Writing by Yvonne Watterson

~ considering the lilies & lessons from the field ©

Writing by Yvonne Watterson

Monthly Archives: April 2013

would I lie to you . . . on National Honesty Day?

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Editor in Awesome Women, Blogging, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Health Statistics, Language matters, Lying, Memoir, Memoir, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Social Media, Soundtracks of our Lives, Toxic Workplaces, Writing

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Annie Lennox, Day 30 #HAWMC 2013, Gallup Poll, Katie Maggs, lie-detection, making time, Maya Angelou, National Honesty Day, Oprah, Paul Tsongas, Studies on Lying, The Book of Lies: Schemes Scams Fakes and Frauds That Have Changed the Course of History and Affect Our Daily Lives, The Eurythmics, The Paris Review, Truth, Would I lie to You

annie1Over for another year, this month long Writing Challenge’s final assignment prompts word-weary pseudo-writers like me to glance back at the trail of breadcrumbs I’ve scattered behind me over the past thirty days.  Fitting, since April 30th coincides with National Honesty Day, which, in all honesty, I never knew existed.

A Mr. M. Hirsh Goldberg, Press Secretary to a former governor of Maryland and author of the aptly titled “The Book of Lies: Schemes, Scams, Fakes, and Frauds That Have Changed the Course of History and Affect Our Daily Lives thought such a day would provide much-needed balance for a month that begins with a day for lying, April Fool’s Day.

It never occurred to me that we would need to officially designate twenty four hours for honesty, but then I haven’t read Mr. Goldberg’s book nor any of his research which reveals that we mortals tell up to 200 lies a day, from great fat whoppers about why deadlines were missed to teeny-weeny white lies about a friend’s new hair color. Admittedly fascinated by this, I had to venture a little deeper into the tangled web and found myself at a Radical Honesty website. Well. Not to be disrespectful (or maybe I’m just not being honest), but I wonder if the patrons of the Radical Honesty website consider themselves “honesty radicals,” which makes them sound a bit dangerous and alternative. Edgy and urban, like a band from somewhere rainy, like Seattle or Derry, circa 1990.

As intrigued as I am by the honesty radicals, I would not want to cross their paths on a bad-hair day, made worse perhaps by the kind of cold-sore my best friend Amanda names after those people she believes caused it (as you do with hurricanes), and therefore feeling unattractive, perhaps even ugly.  According to the Frequently Asked Questions page at the Radical Honesty website, where you will find  self-assured psychologist and founder, Dr. Brad Blanton, waxing honest about the truth, the “honest radical” would make no bones about validating my sorry state on such a day. The FAQ page includes a sample question and answer to help prepare an aspiring truth-teller with what to say should they have the misfortune to encounter me on my worst hair day ever, when I might be feeling “unattractive,” or “outstandingly ugly.” I am not making this up. I couldn’t make this up. As Dr. Blanton himself explains:

Suppose you met someone whom you found unattractive. How do you handle that?

If the person’s outstandingly ugly, then that’s an issue I’m certainly going to bring up to talk about right off. I would say, “I think you look kind of ugly and this is what I think is ugly. I think that big wart on the left side of your face is probably something that puts people off and that you don’t have much of a love life, is that true?” Then we’ll have a conversation about it. That ugly person has probably always felt the negative unexpressed reaction from people. The idea is that they end up not avoiding the damn thing instead of living a life that’s dancing on egg shells. They live life out loud and it’s a whole lot better life.

What else can I say, other than Founder, Brad Blanton Ph.D., ran twice as an Independent candidate for the United States House of Representatives. He did not, however, win. If you would like to get to know him better, you can always visit his website and sign up for what appears to be something along the lines of a truth-a-palooza in Greece later this summer.  I’m not making this up. Honestly.

My renewed interest in the the benefits of being entirely truthful now at a rolling boil (and the whole point of the 30th day of the writing challenge momentarily on a back burner), I’m now curious about who among us lies the most.  Another quick search takes me to a 2010 study in the United Kingdom in which researchers found that out of 3,000 people polled, the average British male tells 1,092 lies each year, about three a day; his female counterpart, a mere 728 times a year – around twice a day. BBC News kindly provides a chart showing the top ten lies told by men and women, which I find intriguing and, well, a bit too familiar. Survey Says:

Top 10 Lies Told by Women

  1. Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine.
  2. I don’t know where it is, I haven’t touched it
  3. It wasn’t that expensive.
  4. I didn’t have that much to drink.
  5. I‘ve got a headache.
  6. It was on sale. (which would be impressive only if it were in a sale in 1978)
  7. I‘m on my way.
  8. Oh, I’ve had this ages. (surely this is preceded by “This old thing?”)
  9. No, I didn’t throw it away. (yes … these words have fallen from my lips in reference to a  pair of cargo shorts and/or a Hawaiian shirt)
  10. It’s just what I’ve always wanted.

To be fair, here are the Top 10 Lies Told by Men:

  1. I didn’t have that much to drink
  2.  Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine
  3. I had no signal
  4. It wasn’t that expensive
  5. I’m on my way
  6. I’m stuck in traffic
  7. No, your bum doesn’t look big in that (in our house, this is typically a measured and calm “No,” from my husband in response to “Do these jeans make my butt look big?” He has used “Not really,” in the past. But only once.)
  8. Sorry, I missed your call
  9. You’ve lost weight. (Instinctively, my husband knows not to say this because it will in some way imply that prior to the weight loss, I must have been fat, but not when I asked him about the jeans.)
  10. It’s just what I’ve always wanted.

Katie Maggs, associate medical curator for the London Science Museum, which commissioned the study, believes we have a way to go in determining whether lying can bet attributed to our genes, evolution, or the way we were raised, pointing out that “Lying may seem to be an unavoidable part of human nature but it’s an important part of social interaction.” She goes on to explain that the prevalence of lying has led to an increase in research dedicated to lie-detection technology. Ms. Maggs admits that only a few of us appear to be able to detect with any accuracy when someone ie lying based on subtile facial or behavioral cues, but high tech-developers are hard at work creating more precise technologies.

What about people in various professions? How do they fare in the truth-telling business? According to a Gallup poll in 2011 in which participants were asked to rate the honesty and ethical standards of 21 professions, members of Congress sit right at the bottom below lobbyists, car salesmen, and telemarketers. The top three perceived as most honest are, nurses, pharmacists, and medical doctors, which, I have to say, makes me breathe a little easier. But only a little. 

In my working life, which now spans three decades, I have been gobsmacked by many of the lies that have flown from the lips of people behaving badly. Not the harmless white lies told to spare feelings, but the other kind employed to preserve the images and reputations of some, while systematically destroying others in the process. There are the flat-out lies that are told to reframe, defame, blame, shame, and even destroy other people. There are the truths that go unuttered, so their very opposite must be true – where there’s smoke there’s fire, right? Often, a different corollary is at work; instead of fire, there are mirrors that distort and deceive. Once ensnared, it is virtually impossible to escape unscathed. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!” Indeed.

Before I go any further, and even though she doesn’t know me, I must apologize to Oprah. I used to think that if it was screaming from the headlines of The National Enquirer, there had to be at least a grain of truth in it (the idiomatic smoke and fire ) I have since learned that, as a friend recently put it, “People make shit up. They just make shit up.” A more elegant assessment of what people do, comes from Maya Angelou, who, in an interview with Opran, explains that gossip and lies are attempts to 

Reduce your humanity through what Jules Feiffer called little murders. The minute I hear [someone trying to demean me], I know that that person means to have my life. And I will not give it to them

So as I bid farewell to the Writing Challenge for another year, it is as a fifty year old. Wiser. Happier. In good health. Telling the truth. I enjoyed seeing where many of the daily prompts took me and, of course, meeting others along the way.  One of the high points was the opportunity to meet AnneMarie Ciccarella of Chemo-Brain.Blogspot.Com, another blogger known to many of you who stop here. We both happened to be in Washington D.C. at the same time, for different reasons, and found the time to meet at the end of a long Saturday. With age, I am realizing there are so many moments just like these that are worth making time for and infinitely sweeter and better for us than any extra minute spent at the office. 

Finding the time to write every day proved that there is time in the day to write and reinforced again that all these moments that make up a day and a life, are of unequal weight. For years, before illness, I made them so, my priorities slightly askew, perhaps not terribly different from those of late Senator Paul Tsongas, who said in a 1992 interview:

Pre-cancer, I was one of the pettiest people you’ve ever run into … I would get angry at my wife for leaving the top off the toothpaste. I’d get angry at my kids for the dumbest things. Looking back on it I feel mortified. I was a fool.

The cancer diagnosis required him to take stock, and  in Heading Home, the late Tsongas explains that it was a letter from an old friend, Arnold Zack, that helped put in perspective the senator’s promising political career,

“No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.”

A least favorite prompt? Honestly, because, you know it is that day, Day 8’s prompt annoyed me. “If your health condition were an animal, what would it be?” It brought to mind all those god-awful uncomfortable ice-breakers and energizers so many of us have been forced into at work retreats and orientations for new employees.  Nonetheless, after stewing about it for a minute or two, I was able to produce a post that I enjoyed writing: Breast Cancer Ice Breaker. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, when I was trying to prove to my brother that Thomas Hardy is a great writer, because even our favorite poet, Seamus Heaney, says so, I stumbled upon something Heaney said in response to a similar question about what animal he would be from Henri Cole during The Art of Poetry No. 75 interview for The Paris Review. (Seriously, who asks that of a Nobel Prize-winning Poet and then follows up with “and what building would you be?” I kid you not). Anyway,  I can just hear the man from Anahorish deliver this phlegmatic response:

I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people’s necks.

Until next year, then, consider me as Heaney, adrift for miles and miles, and then coming to rest around the necks of others who might possibly be trying to shake me off right now. Would I lie to you?

Thank you for reading.

P.S. If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, you most likely have The Eurhythmics “Would I Lie to You?” stuck in your head. You might as well take a minute or two to enjoy a very young and impressive Annie Lennox belting it out in this 1985 video.

Photo: YOU DID IT! 30 POSTS IN 30 DAYS! </p><br /><br /> <p>HAWMC Day 30: Recap</p><br /><br /> <p>You made it! 30 posts in 30 days! Today, write a recap of your experience. What was your favorite prompt? Least favorite? What have you learned?</p><br /><br /> <p>ORDescribe your HAWMC experience in one word!

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Congratulations. A reprise.

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by Editor in Blogging, Educating Rita, Field of Dreams, Goodfellas, grandmother, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Soundtracks of our Lives, The Deer Hunter, The Natural, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood, Versatile Blogger Awards, Writing

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#HAWMC 2013 Day 29, anti-war, baseball and poetry, Cancer as the elephant in the room, Coming Home, Culture and the workplace, Hal Ashby, Jane Fonda, JBBC, Jon Voight, Laurence Olivier, Lean In, Lesley Richardson, poetry, Sheryl Sandberg, The Troubles, Tim Buckley, Toxic culture, Versatile Blogger Award, Willy Russell, Women and Careers

On this, the penultimate day of a month long writing challenge, I am resorting to cheating, and I am going to plagiarize a post I wrote not too long ago. The nice folks over at WEGO are asking for some self-congratulatory smugness, having completed (almost) thirty posts in thirty days, giving us free reign to wax lyrical about our own awesomeness. Well. Having had the misfortune to once work with a self-proclaimed guru whose oft-repeated pitch, seriously, was about an ability to channel dreams into reality, I don’t care much for braggadocio.  Still, I think my versatile blogger award story is worth telling again.  Challenge accepted. For the 29th time.

Last July, I got lost on the Internet. As you do. On the way back Home, I bumped into Lesley Richardson, a self-proclaimed unpublished writer. Before long, I discovered that, like me, Lesley has badly behaved hair that she has learned to embrace, a husband, a beautiful teenage daughter, and a cat. She has just turned fifty, with me not too far behind her. We immediately bonded over the shared trauma of life in 1970s Northern Ireland, not because of The Troubles, mind you, but because we had curly hair before a collection of brilliant minds, in my mind deserving of at least a Nobel award, invented products and tools to tame our stressed tresses. We were relentlessly compared to Crystal Tipps, some us still bearing that handle well into our university years. You could be forgiven for assuming the content of Lesley’s blog is a bit questionable: Standing Naked at a Bus Stop, but the story behind the title is that the mere thought of people reading her writing makes Lesley feel as though they have caught her naked … and standing. At a bus stop.

Such a condition might require a professional intervention, given that Lesley aspires to be a successful novelist, which, by definition, would involve people reading her writing and thereby making her uncomfortable. People like me. Now, let me be quick to point out that Lesley has an agent, and she has even written a novel, which was probably fabulous. She’s been in an anthology too, so it’s not as if she’s technically “unpublished.” And then there is her blog. I love it, even though she neglects it for weeks at a time causing me to wonder if she might actually be “on assignment.” At a bus stop. On the road to Helen’s Bay. The next time I go back home, I will definitely be looking for Lesley. When we meet, I’m convinced we’ll wonder how we managed avoiding each other for the first fifty years of our lives.
-2The other day, I received from the lovely Lesley, a Versatile Blogger Award. Hooray! Between us, the versatility part is a bit of a stretch, bringing to mind the kind of nimbleness required by your Pilates instructor, but I’ll gladly take it. When you’ve been around for almost half-a-century, shameless self-promotion can be forgiven. Especially if you haven’t been promoted by yourself or anyone else for several years. In fact, right when I heard from Lesley, I was shedding the cloak of self-doubt that is the mandatory uniform of a toxic, dysfunctional, and largely joyless workplace where sacred cows and large egos leave little room for anyone else. Margarita Tartakovsky calls self-doubt Creativity’s No. 1 Crusher. No argument from me.

Anyone who has ever worked in such a place knows that every day you don the mantle of self-doubt, it feels heavier, like armor. Why would anyone want to show up every day? Well, maybe there’s an upside in the very near future, like the departure date of the self-proclaimed guru who’s been brought in to shake things up. Or maybe you have the health, finances, and internal fortitude to weather the lies and manipulation, the passive aggressive pettiness, and the collective aversion to honesty. Otherwise, you deserve so much more than living minute by minute, always waiting for the other shoe to fall, and I recommend running at high speed as far away as possible. Once out of their sights, shed the armor. And breathe as yourself, once again. Today, I am out of that uniform –  lighter, brighter, and – just ask Lesley – award-worthy.

My lovely Versatile Blogger Award has arrived right as I am poised to begin Act Two. Scene I opens with me testing the waters of versatility and moving away from the edges where I have had an unfortunate tendency to denigrate myself so people might like me or give me credit when it’s due me or even feel a bit sorry for me because of The Cancer that has sat like a great pink elephant for the past eighteen months among people who were entirely and shockingly nonplussed by it.  I am not proud to admit that I have allowed such people to dismiss me as “insignificant” or less, when the nobler self-respecting thing would have been to just turn around and walk towards people who might raise a glass to me, interested in what I have to say or what I think about a thing or an idea.

Pat Roy, of Learning Forward – The International Non-Profit Association of Learning Educators, once said to me over lunch, “You put a good person in a bad culture, and the culture wins every time. Every time.” I remember thinking this couldn’t always be the case, but I think Pat is probably right. I vaguely recall a power point slide in her presentation, featuring a little stick figure completely overwhelmed by a Tsunami wave. Or to put it another way, “Culture eats structure for breakfast.” Think about it. You may have a million dollar idea like the one my best friend and I have been mulling, albeit fruitlessly, for the best part of a decade. All well and good, but if the culture does not value the creativity, risk-taking, and vision of the individual behind it, the idea will be stifled or scoffed at, and you will be forced to bury it deep in your pocket and stand in the corner with your tail between your legs, asking yourself if you might possibly be stupid.

I have not yet read the versatile Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. I probably will, given all the hoopla surrounding it. In truth, a more accurate assessment of what I’m doing is leaning back – for a better view of the situation, to listen better, to take stock, and to figure out – finally – what matters.

The Versatile Blogger Award reminds me of those chain letters we used to pass around when we were teenagers, convinced that bad luck would befall us should we break the chain. So far be it from me to break the chain begun by Lesley’s Versatile Blogger Award. Now for the rules I must nominate 15 blogs for a Versatile Blogger Award, and regale you with seven random things about myself. These should probably be true.

Previously, I have recognized bloggers who advocate tirelessly for those of us living lives altered immeasurably by breast cancer. Their writing is frequently highlighted by Marie Ennis O’Connor, another Irish friend I met while stumbling around the Internet. In her weekly round-up at Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer blog, you will find some of the most versatile women I know. Living out loud lives formerly untouched by cancer, their resolve has emboldened me to say no to pink ribbons and platitudes and one-size-fits-all treatments for a disease that should have been obliterated long ago. Thus, they write and fight for a different way. Versatile, indeed.

This time, my nominations for a Versatile Blogger Award go to an entirely different group of writers who make it easy to step into their worlds, their words strung together in ways that remind me you can always find your way home. Each of these is well worth a visit. Enjoy:

  1. Nelly’s Garden
  2. Ganching
  3. Shauna Reid
  4. Chalk the Sun: Finding the Phrase to Every Thought
  5. Little by Little: Ramblings and observations. In no particular order.
  6. Mrs Trefusis Takes a Taxi
  7. Siren Voices
  8. Style Rummage
  9. The Franco-American Flophouse
  10. Irish Farmerette
  11. Liberty London Girl
  12. Carol Baby
  13. A Moon, Worn as if it had been a Shell
  14. A Time for Such a Word
  15. Saige Wisdom

Seven Random Realities About Me

  1. In a moment of mild rebellion, I gave my ironing board to Goodwill. I couldn’t quite part with the iron, but that day is on the horizon. This is of some significance given that I was raised in a house where everything was ironed. Even socks, tea towels, and dish cloths. 
  2. My best friend, Amanda, is convinced that the teenage version of me is re-asserting herself. I used to get up at five o’clock every morning. Now, I can’t imagine why on earth I would entertain a meeting before 9:30AM. How fortunate am I to have found a new job where, apparently, lots of other people feel the same way.
  3. I will never not listen to my gut again. Recently, someone I admire, asked me why on earth I once upon a time even considered accepting a job when everybody told me I was insane to do so. My husband, my best friend, my parents, people I respect in the field, and, most importantly, my gut, all told me to run as far away as possible from it. All those red flags waving in my face, and I ignored every one of them. I chose not to listen to my gut. I was stupid. I forgot to ask, “How will this job be good for me?” Lesson learned.
  4. I have rediscovered the sweet tooth I had as a child. My grandmother used to make sugar sandwiches for me, great door-steps of white bread sandwiches filled with creamy, country butter made crunchy by caster sugar. Once, my parents left me with granny while they took an excursion to Derry city with my aunt and uncle from America. While I played outside, she made the mistake (or maybe not; she adored me) of leaving three lemon meringue tarts to cool on the window sill. In no time, there I was on my tiptoes, starting out by just picking ever so gingerly at the edges of the mile-high white mouth watering meringue topping, hoping nobody would notice, but I couldn’t stop myself and devoured every bit of it, rendering the tarts bald, shiny yellow circles atop rings of shortcrust pastry. Granny just thought it was funny.
  5. While I don’t have the phenomenal memory I thought I had (see previous post) I can still recite great chunks of poetry from school and entire episodes of the BBC’s Fawlty Towers. My brother and I are also given to exchanging quips and profanities from Goodfellas or shrewd insights from movies based on scripts by Nora Ephron or Willy Russell. This morning it was that scene from Educating Rita when Frank realizes that, like Mary Shelley, he may have created a monster.
  6. I just don’t understand American Football, basketball, or baseball. Any team sport, really. Over the years, scores of well-meaning Americans have tried to explain their version of a footie match to me, but I don’t get it. I especially don’t understand why football takes such an inordinately long time. It is much easier to go to the mall instead. I watch bits of the Super Bowl  – the National Anthem and the half-time show, but only to see if the National Anthem person will hit the high notes and if the half-time show will feature rockers like Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, or Bob Seger or any other band that would be considered quintessentially, American. These I understand very well. The game? No. I suppose running is almost a sport. It makes sense to me, even on a treadmill where you don’t go anywhere.  I like baseball and have elevated it to mythic status because of W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe which I wish I had read before watching Field of Dreams (I always read the book before watching the movie because I like to cast the characters myself) and, of course, The Natural. Were I ever to teach English Literature again, I would do a whole unit on baseball and literature. It would include Line Drives, a beautiful anthology that transforms baseball into poetry as Bill Littlefield explains: 

    “We wait for baseball all winter long, or rather, we remember it and anticipate it at the same time. We re-create what we have known and we imagine what we are going to do next. Maybe that’s what poets do, too.”

  7. My favorite movie is Coming Home. Made by Hal Ashby in 1978, it was the first movie to tackle Vietnam in a way that was honest and human.  In it, Jane Fonda, portrays Sally Hyde, wife of an army captain who has been deployed overseas. While he is away, she volunteers in the hospital, where she meets and falls in love with a Vietnam vet, played by Jon Voight. I like to think Sally and I would have been friends, as she educates herself about the war and what happens to the men coming home.  Today, it has to be said, I am utterly depressed that Jon Voight, in real life, appears to be absolutely nothing at all like Luke, the Vietnam veteran he portrays with such vulnerability and humanity. Then again, he is an actor. He even won an Oscar for his performance, over Robert de Niro’s Michael in The Deerhunter, another of my favorite movies, and the venerable Laurence Olivier.  The Coming Home soundtrack is essentially a time capsule of life from 1965 – 1968, with no covers. Because a soundtrack was never released, my brother once took the time to recreate it on a CD for me some years ago. This was shortly after we accepted that the days of the Mix Tape were over. I still have that CD, and I cannot listen to Tim Buckley’s Once I Was without thinking of the final scene of the movie, and all those young men who died in Vietnam or came home broken.: 

For extra credit, here are the tunes from the soundtrack, but not in the right order:

“Hey Jude” The Beatles

“Strawberry Fields Forever” The Beatles 

“Call on Me”  Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin

“Once I Was” Performed by Tim Buckley

“Expecting to Fly”  Buffalo Springfield

“For What It’s Worth”  Buffalo Springfield

“Time Has Come Today” The Chambers Brothers

“Just Like a Woman” Bob Dylan

“Save Me” Aretha Franklin

“Follow”  Richie Havens

“Manic Depression”  Jimi Hendrix

“White Rabbit”  Jefferson Airplane

“Out of Time” The Rolling Stones

“No Expectations”  The Rolling Stones

“Jumpin’ Jack Flash” The Rolling Stones 

“Ruby Tuesday” The Rolling Stones 

“Sympathy for the Devil” The Rolling Stones 

“Bookends” Simon & Garfunkel

“Born to Be Wild” Steppenwolf

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Follow you. Follow me. Richie Havens R.I.P.

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Editor in Awesome Women, Blogging, Bullying, Coming Home, Culture of breast cancer, Facebook, Feminism, Health, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Movies, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Social Media, Soundtracks of our Lives, Teaching, Toxic Workplaces, Twitter, Women in Politics, Workplace Bullying, Workplace Mobbing, Writing

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#HAWMC2013 Day 28, Brainpickings, following social media, Hal Ashby, human connection, JBBC, Mixed Bag, richie havens, rolling stone magazine, social media, Women in media, Woodstock

richie1_r2_c2In the summer of 1968, a young Richie Havens told Rolling Stone magazine that the direction for his music was heaven. Until his death at 72 last week, Richie Havens embodied the notion of music as a transcendent medium for connection:

Music is the major form of communication. It’s the commonest vibration, the people’s news broadcast … I think I’m ready to be everybody’s friend, and to do anything for anybody. It’s heavy.

Richie Havens wasn’t supposed to be the first act at Woodstock. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time, having arrived by helicopter. Who could have predicted that half a million people would show up for a rock concert on a field upstate New York, causing chaos on country roads that would delay the performers scheduled to appear before Richie Havens?  Years later, Havens would tell Scott Myers that when he strode onto that stage, he handled the magnitude of the moment by visualizing the 500,000 people in front of him as one giant human body, one person.

On the twentieth anniversary of his iconic moment in the sun, Havens told Rolling Stone:

My fondest memory was realizing that I was seeing something I never thought I’d ever see in my lifetime – an assemblage of such numbers of people who had the same spirit and consciousness. And believe me, you wouldn’t want to be in a place with that many people if they weren’t like-minded!

When he died this past week, I felt like I had lost someone I knew. I never got to see him in concert. Were it not for the cancer disrupting my life the way it did, I would have made sure to catch him when he performed along with Janis Ian in Scottsdale a couple of years ago. It strikes me as ironic that my little brother got to see him perform in Ireland some years ago and even chatted with him after the show. I would have loved to be there, just to be in the presence of someone who knew how to be a part of humanity.  
cominghomeposter-1
I first heard his hauntingly beautiful and smoky voice in the background of a scene in the movie that will forever be my favorite, Coming Home. If Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey were a voice, it would surely belong to  Richie Havens – soothing, calm, irresistible.

The song was “Follow,” and like every other song Hal Ashby used to make Coming Home the film I loved, it was a mood-maker, a reflection of the sixties; yet, it had the kind of  timeless appeal that sent me straight to a Belfast record shop to buy the Mixed Bag L.P.

Ruminating on Richie Havens and our limitless abilities to connect with people we may never physically encounter, brings me to the 28th writing challenge of this month, in which I am prompted to provide a Must Follow list.  Previously, in “The ‘Human’ Resource: Star Stuff” I reflected on the ways in which a diagnosis of breast cancer led me and others like me to the blogosphere.

In the beginning, I tried to write my way out of cancer, unthinkably, all by myself. I opened a WordPress account and began typing. I didn’t dare hit “publish” at first. I chose instead to save my drafts, as I had once locked up my teenage angst in a secret diary under my bed. Like breast cancer, the blogosphere was foreign and strange, but unlike the insidious pink culture of the former, it offered alternative places of clarity and transparency. At once apart and a part of this new world, I could be alone and connected, followed and follower, reader and writer. I could be in control. Social media has redefined the boundaries of my life in ways I cannot quite fathom. Below is just the beginning of a list of wonderful places where I have countless opportunities to connect via social media with like-minded people I may never meet but with whom, I might just make a change in the world: 

  1. Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer where self-described serial blogger, Marie Ennis O’Connor, helps so many of make sense of the breast cancer experience. Together.   @JBBC is always a safe place to fall.
  2. Brainpickings the brain-child of the brilliant Maria Popova. In her words, “is your cross-disciplinary LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces spanning art, design, science, technology, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, and more; pieces that enrich your mental pool of resources and empower combinatorial ideas that are stronger, smarter, richer, deeper and more impactful.”
  3. Literary Jukebox one of Maria Popova’s “side projects.” I swear I had this same idea – a daily quote from a favorite book, thematically matched with a song. In keeping with today’s theme, I would combine Richie Haven’s “Follow,” with this from Seamus Heaney’s “The Follower”

    I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
    Yapping always. But today
    It is my father who keeps stumbling
    Behind me, and will not go away.

  4. Psychology Today specifically the blog posts of Dr. Janice Harper who writes with the kind of insight for which so many of us have been yearning, on the subject of the workplace and the bullying and mobbing that can take hold there. I am looking forward to her upcoming book on the subject.
  5. Rolling Stone Magazine I never thought the time would come when Rolling Stone magazine wouldn’t be delivered to my mailbox. I still have all my old print issues, important because Rolling Stone is where I discovered the musicians and the music without which my life would be awfully dull.
  6. The Womens International Perspective: ” worldwide collective of women writers, The WIP is an opportunity to balance the tremendous under-representation of women journalists and offer a greater diversity of background and opinion than typically found in mainstream publications. The WIP strives to bring together divergent cultures, opinions, and ideas in solution-based dialog.”
  7. Breast Cancer Action @BCAction – faithfully and unflinchingly this organization “carries the voices of people affected by breast cancer to inspire and compel the changes necessary to end the breast cancer epidemic.” 
  8. On Twitter I can access the New York Times Health and Wellness blog @nytimeswell where Tara Parker Pope sifts through medical research to help readers “live well every day.” I have read stories there that have stopped me in my tracks.
  9. #BCSM Chat “The intersection of breast cancer and all things social media. Join us on Monday nights 9 pm ET. Chat moderated by @jodyms@stales @DrAttai“
  10. Women’s Media Center the goal of which is to make “ women visible and powerful in the media.  The influence of the media is the most powerful economic and cultural force today. By deciding who gets to talk, what shapes the debate, who writes, and what is important enough to report, the media shapes our understanding of who we are and what we can be. The Women’s Media Center works to create a level playing field for women and girls in media through our monitoring, training, original content, and activism.”

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this is your life in a big red book

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Editor in Family, grandmother, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Northern Ireland, Soundtracks of our Lives, television, Writing

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#HAWMC2013 Day 27, David McCullough, Eamonn Andrews, Joe Frazier, life writing, Muhammad Ali, This Is Your Life

Can biography evolve to meet our current demands? Has the internet killed off the demand for the authoritative? In an age of best-selling celebrity memoir, does anyone still care what Shakespeare had for breakfast?

asks Guardian columnist Kathryn Holeywell as she ponders the state of the art of biography. For the record, I care what Shakespeare had for breakfast and many of the quotidian moments that make up a life which brings me to the 27th day of the 2013 WEGO Health Writing Challenge prompting us to create five working titles for the book of our lives.

eamonn_index2If I were to write my life, I would first have to devise a way to cull out all the boring bits. Nobody wants to hear about when I started school and when I finished; but somebody might be interested to know more about that time I knit a pair of slippers. Finding the story of a life is work, and it brings to mind the job once done by television presenter, Eamonn Andrews, as he prepared the iconic big red book, “This is Your LIfe,” to present to scores of unsuspecting celebrities throughout the 1970s.

I remember clearly, a long ago Christmas evening, our family gathered around the TV to watch Muhammad Ali, then in his prime, as quick on his toes as he was with his comebacks, when Eamonn Andrews surprised him with the big red book. For the next hour, we watched as the heavyweight champion of the world’s life story unfolded in front of him complete with recorded greetings from friends and relatives who were not thousands of miles away, but waiting behind the curtains to surprise him. The real story lay in Ali’s unguarded and unrehearsed responses to the memories of milestones replayed for him, his family, and an audience of strangers in living rooms all across the country. Who could have predicted the twists and turns that lay ahead?

photo (62)

Belfast 1998

Many years later, my father, my brother, and a few relatives who could keep a secret (an impressive trait in rural County Derry), decided to plan for my mother’s sixtieth birthday a “This is Your Life” style surprise that included an unexpected reunion at the end of the show.  When the big day arrived, I called in the morning to wish her a happy birthday and to tell her how sad I was that we were so many miles apart and that I would definitely arrange a trip home soon.

That evening, on their way out for a birthday dinner, she and my father stopped for a quick visit with my Aunt Sadie. When they arrived, they were greeted by shouts of “Surprise!” from a well-hidden gathering of family and friends whose cars had been parked out of sight. One of my cousins assumed the role of Eamonn Andrews and related the story of my mother’s life to all assembled. When she reached the part about my mother becoming a grandmother for the first time just eight months earlier, she wondered if perhaps they should get me on the phone so, although far away in Phoenix, I could be included in the party. I was unavailable, of course, given that two days earlier, I had flown in to Belfast with Sophie, and had been holed up at my Aunt Sadie’s house enjoying secret visits with my dad and my brother, the three of us laughing that my mother was completely in the dark.

No different from Smokin’ Joe Frazier showing up to surprise Muhammad Ali all those years before, was my baby girl, wrapped in a soft pink blanket and waiting on my Aunt Sadie’s doorstep, for my mother to answer the front doorbell. A perfectly executed surprise. If I were to write my mother’s biography, I would include the occasion of her sixtieth birthday and the story behind the surprise that made it one of those days she would cherish as in a jewelry box.

In an interview about the art of biography, David McCullough explains how he never had any intention of writing except in the narrative form.

In E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel he talks about the difference between a sequence of events and a story. He says, If I tell you that the king died and then the queen died, that’s a sequence of events. If I tell you that the king died and then the queen died of grief, that’s a story—you feel that.

Thus, simply chronicling a life is inadequate; rather, crafting the story is the important thing. To know me, you need to know my story, all the crystallized moments that have shaped and tested me, all the first times, and the days that were turning points, beginnings or endings, best times or worst.

Unlike Madonna, Cher, Prince (or whatever symbol now represents his name), Oprah, my first name alone would not evoke a story worth reading. Scanning The New York Times Book Review’s list of literary biographies, I find there are plenty of titles already taken that would work just as well for the story of my life. Why reinvent the wheel?  In no particular order  . . .

  1. The Art of Burning Bridges
  2. Her Own Woman
  3. The Kindness of Strangers
  4. The Two of Us
  5. A Life in Two Worlds
  6. Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow
  7. Wrapped in Rainbows
  8. Vindication
  9. The Fly Swatter: How I Made my Way in the World
  10. The Decisive Years

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Yvonne hails from Antrim, Northern Ireland, and has lived in the desert southwest of the United States for almost thirty years. Married, with a daughter who is navigating her path through the "teen tunnel," and a haughty cat, Atticus, she has spent the better part of the last three decades in the classroom as a student, teacher, and administrator. Her mid-life crisis came as a sneaky Stage II invasive breast cancer diagnosis which subsequently sent her to the blogosphere where she found a virtual home away from home . . .
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