpaca Farm owner did not hesitate to jump in to help. That is why I insist there are more good people in this country than bad. We just don't hear enough about the good.

Have a good weekend and I hope you find many good people along the way. I know you, my readers, are good folk. I appreciate you taking the time to visit here. 

Everybody Needs a Good Friend

Here it is Sunday again.
The weekend passed so quickly I hardly knew it. One of the best parts of this weekend was a visit with a former student of mine who is now one of my dearest friends. We both agreed we could have talked for many more hours if we had the time even though we don't see each other often.

Those are the friends we cling to in our lives and if we are lucky we never let them go. In my youth, I did not make the effort to hold on to friends, even those I thought about often, and I have some regrets about that. I can't change the past, but I do make a big effort to keep in touch with people I meet now, people who hit a note with me that resonates even when they are not near.

When we are bombarded with all the "bad news" of the world, and we might think that everyone is an enemy, if we are open to meeting others and listening to them, we see a different world. As my friend, Rebecca, and I discussed on Saturday, sometimes people are suspicious of generosity from others. They are skeptical of someone who is kind or giving. They wonder, "What does she want from me?"

I have experienced that reaction from writers when I reached out to them to help them promote their books or write an article about them. I've met some types who were so suspicious they refused my offer. As my personality type is one who doesn't get angry but feels pity for those people, I immediately wonder why they think that way. Could it be that their self-esteem is low and they can't imagine anyone wanting to do something for them without some payback?

Most writers I meet have many of the same issues with themselves as I do. We beat up on ourselves because we are not disciplined enough to write everyday. We don't submit our work. We never think it is ready to send out. We say we don't have time for our passion but will spend our time cleaning house, doing laundry and all the things we hate to do, while avoiding putting ourselves in a chair and picking up a pen or hitting the keyboard. 

We are not bad, lazy, or worthless people, and we need community with other writers to help us see that we all have similar problems. We have our needs that might not be exactly like those of others, but it helps to vent with fellow writers. 

So many of my good friends are students who took my classes in the past 8 years. In my classes we write about ourselves, share our stories and bond in a lasting way. Sometimes we cry or laugh out loud, but that is okay, too.  

Many of my friends are women I met when I took my first writing classes. For twenty years I have shared my sadness, my happiness, my successes and my failures with my fellow writers in my literary community. Some of my friends I've met through affiliation with North Carolina Writers' Network West. They don't live close to me, but we keep in touch. 

One of the highlights of this weekend was hearing the voice of a former student of mine, Staci Bell, as she called to tell me a poem and a flash fiction piece she has been wanting to place were both accepted for publication. One is for an anthology about wolves.

I am as happy for her as I would be if it were my writing that had been accepted. I know that feeling when a stranger reads your work and really likes it. When they like it well enough to publish it in a book or magazine to be read by many people, it feels like seeing your name up on a marquee on Broadway, especially when you have not had that before. 

Friends come in many ways and at any time. You never know how a person can influence your life, can help you through hard times, will need your help one day, and how much you can come to love them. Be generous to others, and they will surprise you with their own caring. 

My friends give to others in whatever way they can. 
My neighbor cooks once a week for a free noonday meal for those who need fellowship and nutrition for their bodies. Another friend, in her eighties, says cooking for others is her ministry. (To minister: to give service, care or aid; attend, as to wants or necessities.)

Maybe we can all ask ourselves what is our ministry to others? We don't have to go to church or have a calling from God to minister. 

I saw a little boy on Sunday Morning who lost his mother recently. He gives out tiny little toys to people on the street to see them smile. He just wants to make people smile and not be sad. We never know when the smallest thing can make a difference.(This story reminds me of the Little Drummer Boy)

My friends and other kind people give me hope that this world is much better than the TV news would have us believe. 
What do you think? Is human kind as bad as what is seen on television?  Do you think our parents thought the world was in deep trouble and feared for their children's future?

How can you believe that people are basically good?

Is it because you live in a quiet rural area where we have mostly white people you can relate to and who relate to you? Believe me, there are places where, if you lived there, you wouldn’t think people are basically good. 
What about those places where people drive through and shoot into houses, where families have to crawl from room to room to keep from getting shot? Do you think those people are good?

I had to answer this line of questioning and I’ll share my words here.
I know I am fortunate to live in a place where I feel safe, where the people I encounter are decent folks. I know I am lucky to live where I can meet total strangers and smile at them and say hello without worrying about any repercussions. But I don’t believe my situation is all that different from most of the people living in this country.

Sadly, we hear on the news media only the most heinous crimes of the day, and we see them over and over. With all the television networks covering “news” there is not enough to keep news fresh all day, so they show the crimes over and over until another terrible thing happens to some person the next day in Atlanta or New York or L.A.

While that horrendous crime took place, millions of good people were going about their daily routines with no news coverage at all. Millions of nurses were caring for sick people. Millions of teachers were working to teach young children how to better live in this world. Mothers were caring for babies. Fathers were working at ordinary jobs earning a living.

I am afraid the average person who watches news channels all day long gets a skewed idea of what life in this country is really like. In fact, older retired men and often women do watch cable news all day long. A friend in Florida says she is surrounded by "angry old white people."A doctor in Texas explained it best to me. If a human being watches bad news, frightening news, over and over all day, it wrecks his nervous system and depresses him because he can’t fix any of these problems.

One of the major causes of depression is being loaded down with responsibility but having no authority to control the situation. When the story is told over and over on TV, and the person watching becomes more and more agitated over what he is seeing, he gets frustrated and upset. He can’t go to Iran or Libya and do anything to help. Without his knowledge the media is manipulating him. He becomes angry and has to turn this emotion on something or someone. His anger toward a situation becomes anger toward the president or the government, or anyone he thinks has power to do something.
He believes that every murder in a ghetto in New York is the norm for all people who live there because he sees it over and over on the News. He sees that neighborhood as a place filled with nothing but bad people. I don’t see that. In every neighborhood, even here in the mountains, some people resort to crime. A man was killed while washing his car in a rural community by two low-life punks passing through. In fashionable communities in Atlanta, we see on TV, a man killed his wife or a nanny killed the children she cared for. But that doesn’t mean that all the people who live there are bad.

I have never seen so many angry people as I have the past four years. Most of these people don’t really have any reason to be that angry. Often they are angry over something they heard or saw on TV News. They have nice homes, live well, and if their lives were the same as forty years ago, and they were at work all day instead of watching the news channels, they would be happy and enjoying life. We are letting others control our happiness when we watch the pundits on TV and become emotionally unhinged over what they tell us - some true and some not true facts.

I challenge anyone who feels angry about politics or the way our country is heading to drop out of the news all day syndrome. That includes online news as well. Besides being bombarded by TV and radio, we have the latest news flashing at us when we turn on our laptops. I went to Hawaii for ten days and did not watch any news at all during that time. What a wonderful vacation! Not just because of the beautiful beaches, the ocean breezes and watching the chickens scratching the manicured lawn beside the pool at the Marriott Resort on Kauai, but the silence, the absence from the never-ending-talk about politics on every media channel.

If you can’t go to Hawaii, just turn it off and tune it out. Like my wise husband, Barry, used to say, “Why worry about it when you can’t do anything about it?” His positive nature was a breath of fresh air and I am trying to breathe that fresh air now. He would not talk about politics and hated when I did. However, he always voted.

Now that this election is over, I hope we can find other things to discuss, other things to watch on TV, and if we don’t feed the monsters, the news channels, maybe they will go away or at least go back to giving unbiased news coverage. I know Ted Turner, when he started CNN, never meant to build a monster that would multiply and tear our country apart.