Month: January 2018

“… Great Again” Really?

/ doreenstratton / 4 Comments

Since the infamous “shithole” statement uttered by the President of our United States, the print and cable commentators have reminded us that Trump’s 26% hard core voters are probably applauding yet another racist utterance from his mouth.

I live in Doylestown Borough where during the 2016 campaign season there were LOTS of Trump signs planted on the front lawns of homes. Pennsylvania went for him but the Borough went for Clinton. I wonder how many of those Trump voters in my community still support him, even as he continues to lack dignity or sanity. And I wonder how many Doylestown hard core Trump groupies hate Americans who are Black, Brown, Red or Yellow? Like me.

Six years ago a letter to the editor by a local woman was published in the “Intelligencer”. Christmas, the day of Good Will was a couple weeks away when she wrote:  “Santa Claus used to be a big fat man with a long white beard. Now, he is a skinny black man in a big white house.”

The paper published my rebuttal. As a ‘skinny black woman’, I invited her to engage in a dialogue about race. When a friend offered to facilitate the meeting, the woman declined. Instead she suggested I “go back to Africa.” Chalk up at least One Racist in my community.

Having traveled to the African countries of Egypt, Ghana, and Kenya, it is complicated when the president brands those nations and others as “shithole”.

Five hundred years ago European nations landed their ships on West African shores. They plundered Africa’s natural resources—humans included—shipping them back to countries in Europe, South America, America, or the Caribbean.

The mid-20th Century brought independence to African nations across the continent. After years of observing how their conquerors’ ruled, some African leaders chose to emulate their predecessors when ruling their freed people.

A few African rulers attempted to bring True Democracy. Last year I learned my African DNA traces to Ghana. When I traveled there in 1999, it captured my soul as soon as I planted my feet on its soil. That country–similar to all African countries–holds rich cultural histories that reach back thousands of years.

In 1957 Ghana was the first country liberated on the continent from the colonialists. Its first Ghanaian Prime Minister was Kwame Nkumah, educated in America. In its capital of Accra, there is a monument erected in honor of Kwame Nkumah.

While China crawls throughout the African continent grabbing its treasured minerals, America is led by a fool who continues to lie and who dismisses the second largest Continent on Planet Earth. Chinese funds constructed that monument to the first African Prime Minister who adopted American Democracy. During my 2015 sojourn to Kenya I traveled across roads built by China. China also funded the construction of the rail line from Nairobi to Mombasa.

For this American president demanding Africans stay “… in their huts” proves again his ignorance to America’s reputation around the World and his complete absence of empathy.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the Freedom Marchers are weeping down on us from Heaven.

Washington DC Monument to Rev Martin Luther King, Jr.

A work in progress

/ doreenstratton / 4 Comments

After sending queries about my manuscript to publishers, only a couple of them had asked to read it. This had happened in 1986 and was my first attempt at writing a fiction novel. Rejection is a bitch. Knocked on my butt, I surrendered and put the manuscript in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet… and moved on.

Then last July during a phone conversation with my sister-in-law she asked about the manuscript. “You should try to publish your book. The time’s right.” She lives in California and her area has been plagued with instances similar to those I’d written into the plot. “Do it!”, she said.

My fiction novel had been written for the mature reader who like me, is drawn to occult novels. Speaking for myself, I’d become weary from so many novels on the shelves of book stores with negative themes. A few days after that phone call I pulled the manuscript from the cabinet. I opened the brown accordion folder and the title page, Call me Alice stared up at me. Looking down at the Artisan font, I could hear the metal ball on my old IBM Selectric bounce and agitate across the blank pages. The “thanks but no thanks” letters crossed my mind, reminding me again that my dream to become a published author had slipped away.

From page one and each page thereafter it was obvious that a LOT of editing was in front of me. Geez. Every chapter needed rewrites. A couple chapters were tossed and replaced with entirely new treatments. The characters—protagonists and antagonists—were as thin as a strand of yarn begging me to crochet them into granny squares. My ending sucked. It was NOT yet the ending. Four more chapters and an epilogue were added.

Throughout those years while the manuscript slept in the file cabinet I pursued other forms of writing, always filling my creative bank with places and people. It surprised me when bits and pieces from those life experiences drifted out and found their way on pages throughout the manuscript.

It’s better than before. I feel confident that it might get published. But before that might happen, four people are reading the manuscript: three women who embrace different essences of metaphysics and/or parapsychology; and a fourth my sister. Two others—a man and women–have also agreed to read it. When everyone’s suggestions and opinions are returned—it’s back to the computer. I’ve a longtime friend who has offered to critique it. She with her doctorate in education will wag her finger at me for bad grammar, sentence structure and all those other things good teachers do for their students.

Wish me luck.