stop. go. stop. go.

When we were little, the game was 'Red Light, Green Light,” and it was actually pretty fun. Someone would stand at a declared finish line, at the end of a stretch of asphalt or a patch of back yard and that kid was the one that managed a race to the finish.

Stop. Go. Stop. Go.

When the light was green, we ran as fast as humanely possible to gain on our opponent. When the light was red – we balanced on the tip-toes of our tennis shoes in sheer anticipation of when the light would change once again – our eyes still on the price of the finish line and the bragging rights.

In life, when we grow up, the game is not so fun. The green light is thrilling but the red lights , where find ourselves in a state of complete imbalance is nothing short of frustrating and at times, painful.

The stakes, of course, are higher. We are racing to get to the stable part of a relationship, or the inside track of the fast track or that place as indefinable as any – where one feels fulfilled and challenged and productive all at the same time. All grown up, the red lights are armed. They are ominous. Their arms come in a form of financial distress, divorce, break-ups, cheating, layoffs, lies and sometimes it's just the end of something and the uncertainty of the beginning of something else.

Either way. It's not as fun as when we were kids.

And in the case of being all grown up, we'd like to punch whoever is giving us the red light, square in the nose.

Of course the light changes...not quite as quickly as when it's called out by children. But it changes. We're not always stopped. And once in a while the red light is actually helpful. It changes its ominous nature and it allows us to open up and take in everything that is around us.

But when it isn't helpful. When it is the one thing that is constantly stopping us from gaining any momentum. We have to find a way to work around it. And it can be tough. And it can be tiring. When it throws us a cliff's edge of uncertainty and doubt and another challenge to overcome...we're not thinking of the finish line. We're just clambering at any way to not fall down.

And when we get to that line – we're punching the red light guy square in the nose.

weightless

“Take the pressure off,” she says.

My mother tells me this after we’ve just gotten into an argument too big and too much for before work on a Friday morning. And I am doing my best “not gonna cry,” but it’s not working.

I hate arguing with my mother because it makes me feel sixteen. And I have not wanted to feel sixteen since I was sixteen.

“Just take the pressure off…”

The pressure is the fact that after five days, no news has been given to me on my car which sits battered and bruised in some body shop 25 miles away. I’ve been forced to make five calls each day between the shop and the insurance company to no avail. The shop says talk to the insurance company. The insurance company says talk to the shop. The insurance company then gives me three different adjuster phone numbers all who whom say they are not my adjuster and can’t help me.

And so I wait.

Frustrating is knowing that if the car is totaled I have about $3,000 to find a new one. Because though it would be awesome to have that brand spankin’ new car smell going on – I can’t afford a car payment. I can’t afford a car payment because I left the great paying job to follow the dream. And the dream ain’t going so well. And without a decision, I am wasting time not resolving the issue.

More frustrating is the nagging feeling no woman who is 29 and alone and unhappy wants to say out loud: that if I had a man, he would be dealing with this and the insurance people and the shop people would realistically, most likely, take him more seriously. They would not keep him waiting around for an entire week. And if he raised his voice the word “bitchy” would not enter the realm of thought. He’d simply be justified in his frustration.

And said man would then keep me together by wrapping his arms around me when I’m shaking in tears after yet another pointless phone call followed by a blow up with my best friend.

But said man has yet to make an appearance. And so the frustration abounds.

And the truth is I probably am doing some sort of disservice to women everywhere by acting as though I can’t get through bad days with the male species…but I can. And I have for some time now. I have moved my own furniture, fixed my own broken electronics, grilled my own meat. I’ve aired up my own tires and I didn’t even cry at the deer. I cried at the damage.

I know what McTalk-to-Me would say. He would say to acknowledge the aloneness but move on, keep going. Don’t lose it on your mother at 7:15 in the morning.

And I already know, that when I get home, I’ll crank the music and dance it out. I’ll revel in the silence rather than the drama. I’ll calm and fall asleep after a stressful week and it’ll all seem less threatening.

But it doesn’t make attending events solo any easier. It doesn’t make crawling into an empty bed any more comforting. And it won’t fix my car or heal the bitter words between the BFF or any other FF’s for that matter and me. It won’t fix my car.

And at the end of the day, it doesn’t relieve any of the pressure.

film about spirituality and action echoes in Tehran

It was on a warm spring night and the eve of what would become a history making event resulting in the ultimate reveal of the true beliefs one of the world’s most controversial countries, that I found myself seated in a padded folding chair in the wide open warehouse of a yacht club.

I sat there, awaiting the Waterfront Film Festival’s debut showing of “Fierce Light” a documentary by filmmaker and activist Velcrow Ripper who took a seat one row behind and a few seats down from me with guest Daryl Hannah. As the film began, Ripper introduced audiences to his friend, journalist and activist Bradley Will. Will’s breath can be heard as his hands hold the camera that is displaying the images in the beginning of the film…the volatile streets of Mexico where enraged citizens and police clash with stones, bullet proof shields and gunfire.

And then a moment erupts on screen that rips through any narration or visual imagery. As conditions became increasingly hostile, and Will’s camera became something unwanted - almost before the viewer realizes it – the sound of a bullet cracks in the air with Will’s last breath, a gasp. His camera clattering to the ground, is picked up by unknown hands and left sitting sideways on a bench.

Will’s death resonated with the activists that had gathered on the same street where he moved about with his camera and his mission to record and act on their plight. An uprising occurred in his memory an uprising against what they must have seen as a murderous and unjust society around them.

The narration continuing, Ripper explains how the death of his friend sent him on a journey to discover what happens with spirituality meets action and activism. When we act on what we believe.

My initial reaction to what Ripper is searching for, was a combination of intrigue based on a journalist’s life lost in the attempt to tell a story filled with raw emotion and skepticism for my view of the new age theology of oneness.

But Ripper began his story with the Civil Rights Movement, a movement during which the belief in equality was so fierce so thick and heavy with necessity that many lost their lives, shed their blood and continued to fight against a deep rooted hatred. And then Congressman John Lewis’s face and voice fill the screen.

“I saw hate,” he said. “And hate – was too heavy a burden to bear.”

The film explores many injustices…from the beating of Rodney King, which ignited the Los Angeles riots of the 1990s to the story a plot of desolate space in the center of where such an uprising had taken place. There, members of the community pulled up dead surface and worked in new land, new soil and created a community garden. That garden produced fresh produce, fresh flowers and fed a community with not just its product but its service, as children spent their afternoons working with the soil instead of on dangerous streets.

And then, along came a company – more interested in space that substance and so began a tumultuous fight to save the garden from blank development. A fight that lasted over 30 days and ended in the arrest of two who refused to leave the property – including Hannah and a sea of salty tears as that corporation turned down the $16 million the community was miraculously able to raise to purchase and keep the garden. The question Ripper seemed to ask is at what cost do we abandon all our conscious and all our convictions? When exactly does the soul get sold?

At least…that’s what I took from it.

The film affected me more than I had expected it to. The idea of taking what it is we believe in and combining it with activism planted a seed in my restless little mind. Think…if we love and we act on that love – in every breath and every minute of every day – it would be hard to turn to hate. It would be hard to march into a museum filled reminders of what can come from such hate and take a human life. Environmentalist and activist Van Jones calls it 'soulfulness'. And if you ask me, there's always room for soul.

If we believe in independence – in freedom – if we live and breathe that freedom in every day and wake only to act upon it, it would be hard for us to allow ourselves to become prisoners of others.

Now, I am not what one might consider a pacifist in any such sense of the word. Will was an anarchist. I am not. But I do believe in the necessity of balance. There must be the dark so we know what it means to fight our way through and choose the light. It is that choice that I believe is the divine of life. And this is coming from a girl who enjoys her dark and twisty little places and her overwhelming ponderous thoughts. But without the suffocating and paralyzing reign of a man so filled with madness – we would not be witnessing an uprising by a people who have so eloquently shown the world there is a silent majority in Iran that chooses to be silent no more.

And now – how unbelievably profound. As we question the purpose of social networking such as Twitter – we now see that it is so rapid and so resonate that members of the resistance in Iran are turning to it to keep the world abreast of the violence and the tyranny that abounds on Tehran’s streets. In 140 characters or less.

As we question whether journalism is even relevant anymore – the ban of all foreign reporting reminds us how it so undeniably is. As we lose our eyes the brilliance of the written and spoken word can still spread a message – a message of what happens in the world around us – and how it affects each and every one of us, a half a world away.

And we can remember how purpose needs action. How even in the battles that are lost – there are wars to be won. As Jones says, toward the end of the film, after the garden had been bulldozed and years after Will’s death still leaves a hole in the heart of the filmmaker – “being a rebel is important, because a rebel opposes injustice. But a revolutionary...a revolutionary proposes justice of a new order.”

That revolution is evident today in Tehran. It can be as vast as a country’s uprising against dictatorship – or as intimate as the parenting of our children or the loving of one another. It's all about soul. And you've got to have soul. Learn more about “Fierce Light” at http://www.fiercelight.org.

the bigger picture

My plan for this week’s column was a preview of the Waterfront Film Festival which I’ll be attending this coming weekend. However, I will be writing a review of the festival for next week and in the mean time – I would encourage anyone with time to kill this weekend to make the drive up to Saugatuck, Mi. to take in a movie or two.

These are independent films with big names, including Robin Williams, Jeff Daniels and Daryl Hannah and the event brings in thousands of visitors to southwest Michigan each year. Check it all out at www.waterfrontfilm.org and look for a review next week.

As a journalist, covering events like the film festival are fun. But when the day is done and we sit up into the wee morning hours reading articles and books and watching newscasts to try and learn as much as we can about what goes on in our world, the fun is just a part of the bigger picture.

A bigger picture of true point of journalism – to be a voice. Whether to the children on our inner city streets, the shop workers in our factories, the teachers, the parents, the doctors or the businessmen and women. Here, next door, abroad. I’m pushing the column on movies to address a far more serious subject – that of the sentencing of two American journalists to 12 years of “reform by labor” in a North Korean labor camp.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee were handed those sentences by an alleged North Korean court after they were apprehended by North Korean soldiers nearly three months ago, as they were working for the San Francisco news outlet Current TV, reportedly on a story about North Korean defectors.

Korean officials say the two young women committed a “grave” crime against the country. Just what they did, however, nobody knows. The sentencing sent shock waves through the news media, put a harsh spotlight on the Obama administration and was an obvious taunt from a country with no plans to live in peaceful coexistence with anyone.

Since the news of Ling and Lee’s conviction there has been an endless supply of reporting, analysis and comment on the situation – painfully and obviously now one that will see these two young Americans as pawns in what is turning out to be a nuclear game of "mine's bigger than yours".

It was weeks prior – even as the two reporters awaited their “trial” – that North Korea turned its back to those nations who wish to live under ideals of peace, humanity, freedom and liberty and repeatedly conduced missile tests and furthered their nuclear aspirations. Still, the current presidential administration was quiet. North Korea acted and they hesitated.

There’s no denying the delicacy it takes to navigate a country in a world filled with countries. There’s no denying the fragility of what is at stake – human life. America can not simply turn its nuclear weapons North Korea’s way threaten an offensive of Sylvester Stallone, Rambo-like proportions. There are consequences and nuclear arsenals to contend with. However, while this situation elevated – the perception doled out by the Obama administration has been: Um…maybe we should put those guys back on the terror list.

Um…really? Washington now has to admit they’ve been checked in North Korea’s chess game…and getting Lee and Ling out of the labor camps they are purportedly being sent to, where prisoners are said to have to try and trap rats for food, transport human waste and live with torture, will not be an easy task. Because obviously – North Korea now has an upper hand.

What the administration must do is chalk up their blatant failure to perceive North Korea for what it is – a living, breathing terrorist entity – and actually do something. It seems almost as if we are dangerously close to adopting a “if I don't look at it, it's not really there” philosophy. There should be more tough talk coming from our nation's capital and less desire play nice with bullies.

The Middle East is a territory of religious ideology. North Korea is not so narrowed. North Korea’s ideology is domination.

In reading the analysis and the articles that are addressing this issue, what struck me beyond the country’s reluctance to be a strong arm when a strong arm is needed – was the reactions of readers to these journalists who “should have known better” than to break another country’s rules. Just because we have freedom of press here, they say, doesn’t mean we should be so daring as to assume those liberties elsewhere.

As a journalist, I agree. And I believe we recognize the dangers. But it is not known if Lee and Ling were actually in North Korea at the time of their capture. Also not known – the circumstances of their “trial” which was held in secret. It is true that the freedom of the press provided for us so valuably in our constitution does not transcend our borders. But true journalism does not live in the constitution.

True journalism isn’t just trying to “get the story” as if they were trolling for the picture of the next celebrity baby. True journalism is to record our world. To give a voice to the people and to report on the actions of those who govern those people. To tell the stories of the goings on in our worlds.

When the world’s journalists are taken, locked up and punished for reporting the truth – we must ask ourselves what that says for the countries behind such acts. Right now, countless journalists are being held in prisons across the world for doing nothing more than what you and I take as a right and a freedom every day.

To those countries, North Korea included, every journalist muted results in an army’s worth of reporters whose voices will only gain in strength and whose missions will continue to expose the atrocities, abuses and infringements on not just a western philosophy, not just an ideology…but the bigger picture. Humanity.

Jessica Sieff is a reporter for The Niles Daily Star. Email her at jessica.sieff@leaderpub.com, or visit her on Twitter @jessicasieff

resistance, it is the “antithesis to nature”

Though the true beauty is lost behind the glossy finish of the magazine's pages, a photograph taken by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel in last month’s National Geographic depicts the rooftop of Chicago’s City Hall.

Rather than an expected sparse landscape of black tarred top and twisted vents – lush green sits against those vents as well as a backdrop of sky on the verge of night and surrounding skyscrapers lending light via offices still illuminated after hours. The municipal building in the windy city is just one of the world’s examples of a living roof. Forgotten spaces suddenly renewed.

Living roofs, which provide energy efficiency in utilizing spaces that often do little less than get hot as they sit in the sun, according to National Geographic's Verlyn Klinkenborg, in “Up on the Roof,” aren't new. In Germany flat roofs have been required to turn their tops green since 1989. On the surface, one sees what is a beautiful urban garden. But just beneath the surface is the real beauty. Some specifically designed systems collect rainwater, filtering and trapping it rehydrating the soil, a fully functioning ecological system creating a new habitat for plants, birds, insects and yes – even a few amphibians – and reducing the world’s carbon footprint one roof at a time.

And that got me thinking. Change is everywhere. And in no way is it limited to what’s above our heads.

Right now, no single industry in the country or around the world is escaping the need to reinvent itself. And it's rather exciting. Because it means new ideas, new methods, new products and ultimately new ways of being will evolve. And call me partial, but personally I think the change in how we exchange, produce and provide information to the general public is the most exciting of all. I entered this industry with my soft spot for printed newspapers, the smell of newsprint and the heroic images of the newsmen depicted on television and in movies. Because I thought nothing was more classically American than a man or woman tossing a few quarters up on the counter of a newsstand on a busy street and tucking a paper under their arm on their way to work.

But times have changed, as is painfully clear every day in our industry. And the conversation among all of us news hounds never seems to end. But the direction of our talks are changing. The topics started out troubling and thick – like really bad fog. In the annual State Of The News Media Report put out by The Project of Excellence in Journalism an overview of the industry says it all in the first sentence: “some of the numbers are chilling.”

And the first of several major trends reported, “the growing public debate over how to finance the news industry may well be focusing on the wrong remedies while other ideas go largely unexplored.” Journalists are losing their jobs and fighting for freelance opportunities, newspapers have thrown in the towel on a tangible product completely – jumping feet first into online media.

They’re going to make mistakes as they navigate these change filled waters. A lot of the papers that have turned their heads solely to the online avenue also assume they don’t need to write anything, pulling feeds and headlines to other services rather than keeping the valuable minds of their own reporters. But they’ll figure it out.

Brainstorming what can turn out to be a brilliant new idea, taking daily processes and whipping them up and tossing them around, pulling a fresh take on an old practice – is all part of the romance of change. So why do we fear it so much?

Because the reality is that change sucks.

Because once we figure out we need to start changing…we realize that we need to start changing. It’s a challenge. It's a process. It's work. We're uncertain of the outcomes. It’s painstaking. We build a new product and we have to be patient and wait for it to take off… We start changing our own behavior and we have to wait for the change in belief and in mood to come. We leave a bad relationship and we have to wait and see if a better one awaits.

We get frustrated and we fall down. More than once, more often than not. But the thing is, what was once wonderful, sometimes has to remain what was once wonderful. So we can be awakened to a new kind of wonderful.

Who would have thought…as those skyscrapers burst into the skyline decades and half centuries ago that eventually one day, they would house a lush green meadow? “When we go to the rooftops in cities, it's usually to look out at the view,” Klinkenborg writes. “...I can't help feeling that I'm standing on the view...” What an interesting perspective. Change is everywhere. Navigating it is hard. But resisting it is pointless and frankly, harder. In resisting it, we're the only ones who lose.

For those of us down on the ground, in the newsroom, we have so many opportunities ahead of us to reach you, the priceless reader. We can come into your living rooms, be stuffed into your mailboxes and paper boxes, upload to your iPod, Blackberry or mobile phone. We can be delivered to your PC or Mac in a matter of seconds – one example of the newspaper's future: the New York Times has introduced the the Times Reader 2.0 – the entire paper uploaded to your computer in a matter of seconds, with a paid subscription, so you can carry the news anywhere you go.

Imagine that. A news publication delivered to you, providing revenue and exercising the invaluable act of journalism all at the same time. Novel.

No matter the landscape, a rooftop, a newsroom, an auto giant, a government, your own home, we never know which changes will be good changes until we try. But we figure it out. It’s just going to take a new perspective – and a few changes. And who knows. As painful as it may be to change, when it's all over, the view on the other side may just be a bit greener.

one thing that never goes out of business

I’m writing from the dark place.

The dark place happens when deadlines are looming and weekends fill up with errands and the trash needs to be taken out but there is very little time to do so and there seems to be so much more ahead of what one really wants to do – fun things like catching a good summer blockbuster movie, or scouting out cheap tickets to a summer concert, reading a good book, visiting with friends or letting a mind turn to mush in front of pointless television.

The dark place happens when problem solving takes the front seat and innovation takes the back.

In matters of business, if economic pressures of a changing socio-economic climate is the dark place – it is, as a matter of fact – that innovation that is the light to help us find our way out of the tunnel.

I have a thing for entrepreneurs. Maybe it's just the fancy title or the fact that they have their own magazine. But then, writers and musicians and sock puppets have their own magazine, so come to think of it...that's probably not it. I have a thing for entrepreneurs. Because it seems like such a rush to, one afternoon, be sitting in a leather arm chair somewhere, pondering one's business, one's direction, possibly a glass of scotch in hand and the next day – putting that plan into action. Developing that idea into a bona fide business, scouting out space and strategies, turning one simple idea into the next big thing.

There are probably plenty of ways to describe an entrepreneur, but that seasoned figure, sitting in a leather arm chair…mind as electric as a lightning storm…that's how I romanticize them. I could romanticize a turkey sandwich, but still... I have a thing for entrepreneurs.

When I first thought up a series focusing on some of the area’s own savvy business minds, I thought the least I could get out of it was a handy mini-slate of stories. At the very least, maybe a better idea of whether or not all the talk about the nation’s innovators would have a strong impact generating new business throughout the country, thereby aiding in a rebound of the economy, carries any weight.

What I got, however, was one of the most inspiring projects I have had a chance to work on yet.

Some businesses may be faltering. Car sales are down and home sales are down and they trickle down to the machine shops and the real estate firms and before you know it you’re muttering to yourself as you head home, thick in the dark place, that you’re lucky to have a job.

But one business that will never suffer – one commodity that will always be in demand – are ideas. Good ideas. Brilliant, creative, innovative ideas.

Walking into Veni’s Sweet Shop to pick up a few delicious treats at the end of a hard day, driving past Tem-Pace’s facility in the heart of Niles’ industrial area on Terminal Road, peeking at the products being thought up over at G&H Machine Group – and as you’ll hear Monday, learning about how the guys at Thesis in Three Oaks are taking other people’s ideas and giving them tangible identity to make them visible to their target markets, may all sound like business as usual. But it is not.

Each has, standing behind the curtain, an innovator whose passion is evident in every aspect of their business. Each is a brain child of an idea that was thought up in living rooms, libraries, offices or during a break from work when a little stress needed relieving.

Through the cultivation of these ideas, businesses are created, a need is provided for and sometimes – just sometimes – our world is changed by the products and services these entrepreneurs put their blood, sweat, tears and dollars into creating. Without such innovators – we might not have an automobile industry just waiting for us to re-imagine it. We might have an industry of news just waiting for a creative new way of getting to people. We might not have television or movies to lose ourselves in. We might not have that designer handbag that we covet or our favorite pair of tennis shoes – or Starbucks.

I have a thing for entrepreneurs because they are risk takers. Savvy in their industries and tireless workers. Their passions are their business. And it shows. It shows in a unique quality. In a desire to constantly make their businesses better. Be it through finding stronger methods of human resources, finding good financial advice to weather a tough economy, developing a diversity or even just hanging on to a faith that keeps them going when they fear they’ve put everything they have into something that the masses just need to be exposed to.

Their businesses are true reflections of themselves.

Each month, Entrepreneur Magazine highlights businesses such as these. They offer up advice on everything from venture capitalists to building a better website. I read up their articles like candy.

Because they’re all based in ideas.

No matter what your passion is – whether it is what you do every day – or just what you long to do…there is something to be learned from these brave businessmen and women who are one by one, storefront by storefront, office space by office space and endeavor by delicious endeavor – changing our world.

Instead of focusing on what is not working – on what the masses no longer seem to be drawn to – innovators focus, rather, on what might entice. And they go after those ideas with reckless abandon.

It is a warm thought. A light in the dark place. That dream business you always wanted to start, the nonprofit organization you always wanted to put your time into, the product you always thought would look good on a shelf in a store somewhere – now is the time to pull out the drawing pad, even as the sun sinks below the horizon and the day’s hours grow long – and just start sketching it out a little bit. The idea of an entrepreneur, for some, for me anyway, has always emitted a “lone ranger” quality. Those seasoned men and women work tirelessly and furiously on their own to turn their vision into tangible reality.

But that’s not true. Ideas breathe in the like-mindosphere I’ve mentioned a time or two before.

Take the chance and begin throwing them out there – and you might just find a talented resource in the form of a counterpart, or a colleague or a supportive spouse. Each of them a face you’ll see when you look back at the forefront of your dream. Be sure to read about the guys at Thesis (www.designbythesis.com) on Monday and check out www.entrepreneur.com the next time you’re in the mood for a little inspiration.

Better yet – tempt your sweet tooth at Veni’s, indulge in the art of glass at Tem-Pace’s Carapace, take a second look at www.ghmachinegroup.com or step inside any of the unique businesses right here, right outside your door.

one year later - still living the dream

There's a thing about writers. Novelists, screenwriters, poets, essayists, journalists. We have a thing. And I can't quote this as my own - I read it long ago, in Nora Ephron's novel "Heartburn." The thing is: everything is copy.

We writers pass you on the street as you're window shopping, picking up groceries, picking your kids up from school. We take notes. We watch your eyes. We look for the joy and the sadness. We jot it down in our mental notepads and when you close your eyes to sleep, we hang on to those little details. We put them all together in fictitious tales where you are the hero - or we remember the reality of them when we try to tell the stories of our world.

We try not to eavesdrop when we're sitting next to you in a café, but we can't help it. And we hear you divulge your greatest secrets, your vulnerabilities, your annoyances to the people you trust - or those you like just enough to tell them so. They make up the characters in our plays, the heroes in our comic books. That's what we writers do.

There's a thing about journalists. We don't just write up stories to fill pages. When this whole gig started, the founding fathers of our craft built a platform of truth and poignancy. Our job is not just to inform and to tell the truth - but to present the world as it is - as it matters.

And it all matters.

We tell the stories that can't be made up. From the long lines for corn dogs and the way a child's eyes light up the first time they see the county fair to the way to shelling of war torn villages in lands far, far away.

We sit back and we watch - and more often than not - we try to give a voice to those who may feel they have none. We try to keep them informed. We put it down on the page and we hope against hope that at the end of the day, we have done a good job at whatever story we have tried to tell.

This week marked my first year here at the Niles Daily Star. And one year later ... I try to think of everything that has changed my world since then.

The dream, originally, was as romantic as Cary Grant following after Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday." Wake up to the sound of the bustling city, the grumblings and the heavy trucks and the sirens and the heartbeat of the streets. Step out into a crisp morning and wonder, where are the sirens headed, what's the grumbling about, how's the heartbeat today as you pick up a cup of coffee and tuck the competitor's rag under your arm and head into the newsroom. And the sound of the rustling of the pages is like the best soundtrack.

Well, dreams change.

In a year, several presses have gone quiet. It's a wonder how many will ultimately survive a world that used to churn out so much newsprint that children's hands were stained with ink after an afternoon of "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" It's not that the world doesn't read anymore. It's just that they want to read everything in 140 characters or less.

And that matters.

When the gig started, there was no question of its relevance. And there was no need to be punchy. Martha Gellhorn wrote more than just reports on the shelling of Madrid in 1937. Without falling into bias like just about every other journalist that comes out of college with the dream of being the next coiffed morning talk show host, she wrote searing descriptions of the men and women and children who remained amidst the rubble. Who continued their walk to the market under a charcoal grey sky.

She wrote the world as it was. And it was enough. And it inspired the dream.

Some dreams change. Today, for instance, Cary Grant would likely be uploading a tweet on his Blackberry while chasing after Rosalind Russell through a newsroom with several empty desks and ergonomic office furniture and a bunch of writers who aren't sure what the dream is anymore.

When I lose the dream, I look back to Gellhorn and remember that original dream. And all of the others that I have stored up in a special file. The streets of Havana. The back alleys of Gaza. The cliffs of Santorini. The streets of New York City. Madrid. And everywhere in between.

More and more industry heavyweights are grasping at finding the new in the dream. They're busy, "reinventing" the magazine, trying to make their websites profitable, putting their presses to bed, trying to figure out how to make advertising lucrative again. And more and more journalists are getting worried that there may be no platform in the future for their words.

We writers have a thing. We watch you, we build on you, we tell your stories. The best we can. In one way or another. The relevance of that can only end in all of you. If you choose not to find any relevance in each other.

One year ago, I came in with a little dream. When I started, all I wanted to do was write for a newspaper. Check.

Thankfully - I'm reminded today of how much that dream has grown. I want Cary Grant. Rosalind Russell. Martha Gellhorn. Madrid.

I don't want to reinvent the art of journalism. I want to recreate it. Just as it was meant to be. Because even when the presses go quiet and shrink to the size of a microchip - the stories we tell are bigger and better than ever. They're you.

Everything is copy. It all matters.

Extra, extra, tweet it up - get thee to a blog - but most of all ... read all about it.

Jessica Sieff is a reporter for the Niles Daily Star. Reach her at jessica.sieff@leaderpub.com.

the battle to save the shop around the corner

“Let’s take a better look/Beyond our storybook/And learn our souls are all we own/Before we turn to stone…” ‘Turn to Stone’ - Ingrid Michaelson

There are those who live for what they do. And they know nothing but. And now, in a time of such economical and cultural change, we realize that sometimes, we have to be able to expand ourselves, our skills. We have to be able to be diversified. Still, there is a mourning in this shift, which is shaking the futures of Americans in industrial shops across the country.

I have written before about the soft spot I have for industry. The small mom and pop machine shops where mornings consist of thermoses of coffee, uniforms with names embroidered over where the heart lies not far underneath, beating with the hum of large, bulky, various machines.

My affection for this integral part of our country’s heritage has only strengthened since last I wrote about it. Because we have something in common those industrial, tool and die, machine shops and me. Both of the mediums in which we work are in serious danger of becoming obsolete.

I think as a country, we all thought bailout money would bail us out. The big auto dealers would turn around with brand new cars we would have never thought they would come up with. And we would all want to buy them. And the money would just appear in our pockets. And the lines would run again.

And thanks to those lines, the rest of the world of industry would pick up. People would be all about building things and making things and developing things and it would all consist of heavy machinery and construction and manual labor. And parking lots would be full. And families would be secure. And our engineers, machinists, welders, etc. would not be facing the threat of their own extinction. But things haven’t turned out that way.

The all too recent example is 450 lives that hang in the balance of Tyler Refrigeration. Elsewhere, industrial parks sit all but abandoned. Plants have gone dark.

The New York Times recently went to Grafton, Wis., to sit in on a layoff at a family owned tool and die manufacturing company in which the vice president of administration, with the final list of those who would have to go, sank into tears after she had informed them all of the unfortunate news. The Washington Post took a look at areas such as Michigan, which had once thrived off of an auto industry that has all but gone away, searching for industries that might put people back to work in the future. Healthcare. Green jobs. But the future's classification stings. “Uncertain.” At www.toolanddieing.com, almost every moment of this struggle is chronicled with updates, stories of businesses across the country and links to resources within the industry.

I can appreciate community colleges that are reaching out to help those shop workers who may find themselves in need of “retooling”... But I am sincerely afraid to lose our industry. Because the fact of the matter is, if we lose our industry – we will have turned our backs on our own legacy. We will have built a history on the backs of our grandfathers and our fathers, who know this crazy world of steel and sweat better than we could ever hope to learn from history books, only to tear it down without so much as a Plan B. We have to save the shop around the corner because our grandfathers and fathers don’t have a Plan B.

Many small businesses, tool and die, CNC, precision machining, are looking for help in order to survive. Yet as a country, we don’t have so much as a method of CPR. Loans are tough to accept as a resolution when you’re struggling to keep employees. And if you’re looking for any help beyond that – coming from someone who has seen the frustration of many trying to do just that – good luck.

We have to save the shop around the corner – because it means starting with the big businesses uptown. Those who would have us all believe that the future of innovation couldn’t possibly gain anything from wearing a blue collar. It means pooling our most valuable resources, the men and women of the line and taking another look at what this country can do to build itself back up again. It would mean building a future workforce that can benefit from the teachings of the old school and the capabilities of the new school. It would mean enticing entrepreneurs to find new ideas that could put men and women back to work.

Because it can't all be that bad. It can't be that this is how their story ends. It means thinking hard, lending a hand, taking a chance on a new idea. We should save the shop around the corner because it would mean looking at our priorities. Priorities are goals for the future and truly inventive ideas. Stop-gaps are not truly inventive ideas.

Most of all – we should save the shop around the corner because it’s about the ideals. Those ideals are what built our railroads, mined our coal, generated our power, laid our brick, built our cars, our homes…our past. Our present. That our best asset is our hands, our minds and the ability to use them both at the same time. We have to save the shop around the corner – because if we don’t – what will be the next thing to go? Will our work ethic evaporate like fine dust that sloughs off metal shavings only to settle corners of the shops that now sit empty, nothing but natural light and shadows and locked doors. Will we no longer feel the need for inventiveness? Will we lose our convictions?

We have to keep looking for solutions. We have to keep asking for help. Put in the hours. Burn the midnight oil. It sounds so incredibly melodramatic, I know.

So how about this…we have to save the shop around the corner, because if we don’t, we will have a hard time meeting our neighbor’s eye when we pass them on the street. And because when our shops shut down – the silence will be deafening.

moms

To be quite honest, I'm a bit surprised at what I think of when I hear the word "mother." Almost immediately I envision golden sunrises, Donna Reed aprons and breakfast foods so heavy with buttermilk, eggs and greasy meat that one might as well not even begin to count calories.

I think of sunsets on sticky summer nights when the only thing that has any power of the humidity is ice cold lemonade and when the only thing that soften the aches and pains of a fever or the flu is the cold washcloth held to your forehead or the chicken soup that she'll cross town to bring you even when you're old enough to cook your own. I'm surprised at my initial reaction to the word because I have grown up in a life that has taught me well enough that motherhood is not all Donna Reed aprons and calorific foods.

When I think longer about the what I think motherhood means... I think of how I was blessed with the influences of exceptionally strong mothers in my life. On my maternal side, my grandmother is the mother of 15 children. Hers is a life filled with the teachings of thank yous and pleases and buttoning up shirts and making sure everyone was in school on time. And my grandfather helped. She cooked all the dinners and the breakfasts and the lunches and she still does. And she's always the last one to sit down to the table.

She turned those 15 children into bright, intelligent, successful human beings. Who know how to laugh when what they may want to do is cry, who find strength in just the sound of her voice. Her love knows no time and no distance, as many of her children live an ocean away in a country thousands of miles and who knows how many time zones apart.

She bites her tongue when she has to, a trial and tribulation that comes when children grow up and insist they know what's best for themselves - but she's not afraid to speak her mind.

In her strength, I see my own mother. The single mother who raised three children, worked full time and still fought for a well balanced dinner that we were all to sit down to together. As we children battled adolescence and nursed our broken family wounds, she put her heart last. Left it carefully on a shelf as she made sure our clothes were clean and our shoes were tied and we didn't forget to thank our grandparents or wash the dishes. When we're young, those are the things that seem standard. But they end up meaning everything. We spend a lot of our grown-up time trying to recreate those dinners, searching for detergent that's not only organic, but smells vaguely of childhood.

When her eyes were heavy with sleep, she kept herself up long enough to soothe our own fears as we lay beneath the blankets, warding off our nightmares. And when we became the ungrateful adolescents that all children become at one time or another - she swallowed the hurtful words we slung at her and always said goodnight with an 'I love you.'

Though I never got a chance to really know my paternal grandmother - she lives in a vivid memory from a very young age. And sometimes, even when we haven't had the chance to know our mothers or our grandmothers through and through - their strength is evident in presence. I remember her fondly. As kind. And with very strong hands.

And I have been blessed to see some of my closest friends transition into motherhood. And perhaps that experience has helped me to the perspective I have on motherhood today.

That the best parts of our mothers - have nothing to do with us at all.

My favorite stories of my mother, are about her, her days at work, what she enjoys about her home, the things she did when she was seventeen. Many of my favorite photos of her are those that capture her at that age, young and with long flowing hair, delicate with an underlying strength the world had not yet seen.

My favorite stories of my grandmother are the ones she tells where I can envision her on a kibbutz in Israel sipping on cups of coffee laced with cream, tossing words back and forth with the rest of the motherly clan. My favorite pictures of her are those with my grandfather, trapped in time and in black and white, when she'd slip in the occasional drink, chatting up the issues of the late 1940s, and those even younger still, when she was just a girl with the moxie of legends at her fingertips.

Because I think too often we think mothers are simply defined by motherhood. But they are so much more. They are little girls who dream, young women who live on the edge, who love and break hearts and mend a few broken pieces of their own.

It's fun to think of mothers when the mothering is put down for the night. When the insides come back out. To think of Donna Reed with her feet up on the coffee table, some good music flowing through the living room, a glass of wine in hand. Or sitting out on the back deck with friends, laughing a little too loud for the neighbors. The aprons thrown off, the hair down and screaming at the top of their lungs to an old, favorite song, telling jokes or jumping into a round of bull poker (long story). Of course, those pieces of our moms are always there. We just don't always see them.

Our mothers continue to live outside a simple term. They are our stepmothers – and I'd like mine to know, she has not been forgotten here. And they are our aunts and sisters and daughters and best friends.

I applaud all mothers. I stand in awe of them. I honor them. And most of all I wish them the moments when they melt back into those little girls, who knew the exhilaration of a plie in new ballet shoes, of their first painting or their first home where the silence was all their own. The triumph of their love and everything that goes with it.

They have their own desires, their own sense of fun - dance when no one is looking and all that. As a matter of fact, I consider myself exceptionally lucky - because my mother dances when everybody is looking. And I always think, how I would love to be as brave as that.

What are you waiting for? Call your mother. Take your best friend some flowers. Shoot a twitter to your sister. It's their turn.

the curse of the blank page

Once upon a time ... okay it was a few weeks ago ... my managing editor told me that he once wrote an entire column about the blank page. Well...I supposed if nothing else, rather than a lack of creativity, we could consider this simply a tip of the hat. Indeed. That sounds better than a lack of creativity.

I can't say if all writers fear the blank page. But I always have. Blank canvas always sounds better than blank page. The phase "blank canvas" is filled with possibility. Will you be a Monet or a Seurat or will burst through boundaries like Pollock? "Blank page" is ominous. It says, millions and millions of writers have come here before you. They have filled this space with brilliance. Now ... what have you got to say?

Where painters may see a canvas just waiting for color, or those writers who are immune to the idea of a blank page see simply some white background on which to put their words, I see a vast, empty space.

And I have to fill it. And it better sound good. Or I'm going to be in trouble.

My adolescent years are probably at the very least, responsible for 30 percent of the all the vanishing trees. Back then, my friends, there were stacks of wide ruled paper and pencils. No flashy laptop computer screens. So when it came time for book reports, poetry, letters, short stories - even drawings, I would write (or draw), crumple the page, throw it out and repeat the process at least 17 times before finally committing something to paper.

To this day ... the lack of a good lead, even just a relatively stable column idea will leave me staring at my screen, my fingers mute. My thoughts clogged in my neuro-gutter.

Blank pages are scary.

They're empty and they're stark white, unless of course you use that fancy patterned paper, but either way - they're empty and they are begging for you to put something down on them. And what is put down is going to matter because it will leave the transparent world of thought - and enter the tangible world of reality. But as I ruminated on the blank page - and as I've probably bored you with it - I realized ... we walk around, every day, living, breathing blank pages. Every day. And these days, we're seeing that more than ever. Even after 100 days of a president in office. Even after the celebration of a country's independence. Entrepreneurs are being forced to scrap business plans and get back on the horse, seek out a new idea, develop that idea amidst what is bound to be significant risks and hope for the best. One after another, we're being forced to face the blank page in an increasing world of unemployment. Ultimately in some way, shape or form, our jobs identify us. And losing one during a time in which any job and every job is a rarity and a prize to be won - some of us are being forced to work where we never thought we would, just to make ends meet. Or worse, figure out how to live a life that was once stable -in the unstable and uncertain.

And blank pages come even more frequently in small, everyday ways. When we lose a relationship, the vastness is painful and scary and unwelcome. And taking the chance to get into another one, in this case, is the same. We run through a seemingly endless checklist of what-ifs and what-abouts and afraid-ofs that, should they work out for the better, only lead to a big blank page sitting in the shadow of to-do items like the pre-rehearsal dinners and pre-weddings where what we're really doing is setting ourselves up for taking the first step on a big blank page.

The things we've never done before. The things we've been avoiding. The things we have to face each and every day. Every fear. Every trepidation. Every dare to hope. They're all blank pages that fill us with that feeling that forces us to keep a small bottle of Pepto-Bismol or in some cases, hard liquor, in the house.

But here's the thing about blank pages.

They're filled with the things we've always wanted to do. The hopes and the dreams and the double dog dares. The overcoming the trouble. The trumping the pain. They're scary. You can douse the nerves with Pepto. Or you can choose to feel the fear as a swarm of butterflies. You can write it down and erase it and write it down again. But you'll probably just get an ugly looking page with lots of smears and smudges. Or you can just start putting things down. You'll find you move on to the next page a lot quicker than you thought - and you can write down the learned lessons from the pages that came before.

How about that? I found something to write about after all.

Jessica Sieff is a reporter for the Niles Daily Star. Reach her at jessica.sieff@leaderpub.com.

With a voice as soft as thunder

Most mornings begin the same way. Rush around over a cup of coffee. Pass the same houses on the same streets wishing and hoping that one day the street scape will change from small town-ness to skyscrapers. Step through the same doors and sit down to a big blank screen.

Then starts the uphill climb. Most days, sitting down to write is like a swim against the current. The current hitting with wave after wave of self doubt and insecurity and 'will this sound good enough,' 'is this written well enough,' those thoughts mixed with 'will I end up anywhere other than here.'

Those are the thoughts that wrap themselves around our weaker places like vicious vines that grow alongside a beautiful old house until they practically cover it all up. And then...Wednesday I caught a teaser on the 'Today' show about a woman who auditioned on Britain's Got Talent.

Later, I jumped on You Tube to see for myself the emergence of Susan Boyle. The “nearly 48” year old woman who had “never been married” and “never been kissed”, was displayed at first against dippy music, presenting her as a joke. As she stepped out onto the stage, the audience laughed. The judges rolled their eyes at responses that have been described as “inarticulate.” Someone in the audience gave a sarcastic whistle at her and the camera caught audience member after audience member laughing and rolling their eyes as she told judges Piers Morgan, Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell that she wanted to be a professional singer along the lines of British legend, Elaine Paige.

Then, the music started. And Boyle began to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” of the musical Les Miserables.

“I dreamed a dream of time gone by,” Boyle sang with a voice that simply can not be described in one word. It was beautiful, it was delightful, it was amazing. In just that first line, the audience that had been so merciless to Boyle just moments before, were on their feet, in tears and screaming for this woman from a small village in Scotland who has been described as shy and kind – who lives in a government subsidized home with her cat, 'Pebbles,' the youngest of nine children who had been caring for her ailing mother until she died two years ago.

Until her appearance on Britain's Got Talent, Boyle, who had been singing since she was 12, had only sung in and around her village, mostly in church. Which seemed fitting. Sometimes I think God likes to keep the most talented in the unlikeliest and hard to find places, almost as his own rare treasure – so valuable that they have to be sought out.

We live in a society in which we literally build stages on which to mock people. Sometimes I think the best talents, the most beautiful voices, the best painters, sculptors and artists are kept under wraps – until God knows that the world will give them their due.

Boyle's performance on the talent show continues to bring me to tears, even after having watched the clip countless times since.

Over 600 articles had been written about her as of yesterday afternoon. And the number of viewers of her performance on You Tube jumped from nearly six million yesterday afternoon to 11 million this morning.

Several of them take a look at Boyle's looks. They refer to her as “dowdy” or “frumpy.” And they echo judge Holden's remarks that the entire audience was against her when she walked out onto the stage, entirely cynical – and that it was a privilege to hear her.

“Everyone was laughing at you,” Morgan said, when Boyle had finished singing. “Nobody is laughing at you now.” What is most endearing about Boyle is not only her voice. Or the song she chose to sing.

“I dreamed a dream of time gone by/When hope was high/And life worth living/I dreamed that love would never die/I dreamed that God would be forgiving/Then I was young and unafraid/And dreams were made and used and wasted/There was no ransom to be paid/No song unsung/No wine untasted...”

No, the most endearing thing about Boyle was that following her performance, she began to march off stage without so much as a critique – as if she figured the judges would have tossed her off anyway. She was generally surprised when each judge praised her more than any previous contestant and passed her through to the next round. Her eyes went wide, her face flushed and she pumped her fist in the air and stomped her feet. And one got the sense that it is not just talent but purity that runs through the “nearly 48” year old woman from Scotland.

And when Cowell said, “Susan, you are a little tiger aren't you?” Boyle paused. Blushed and said hesitantly, “I don't know about that...no I don't know about that.”

Ms. Boyle, while the world will look at the bigger picture, the way an entire crowd misjudged you based solely on your appearance and while others will look at your talent, I would like to commend you on your bravery and say that you sang to millions of people who still sit at home with their dreams tucked away and tied down by their own self doubt, their own insecurities and their fear that the world might judge them.

You sang to a little girl who grew up loving to read, with unruly hair and a still compromised fashion sense who was teased from childhood to adolescence and sometimes even adulthood for being a little awkward at times and who often fears stepping out of her own village. And probably to countless dreamy children who continue to live in all of us.

And when you sang the lines, “But there are dreams that cannot be/And there are storms we can not weather/I had a dream my life would be/so different from this hell I'm living...” I lost my breath.

And I think everyone else did too.

In an interview, Boyle said she auditioned for the talent show for her late mother, who wanted her to do something with her life. I think there is no question on how proud her mother would be now.

And in that interview Ms. Boyle commented on the subject of the angle that so many are taking about the “frumpy” woman with the angelic voice.

“Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances,” she said. “There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson or set an example.” On the contrary, Ms. Boyle. I think it would be an honor just to be able to shake your hand and compliment your voice. And I think you just might be one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

And this morning, I hummed your song on the way to work and dreamed a dream of time gone by. And I think I speak for millions when I say that, when times are really tough, you will lift us all as high as your voice carries.

The truth is – I would never be able to describe it well enough. So I encourage everyone to go to You Tube and search for Susan Boyle. It'll make your day. And it will remind you about what it means to dream. And that dreaming is just the beginning. Living is in the dreaming and the doing.

in the abundance of memory

I'm beginning to wonder if I've ever had a truly original moment as a full grown adult.

When I was in high school, I cared about my social status, but I didn't care enough. I didn't care enough to take the time to figure out what it meant to have good hair, a good wardrobe or good make-up. I didn't really care that I didn't quite fit into one particular clique, but rather certain percentages of various cliques. I remember being awfully frizzy as a highschooler.

Will used to call me "Jugs". But I can't remember exactly if that had anything to do with my boobs. I don't remember them being very big in high school, but I'm surprised at how big they are now and I'm almost thirty. I don't pay attention to a lot a lot of the time. I think the nickname had more to do with the fact that I was the only Jew in school and Will and I hugged each other a lot. Gimme a hug. Jew. Hug. Jew. Jug. Nah. It probably did have to do with the boobs.

I had a moment the other day when I could feel high school all over me like a heavy wool coat in the middle of summer. Oddly enough, it was memories of summer that did it.

I worked in a generic Dairy Queen in my small town for most of my high school years. It was my first real job and it was a beautiful tapestry of colorful characters with the added bonus of a measly paycheck that felt like millions when you don't have bills to pay each month. I often wish I could put my small town experience into words. But I haven't found the words yet. In that little ice box of a building I didn't just swirl together soft serve and broken pieces of candy bar but fell into a family that I only now realize I've lost a lot of.

I can still feel the stickiness that came with working there. The sweat from the hot, humid days when the air conditioning couldn't stand up to the steady flow of small towners who wanted slushies and hot dogs and ice cream cones. I can still smell the bleach Kim would pour into the mop water and feel the steam from the hot dog cooker. My job there was so intoxicating. So high school. So small town. So delicious.

I used to scribble soap opera style diatribes on the dry erase calender where our schedule was written in each month. A whole world existed for me when I went to work there in the afternoons. I picked up every hour that I could. It felt so exhilarating to be in that building rather than in my room where I was bored and scribbling into my sketch pads. At work, I was the nerdy intellectual one compared to everyone else who lived real lives with boyfriends and sex and drugs and alcohol. But I never seemed to mind much.

I can still feel those days. You know the times of your life that you can feel - even in memory. I can feel them there. I think I stopped feeling them for the most part when Lynne died. She was the boss of us all, the mother of one of us and a friend. And I wish I could have known her as an adult. And when she died I think a piece of me tucked that part of my life away and stopped being that nerdy girl with the big aspirations.

And when I saw Punky's mug shot in the paper - it all came flooding back to me. A stark, stinging slap to the face. Over ten years later and this is where we all are. I'm still watching old black and white movies wishing I were living somewhere else, Kim is a mother with a house and a husband and a life that is still heavy with tragedy and happiness and Punky is busy finding herself amidst recklessness...of which I wonder often her mother's opinion - had she lived til today. The memory of it all weighs a lot. The reality of it. I can feel high school and adolescence the way you can feel the cool water in a pool on a hot and humid day. Immediate.

I used to write and draw insanely. I can't even remember what I wrote about, but I do remember not thinking so much about it. Stories and poems and paragraphs of thought just went on the paper until my hands were cramping and it was past midnight. I miss that. The lack of self-consciousness of it all.

And I don't feel as original or individual as I did back then. I'm just realizing that now. I am loved by many for who I am. I know that. But I don't feel that quirkiness that I had once been so proud of. And I'm just wondering, as I wonder if I really do have something worth saying as a writer - if I've ever had that originality that is so blessed in adolescence. If I am an individual.

In New York, as I sat across from my Aunt Darya on a seemingly calm Saturday afternoon, she asked me if I had passion about anything. My answer was no. I've lost all passion. Passion is what fueled me to fill sketchbooks with drawings, what led me to fill notebooks with stories just for the story's sake. I miss passion. Passion is what led me to apply to Columbia and make the drive to orientation with Kim, buy a coffee mug and books from the bookstore even though I knew I wouldn't attend classes there and what led me to request information from Johns Hopkins. It's what led me to apply to Sarah Lawrence.

I always knew that even if I didn't always feel as though I was able to breathe on the streets of my small town, my passion for writing would keep me afloat.

Yet when Darya asked me if I had passion for anything going on in my life at the moment. All I could say was no.

I wish I had the words.

the visitor

I am on a current, constant search for inspiration.

I am worried that as a writer...I may have nothing important to say.

I worry that the stories I may tell may be better told by someone else.

But sometimes, in searching for inspiration...through movies or music or books - I find a quick moment of it. And the song, the film, the paragraphs or the pages...they make me tear up. Like this one did.

disclaimer

A little note about the post below that I was hesitant to post at all...

I don't know if anyone reads this at all - but if anybody does - please don't freak out about the thoughts expressed in the post below and start thinking I'm in some sort of dire need of the odd sort of attention.

While I appreciate it - I am someone who writes thoughts and ideas as they pop into my head and they're not always to be taken the way they are by other people.

If I were really that bad - I think I would be off getting some help - and not sitting here typing my little heart out at a Barnes & Noble on a beautiful day listening to Led Zepplin and craving a Toffee Nut Latte and oddly...some falafel.

in which our heroine is overworked and overwhelmed

There are times that are almost too much for real life. They belong on television with prolific voice overs and a killer soundtracks and soft lighting. Everything looks better with soft lighting.

Last Sunday, over 1/2 a Barnes & Noble cookie and a latte, I realized something painfully simple. If you take a step closer to something - you get closer to it.

But I too often speak in tangled metaphor.

The frustration of not writing, of feeling creatively and intellectually stifled in the small town I live in - eventually became too much for me. And I began getting annoyed at my own voice as it complained to friends and family about my own unhappiness.

So I put the call in to my editor - telling him I was in need of advice as well as ready and willing to do whatever it would take to move my career in some sort of progressive direction. I was neither ready nor willing. But I took the step anyway. And I took on the title of "Southwest Regional Editor". Nothing is certain right now. Not the direction in which I am going or the real depth of that title. Not my future in terms of any of my jobs - or school - or anything else. Things may not change much - but even the littlest amount of change is enough for me.

And having the personal and emotional hell going on that I've been dealing with for the past week - being told that I had one week to put out my first paper with only one writer - me - was almost like a blessing in disguise. A masochistic blessing - but a blessing nonetheless. Anger fuels me in ways. I'm able to scratch off items on a to-do list much faster. I think less and act more just to keep my anger from bottling to the point of combustion.

I worked out until my muscles ached and my breathing was heavy and the anger and stress subsided a little bit. When work became too much and my mind began to spin and my anger started to swell, I'd grab the weights, crunch until I couldn't crunch anymore, push up and get on the gazelle. I've been working constantly. Asleep at six in the morning and up by 10:30, making phone calls, arranging interviews and typing up notes - just to make dinner and go to work until 5 in the morning and asleep by 6 again.

I won't say it hasn't taken it's toll. The lack of sleep and utter exhaustion took an emotional and physical toll on me yesterday when I collapsed into a crumple of tears and fears on my sofa just an hour before work. The only joyful moments were to hear Madison's two-year old voice say she loved me when I kissed her goodbye and when Kim said she understood my sudden desire to return to the age of 20.

I wonder often and over again how I have become the person that I am now - even though I know the person I am now will not be the person I am tomorrow. I wonder where the girl who was on the verge of turning 21 went. She was kinda fun. She drank too much and didn't think about the injustices of the world and she was confidant and comforting.

So I took on a new challenge. And at times - the thought that this could all lead to a more creative and positive life makes my insides surge. I have another meeting with another editor next week for more advice and I've even been in touch with yet another editor of a regional magazine for more work. I've begun thinking of myself as an actual writer. I've made contacts in New York in order to put up an actual website and it would seem this is all a big mass of positive change.

But remember what I've said about me and change...

And still...the personal and the emotional are shaky and uncertain. What were once solid relationships are now taking on new forms that don't necessarily fit me yet.

And I am just a lady in waiting of the future. Waiting for the next wave of change to come.

a few good truths

Honesty is a funny thing.

We say we want it. From everyone. About everything.

But do we really?

The short answer, I think, is no. We don't want honesty. The real, grit your teeth, clench your jaw and hear the truth, truth. Certainly we want to know when a pair of jeans makes our asses look like a parking lot or when half of dinner is sticking in our teeth. But we don't want to hear the real stuff.

We don't want to hear that we're wrong. That we are not always the shined up, polished versions of ourselves that we're only really able to see from behind our two eyes. We don't want to hear that little by little, we're making mistakes...we're doing something wrong...we're hurting people. The people we love. That's the problem with honesty. It sounds really good, rolls off the tongue like ice cream. Only it doesn't taste like ice cream...it tastes like escargot. Or caviar. Or something equally slimy and bitter and nauseating.

And so....the quandary. If writers take from the lives they know...how do they do so without hurting feelings? And how do friends know the depth of translation and interpretation and observation? To put it plainly...how do they understand the two sides of honesty...

The side that tells it like it is...and the side that loves you anyway.

being j.k rowling

I found Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone sitting solemnly in a "In Hardback" section one day, years ago on a trip through Barnes & Noble. Or was it Borders? Anyway - it was years ago. The book hadn't seemed to find a place for itself at the time. It wasn't in the children's section - not even in the young adult section. It just was sitting there. A hardback book. That was it.

It was being described at the time as a book that was just as much for adults as it was for children - which had me opening the front cover and the writing was so eloquent - I picked it up and took it home.

At that time, there wasn't much being said about the book, or its main character or its author. I devoured it and the next book and the next. By then, Harry Potter was everywhere.

A little too everywhere.

When the 4th book came out - at a whopping 734 pages - it seemed like a little too much work just to be part of this curious "in" crowd. The crowd that had begun throwing parties for the book's release and dressing up and eating disgusting jelly beans for fun.

So I quit reading it.

Then came the 6th book - and the news that a central character would die. I suddenly felt like I should join the crowd again. But I didn't. When Kim bought me a copy of the book as a gift, I couldn't finish it.

And so now, the world is at its end with the whole Harry Potter thing. And all I really have to say about it all is: If Oprah doesn't adopt me - I'm hoping J.K. Rowling will.

The one thing that stands out about Rowling's work of a lifetime is her voice. She created a single world that is so much different and so much the same as our own - in massive detail. Her writing welcomes anyone who takes the time to flip the book open - in for a warm and wondrous afternoon read. Like a cup of tea. Or a scone.

I see a photo of her and it makes me wish I were British - much like photos of Cate Blanchett or Helen Mirren or Emma Thompson. Intelligent, witty, beautiful. It's Rowling's story that really hooked me. The single mother, sitting in the cafe writing out this massive chunk of incredible imagination. In an interview, when discussing what might be next, Rowling says she just wants, "to fall in love with an idea again."

I've spent the last week jotting down notes as I begin the research for a novel about my mother's family. One thought begets another, and another and another. I make one list which begs for more lists. A diagram of the family that won't fit on the page. And for the past two days - I've been hesitant to keep going. Right on schedule.

The thought crept into my brain today. "You won't get it right," it said. "It's too much for you to do. You don't even know what you're doing to begin with."

Rowling's words resonated. Writers...fall in love. Over and over again. They fall in love with their characters, their plots and subplots, their sentences and everything in between. Authors cry when their characters die. (Remember Emma Thompson in 'Stranger Than Fiction'?)

And so...right on schedule...I'm tempted to back away from the family novel. As cliche as it sounds, I can't really fall in love. It's too much. It's too close, it's too personal and it's just too, too much. I'm afraid of it all - and it's why it's taken so long to start the novel in the first place...why most of my stories sit unfinished in a case in the spare bedroom - and why I take so long to finish a news story that's not under breaking news deadline. You fall in love and then what? Then how to do you maintain? I certainly have no idea.

Still...I tap my pen against the pages of my journal. Because this time, I'd like to give it a good go. Like a school girl with a mad crush on the quarterback - I daydream about sitting in a cafe and just writing until the sun has set and it's time to go home. And something tells me that if I jump all in - I might just learn to fall in love elsewhere.

Or at least, finish the Harry Potter series.

voices

A writer is not much of a writer at all without his or her voice. Artists search for their expression. They wander out of paint splattered studios covered in color, the hours of the day showing in the bags under their eyes as they try, try and try again to put their visions on a canvas - or carve them out of soft wood - or mold them out of metal.

Writers search for the voice. And if you're not a writer - you don't really know what that means. It is as intimate as the look in the eye of a soul mate. Something that is just known. It is as loud as standing in front of a main speaker at Ozzfest - it is heard. It is as plain as day - or the look on one's face. It is who the writer is.

And I can't seem to find mine.

I leaf through journals and folders of writings always started and never finished...I scribble ideas and scenes and notes and think they sound good but they always fizzle out once I try to expand on them.

I wish I could capture my conversations with you. I wish the exchange could be put down on paper as beautifully as it comes across in an empty bar, or over the phone or sitting in the driveway as the sun is coming up in front of us. I wish it could hold the comfort and the relief and the honesty of those talks. I wish I could put it all down.

I am me when I am there...and I wish I could put it down here.

see my soul makes it home

By 6 o'clock Thursday evening - I wanted to be a writer for Rolling Stone.

I was sitting in the lobby of the Ship & Shore Motel which had been converted into the VIP festival hub, which meant a full open bar - someone to crush the mint for your mojito or get you a plastic cup filled with frozen margarita. I poured myself a T&T and sat down.

The press handler and I were waiting on the arrival of The Damnwells - who were playing live for the street party and who were also the subject of the documentary "Golden Days" - which was showing at the festival over the weekend. The film's trailer had hooked me. The Damnwells, out of Brooklyn, have opened for The Fray, The Dixie Chicks and Blue October and had struggled to get their band on a major label. They succeeded - getting the go ahead from Epic to produce their first professional record. Only to be dropped from the label after months of recording, fine tuning and waiting.

The press handler spoke nervously into her cell phone as she checked up on the band yet again - and Alex Dezen, lead singer of The Damnwells, suddenly showed up behind us both.

Frankly, I didn't expect to get much out of the guy. I write for the local paper, and Dezen & The Damnwells had spent less than 10 minutes in Saugatuck. Dezen had a radio man waiting for a five minute spot and The Grand Rapids Press threw in a last minute call requesting an interview...and the band was supposed to go on stage by 7:30.

Before I go on let me just say - now that I've watched "Golden Days" three times and have had nothing but their latest album "Air Stereo" playing in my car all weekend - it's hard not to fall in love with The Damnwells. Theirs is a kind of genuine rock and roll that's hard to find these days. It's in the sound of a guitar case clicking open and shut, the smell of the strings... It's in small bars and clubs where guys like Dezen and his band play under heavy lights... It's on the road.

Instantly I was hooked on the lyrics...delivered soulfully by Dezen - like on "Golden Days": 'Am I in tune?/Yeah I can't hear much but the melody coming from you...' or on my favorite track so far "I Am A Leaver": 'Lock your lips in Eastern time/bleed my heart, I'm leaving mine/see my soul makes it home/I'm high on wretched wine/spinning here alone...'

Back to Thursday night, Dezen, the handler and I walked across town to get the radio man his five minute sound bite. The Grand Rapids Press was rushing to get to Saugatuck before The Damnwells took the stage. Dezen and I sat down to talk.

We talked about the movie... "Ego would probably be the death of any documentary film," he said. "You have to kinda e on the outside."

Dezen seemed nervous - but he was comfortable enough to joke around. I wanted so much to relate to him as he talked about being young - and then getting older - and still trying to find some form of success. Even with the film and the new record and the band's current tour - he was careful. "Whether it takes us to, you know, large success still remains to be seen," he said.

The subject turned to the band itself - and I got cliche - "So how long are you guys going to be doing this?" I asked him. "Forever?" Dezen laughed and was quick to say - more or less - not really. And it was almost heartbreaking. You expect some bands to break up and go off on their own. Soon that Pete Wentz guy will probably find his way out of Fall Out Boy and I'm sure each Pussycat Doll will sign their own record deal. But bands like The Damnwells you just hope will go on forever. You don't want them to grow up.

"The future is very finite," Dezen said. "I think our goals are pretty much practical. When you're more practical about your goals, you can build to bigger achievements."

The band's music, he explained, will "live on beyond us". "That's the only goal that has any real permanence," he says. And he uses the term "insurmountable obscurity" and suddenly I want to be a groupie. I want to be Kate Hudson in "Almost Famous". I want to be a "band-aid". I want to make a list of every band I've every liked and go on the road with them.

"When you play a show," Dezen says. "You leave more of an indelible impression on people. A record is a permanent memory of that experience."

And suddenly I realize - I want a lot of permanent memories.

Dezen says what he wants, is to feel like "at the end of the day, I can walk away."

And I thank him for his interview. And I wish him luck. And I leave him for the rest of the reporters. I go outside on a high and wait for the band to set up. When I make my way up to the stage to take pictures for the story, I stop at the small table that is sitting just a few feet away and throw down $15 for "Air Stereo".

Unable to make the screening of "Golden Days" at the festival, I get a screener to take home. I pop it in and I watch...and then I watch it again. The festival is over. The weekend is over. I don't want to go to work. I want to sit in the shade of Rachel's garage and drink a beer and scribble notes into a notebook and go home to a slate full of stories waiting for me the next day. I wonder if I'll ever really write full time. For a bigger paper. Or a magazine. Who knows. The future is very finite.

hats. off.

One year, for Christmas/Hanukkah - my mission was to prove that I was a killer gift giver. The previous year, I'd come up terribly short on my gift to Kim - and a bad gift from a best friend does not look good on a resume.

I wrote her a letter for any and every possible event I could think of until...well...the end. Every milestone birthday, divorce, marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, bad days, any days, moving away, the death of our parents and plenty more. I wrote each of them by hand, on soft, creamy paper and stamped them with a wax seal.

But Hallmark beat me anyway. Hallmark has introduced a new line of cards called "Journeys" that focus on a change in times. Cards dealing with cancer, chemo, recovery, depression, eating disorders and for homosexuals - coming out.

Maybe it doesn't seem like much - but for we writers - it seems like the technical age has threatened to diminish the meaning of what we do. With email - our messages are shorter, with text - even shorter than that. The power of words come not only in their meaning - but how they are used. It's not just reading a book...it's the drive to the store, the wandering of the shelves, opening that hard cover to the first page and discovering words that you don't only relate to - but relate to you. It's not just saying the right thing. It's opening the mailbox, seeing the envelope, reading the inside...

We're never going to get back to long, handwritten letters describing everything we're going through to the people we love most. But maybe a card or two - wouldn't hurt.

My hat off to Hallmark for acknowledging a change in time.