Request

From Ghost to Bad Cat

So, I raise my head once, get a boatload of wonderful responses, and immediately show up on your doorstep again.

I’m in need of some immediate help. I’d like to get to Sherman Alexie, Jim Harrison, and Leonard Peltier to see if any would give an endorsement for The Wolf at Twilight. The publisher has no real access, so I’m turning to my friends. Do any of you have current addresses or back door ways of getting to any of these people?

On another note, the response to my flare in the night has been most heartening. One reader suggested something that makes good sense despite the fact that it would cause me to eat a healthy portion of crow. She said I should start a Facebook page for The Wolf at Twilight. I like that idea very much because it would allow you to share thoughts and opinions with each other, which has been a big deficiency of my website the way it is configured. I probably won’t do it for awhile because the book doesn’t come out for awhile. But it seems to be a good way to get the word out, and that’s what I want to do. Any other ideas?

I have to say that the response to my note has been inspiring, heartwarming, and energizing. I didn’t really expect people to write back. My new goal is to turn this group of caring readers into some kind of a community, though I’m not sure how. As I said in my first blog back before the earth cooled, I consider my readers a special breed. I might as well quote myself, because what I said then is equally as true now:

I have come to realize that you, my readers, are a special group. You care deeply about the children of the world, you believe that there are voices in the land that we must learn to respect, you believe in helping the weak and in caring for the less fortunate, and, above all else, you believe that there is a power of spirit that inhabits every stone and star. You are a rare breed, gentler in heart than the world around us, and I am happy to provide a place where you can meet and share thoughts with each other.

This statement has proven true over and over again through the years. There are those of you who have gone to work in prisons, traveled to reservations to bring friendship, gifts, and, in one case, veterinary skills, and those of you who written books of your own. One of you has gone to Africa to live and offer his medical skills. Another has tried to bring a human touch to his emotionally difficult job of serving as a Chicago policeman. There are college teachers, elementary and high school teachers, and folks who work in nursing homes. The list goes on. And then there are those of you who simply offer the gifts you can in the course of your ordinary everyday lives. But the one characteristic that has always shone through, no matter who you are or what you do, is a singular lack of a sense of self-importance. You – we – are the servers; those who try to go to the end of the table rather than take a seat at its head. I think its time we do something with this, and I’ll be picking your brains as the weeks progress.

So – any thoughts on how to get to Sherman, Jim Harrison, or Leonard Peltier?


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A Strange Question about generations

This is a very strange question. But I’m curious: what do you think your generation’s contribution, for good or for ill, has been to the world?

Perhaps this is an obsession only for those of us who came of age in the sixties, convinced we were changing the world, only to find that not only did we not change it as we had hoped, we planted as many bad seeds as good. But I think other generations must have some reflections on what they have done, as well.

I’d love to hear from any of you. We’re all called to meet certain circumstances, we somehow, as an age group, form an amorphous cultural critical mass, and we respond in a fashion that we neither understand nor control. Yet it is possible to say in retrospect that, yes, we were a cultural force and yes, we did move this world to a slightly different place than it was when we arrived on the scene.

It is a strange cultural phenomenon, understood only in retrospect, and then only dimly. But it is real.

Thoughts? From anyone?

Submit your thoughts and ideas by clicking on the “comments” phrase at the bottom of this entry.

Thanks.


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