“You don’t look Chinese!”
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One day murder came to town
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I write to change the world. Why do I want to change the world? Because it needs it.
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Being a somewhat sickly kid, I had been out with the flu the day my class took the Iowa Achievement Test in 4th grade, so on February 20, 1962, along with all the others from my Detroit elementary school who had missed that test, I sat in the small, upstairs art room all afternoon taking the make-up test. I don’t remember who the proctor was who monitored the test. Perhaps it was the art teacher, Miss VanAntwerp. She was a legendary, well-liked teacher at the school. She ended her class by saying in a booming voice, “STOP! Don’t move…don’t even breathe!” Then we knew it was time to end our art project and clean up our space. She would have been an excellent monitor.

But this afternoon was different. We all knew John Glenn was making a historic space flight and throughout the afternoon, our principal interrupted our endeavors by coming on the PA system with updates on the progress of his flight. We broke off whatever we worked on and sat in rapt attention to the short announcement. The proctor stopped her watch for that moment before we got back to our test. John Glenn was doing fine (we were not told of the broken heat shield) and on track to make history. We knew he had completed his mission before our 3pm dismissal bell! We were elated.

My parents watched the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC every night after dinner during my years at home. The program went off the air on July 31, 1970, just as I was about to go off to college. They then switched allegiance to CBS and Walter Cronkite. I’ve watched CBS ever since.

Even now, we watch the news on CBS, both national and local. We do not watch any cable TV, regardless of our political leanings (which anyone who has read my writing knows is very liberal). Dan can barely bring himself to consume any news these past years since November, 2016. I devour it, but mostly in print.

It was a fluke that I tuned into CNN on January 6, 2020 just to check on the Georgia special elections from the previous day. I watched the horrors of that day play out in real time. I was glued to my TV, even as I am to the hearings being broadcast now as we find out what led to that miserable day. I hope ALL the participants, including TFG, get justice.

There are several news events that stick in my mind forever, but the John Glenn space flight is the first that I can recall and I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was 9 years old. I even had an opportunity to meet him many decades later when he received an honorary degree from Brandeis. At least I could shake his hand.

God speed, John Glenn.

 

If not for Retrospect, I would probably not be writing at all.
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The Writing Life

Why do we write?   For me words seem to come easily and I enjoy the writing process.   (See Why I Blog)

But here’s what some renown writers have to say about their writing life.

“I write because I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of living … I must order my life in sonnets and sestinas to provide a reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.”   SYLVIA PLATH.

“I write because there is some lie that I want to expose.”   GEORGE ORWELL            

“Writing is my way of expressing – and thereby eliminating – all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.”   ZADIE SMITH

“I don’t know why I started writing.  I don’t know why anybody does.  Maybe they’re bored or failures at something else.”   CORMAC McCARTHY

“Why does one write?  Because she feels misunderstood.  Because she wants to rephrase the world.”   NICOLE KRAUSS

“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I have to say.”    FLANNERY O’CONNOR 

“Because I can’t escape it.   It’s a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human.”   JUNOT DIAZ

“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself – an exorcism not necessarily of his demon but of his divine discontentment.”   HARPER LEE

“Why do I write,  torturing myself to put it down? … Certain ideas keep filing away at my lethargy,  my complacency.”   RALPH ELLISON

“I could not live in the world of my parents,  the world of war,  the world of politics.  I had to create a world of my own.”   ANAIS NIN

“I write with a grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult.”    COLM TOIBIN

“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”    OCTAVIA BUTLER

And why do we read?

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”    ANNE TYLER

– Dana Susan Lehrman

My conclusion from this is that we, or many of us, write for the satisfaction of having our words survive the birth canal, and be launched into the stream of time.
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I write because I have to. I write because I can’t not. I write because I want to.
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I write because Suzy Underwood put out a plea to my college class listserv for stories about interviews, and I thought I had a good one.
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