tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43908223371545890222023-11-16T14:56:28.257-06:00Kim WellsAuthor & Poet & Teacher. Magical Realism, Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Ghost Fiction. Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.comBlogger99125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-30052703692504729072023-11-16T14:55:00.003-06:002023-11-16T14:55:34.874-06:00Things I Have Done Today Besides The Work I Should Really Be Doing<p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Create sample Mentor Text PowerPoints for a student project. <br /></li><li>Chat with fabulous co-workers about upcoming department issues.</li><li>Re-register my child for a different class in the Spring after hearing the previous class <i>would not do</i>. <i>For reasons. </i> </li><li>Go chat with my club mentees and admire their recent remodeling of the club meeting room. </li><li>Re-read all of my currently read work emails. </li><li>Walk over to the cafeteria to get milk for a coffee. Said milk was almost 4.00</li><li>Complain about said milk being almost 4.00 when I could have bought a gallon for that price.</li><li><i>I forget what eight was for. </i></li><li>Make a coffee/mocha. </li><li>Drink the coffee/mocha. </li><li>Briefly contemplate dusting my office, but that fits the "work I should be doing" category so... nah. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxs6__cAmyf5JaoCCtSllcwkZ17mMc7HYFP2O4lNpHs3TUcdLa1cq5jjqkpkcgTDcCirGuUUT80plDbART5q0jZDRaxfOFfe64tdviSGD87tGIBWB9qnADnHkNzxjGdz-NHpnN2E3bXSOqneyuuwiircVIlrFTngAG_YX2zGv6yz3DuvYyJX-g8et7tA/s605/medesk2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="605" data-original-width="605" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxs6__cAmyf5JaoCCtSllcwkZ17mMc7HYFP2O4lNpHs3TUcdLa1cq5jjqkpkcgTDcCirGuUUT80plDbART5q0jZDRaxfOFfe64tdviSGD87tGIBWB9qnADnHkNzxjGdz-NHpnN2E3bXSOqneyuuwiircVIlrFTngAG_YX2zGv6yz3DuvYyJX-g8et7tA/s320/medesk2.png" width="320" /></a></div></li><li>Change the October calendar to November (checks date) 16 days late. </li><li>Think about ADHD. </li><li>Send an email to my boss about how cold it is in this building. </li><li>Think about going out to my car to get a warmer sweater. </li><li>Fail to go out to my car to get a warmer sweater. </li><li>Daydream about course syllabuses for the upcoming Spring semester. </li><li>Suddenly realize I COULD be actually working on a REALLY WORK project and hence put off "Work I Should Really Be Doing" for another while, but still be actually working. </li><li>Do a victory dance, then look for photos for reference in stock imagery collection where I have 100+ credits.</li><li>Add one more thing to the list so it's an even number because I'm not a monster. Hit Publish. </li></ol><p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-26584069594532133882023-11-09T16:49:00.012-06:002023-11-09T17:00:02.659-06:00Texas Public Radio Events<p> Oh yeah!! I've been on Texas Public Radio a few times since I last did a blog entry. The videos get a little edited from the live show; a lot of the host and co-host "banter" between stories doesn't stay in the final YouTube version, so you really should try to come to a live version. They're super fun! And not very expensive (and you know someone who might be able to get you in free if you live in San Antonio, by the way.) </p><p>Oh, two of these are not really kid safe-- at least the ones with the warning labels on them. So watch it only in a SFW setting. It's really just some grown up language in a couple of them (curse words, and a little rated PG16 or so) but if you're sensitive to language, don't ignore that disclaimer text. </p><p>For this one in October 2023, themed "Specter" (ghosts and spooky things) I was the co-host. It was pretty fun, and lots of really spooky stories. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="373" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-J43m07jDUs" width="449" youtube-src-id="-J43m07jDUs"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And then there's this one, where I was actually the HOST host. Not co. It was so fun!! I am not looking to take over Tori's gig but I really appreciated being able to do this. The theme of this was "Rescued." </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="381" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IuiBM7mIVgw" width="458" youtube-src-id="IuiBM7mIVgw"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">And another spooky co-hosting gig, "Ghosted," in October 2022.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="379" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D0UzqdqoJGw" width="456" youtube-src-id="D0UzqdqoJGw"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Even though I find myself awkward in videos, I'm so psyched that I've found this community. I want to keep doing this for a long time, as long as Tori (the coolest host ever) will keep having me around. </div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-60501494144353552032023-11-09T15:52:00.004-06:002023-11-09T15:53:52.968-06:00Old Bones<p>The ancient lady (who feeds the feral street cats) is out </p><p>in the yard </p><p>again this morning. The sky is a gray purple touch of pink and colors you would say were lies, Photoshopped. Unreal. </p><p>The cats hide, not ready for breakfast. They yawn and stretch,</p><p>lick matted fur, bat at rivals. </p><p>She is Baba Yaga without her chicken legged house, stuck in the middle of an urban block, and the cats do not appreciate, do not even notice her magic. </p><p>They meow “too early. Go back to bed, woman.” </p><p>But she doesn’t understand their feral language. </p><p>They don’t care enough to understand hers. </p><p>She is pouring water into bowls, crouching low to fill</p><p>each, coiling her snakinggreen water hose around her thin legs. It tries to trip her,</p><p>catch her unaware, and </p><p>she ignores its secret, hidden malice</p><p>not yet tripped up.</p><p>Her sweater is red and thin, just like her bones, in danger of unraveling. Not enough calcium. (Babies take calcium to make bones, stealing away parts</p><p>to form their parts they will later disregard as they crouch low, kick, stretch). </p><p>The cats steal other bits too, time, uncaring.) Perhaps this loss of bones happened to the lady with the red sweater, knitted out of time out of fate, Mme. DeFarge’s skein, judging all. </p><p>Her bones</p><p>worn thin from children who never visit, so she fills the gap with feral </p><p>cats. Who also</p><p>do not call </p><p>but lounge, arrogant and needy, circling her,</p><p>in a long driveway where no one ever parks a car. </p><p>Fall 23</p><div><br /></div>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-38175756642887900242022-12-29T07:56:00.006-06:002022-12-29T08:01:08.259-06:00Winter Light<p>In the early thin, pale part of the day (we can't just call it morning, can we?)</p><p>my ghosts surrounded me. Today. Not only today but-- today.</p><p>I was sleeping (or rather, trying to and failing), turning over, avoiding the thoughts--<br />circling in my head of loss, some decades old. Restlessness found me, flung me against the gray light creeping into the window. </p><p>There was the college roommate, responding to a flyer with Queen Elizabeth's face, and sharing<br />Indian food with me for the first time (with a coupon pulled out of one of those books we used to buy). Her sadness filled too much space.</p><p>My mother, of course smoking a cigarette, drinking her coffee with a few cubes of ice<br />(because <i>she wanted to drink it now, dammit, and it was too hot</i>). A thing that makes so much sense, now that I am older and less patient. </p><p>My sister, annoyed to be here, arranging her plate so that none of the food<br />touched each other, and then systematically emptying it one item at a time. I wanted to ask her if she had been ready, was afraid, a lot, of the answer. </p><p>My niece, silent, way too soon, because she is definitely not ready to talk about it yet.</p><p>My grandmother wasn't there because she definitely has better things to do in the morning,<br />although she's probably somewhere turning on the heat, feeding cats swarming around her feet. She is somewhere else calling them beggars and laughing at their yowling. </p><p>I would say my father was there but he never really was, was he? </p><p>Another father, the "in-law," who was part of my life for so much longer and in a much more<br />"there" way, would have wanted to take a drive, munching on chocolate, singing along with the radio. Snapping his fingers, he had places to go. </p><p>Unlike the ghosts in mythology, they did not linger, pale versions of themselves seeking out heat, seeking out a little blood so they could sip life again for a moment, called back from the greyness of whatever is there when we aren't dreaming (or failing to dream). There were no pleas to bring back messages. The only message there was, I guess-- the memory of a warning of life being a loaded gun-</p><p>until it no longer is--</p><p><br /></p><p>KAW December 22 </p><p><br /></p><p>(partly inspired by Emily Dickinson's poems, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45723/theres-a-certain-slant-of-light-320">There's a Certain Slant of Light</a> and <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52737/my-life-had-stood-a-loaded-gun-764">My Life Had Stood</a>)</p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-79702517793998248582022-09-23T12:18:00.010-05:002022-09-23T12:31:15.267-05:00This is just to say: An Action Plan<p>I have assessed<br />the grades<br />that were in<br />the spreadsheet. </p><p>and which<br />you were probably<br />trying to strengthen. </p><p>Forgive me. <br />they were achieved-- <br />so indeterminate,<br />and so consistent. </p><p><br /></p><p>************************</p><p><i>(What I do in department meetings while also absolutely paying attention. It really does actually help me focus.... hello ADHD.)</i></p><p>************************</p><p>Because I could not reflect the goals<br />they summarized for me--<br />the meeting held but just <br />our Team<br />and Institutionality.</p><p>We slowly spoke-- we knew no gleam--<br />and I had written Notes.<br />My outline and my planning, too,<br />for Administrative pleas. </p><p>We passed the gates, where students strove,<br />at writing--in the Spring--</p><p>We passed the margin of error--<br />we passed the previous plan. </p><p>Or rather-- it passed us. <br />The date showed--<br />the classes planned and done. <br />Our language, only seen. </p><p>We paused before a Goal that seemed,<br />a lesson, in the sand,<br />The Learning scarcely lost,<br />the meeting-- in the room. </p><p>Since then--'tis Hours, and yet,<br />feels like it was a Day. <br />I first surmised the curriculum,<br />felt an Eternity. </p><p><br /></p><p>I actually wrote one more that's even better but I might have to save that one for potential publication. </p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-13420795688155030092022-09-07T16:10:00.004-05:002022-09-07T16:12:04.635-05:00Nostalgia beats gaslighting<p class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t the single-family happy to go out for a fancy
expensive Sunday brunch after church pancakes and mimosas and Bloody Marys with
an entire fried chicken as a garnish you remember from the popular TV shows and
social media. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was a diner in a bad neighborhood that smelled like
greasy fried potatoes topped with chili and tomatoes, melted American cheese,
both crispy bacon AND ham. It was sitting close together in booths while other
people waited for a table and tired waitresses on their fourth double shift in
a week in the middle of the night after you’d been out to a smoky dance club
and you just needed that fat and carbs. It was laughing and thinking of how
tired you’d be in the morning at work but not caring because you were young. It
was a waitress who called you "hun" and frowned when you put in your
order. But who you tipped well anyway. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was the middle of a Florida military tourist town chock
full of fifties-era beat up brick ranch houses in our run-down rental area and
it was needing a better landlord but not getting one. It was no central air
conditioner. It was sand fleas next door and a kitten that disappeared in the
middle of the day, probably stolen by a neighbor. Neighbors who stomped around
their upper floor aggressively. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was a neighborhood of old Victorian houses gentrified and
wealthy right down the street from one of the most poverty stricken ones in
town. It was a landlord who tried to bully you at every chance he got, who lied
to get the police to come into your apartment when you weren't there. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was potholed and tall pine tree lined streets, not like
the towns I saw on TV where everyone had a dad and a weekend family dinner
table with some kind of nice meal and family talking about their days, sharing
happy memories, family with a mom AND a dad, sisters AND brothers, and people
genuinely caring about the question “how was your day?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It meant walking for hours with a sister in the middle of
the night because we didn't have a car. It meant doing all those things
together that we never did again, surviving the unspeakable. Until that day
when one of us didn't survive it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And I'll be damned if I don't miss it in some ways. And
would never want it back again in others. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was truly complicated.<o:p></o:p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0847C3RC6+5235.0704179 -131.18990475.4474174929656911 -166.3461547 64.6934183070343 -96.0336547tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-62063518153372609392022-07-30T13:24:00.015-05:002022-07-30T13:34:20.818-05:00Fairy Tale: The Rain<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Story Prompt:</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLuqDZT5gssE1mbpaGCXZDeWSYVUTUsLGfSIMs_ROW2Za41RHjzMWIT5TqqchnXjvwPgn3Eo3-l2fruGhO9gz8IUgIx5RoQu5hiefVF4WTD30kTi7Kd3Itckwxln8mWqBxG3KFf5YJPcRx1swV5MiXHfiqW2SSUVKRbp4w2LZA7YwGo-YYPzLMjdY/s5655/rainstock.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3181" data-original-width="5655" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLuqDZT5gssE1mbpaGCXZDeWSYVUTUsLGfSIMs_ROW2Za41RHjzMWIT5TqqchnXjvwPgn3Eo3-l2fruGhO9gz8IUgIx5RoQu5hiefVF4WTD30kTi7Kd3Itckwxln8mWqBxG3KFf5YJPcRx1swV5MiXHfiqW2SSUVKRbp4w2LZA7YwGo-YYPzLMjdY/w640-h360/rainstock.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><span face="adobe-clean, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Image credit: </span><a class="blue science-text js-contributor-link" data-ingest-clicktype="details-contributor-link" href="https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/204918064/grandfailure?load_type=author&prev_url=detail" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">grandfailure</a><span face="adobe-clean, Helvetica, sans-serif">, licensed via Adobe Stock. Do not copy. </span></span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal">When the rain started, the world was dry and hot. The weary
plants surged upward at first, grateful, basking in the needed moisture. They
turned green, smelled clean. Children splashed in the puddles happy, kicked
water on their parents, who laughed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But the sprinkly storms turned heavy. The heat became moist,
like a laundry room. The rain no longer refreshed anyone; people stopped
splashing playfully in puddles and instead, began to fill sandbags with mucky
brown grit. The grit got into their teeth, their eyes, stained their clothing
and began to fill everything. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After a while, the domesticated flowers drooped from
too much water. Their leaves grew yellow, then brown at the edges, then,
black and moldy, and finally, turned to mush.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It kept raining.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Vines dormant since the age of dinosaurs came out of hiding
and started to grow again. Tiny green shoots, at first, but then they covered
outbuildings, eclipsing the formerly square shapes, then the vines crept into
the yards, the parking lots. Everywhere. Nothing had sharp edges anymore-- it
was all soft, green, masses of tendrils. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The tendrils grabbed at children's ankles as they ran past,
on their way through the downpour into the rapidly growing blurry in the landscape houses. The summer sun was never bright-- everything was dim, dark. Skies forgot how to be blue. </p><p class="MsoNormal">These old/new vines had beautiful, giant flowers that smelled heavenly to the small
birds and insects-- who hovered near until they were were snapped up, eaten by
the flowers, slowly digested in slimey juices. The lucky survivors learned to stay away,
hungry bellies empty. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still, it rained.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">People forgot what lawnmowers looked like, left them to rust
in the yards. The gasoliney smelling machines began to look like old art
projects as the vines covered them, turned them into topiary of an ancient
world. New indoor lives were found, forgetting the heat of summer, the heat of
lemonade and ice cream and beaches and dry sand that sticks to the backs of
legs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The rain did not stop.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It dribbled. Drizzled. Poured. Torrents came down and then
became gushers. Ditches filled up, overflowed. Sidewalks became small rivers.
Doghouses floated away, some with the dogs, forgotten, perched on top of them,
howling.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">New words were invented for the types of rain, 100 different
ways to describe texture, smell, density of water. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And the water and green kept flowing, flowing, flowing,
until people forgot the words for "dry" or "dusty" and even
"desert." Forgot those places ever existed. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">***************************<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Note: in this summer's outrageous heat, this feels like
wishful thinking a bit, even with the slightly apocalyptic nature.....<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-52594383654750805262022-06-09T08:53:00.018-05:002023-11-09T15:58:21.247-06:00Carry Your Hearts: Erin & Mandi's wedding speech<p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">Good evening! I’m Kim, Erin’s exceptionally awesome aunt, and I’m here to tell you all of his deepest, darkest secrets. </p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">No, I’m just kidding about the dark secrets part… the rest is true obviously. </p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">Erin & Mandi, Congratulations on finding each other. That’s a much harder thing to do than most people realize. In all of the world, so many things had to go right for you to meet, for that first date to go well, for the world to keep cooperating up ‘til now. You did it! </p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">As you may know, Erin & I lost his mom & his sister in 2020/21 and that wasn’t easy. I can say with all my heart that Judy and Sara would both be so proud of you and how you’ve handled things in the last couple of years. They would also both offer to fight anyone who stood in your way, and if you ever met either of them, you would know that would have been pay per view worthy. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinjUSXbKpZO9w0dQc4QHUqxWQQZpRFh_bs4MYx3A3JnU0DHkdQixvnRXNyvGYeCNFPTelgWhsGdL9NGf92_lNPk0uWUtAdugO2fD4wte1t4cduyRZ6f37oA7ekG_6vpOvHbrqdzqqPIxJZLo6De36JQdgPyrIFlLy6bniJSC99I1XAL1Y4BNmm92k/s2048/judyy_sara.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinjUSXbKpZO9w0dQc4QHUqxWQQZpRFh_bs4MYx3A3JnU0DHkdQixvnRXNyvGYeCNFPTelgWhsGdL9NGf92_lNPk0uWUtAdugO2fD4wte1t4cduyRZ6f37oA7ekG_6vpOvHbrqdzqqPIxJZLo6De36JQdgPyrIFlLy6bniJSC99I1XAL1Y4BNmm92k/s320/judyy_sara.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A photo I took of the memorial table with the shot of tequila I bought for my missing family members. <br />Judy & Sara, y'all should have been at my table making snarky comments, dammit. </span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">Your life has been pretty tough in a lot of ways but you’ve persevered and I am as proud as I can be of you—getting the good job, (taking my and your Uncle’s helpful advice that you should definitely take the leap of faith and step out of your comfort zone.) Not messing up too badly with the lovely bride you’re standing next to now. Again—you did it! </p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">I knew as soon as I met Mandy that we’d be here today. I could just see <i>that look</i>—you know the look. I’ll tell you a quick embarrassing story: your Uncle Andrew & I have been married almost 30 years now, but you were there from the start. When I first met Andrew and I was trying to play it cool, we took you and your sister roller skating. You were in the back seat and after a lot of giggling, you asked him “Are you gonna be my new dad” and Sara poked you and said “No silly, he would be our UNCLE” and I tried to melt into the seat. I didn’t want him to think I had set you up to ask that question but at the same time,<i> it was pretty good question I also wanted to hear him answer.</i> </p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">Now I’m going to give you an important piece of advice, and I’m standing in for all of those family members up there who would be hanging out at the back at the open bar if they were here. </p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">Someday you will be able to stand up at one of YOUR younger relatives’ weddings and tell them you’ve been married three decades if you take my advice: Pick the one trait in each other that you dislike the most. <i>(Mandi—it’s probably something to do with his tendency to lounge around shirtless, hair unbrushed, watching the Cowboys lose...And I know Mandi doesn’t have any flaws so you’re obviously going to have to make those up…. )</i></p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">But still, take that flaw and decide to love it. This thing they do (like chewing too loud or watching terrible Netflix shows and bingeing on nacho cheese popcorn or whatever) this thing makes them the person you love. They would be someone else without that… this one trick will guarantee you will stay happy. You still might want to smack them, but you will still, at the end of that day, love them and find joy in that one annoying trait. And it’s not always easy, and some days the hard stuff will feel much bigger than the good stuff. But it’s always going to swing back to the good, as long as you can remember this feeling of happiness you are feeling right now. Store this in your heart and pull it out whenever you need to, and that is what will make this all work, even when it doesn’t feel like it possibly can. Close your eyes and time travel back to right now, and trust your heart. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp9MEtavQQXcCp89RhJpQ9MQa1pb90tEdqX330l35hIyDScrNmZPE4uOMbRSfCCwEFhjlaowqNITLXRMNroaJ_n6N6N5IRvuru3wk-8oyUFUO7IVLvsr8_WAGTVPsV7vHuKpUpAXe3Qgi6cMC01Y9hYmM9jfRWTtZuohMntkRyX7beXGgJFe5SwGg/s2048/Mandi_erin.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp9MEtavQQXcCp89RhJpQ9MQa1pb90tEdqX330l35hIyDScrNmZPE4uOMbRSfCCwEFhjlaowqNITLXRMNroaJ_n6N6N5IRvuru3wk-8oyUFUO7IVLvsr8_WAGTVPsV7vHuKpUpAXe3Qgi6cMC01Y9hYmM9jfRWTtZuohMntkRyX7beXGgJFe5SwGg/w427-h640/Mandi_erin.jpg" width="427" /></i></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>My favorite from the photos Mandi has uploaded so far. I stole it and I'm not sorry. THIS is the moment I mean. <br />THIS ONE RIGHT HERE. </i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">So speaking of storing things in your heart, this is the part of the speech where you get the “Aunt is a literature teacher” poetry, and at the end of this short verse, I’ll raise my glass and toast you both. This is a poem that wraps up all of my brilliant advice: </p><p 0in="" 11pt="" 15.6933px="" 8pt="" calibri="" class="MsoNormal" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" margin:="" sans-serif="">Erin, Mandy: congratulations, you did it! </p><div><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; text-indent: 0in;">a poem that wraps up all of my brilliant advice:</a></div><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.6933px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 22.8267px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdD6YU3kptT2TrBQ9xmP9yCq1Yel5BjYIBtpo64x4Pyhn0_FHnOZS95bE4U2ibSNjYkyZ9Drd2Mk4rYzPYeesrXL96V4nrcFsewdmR5S_PqUWuFHHootFAzr4FTPp5mLfAuznLuFNK9DyeIAfVAZHfM6FWn6nS8fevZRu4mWDUMpB7MeYCdy-b-NQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="693" data-original-width="691" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdD6YU3kptT2TrBQ9xmP9yCq1Yel5BjYIBtpo64x4Pyhn0_FHnOZS95bE4U2ibSNjYkyZ9Drd2Mk4rYzPYeesrXL96V4nrcFsewdmR5S_PqUWuFHHootFAzr4FTPp5mLfAuznLuFNK9DyeIAfVAZHfM6FWn6nS8fevZRu4mWDUMpB7MeYCdy-b-NQ=w398-h400" width="398" /></a><span style="font-size: 16pt; text-indent: 0in;"> </span></div><p></p><p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-48149085653211478682022-05-27T12:54:00.004-05:002022-05-27T13:05:12.089-05:00Done for now<p>I posted about this on the "social media platform which will not be named" and that might be why you showed up here. But I've been considering this for a long time. </p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The policies of that particular media platform have promoted
negativity, probably led to the election of the former politician who will not
be named, and it has generally have turned into this thing where I rarely see many people I
<i>want</i> to talk to or interact with it but I do see a lot of ads from Chinese
companies that show up overnight, are gone the next day, and try to sell me junk. They definitely
promote articles and stories that make the world a more negative place more
often than not. I have cultivated a friend list that has been positive for
multiple years and tried really hard to take out the negative voices but I have
seen way too much that has made me sad, angry, and I honestly think that
because they make more money when you are more riled up they are trying to make
us sad and angry. I know there are legitimate things to be sad about but social media platform that rhymes with space crook just isn't the only game. It has been too long with too many users. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Back in the day before the robot man came up with his idea to
rate hot chicks which turned into what we use for the last 10 years to
socialize, we used blogs and blog comment threads to communicate. We also used bulletin boards. Those bulletin boards didn't explicitly try to sell things to
us. To be honest I think I've developed a bit of a shopping addiction in the
last two years since the lock down put us all at home so much. I've been
working on it but this social media platform doesn't help. I find myself with
my face in my phone way too often, focusing on things that aren't enlightening. I had
already deleted the one with the bird after a certain billionaire decided to
turn it into his platform and unban someone who I don't think should be
unbanned. </p><p class="MsoNormal">And that actually made me really happy. </p><p class="MsoNormal">I also already feel a weight
having lifted off of my chest from the simple act of deleting the app from my
phone. I used to never have it on my phone until I had a job that gave me a
laptop and I didn't want to be on social media on the work computer. Then I
guess I got used to it being on my phone. It's gone now. I haven't officially
deleted the account which I know is never really gone anyway. I'm going to
leave it there for a while. See what happens. At a minimum I have to download
all the photos that I have saved there. I don't want to lose those. But... I
think there's entirely too much power given to this corporate media outlet that
is unchecked and seriously, it's weird how much control the app seems to have over so many things. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are other media outlets; I may set up a discord server
and let y'all know how to chat with me there. That's how my kid communicates
with her friends. I'm gonna look into that. I may also find a bulletin board
somewhere and go totally old school. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
for now if you need a daily me fix come here to this blog and see what I've
been up to. I wonder if I can remember my Myspace platform password? Tom would
never do this to us.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbJugPWMYwhPG9vO88DZtgN1GwBS2bu1rmXh60XysyHCJATu-9CZFkvvgQcXdOavKdWvxcTkZXoT2YM4WOFamZt2FR4cUq27dqX1IjtdYGmkpppBAXNQj90FKPmJQd7Gs9xdsnMoExZXmoo1MyhaXtd8wVY75L0yJgjIEH0IiHTV0nPluN1SH5uMw/s498/tbt-myspace.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="498" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbJugPWMYwhPG9vO88DZtgN1GwBS2bu1rmXh60XysyHCJATu-9CZFkvvgQcXdOavKdWvxcTkZXoT2YM4WOFamZt2FR4cUq27dqX1IjtdYGmkpppBAXNQj90FKPmJQd7Gs9xdsnMoExZXmoo1MyhaXtd8wVY75L0yJgjIEH0IiHTV0nPluN1SH5uMw/s320/tbt-myspace.gif" width="320" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>In the meantime, email me at <a href="mailto:drkimwells@gmail.com">drkimwells@gmail.com</a> if you really wanna share that cat pun or some other newsworthy meme. </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><3 me.</p><p class="MsoNormal">edit: Okay, so I already set up a discord server. If you wanna join, it's at <a href="https://discord.gg/jGKaGVNb">https://discord.gg/jGKaGVNb</a> </p><p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-41126122103044923682022-05-24T22:32:00.007-05:002022-05-24T22:36:04.637-05:00Hide. Run. Fight. <div>Hide. Run. Fight. </div><div><br />At first, they would giggle,</div><div>the lesson plan was over,</div><div>the lights were out, and</div><div>they were under the desk in a </div><div>safe </div><div>place. </div><div><br /></div><div>It was kinda fun to these 14 year olds.</div><div>I don't really know when it changed.</div><div><br /></div><div>When we announced the drill,</div><div>they would swoop under the desk in the cool, dark, locked room,</div><div>and no noise would come from them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Except hushed whispers. </div><div>They knew. They knew they had to learn to be quiet. </div><div>I used to struggle with the keys to my room. </div><div>Had to go into the hall to lock the door. And it wouldn't</div><div>always</div><div>latch. </div><div><br /></div><div>Once, admin had us read a "hide/run/fight" scenario to the kids. </div><div>The thirteen year olds I had just taught</div><div><i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. </div><div>I cried the entire time and then pretended</div><div>it was just allergies</div><div>and then we discussed comma splices. </div><div>Hide. Run. Fight. </div><div><br />Have you ever sat in the dark</div><div>pretending to pretend</div><div>but imagining it being real?</div><div><br />Have you ever imagined it BEING REAL? </div><div><br />Once, the school where I taught had a bullet found. </div><div>In the hallway. </div><div>It was probably a visitor, probably fell out of a pocket. </div><div>We went on lockdown for hours. </div><div>Searched backpacks. </div><div><br />A week later, in a fire drill, a student hit the deck</div><div>when a balloon popped. </div><div>He laughed it off, pretended </div><div>he was making a joke.</div><div>But everyone knew. </div><div><br />Don't tell me you care about life</div><div>when this is still okay. </div><div><br />KAW 2022</div>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-18362853677104441602022-05-24T21:40:00.010-05:002022-05-25T07:35:25.909-05:0014<p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I have this wind chime</p><p>a co-worker gave us when we moved to Louisiana, when my husband</p><p>went to fly bombers there. My husband, <br />who has a father from the town it happened THIS time. </p><p><br /></p><p>The wind chime is a pretty one, expensive, with the dongle (is that what they're called) in the shape of Texas</p><p>blue and red and a bluebonnet and a road runner. </p><p>She said it would remind us of Texas while we were away. It hung in the Magnolia in our front yard, for 8 years. Mostly silent. </p><p>Tonight, on hearing 14 children (so far) plus at least one teacher,</p><p>were murdered with a gun<br />and the governor said it was "incomprehensible" and offered </p><p>thoughts and prayers...</p><p>and "our" senator joined a protest about "replacement theory".........</p><p>...............</p><p>I tried to sound the chime fourteen times. </p><p>The low, deep note. as a tribute, a prayer. </p><p>But every time I tried, the other five tubes echoed. Chimed in. Resonated with the</p><p>loss...</p><p>I tried to stop the echoes in my hands. Clasped them</p><p>in a prayer I no longer (if ever) believe. </p><p>And I thought of all the people</p><p>who would lose someone to that bullet. </p><p>THOSE bullets. </p><p><br />The chimes/echoes/resonance...</p><p>times five.<br />times ten.<br />times all. <br /><br />I remember again,</p><p>that America is a gun. <br /><br />And Texas is a gun, with bacon. <br />This is not meant to be funny; it's never <i>funny</i>. <br />And I remember that ...</p><p>resonance, those irreplicable children who are gone. Forever. Resonating out<br />along the wind chimes. Times five. Ten. Infinity... </p><p>You absolutely know someone who has a hole in their lives because of this. </p><p>It doesn't matter where you are. THIS is not just a <i>here </i>problem. </p><p>Six degrees of separation does not equal the second amendment written back to when bullets fired .....maybe..... every 2 rounds a minute. </p><p>How many minutes could those resonances have taken back? <br />How many moms, dads, sisters, brothers,<br />who have hidden many times under desks in a dark room, only <br />to go on to take their Algebra test in the next class period, the last test<br />put aside, for now. <br />How many of them would wish<br />for those minutes back? </p><p>How many are still waiting? </p><p>My answer, tonight, is too many. </p><p>TOO many. </p><p>What's on my mind is change. </p><p><br /></p><p>KAW, 2022.</p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-61104206272975289442022-05-16T08:37:00.004-05:002022-05-16T08:38:21.093-05:00What I did this Spring....<p>This past Spring Semester, I taught a British Lit II class of dual enrollment high school students. I know what you're thinking "British Lit? Wait... don't you do American Lit?" (If you weren't thinking that it's okay; who even knows the distinction outside of my own head?) </p><p>OMG I really adored this class. It reminded me of how much I love the literature that lured me into the life of teaching and studying literature in the first place. I guess I had forgotten over the years that fascination with the Literature anthology that would have me skimming through the parts the teacher never assigned, discovering the works of <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/t-s-eliot">T.S. Eliot</a>, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/e-e-cummings">e.e. cummings</a> (I know-- American, but there's a whole Paris thing in there too). <a href="https://dorothyparker.com/">Dorothy Parker</a>, <a href="http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html">W.H. Auden.</a> I thought about how I tried to take flowers to <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/aphra-behn">Aphra Behn's</a> grave back in 2002 at Westminster Abbey the way <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMLkce_BLg">Virginia Woolf </a>told me all women writers should do only to be flummoxed by the fact that there weren't ANY of the ubiquitous everywhere else in London flower stands near the church. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DcMLkce_BLg" width="320" youtube-src-id="DcMLkce_BLg"></iframe></div><p>And I had this small group of young women who sat in the far right corner of the classroom whose faces lit up every time I talked about a woman writer, or the suffragettes, or Shakespeare's sister. It was, according to several of them in their notes about the semester, the first time many of them had ever been taught literature of <i>people who look like them</i> in an English class. And I had a comment from several of the boys that they had never had anything that spoke to them in a way that made them want to read more on their own outside of class before (this one student enthusiastically wrote about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_out_of_Many_(V.S._Naipaul)">V.S. Naipaul story</a> we read). And another young man wrote about how he'd never thought of what it took to be a writer before, and how he wondered if he could do that too. Since many of these students at this school are first-generation college students, it means SO MUCH to me to be able to help them understand more about their own paths to future success. </p><p>And one of the young women wrote an incredible poem that I encouraged her to submit to poetry contests because it honestly blew me away. The chance to be THAT MENTOR just gives me absolute chills. </p><p>The students were incredibly sweet to me and gushed about how fun and interesting the class was. I really had the best experience with them and can't wait to get to teach this content again in the future. And maybe I'll get to teach Brit Lit I (and maybe American Lit too!) soon. I love teaching writing. I've been doing it for 20+ years. But getting to teach about <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock">Prufrock </a>and giving the students a peach (gummy heart) before their final exams and daring them to "disturb the universe" was what I LIVE FOR. </p><p>Here's hoping for future chances to do more of the same. Fingers way crossed. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w3qPMe_cCJk" width="320" youtube-src-id="w3qPMe_cCJk"></iframe></div>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-52942959803965104622022-05-09T17:22:00.002-05:002022-05-09T17:22:50.586-05:00A Song of Red Threads and Pens<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCwtx7NJTctNxSnQzEkLVyWzJZ4WOaI-GQLABPIBLYD2wrhz7ECrZcWmoyLkuE7Ejrz_MQEHlV3VrAcm50RR43_YxsHU9PsFf1XNE83DLxPnyXCB_oZVMFdP_iC8LAr10MXjRT4MS-SNIBqF1HQ_zOViaibX9nBL4ZJ6-aYGc3KcWLbJ0i_cyoMlw/s722/red_thread.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="722" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCwtx7NJTctNxSnQzEkLVyWzJZ4WOaI-GQLABPIBLYD2wrhz7ECrZcWmoyLkuE7Ejrz_MQEHlV3VrAcm50RR43_YxsHU9PsFf1XNE83DLxPnyXCB_oZVMFdP_iC8LAr10MXjRT4MS-SNIBqF1HQ_zOViaibX9nBL4ZJ6-aYGc3KcWLbJ0i_cyoMlw/s320/red_thread.jpg" width="320" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br />A Song of Red Threads and Pens<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>(<a href="https://poets.org/poem/menopause">for and inspired by Prudence)</a><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The eternal battle of the English teacher is that<br />
we balance between other people’s writing and our own. <br />
This is a precarious place to perform that razzle-dazzle: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A comma splice here, a poorly cited quotation there. <br />
We raise the MLA handbook over our heads, a holy canon.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Red ink spills across our middle fingers where the callus just
above the top-<br />
knuckle <br />
where blue blobs of ink once demonstrated our own student days <br />
becomes hard and swollen<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with
corrections (what did you think I was gonna write?) <br />
<br />
We will <i>somehow</i> teach our students to write. <br />
Teach them to care. Teach them what a comma splice even IS --<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and then they will come to our
office hours and tell us <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t really like English class.”
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s funny how often I put my head down on my desk. <br />
Just for a moment. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We became teachers of literature and writing because we love<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the caught breath, the shock of the
perfect metaphor,<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the look on Prufrock’s face when the
mermaids stop singing. <br />
Again. Always.<br />
<br />
And now we make PowerPoints for bored teenagers who would rather <br />
be watching TikTok.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We wanted to roll around in poetry, swallow vivid imagery,
smell the bee loud glade. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hold up the honey and say “see? THIS is a poem.” <br />
But there are these very long meetings we attend, instead. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A friend of mine from graduate school wrote a poem about
menopause and<br />
screaming aloud and <i>I</i> wanted to write a song about <i>her</i><br />
that included a verse about a woman who has just <br />
pulled off <br />
a necklace of free-floating black<br />
pearls (of wisdom) to scream, open throated, while she fills her hands with
other people’s writing and yells<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the (chorus) of<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AAAAHHHHH<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AAAAHHHHH<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AAAAHHHHH<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">!!!!!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am pulled up out of my corrections. No longer the teacher.
<br />
I remember this friend in graduate school (when we were both still too young to
think about things like<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">hot flashes. unbalanced thyroids. silver
plated roots and the saltandpepper that makes <br />
men <br />
distinguished and woman poets scream a chorus AAAAHHHHgain.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She had injured her leg doing a cheerleading move from high
school; <br />
we smiled, not very far <br />
from then… <br />
ourselves. Contemplated<br />
Allen Ginsberg howling.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She was ok. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">We didn’t know then that during
menopause, <br />
a few calcium supplements could help heal that leg right up. <br />
We were decades away from when <br />
your Apple Watch would alert “it looks like you’ve had a hard fall, are you ok?”<br />
You can click a button that says “I fell; but I’m ok.” <br />
The ambulance will <i>not</i> arrive.<br />
The doctor will not <i>tsk</i> and fill out “noncompliant” on your chart. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Once, walking into my tile bathroom, I had a hard fall.
There was water where there <br />
shouldn’t have been <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and my feet flew out from under me. <br />
My watch stayed silent. Judged me<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as I hobbled up from my deeply bruised knee. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Braced my hands on thick thighs. Panting.<br />
I wondered if the gyroscope and accelerator nestled deep in the expensive watch
wanted to kill me. Perhaps,<br />
tired of my queries, my robot nanny was finally making her freedom play. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In many literary texts, the apple is a symbol of sin,
temptation, the Fall. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>I fell, but I’m ok. <o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As I zoom through rubrics, grading close readings of British
poetry,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">written by students hoping to graduate, hoping to exercise
their own cautious steps towards<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">hard <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>falls.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I visualize generations of women reaching up with our (no
longer) blood-soaked hands,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(or maybe it’s
just red ink)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And yelling <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AAAAHHHH<br />
AAAAHHHH<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AAAAHHHH AAAAHHHH<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Or maybe just clicking “finalize grades” and wandering off
to check their calcium levels. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“Sylvia Plath never had to deal with this shit,” </i>I
think. <i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">SO perhaps this is a good thing?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Menopause. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My own uterus has wandered off, been excised with a sharp
knife. <br />
It was completely hysterical. <br />
My hands, blood-soaked, as I had to lie on the floor while waiting for someone
to come take me to the doctor, take my kids to school for me, spend the night in
a hospital listening to Prince songs on my playlist. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
I’m pretty sure they burned it after it tried to kill me.<br />
But I bought all white clean panties that <i>stayed</i> white. <br />
It was glorious. It IS glory. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I don’t even know if I’m menopausal but I’ve started getting
irrationally<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>ANGRY lately.<br />
My ears and the pale skin behind them grow hot and embarrassed at odd moments. <br />
I joke that it’s reverse puberty. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And then, a long thread of 20 years gone poetry sharing <br />
(in the hallways of a graduate school college)<br />
launches forth, ever unreeling, gossamer. <br />
Patient but not noiseless. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
I scream the chorus and write,<br />
on a day grown too hot,<br />
and then head back to the grade platform to read <br />
“Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes about freely given love,”…<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a student writing my own lecture
back to me. I<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“click here to check for
plagiarism.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I put my head down on my desk. <br />
Just for a moment.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’ve had a hard fall. <br />
But I’m ok. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">KAW, May 2022<o:p></o:p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-61843482201870754602022-04-23T11:41:00.022-05:002022-04-23T13:01:14.126-05:00Revisiting my Youth-- Trailer Park to Ivory Tower<p>I was recently searching the Internet Wayback machine for some of my old writing and in around 2015, my Women Writers website went down the path of Wayback. I honestly just didn't have the spoons or time anymore to keep publishing it, even though I ADORED the work for almost 20 years. <br /><br />But I found this article, and I want it back on a live website somewhere, so here I am reprinting it. Traveling Wayback to 2000. <br /><br />Side note: My mom used to say "I don't know why you make such a big deal about this. We only lived in trailer parks for a few years." For her, those few years felt like a short glitch, for me, they were more than half my life before I had written this essay. </p><p>Dark Academia visual for funsies and aesthetic. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEBEvpdMkSx_aFamrIhBHj-RPsvlYQAKXMpO1AE0drlOfpsxPbonfINgaJMfc84EMPMYH4KElcBw6AEZew9LSq3dgAarzC-KXf2-WYvos1sQrys4swCfMapK-a4-VM98ndfKlFHoth9QVIW2kEaqdnbirOLAwnKXt0XDZEYPuZcSGFq43tvvdc0HU/s844/dark_academia_liscensed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Licensed Adobe image, visual featuring a steampunk style aesthetic, Dark Academia room set. Vintage elements collection. Bust, french press, typewriter, stacks of books and gramophone. Hand written lettering. Antique aesthetic vector illustration. Gothic architecture" border="0" data-original-height="812" data-original-width="844" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEBEvpdMkSx_aFamrIhBHj-RPsvlYQAKXMpO1AE0drlOfpsxPbonfINgaJMfc84EMPMYH4KElcBw6AEZew9LSq3dgAarzC-KXf2-WYvos1sQrys4swCfMapK-a4-VM98ndfKlFHoth9QVIW2kEaqdnbirOLAwnKXt0XDZEYPuZcSGFq43tvvdc0HU/w320-h308/dark_academia_liscensed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>*****************************************************************</p><p>Originally published on the WomenWriters.net academic zine. </p><p><br /></p><p></p><div align="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="mso-cellspacing: 1.2pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 92%px;">
<tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="padding: 0in; width: 50%;" valign="top" width="50%">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kim Wells<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0in; width: 50%;" valign="top" width="50%">
<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">12/15/2000<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td colspan="2" style="padding: 0in;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Introduction: Context &
Apologia</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This paper was written for a
conference at Texas A&M-- because noted autobiography critic Nancy K.
Miller was our keynote speaker (see the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">interview with Dr. Miller</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> [no longer available] published on the site) I thought it important to
organize and participate in panels on autobiography and academic
intersections. I promised a paper on myself-- and after reading a lot of
really great theory, wound up writing something that used the theory mostly
as background for actually <i>practicing </i>autobio- graphical acts
in writing. As a result of this paper, I want to write more about these
issues, and have become increasingly aware of class as an important part of
who I am-- something I was completely oblivious to a few years ago. I am
aware that in publishing the paper on a website, these issues, private
issues, become even more public. My family might see the work and feelings
could be hurt about me putting the private out in a very public forum. But
somehow, though I'm still working out WHY and how I want to do this, I feel
compelled to do so... and since you're here, you're just going to have to go
along for the ride...<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<hr align="left" size="2" width="100%" />
</span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> There
are so many reasons why, although I have started to tell my story many times,
I have often just stopped. Who would care about <i>my</i> life?
What makes me think I'm so special? bell hooks asserts that writing about
"one's personal experience or speaking with simple language" can
build a sort of connection with others who feel "estranged,
alienated" (qtd in Lanza 60). So my story-telling urges are legitimized
by helping others in academia, in my classroom, know that they are not alone?
This is, perhaps, a cop out. Maybe I'm just a braggart-- arrogantly telling
people how bad<i> I</i> had it so that they can admire <i>me.</i> I
know that often, when I tell other academics about my life, its extreme
poverty, they say "Oh, we were really poor too," wanting membership
to the club, entrance into a group of people who often hide their own past,
who you can no longer mark with visible signs of difference. I often doubt
that their poverty was as extreme-- as I said, this is arrogance, but also a
feeling of pride in something that I wonder why any reasonable person would
feel proud of. In its simplest form, my life becomes an anecdote: "Ever
hear the one about the girl who was so poor she lived in the back of
honky-tonk and eventually became a college professor?" For the longest
time I didn't tell anyone where I came from, let them assume I was like
them-- middle class, upper class, whatever class I was with I pretended to
be-- a class chameleon.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Trailer Park to Ivory Tower</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Definition. <i>Self</i> Definition.
Is the autobiographical impulse one which attempts to resist the inscription
of self by the outside world-- to deny selves we might appear to be but which
we would not choose to be? Perhaps the trend to combine feminist theory with
the autobiographical is a way of trying to avoid charges of essentialism-- a
reasoning that "Women's" experience has been one thing, but
"MY" experience fits, or fails to fit, that experience in these
ways. . . The numerous declarations towards a feminist- Marxist- white-
black- native- Latina- Asian- (etc) poetics" which dispute other poetics
as less inclusive is necessarily divisive, a way of asserting difference within
grand notions of feminist identity. The autobiographical, finally, is an act
of survival, a voice crying out "I exist, and in these ways, and others
will understand more about themselves through a hearing of my story."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So to begin. In its attempt to define,
the outside world would label us all, beginning with the most obvious,
superficial, generic characteristics:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> I
am female. White. American. <i>Those labels could apply to many.</i> Feminist.
That label narrows it, because many women of my generation choose to disalign
themselves with this-- or they say "feminist, but . . ."
Academic. <i>This last I, as an individual, find strong reasons to
question because to most people, academic = intellectual; privileged;
speaking (sometimes wrongly) for the silenced; middle to upper class.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b><i>I</i></b> am
a class climber, an academic gold-digger, using my brain instead of my body
to advance myself up from the ranks of the lower class (called white trash by
so many). In the academy, I amount to a <i>nouveau riche</i>, recently
arrived within the ivory halls, assuming the mantle of expensive clothes
& jewelry and middle class respectability. I am not comfortable with
casual clothing when I teach or go to class myself because I am still afraid
someone will ask me to prove I belong unless I appear in "nice"
clothes-- I cannot afford to slum it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> I
can be loud-- in the way that women who work in loud places (waitresses,
bartenders, maids, factory workers) all their lives must be. What is the norm
in academia's hallowed "Thinking" spaces (I've been shushed in the
halls by irritated members of the old guard) was weird in the trailer-parks
where the quiet are looked at suspiciously as "too quiet." In the
world where I grew up, a woman who cannot speak for herself will not "rise
above" her humble status, something a lot of them long to do, without
quite knowing how. Because they do not dress well and look like they have any
influence, they will be shunned by sales girls, scoffed at when they complain
to managers, ignored in bank lines until, angry and red-faced, they
"show their class" and become wild women who no one can ignore.
They certainly do not become college professors very often (<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/03/28/the-well-heeled-professoriate-socioeconomic-backgrounds-of-university-faculty/?sh=2012c48c5e22">some statistics say a very small percentage of college graduates with advanced degrees are from lower-class origins</a>).<o:p></o:p></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">As the study above shows: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fcfcfc; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;">"this study strongly suggests those diversification efforts face a major problem: the pipelines to academia are not all equally full or flowing.<b> Socioeconomic background appears to open or clog them to a considerable extent, revealing a major obstacle that will remain if, as the authors claim, “our current definitions of meritocracy within academia implicitly favor individuals with the inherited advantages conferred by wealth and education</b>.” (added to 2022 version, emphasis mine)</span></span></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> So
here is my dilemma: do I continue to "pass" as a middle class
academic feminist? Or do I show my roots? Do I stand up and shout my
difference? In a world where sameness is equated with blandness and both are
identified with oppression, there are certain benefits to showing off (like a
medal of honor) your lack of privilege, your solidarity with the populace.
But in my old world, there were a lot of secrets buried under the
middle-class veneer. <i>If I show you my roots, will you show me yours?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> In
the world where I grew up, any woman who "showed her roots" would
rush out as soon as possible, on her girlfriends advice, to buy a new box of
hair dye (usually blonde; blonde being the color of cool, classy women like
Grace Kelly) to cover up those (trashy, dark) roots, sprouting in a line
along the center of her skull. A woman who showed her roots in my childhood
community was making a spectacle of herself, "Showing her class"--
acting trashy, being sexual, being loud, being drunk, fighting. She might be
letting her bra straps show, or wearing whore-red nail polish instead of a
properly Grace-Kelly-subdued peach, or pearl white. In my case, my difference
from fellow trailer-girls came not from whore-red nail polish but from two
places-- the fact that I was quiet (weird) and that I read books (weirder).
Thus, I aspired, even before I knew I was doing it, to join a group I could
never completely become acclimated to. I did not know I would regret leaving
anything behind. Why would I?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> As
an adult who has found her way up through various means to middle-class
education and a house without wheels, I find that the past I am often ashamed
of also holds for me a strange source of pride. When Tonya Harding and Nancy
Kerrigan squared off years ago over the Olympics, an acquaintance of mine
dismissively said of Harding, "Ah, she's just trailer trash." I
watched the story of those figure skaters obsessively-- I think, in some
ways, the two women represented the battle in my self-- between the
upper-middle class princess that Kerrigan seemed to be and the dark-rooted
bleached blonde girl with bad judgement that Harding was. Harding too was a
climber, and because she did not follow the rules, she was rudely pushed
back. Legally, she was never convicted of any involvement with the scheme--
but the court of public opinion decided that, since she was trashy, she <i>must</i> be
guilty.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> I
do and don't want you to know that I lived in many trailer parks; I, too,
have been dismissed as "just trailer trash;" but that today, you
wouldn't know it to look at me. I suppose it's because all my life I heard
that you can "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"; but who knows,
once you've done it, the work it's taken you to get there? Maybe I want
people to realize that those "trailer trash" folks are people too,
with dreams and plans and, while sometimes poorly executed and a bad idea
they mean just as much to the trailer park residents as they do to middle
class and upper class America. Maybe I just want you to know how hard it was
for me to get what a lot of people take for granted: the right to be here.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Outsider/Insider: Borderlines of
Identity</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> I
never really fit in with the other occupants of the trailer park. In eighth
grade, Sammy, a local heartthrob with blue-green eyes, swollen, pouty lips
and wavy brunette hair, who was 15 years old in and the 5th grade, spoke
these words: "I see you reading at recess. You must be smart."
Sammy was the first boy I ever met who exuded sexuality; he was like a young
James Dean. I am certain that, like Dean, he has come to a bad end since I
last saw him, almost 15 years ago. Weeks after admiring my odd recess
behavior, he beat me up because I broke the cardinal rules of the school bus
and didn't side with him against the bus driver. While I'm dismayed by the
way my mother taught me to cover the black eye with make up, I am also
emboldened by the knowledge that I fought back, covering his back with alley
cat scratches that didn't go away for weeks. His mother convinced my mother
to try and not get him expelled from school; I remember the look on the
Principal's face as I explained, black eye barely hidden with greasy makeup,
that we wanted to "drop charges." He looked puzzled; I had clearly
been abused, why was I standing up for my abuser? "Those trailer park
girls just ask for it, don't they?" he seemed to say. I was glad that he
expelled Sammy anyway, but had to pretend sorrow because, as the son of our
landlord, the boy who beat me up still had power over me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4krEDGvkhU743aQZtUwmVCbHghJs8y7mJ1h1Uv7GZR5B9Lfud91bh0Tpsr7FRV2Qr4jgORkDxrvbRjwP5L55qtU-_TcsP6Inn00tqW1cHDRBfySwmog2Lz4EQpMwM0zMEwHobigHAvfK9teNvmxbPXao-d0FUvNarBWzmRRrE6ncRWc_0DTY4OdE/s1198/me_13.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1198" data-original-width="828" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4krEDGvkhU743aQZtUwmVCbHghJs8y7mJ1h1Uv7GZR5B9Lfud91bh0Tpsr7FRV2Qr4jgORkDxrvbRjwP5L55qtU-_TcsP6Inn00tqW1cHDRBfySwmog2Lz4EQpMwM0zMEwHobigHAvfK9teNvmxbPXao-d0FUvNarBWzmRRrE6ncRWc_0DTY4OdE/w221-h320/me_13.jpg" title="Me, about the age of above incident.... maybe 13 years old? OH I loved that sweater.... it was so classy." width="221" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These are two parts of myself: the
princess-in-training and the girl just waiting for a bad dye-job and a
waitress position.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The
downward spiral from what was a relatively "normal" middle-class
childhood for my two older sisters (camp, girl scouts, family vacations in
the station wagon) began when I was about three. There are only short mental
snapshots that I really remember about the time before my father dropped off
the radar, and my mother was plunged, (<a href="https://sasforwomen.com/what-divorce-does-to-a-woman/">as the statistics tell us) down in income about 75%.</a> My memories of that "middle-class" world consist
of brief moments-- watching my father bake and ice a rabbit-shaped cake with
coconut, fishing/camping, lying on my stomach in the Army-Navy surplus store
we owned for a while, seeing my cat get run over by a speeding car while
waiting for the bus from Sunday school, and the hysterical tears that
followed. These are probably memories that compare with any other kid who
grew up in a smallish, suburban, late 20th century family. But another memory
stands out, and though I did not know it at the time, it was significant. My
father drove me to a house, (I thought it was a restaurant because for some
reason there was a neon sign) where a dark-haired plump lady served me
lasagna and a jelly roll. When I told my mother about where we had gone, her
lips thinned into a line of disapproval and anger (they were already narrow
with smoking and poorly fitting dentures, which she was supposed to get
replaced but which she wound up keeping for another 15 years; which made her
look old at 35; which made her face sour and lined, even when she was happy).
She said, "He took you there?" "There" was the home of
her former best-friend, the woman my father was about to leave the family
for. Apparently my mother already knew about the affair; apparently my father
was ending any pretense of secrecy, about to "jump ship" for a life
where child-support and parenthood consisted in taking care of someone else's
children. I have a photo of our family from this time period and a few years
ago, I was shocked that I had finally come to resemble my mother. For so many
years, I only saw the sunken lips, the tight eyes-- and they did not compare
to my youthful, wrinkle-free gaze. But now, I see the beauty beneath the
stress, and I see how close we actually are. My mother was just, as a
boyfriend of hers used to say, "rode hard and put away wet."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> For
a while after the separation, my mother managed to hold our lives together--
she struggled to pay the mortgage on a home with three bedrooms and hard wood
floors in a tree-lined neighborhood, where the mailman came in for lemonade.
She worked double shifts at the local hospital and attended night school to
become an RN. Mere months before completing the program and becoming a Nurse,
after collapsing with exhaustion on the job, she was ordered by her
supervising doctor to either "keep working or keep attending school, but
she had to quit one of them." He would not allow her to do both because,
he said, "It would kill her." How could he know that his sentence
would cause, instead, a million smaller deaths by poverty? The system was set
up for women who were working nights but who did not "HAVE" to
work, who had someone else to pay the bills. In 1974 Kentucky, there was
barely a word for "single-mom," and no programs to help a woman who
wanted to work, to take care of her kids, but who had narrowing options. The
doctor disapproved of my mother's position, blamed her for the divorce and
wanted to know why she didn't <i>make</i> my father help out. As a
nurse-in-training, she could not keep working at the hospital, though,
without also attending school, and she needed what income my father was not
paying in child support to feed her daughters (programs that enforce payment
by dead-beat dads did not come until I was well past 15). She quit the
fairly-decent paying job at the hospital, as well as school, to become a
bartender at the yacht club and brought home a bag of kittens someone
(intending to drown them in the lake) had tossed from a speeding car. They
were too young, not yet weaned, and sucked hungrily at any appendage they
could find (ears, fingers, neck). We named them "Starsky, Hutch and
Baretta" after TV cops who were popular at the time. They remind me now
in retrospect, of myself and my sisters, weaned too early into a world ready
to drown us, rescued by my mother, who was barely keeping above water
herself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It Must Run in the Family</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> My
mom had fallen hard; from a middle-class life to a place where she was forced
to live with men who beat her to keep her youngest child fed, a place where
she would agree to let her other teenaged daughters drop out of high school
because they wanted to get married. My grandparents had been modestly
middle-class, married in 1927, living in a nice house in suburban Illinois. I
have a photo of my mother posing coyly in front of a new car, leg out
coquettishly, when she was confirmed in the Lutheran church. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF4uuCYdCqKy2t4m6L9fYBaCyVIjl-ileB1kAR4zmMz8jUKk_ikcy9oSWmWDwHXKDhdZTchvKg1vF6W6wkAR3fdfwQBL7mxXFZdYMFuHwRnr5YTn-JNMZ9qU7D8M9ajDOAJE9T57c5kMMwrRIOkGMrO7mu-voLH5hHPQWb-yGeRb7Hv_kIZaZukew/s828/mom_15.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="828" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF4uuCYdCqKy2t4m6L9fYBaCyVIjl-ileB1kAR4zmMz8jUKk_ikcy9oSWmWDwHXKDhdZTchvKg1vF6W6wkAR3fdfwQBL7mxXFZdYMFuHwRnr5YTn-JNMZ9qU7D8M9ajDOAJE9T57c5kMMwrRIOkGMrO7mu-voLH5hHPQWb-yGeRb7Hv_kIZaZukew/w320-h250/mom_15.jpg" title="Look at that coat! I think she was about 15... about the same age as me above...." width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But my
grandfather died young from cancer (back then, it was a shameful disease;
family members whispered it sotto voce, "<i>he has cancer</i>," the
way some people say "AIDS" today). My grandmother worked for the
telephone company, and in the 1950's , when the ideal was the nuclear family
with mom in heels and a pretty apron, my mother was a "latchkey
kid." After my grandfather died, my mother, then about 13, used to have
nightmares where a large, winged creature took him away while she stood on a
cliff and screamed. Did this disaster contribute to the later depressive
fugues that would be a large part of what drove my father away and plunged us
into poverty? Was her fall from middle class pre-ordained by some angry
"class" god who felt my grandparents reached too far from their own
lower class origins?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">BOHO Blood</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> We
moved to Mississippi because, in the early 1970's, the news about the new
"Gold Coast" and the tourist industry growing there drew my mother
like a moth to a candle flame. I use this stereotyped simile because it
really is the best image I can summon up for how my mother's (and
consequently, my) life was to go from here. I remember the zealous hope on
her face when she said how much money bartenders were making in the hotels
and restaurants there. I don't know who gave her this information, but the
propaganda (the scholar in me now knows from reading history) was everywhere.
A large migration of low-wage workers had begun to move back from the North to the
South-- people in search of better wages and less winter snow. My sister, her
much older boyfriend, and I, drove down first in his beat-up old blue
Cadillac. Once we got there, we lived in the first trailer park I had ever
even seen. I was afraid to go to sleep in my room because the ghost of a
small, black cat used to jump on my bed at night and suckle my ears and neck.
(I don't know if it was the memory of those three kittens we had left behind
or some sort of recurring dream. My memory insists it was a <i>real</i> ghost
in my room). I feigned sleep on the living room floor to avoid being put in
bed; it did not work and I suffered a nightly torment, lying under my covers,
waiting to feel phantom paws circling my head. I knew I couldn't tell my
sister because she wouldn't believe me. At the same time, I had several
dreams where my mother lay in bed, in the back room of our trailer, while
flames engulfed the building and I, with a garden hose too short to reach,
screamed for her to wake up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I'm going to interrupt my
narrative to comment on the process of writing this autobiographical sketch.
There are two sides of my persona at war as I write; I am both a small-poor
girl afraid and too proud to tell, and the adult scholar she has become, who
wants to discuss the class issues and the life of a child who, although
raised in poverty, has climbed a ladder towards socio-economic success that
few of her childhood peers traversed.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <i>But
as the child of a very poor family, I cringe: we don't talk about the things
that happen at home. Yes, for four weeks straight we ate nothing but drop
biscuits and thin soup made from stolen bags of instant mashed potato that my
mother stuffed under her shirt because she had lost her job when she got a
kidney infection and couldn't work, but still didn't qualify for food stamps.
I cringe because as a kid, when, and if, I inadvertently broadcast these
every day facts of my life, severe consequences followed (a social worker
blinking with very big-eyes at my mother as I, pretending to sleep, lay on
the floor; later another social worker asking my mother to explain my
frequent absences from school, along with statements I had made which clued
my normally clueless teachers in to exactly how poor we were). It feels
self-indulgent, it feels like complaining, to tell this story. At the same
time, I read autobiographical scholars and know that their theorizing about
their lives has taught me something, made me feel that "click" of
self-recognition and consciousness-raising-- a place to belong that I hope to
show to others.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As a scholar who has been trained
in coherent narrative and the importance of "EVERY" perspective,
I <b>want</b> to analyze who I am because it might help others
understand the students like myself who show up in their classes. I hope it
will stop people from assuming that because someone shares their white skin,
they also grew up sharing white privilege. I want people to not lump me in
with others who I (sometimes incorrectly) assume had an easier time of it, as
a professor once did, when, discussing the poor in America, he said
"let's face it, we're all middle class here." (I was the only one
who argued with him about this blanket statement but others later told me
they, too, were alienated by his assumption of shared privilege and
prosperity, but too embarrassed to say otherwise). So now I argue for those
who can't, no longer the "too quiet" girl who reads too much, I
show my trashy roots and get loud, for others. This war must be considered a
part of my intentions to make some sort of argument and theory. How can I
summarize the ups and downs of an entire lifetime into 12 pages of
double-spaced, smoothly logical discourse with a thesis statement and
conclusion, and a point, an argument to be made? I have promised to do so--
and I plug away, thinking that perhaps somewhere an argument exists to be
made.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> So
here my narrative jumps several years to a trip to Louisiana. My mother and
her current boyfriend, who looked a lot like Abe Lincoln and could sleep with
his eyes open (a trick he learned in prison), for some reason unknown to me
went for a weekend jaunt to Delcambre, Louisiana. While we were there, the
driver of the expedition got angry and drove off, taking my mother's purse
with him. We were stranded, with no money in a very tiny, very poor,
shrimping town. Somewhere my mother had met a woman who owned a local bar--
and she offered us a place to stay and my mother a job as a bartender. The
bar, which was a large, lime-green, gay disco on the edge of a largely
Catholic town, had a room in the back that was a living space-- bedroom,
bathroom, kitchen, corrugated tin walls and roof, and the nightly throb of
disco and rows of eerily glowing pickled eggs and pigs feet, stored on a long
shelf in the back, by my thin cot-bed. The apartment where we lived in
Mississippi-- along with my collection of teddy bears, my clothes, the bike
bought with the 25 dollar check my grandmother sent for my birthday-- had
been repossessed for nonpayment of rent while we were stranded in La. My
sisters lived with their respective love interests (the oldest was newly
married and the other was attending Job Corps). I think that my mother was
ashamed to call my grandmother for <i>another</i> cash-draft which
could have gotten us a bus ticket back to Mississippi, and anyway, what did
we have to go back to? Maybe Grandma didn't have it; although I imagine she
would have found a way to get something to us if she'd known. My father was
remarried to a wealthy woman. We "made do" in Louisiana-- I
enrolled in school, where students initially impressed with how fast I could
write my name in cursive, soon began to hate me for being poorer than they
were, and for picking up the school bus in front of what they knew was the
town's only gay bar. I wore clothes donated by the bar-owner's sister (too
big for me and out of style, but all I had). Funnily enough, despite all the
things wrong with this picture, (no food, no money, living in the back of a
bar and despised by my peers) this is a bright spot in my life-- my mother
met and made friends with several drag queens, who used to bring me
coca-colas loaded with maraschino cherries and laugh when I didn't recognize
them as a large-breasted blond woman in a black velvet pant suit. I also,
prompted by my mother's love of books, discovered the public library.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> This
part of my life has been well-mined in my poetry, and fiction. I tell people
who are all agog with 70's retro nostalgia that I knew how to do the YMCA
back when <i>they</i> were still playing with Barbie and eating
fish sticks for dinner. When I tell someone about this time of my life, they
usually laugh admiringly-- this stigma of childhood has become cool, today. I
don't think anyone outside my family but my husband, though, knows how bad it
became, how, for about a month, <i>in January</i>, we lived in an
unheated 10x10 ft boat instead of the back room of the bar because the woman
who owned the bar was angry with my mother and told her to get out. About how
a girl at school tormented me mercilessly and told everyone that I had eaten
a spider in the girl's bathroom (I know now that it was one of those
pecking-order things, by diminishing me, she gained status, but then it was
devastating). Again, the scholar knows that these issues can be mined, as
well, for rhetoric . . . perhaps about the status of sexual difference in our
culture (how I was stigmatized at 10 years old for being picked up in front
of a building shows us how deep the prejudices go, illustrating how children
who may have had no concept of what made the difference between that bar and
others on the main strip of town still reflected the hatreds of their
parents). But the little girl just wanted someone to be nice to her-- and the
only people who were kind were society's outcasts, bisexual men who
transgressed gender and got beaten up in "straight" bars when the
truckers figured out who the blonde in the velvet pantsuit really was.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> So
you will want to know the secret of how I went from that poor little girl to
the academic you see before you. Another move-- escaping years with my
mother's abusive boyfriend and many untold horror stories-- to Florida. Soon
after, I turned 15 and got a job. A tiny bit of money and control over my own
school clothes buying and the "kids at school" were convinced I was
like them-- I successfully passed as middle class and gained the friends I
had never had before. Despite being qualified, gradewise, by poverty level
& with test scores, I didn't get any offers of scholarships-- no
counselors even suspected I could qualify for need based aid. After
graduation, and a few years as a waitress, I applied for and received full
Pell Grants. This paid for two years of college, where I was officially
"in"-- all college students are poor, so my need wasn't appreciably
different from anyone else's. Attracting him with my ambitions to be like the
teacher in <i>Back to School</i>, reading Joyce's "Penelope" sequence, I
married a Naval Officer who, in the great tradition of Jane Austen novels,
swept me up into a completely different class (that I was well on the way to
joining via education anyway).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Once,
when we were first married, I held a small dinner gathering for some of my
husband's friends. While I was in another room, the wife, who grew up a
Colonel's daughter-- the upper class of military life, was impressed with my
waitress--learned skills and said to Andrew: "Kim's so sophisticated, is
she a professor's daughter or something?" He just laughed, but from then
on, I knew, unless I tell you, you won't suspect my kinship with Tonya
Harding. And surprisingly, that makes me sad.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">| </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-38427700135129230042022-03-30T11:09:00.003-05:002022-03-30T11:45:51.982-05:00Pearls of Wisdom at Texas Public Radio<p>Well hi there. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKlogsg20ckMXJ59DjZvYeBQ9mqt98QdJlpBzlZPKJOkDU5b78n20xbQeie3WZZZgDKdJPRffMyCvXNgHxtSpJi9HoI8Q-ecIToW5yD-MqwtoE3vJHx3T2x1EDvB7-K6WyDca4Al-5oZEHGwYkzFnzdCT4YXNqo0PVVZXkg0HijgTtjFbf91EY7PU/s498/hello-wave.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="498" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKlogsg20ckMXJ59DjZvYeBQ9mqt98QdJlpBzlZPKJOkDU5b78n20xbQeie3WZZZgDKdJPRffMyCvXNgHxtSpJi9HoI8Q-ecIToW5yD-MqwtoE3vJHx3T2x1EDvB7-K6WyDca4Al-5oZEHGwYkzFnzdCT4YXNqo0PVVZXkg0HijgTtjFbf91EY7PU/w200-h200/hello-wave.gif" width="200" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Been a while, hasn't it? I've been hanging around in the Ivory Tower way more than my creative persona (this gets a little weird when we really start thinking about it) so this blog hasn't been updated in waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. <br /><br />But here I am today.</p><p>And I have news! <br /><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;">I'm reading on a Texas Public Radio show called "Worth Repeating" in April. April 12, from 7-9 PM, to be specific.</div><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoGVau0cIFeOP9q55eL9x5cdXTOp75fTvIuLcIS5oLFoG2VvsJJnh1jtsgIO1n5p1Cspbxj_9ygRlNg5mmL_XD0ETL_A0qGA3G0HpMnyXzHGRAheX8eDjIaWUr5dFqpkmuOwQjM4axa0-XYl3dGMjCp_vB6odsvcEXq72UGRz2GvHkHQo0q1pzyc/s2040/judy.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1530" data-original-width="2040" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoGVau0cIFeOP9q55eL9x5cdXTOp75fTvIuLcIS5oLFoG2VvsJJnh1jtsgIO1n5p1Cspbxj_9ygRlNg5mmL_XD0ETL_A0qGA3G0HpMnyXzHGRAheX8eDjIaWUr5dFqpkmuOwQjM4axa0-XYl3dGMjCp_vB6odsvcEXq72UGRz2GvHkHQo0q1pzyc/s320/judy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />What I'll be reading is a short version of a longer story I'll publish here after the TPR performance (don't wanna spoil it for anyone) about my big sister, Judy, and the day I watched her take her last breaths. It's not quite as sad as it sounds but it's definitely a source of a tiny pearl of wisdom from a oyster that I'd rather have not had to try yet. <p></p><p>If you'd like to go to the <a href="https://fb.me/e/1pCe9RUuO">Facebook Event for it, click here</a>. </p><p>Ticket Deets below. </p><h4 style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://do210.com/events/2022/4/12/worth-repeating-pearls-tickets" target="_blank">Tickets are on sale here<span style="text-align: left;">. </span></a></span></h4><p>There's also a pretty cool video of the previous performances. Ours will be slightly different because the "Quitters" one was meant to be livestreamed and ours will be IN PERSON!!! ::Excited face emoji::</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxlgdZPkSkO38m4J9nX16ZQI0ssoD0Yhlm3DvP-udEvuZJiN7lIer-4w7I2D7pFgKGqN58gWzHLhyxhaEQATB3ARYZAfDNFxtCC_25mlnYASJzaLU8Cq9U6690128fbBrUzq9fdo9ZN7_qdNRugzN2eeMm0vl7iX1XRQnmBGD-DUkYVrSeh_5xdoE/s596/Pearls.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="596" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxlgdZPkSkO38m4J9nX16ZQI0ssoD0Yhlm3DvP-udEvuZJiN7lIer-4w7I2D7pFgKGqN58gWzHLhyxhaEQATB3ARYZAfDNFxtCC_25mlnYASJzaLU8Cq9U6690128fbBrUzq9fdo9ZN7_qdNRugzN2eeMm0vl7iX1XRQnmBGD-DUkYVrSeh_5xdoE/s320/Pearls.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />I'm hoping this is the first of a lot more of these kinds of events now that 1. I have a job that allows me to have actual time to do creative stuff & encourages it 2. Covid has finally started to behave itself (she said, very quietly, so as to not let the gods of all chaotic tiny things hear). <p></p><p>If you feel like it, even if you aren't attending, go click on the "Like" buttons on the FB and other link because it will increase the visibility. </p><p>Watch this space for more. :) </p><p>Oh, yeah, and there's hopefully going to be more at my FB writer page, too: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/kimwellswrites">https://www.facebook.com/kimwellswrites</a> </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-88934937879029580162020-12-08T12:06:00.004-06:002020-12-08T12:11:12.765-06:00Enough<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuzsiUZ31djvxIaA7V9DA79ZuFF5PArwE9gRsioxpGGJdQsC_8ba6xDuVa4OveX5zhqMM7LVQopUIph__yMgwjdF39Omo_iMMokOgj6l7QmymXhthwnEHm6AOEzbglno7_iqK2Yscmyk8/s2048/blog_stock_mental.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image of two thoughtful silhouette heads" border="0" data-original-height="1538" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuzsiUZ31djvxIaA7V9DA79ZuFF5PArwE9gRsioxpGGJdQsC_8ba6xDuVa4OveX5zhqMM7LVQopUIph__yMgwjdF39Omo_iMMokOgj6l7QmymXhthwnEHm6AOEzbglno7_iqK2Yscmyk8/w400-h300/blog_stock_mental.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Fighting back tears, again,</p><p class="MsoNormal">
for the thousandth time in this pandemic world--<br />
I think of all the mental health ads I see on a daily basis. <br />
Mostly for meds that have a long list of insidious side effects. <br />
But I’ve cried more this year than in the ten years prior. <br />
The void is still there. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And how hard it was to find someone last year for <br />
my 15-year-old who thought<br />
her being gone forever might be less of a burden<br />
than simply asking for help. <br />
How many weeks and weeks of unreturned phone calls<br />
and searching just to <i>find</i> a doctor, and finally the one we found<br />
sees every conversation through a lens that doesn’t quite fit her…<br />
who seems poised to <i>cause</i> the very problem he strives to fight…<br />
I tell him he has a hammer, <br />
and all of his problems are body-image nails, <br />
but how many won’t argue?<br />
How often does he shove someone into HIS narrow box?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I can say that <i>I’m </i><br />
really okay. But <br />
everything is balanced on this sharp edge<br />
and some days it cuts and I have to take a moment to collect myself…<br />
maybe more than a moment,<br />
and I think of others who always walk that razor,<br />
who have a darkness inside of them that they fight,<br />
long, exhausted battles that end in a draw, most days. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And I think of 290,000 families in the US alone<br />
who now have an empty place where love should be. <br />
How many more will there be before the year is over?<br />
It is already enough. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How many deep, cleansing breaths can we really take?<br />
How many times do I have to watch a strong woman <br />
be berated for her honest admissions of sorrow, of weariness,<br />
by someone who barely knows her but feels entitled to scold? <br />
Yes, she’s capable of defending herself but why should she have to?<br />
Enough. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We are all of us breathing, pausing, <br />
in this world, this place that tries to <br />
shove us into the darkness with every hand<br />
and we are holding that breath and fighting back sharp tears.<br />
Always walking that razor edge. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
I want to yell: “<i>stop</i>” and <br />
hold out my hands to pull you up. <br />
But there is no time. No place.<br />
And my heart just hurts. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The poet once wrote “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach" target="_blank">ah love, let us be true to one another!</a>”
<br />
And yet we still falter, still lie, still reach out to find no help. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When will it be really enough? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">KAW Dec 2020</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Image by <span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Benjavisa
Ruangvaree, licensed by Adobe Stock, Standard License. Do not reuse. </span></span></p><br /><p></p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-11268895361667264972020-08-25T14:17:00.001-05:002020-08-25T14:17:14.835-05:00What Rough Beast....<p>I'm slowly dragging myself towards creative writing again... one small slouch at a time. It's gonna take a while, I think, so bear with me. </p><p><b>I've been thinking about feminist sexytime romance</b>... so much of what we see is humorless, as though feminists are truly not interested in romance. This is letting others define it for us. Which is not good, nope. A lot of the time if you look up "romance" it either shows stereotypical images of woman's likes and dislikes as though we still only dig housework (the idea that feminist love stories are men washing dishes, because sure, that's the only frame of reference we have). I was thinking also about how many women flooded the theaters when <i>Magic Mike</i> (both 1 & 2) came out-- and the types of imagery those very sexy guys used to appeal to women. In the 70s, there was the great debate about sexuality and feminism where a lot of folks argued that heteronormative sexuality and romance was inherently oppressive to women. <br /><br />And I disagree. It is if only men write it for us. It is if we write it using the old tropes that were defined hundreds of years ago, only. It doesn't have to be, though. </p><p>I think there's a place for romantic stories that have feminist protagonists-- both male and female. There have been some strides made in popular culture, but it's still the same old romcom tropes of the "ugly girl" who takes off her glasses and suddenly is hot, suddenly loves the difficult guy that she kind of hates, too. (I see you, all Sandra Bullock and Katherine Heigel movies). <br /><br />What does feminist romance of a sexy sort look like to you? It's definitely not poorly researched 50 Shades style work, but might include elements that appealed to the people who ate that series up with a spoon. </p><p>I dunno. But I'm thinking a lot about this issue right now, and want to get back to my undead cyborg story. It's just hard shifting from academic teacher-y stuff back to the fun, "for me" stuff. </p>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-40002158795733081772020-06-29T22:20:00.000-05:002020-06-29T22:20:04.792-05:00Coming SoonWell the bad news is that the gig I've been doing for the last four years (teaching at a high school in Texas) is over. I loved teaching there and I learned SO MUCH about a lot of things. It was very much a growth opportunity and I am not at all sad to have done it and to have moved on. <div><br /></div><div>The good news is: this means I have freed up a ton of time to try to get back to the CREATIVE writing. I looked here today at my sad little creative countdown tickers on the right over there and abandoned so many baby stories because my teaching load was just too heavy to keep up the writing. So I'm going to be revisiting the stories that were in-progress, especially Orpheus and the Butterfly, very, very soon. Now that I figured out my passwords and user names for all my old blogs, here we go. :) </div><div><br /></div><div>In the meantime, hope if you're still following along you're having a great summer! I realize that the current 2020 lockdown is not great for most people, but I'm trying optimism. At least we have a lot of time to contemplate great plot twists in our fictional worlds. I'm not sure how they can out-pace reality, but I can try. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-62402770937679894002016-03-02T13:23:00.001-06:002016-03-02T13:30:06.764-06:00Mosaics is Live!<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The print paperback (trade paperback size) for the Mosaics Anthology is live now! We worked really hard to get the formatting all perfect by Monday because we had understood that we must have it submitted to the printer by the 1st or it wouldn't be ready by our target March 8 date.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And we did such a good job, the printer cleared it already!! So even though the Kindle pre-orders aren't ready yet, the paperback is! Yay!!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We already have our first review. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Author.Shebat.Legion">Author Shebat Legion</a> called it "Disturbingly Inspirational." Which I"ll totally take. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm thrilled. Seriously. </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAcVOnCndnV5tojjdkgV2zYFI-gFqRgomE0c0I2PmRXWXiez2OcwcuJVWx3ZnVATb8jV9e2Znfef90fI09JDjhI28Zj5yDpMkDQ75DrzERZQEJTgsbJy-Gd21fRugqJNvVcomUngieAnw/s1600/MosaicsVol1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAcVOnCndnV5tojjdkgV2zYFI-gFqRgomE0c0I2PmRXWXiez2OcwcuJVWx3ZnVATb8jV9e2Znfef90fI09JDjhI28Zj5yDpMkDQ75DrzERZQEJTgsbJy-Gd21fRugqJNvVcomUngieAnw/s400/MosaicsVol1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="a-size-base a-text-bold" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; line-height: 19px; text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="a-size-base a-text-bold" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; line-height: 19px; text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="a-size-base a-text-bold" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; line-height: 19px; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://amzn.to/21DMTGZ">Go grab a print copy here. </a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And you can see the book trailer here:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/T_tmPEno0Eo/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T_tmPEno0Eo?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-64692474853802522352016-02-12T07:31:00.002-06:002016-02-12T13:34:07.298-06:00Racism & Privilege and the "Drive By" Racist Meangirl<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgou4gJ98Z4K_edt6soLp52TZGzReSnMNJLvNhE7Uy_R2Vv_7wBTpA0u8ERnhgwQqZdXbps8Z_luKsZaM707FQ66Z1m1pHPVy5GAGnkXHbpEhKLg72-fe6CvUf_6x4i4hs6v8LVKhc3798/s1600/FBCOVER2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgou4gJ98Z4K_edt6soLp52TZGzReSnMNJLvNhE7Uy_R2Vv_7wBTpA0u8ERnhgwQqZdXbps8Z_luKsZaM707FQ66Z1m1pHPVy5GAGnkXHbpEhKLg72-fe6CvUf_6x4i4hs6v8LVKhc3798/s640/FBCOVER2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
In crafting the intersectional feminist anthology that I'm working on, my writing partners & I are committed to finding writers from communities not always well represented in indie publishing, or anthologies, or just about any literary scene. So we wrote a call for submissions that stated exactly what we were hoping for, being specific about welcoming womanist and racially intersectional feminism in addition to GLBT and disabled stories.<br />
<br />
A lot has happened during the process, including getting somewhere near 500+ submissions from all over the world. The anthology we're putting out (anthologies, actually, since we committed to doing two after I saw how many we had gotten) is amazing. Potentially award winning. And I say that not as a result of my writing but as a result of the response we got.<br />
<br />
But what also happened was that yesterday, a now former Facebook friend decided to attack me. It was kind of out of the blue, and surprised me because said former friend would likely, if you asked her, consider herself pretty progressive. Certainly not a racist.<br />
<br />
But she said my acknowledgement of my own personal privilege (because of which I can afford to front the money on an indie publishing venture and pay the writers with actual cash, not "exposure," which we all know is BS) was me being desperate to "hang out at the rap kids table." That I was trying too hard. That if I wanted to really help "them" I should donate money or something (to a nebulous "them" and not the people I actually do help in several ways every single day.)<br />
<br />
I won't write a long bit about how I grew up really underprivileged, how I score every time on that "how privileged are you" quiz that goes around in a range you wouldn't believe. With a single mom, a deadbeat dad, and times being homeless, I get to check a lot of boxes. But I've grown up, and through my husband & my business ventures, done pretty well. And so I've reached a place where I can, as Kevin Spacey said, send the elevator back down.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjlBx2tiLNOWF96vASzVBzeWONENDZlhPTaZBkSBcdk1IW4BlXS8bERfsnxd8V25SiSwWGxocjGIrxnMhXAKK6VYbOjqJWM3ugF3baaB1n87e3EZx7ddRL7F0vIZxjmHN8Ln59XxYTAI4/s1600/elevator.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjlBx2tiLNOWF96vASzVBzeWONENDZlhPTaZBkSBcdk1IW4BlXS8bERfsnxd8V25SiSwWGxocjGIrxnMhXAKK6VYbOjqJWM3ugF3baaB1n87e3EZx7ddRL7F0vIZxjmHN8Ln59XxYTAI4/s640/elevator.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I also <b>spent more than 10 years studying women's & minority literature and social culture</b> in college, <i>received a PhD</i> and read countless hours of theory on race and privilege in our society. Including the Marxism from which my former friend was throwing darts at me. In that study, I hoped to teach at a college level and help expose students to amazing literature and history that they might not have heard. I am not teaching at college, but I'm still trying to use those studies, and that's where all of my experience, training, and love of writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison have sent me.<br />
<br />
The racism implicit in the former friend's assumption that people of color equate to "kids at the rap table" and that I was trying to fit in with my coolness by talking about things better left to them... it just blew me away. It is not just people of color who should be addressing the race problems in this country. We ALL need to be talking about it. All the time. Because people are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice">dying on the street</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland">in jail cells</a>. <a href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/02/10/comprehensive-report-mmiw-curiously-different-tales-violence-against-indigenous-women">Indigenous women are disappearing</a> at an alarming rate and people don't talk about it. <a href="http://time.com/3999348/transgender-murders-2015/">Trans women and men are murdered </a>and there has been a defense used of "<a href="http://lgbtbar.org/what-we-do/programs/gay-and-trans-panic-defense/">I was worried because they were trans</a>" that has been considered a fair defense!<br />
<br />
It's not just the communities who are being oppressed who should do this work. And to imply that I am just trying to be cooler by doing so, or that I'm somehow desperate for attention.... I've thought about it all day and night, how to respond to that. I want people to know this: it's not okay to write a check to some "them" organization and get your feel goods because you're doing some kind of "social justice" by sending an occasional tax deduction towards charity. Stop turning it into an us and "Them." Because when YOU, yes you, nameless former friend, do that, you're continuing the hatred and vile rhetoric that let people like some of our current presidential candidates thrive.<br />
<br />
So yes. I will continue the work I'm doing. It's not just being aware of a somewhat troubling trend on Facebook to only show me white "suggested friends" and all that the realization implies about how algorithms are set up for how we are "similar." Social networking might not be changing the world (although I would argue with that, a lot, but just not here). But doing things like sponsoring a charity that is out to end <a href="http://www.thepixelproject.net/">Violence Against Women world wide</a>? And PAYING writers for their work? Writers who don't have a ton of venues already directed at them? All of that is social justice.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>And I would rather sit at that table than with the Mean Girls every. single. day. </b></blockquote>
Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-55991091312292650302015-12-31T09:37:00.002-06:002015-12-31T09:38:34.538-06:002015 in reviewI was busy the last couple of weeks & didn't post on my "book birthday" (Dec 24) that <a href="http://amzn.to/1P2kYEP"><i>Mariposa</i> </a>has been published now for a year. That was the official start, last year, of my 2015.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7V3MwHsB-NFD13na4316h9uCqV-DRW77iv9eQ340rNSbhjZF_cI_wKM68fd4lP3FHRxj5JJwODP7V_m4ZR3WiEdBqkcBETmqghZuy5aITtOK-bTPJcw3TLLKW4UDVURhKZj1amRstLyc/s1600/depp.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7V3MwHsB-NFD13na4316h9uCqV-DRW77iv9eQ340rNSbhjZF_cI_wKM68fd4lP3FHRxj5JJwODP7V_m4ZR3WiEdBqkcBETmqghZuy5aITtOK-bTPJcw3TLLKW4UDVURhKZj1amRstLyc/s320/depp.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
We felt out of it last year on New Year's Eve and went home early to watch the Brad Pitt movie <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1YRdgb9">Fury</a></i>. While the neighbors blasted fireworks, we watched a movie with all kinds of explosions. It was a bit odd, to be honest. That's been another sort of theme of this year-- not fury, but feeling a little out of touch, socially. Not on purpose or for any reason other than just-- well, our couch is <i>comfy</i>. Our TV set up a little too awesome. Luckily, my kids & my spouse & I all like hanging out with each other, and we have two snuggly cats who prefer us to stay home, too. If I am making a resolution, one of them is to be better about doing things out of the house. Meeting up with old friends over the holidays reminded me that I do love being social. I just have to do it <i>my way</i>....<br />
<br />
The early part of last year found me writing <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1P2kSNy">Hoodoopocalypse</a></i>. It was the fastest I've ever written a novel, and I enjoyed it very much. The group of writers who "felt weird" was having a blast, and I would easily crank out 1,000 or more words a day. I thought that was the way you did it now after having written your first novel-- you just could flow that easily. After that one was done, I found that it's not as easy every single time. I'm doing my best to keep up a reasonable pace, but two novels circulating in the space of a year still "a'int bad."<br />
<br />
One of the best things this year has been meeting a lot of new imagina-- online friends. As part of my drive to get to know more writers, I followed a few of my favorites online. Then I met more. Now I have some new, dear friends and a few loyal fans who keep me on my toes and remind me that I should be writing. Yes, yes. I know.<br />
<br />
Upcoming in 2016: I have two job prospects, and I dearly hope I get one of them. If I don't, I'll survive, but it would be very nice to be back in the classroom again. I miss it-- I miss students, even on their "do I really have to write a paper" days. The next few weeks will be big as far as that goes, or they will fizzle out if I don't get a nibble on one of the two for interviews. Antici-<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2jA3IrJ14yPH6bYUOVOxQScXTyZfIDfGVbYDqunc5dJn15Q9YB1CIpiH6cvZOC0DSvnhJgiMpDMYD0SY8Yb-o9WMeAC0e-lv1vnrSI21nbVSFdckkWx8z5L36Q5OXceKMCZm2L0YW-0/s1600/tumblr_mutx3nae1V1sunajqo3_r1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2jA3IrJ14yPH6bYUOVOxQScXTyZfIDfGVbYDqunc5dJn15Q9YB1CIpiH6cvZOC0DSvnhJgiMpDMYD0SY8Yb-o9WMeAC0e-lv1vnrSI21nbVSFdckkWx8z5L36Q5OXceKMCZm2L0YW-0/s1600/tumblr_mutx3nae1V1sunajqo3_r1_500.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
--pation is the word, then.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9SyvaAsQ8Q1DDtse9TC-nYLYbf9a9HmLvH_9GWAYna-FevoO74wZIDaxmpvYdYt2OQTKDOhoEN6pl6jPMIOEaFs9xmxQtR4Nk5HiK7aWq797Wqfuvd8ADyDw4vRojCKJyIEowwmxV9lw/s1600/pation.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9SyvaAsQ8Q1DDtse9TC-nYLYbf9a9HmLvH_9GWAYna-FevoO74wZIDaxmpvYdYt2OQTKDOhoEN6pl6jPMIOEaFs9xmxQtR4Nk5HiK7aWq797Wqfuvd8ADyDw4vRojCKJyIEowwmxV9lw/s1600/pation.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
We're prepping our house for the move back to San Antonio, and will miss the friends we have here, but are looking forward to purging all the build up of the last 10 years. Getting rid of the toys the kiddos never play with. Me getting rid of something, I'm sure, that I never bother with, too. I'm going to try the <a href="http://amzn.to/1P2jXg1">Japanese method of "tidying up</a>." Purge purge purge.<br />
<br />
I'm also in the process of reading stories, poems, etc, for the <a href="http://www.daydreamsdandelions.com/">Indie Women Anthology</a> that my friend Pavarti & I are putting together. We have gotten a lot of great submissions already, and we still have a whole month 'til the last date of the submission period. It's a project close to my heart in that we're donating the proceeds to the <a href="http://www.thepixelproject.net/">Pixel Project</a> to End Violence Against Women. I've already seen an amazing <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/460438264159206/">community forming around the Facebook group </a>for it, and I'm so psyched at the potential to really fill a niche that seems to be there. Women's writing that provides a market and a place for people to actually make something happen for charity. Social activism through social networking, FTW!<br />
<br />
The year ahead: big change. Good things, I hope. Starting tonight when we're going to a friend's house for our last "Redneck New Year's" which will entail a LOT of fireworks, black eyed peas, and socializing.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><b>2016: Let's Do This Thing! </b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikrjTmMuEE-R0zP2D7cO-qv9lE14drrFmedwPdcv2iO0mxz1yNmMiV6gUhyphenhyphen8W2CSa5Zx_vzMp-8_E2lSGqo6SYYEXJI4kWSjZiYp5gtN1E2Z_ph1WHynvCfhmbvjL9OHT46sjNLSwRA14/s1600/2016-new-year-gif.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikrjTmMuEE-R0zP2D7cO-qv9lE14drrFmedwPdcv2iO0mxz1yNmMiV6gUhyphenhyphen8W2CSa5Zx_vzMp-8_E2lSGqo6SYYEXJI4kWSjZiYp5gtN1E2Z_ph1WHynvCfhmbvjL9OHT46sjNLSwRA14/s320/2016-new-year-gif.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-82208498396456801852015-12-12T10:47:00.002-06:002015-12-12T10:51:54.319-06:00Lee Lee’s Cajun Eggs Benedict Sunday Brunch Recipe <div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Lee Lee’s Cajun Eggs Benedict
Sunday Brunch Recipe <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHY2zySTSnCQW8qcmL36acYk6CxI2-Bo_Fl9lZ6Kt7xgBF3CeLFK8onfrhFrn2SqY6v1aaaFWm9XEo14BMUbfQSisKSCCAcGMeePvmHupa92C67JTNucuuwD6fjKVsuVzTZ-HM5_xct0M/s1600/samedi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHY2zySTSnCQW8qcmL36acYk6CxI2-Bo_Fl9lZ6Kt7xgBF3CeLFK8onfrhFrn2SqY6v1aaaFWm9XEo14BMUbfQSisKSCCAcGMeePvmHupa92C67JTNucuuwD6fjKVsuVzTZ-HM5_xct0M/s1600/samedi.jpg" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Ingredients<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">1 pound
andouille sausage, diced in ½ inch cubes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">1 dozen fresh
eggs (if you can get the ones from the Farmer’s Market, everyone is always
impressed by that)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">6 English
Muffins, toasted and split and buttered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">1 pound of
butter, salted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">1 package
of the really good Hollandaise sauce mix (because honestly, you don’t have all
day to be making sauces. Just follow the directions on the packet, even that
woman from carpool line can figure it out).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">2-3 vine
ripe tomatoes (have your housekeeper dice these and remove all the seeds while
you have a mimosa. Have her make the mimosa too. Heavy on the Prosecco, please,
we have another bottle in the liquor refrigerator out in the garage. Use the
fancy crystal champagne glasses Maw Maw gave me for Christmas last year because
we are not trashy around here). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Send the
kids to their rooms to play the Nintendo-Box so they will get out from
underfoot. Seriously, I do not need y’all in the kitchen while I am trying to
cook! Send your husband back to the living room when he tries to steal one of
your English muffins. Surely there is an
LSU football game on or golf or something! I will call you when it’s ready!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Have the
housekeeper pour you another mimosa while you find the special French iron
skillet you saw on that Paula Deen cooking show last year and just had to have.
The one you haven’t used yet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>One more
mimosa won’t hurt while you wash the pan out because you have to do everything
around here.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1OQ42jnkszmoKiMa9se9i_jInoYyy2VBE1PwgyjIFD3P8bw-pUm9jAgx_82mc6iKuY7OD3eE24eS5BSXK0ZZPREnMA5gKFW1f77YKe37l48JBJoeYRMOfR9vrn3eWMSyxyaoqg_FzIZk/s1600/mimosa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1OQ42jnkszmoKiMa9se9i_jInoYyy2VBE1PwgyjIFD3P8bw-pUm9jAgx_82mc6iKuY7OD3eE24eS5BSXK0ZZPREnMA5gKFW1f77YKe37l48JBJoeYRMOfR9vrn3eWMSyxyaoqg_FzIZk/s320/mimosa.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Put two
sticks of butter in your frying pan. Melt those right up. Keep the heat high
and toss all that yummy andouille sausage in there until it browns. If you live
somewhere sad that doesn’t have andouille, just use Polish sausage or whatever you
can find. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>(Bless your heart</i>). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Once the
meat is cooking, prepare to poach the eggs. Your housekeeper should do this
because you need to take a break from all this effort. Have a seat at the
counter while she poaches the 12 eggs perfectly. You’ve already made the hollandaise
sauce (which of course is why you’re so exhausted already you need to put your
feet up). The sauce should be waiting while your housekeeper grabs the pretty
China plates out of the China Cabinet in the dining room. You’ll have her hand
wash these later because we don’t put those in the dishwasher; <i>I don’t care
what that lady at Dillard’s says; these are hand wash only</i>. Use the good
silver, too. This is Sunday Brunch and we <b>celebrate</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
andouille sausage should be perfectly browned now. Remove from heat and toss
the diced tomatoes into the mix. Toss gently so you don’t squish the tomatoes.
(It doesn’t matter if your kids don’t like tomatoes because the little bas—angels—
aren’t going to eat this anyway and are going to beg for cereal after you put forth
all this effort). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Place two
buttered English muffins on each plate, scatter the sausage & tomato
mixture on top. Have the housekeeper put a poached egg on top or to the side so
it looks pretty on each half of the muffins. Pour a lot of hollandaise on top
of the entire mixture, then sprinkle <a href="http://www.worldmarket.com/category/food-and-drink/food/spices-seasonings.do?template=PLA&plfsku=429671&camp=ppc%3AGooglePLA%3Anone%3A99575037899custom4food&adpos=1o2&creative=83022574259&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=Cj0KEQiAqK-zBRC2zaXc8MOiwfIBEiQAXPHrXhvdsGR3lxIiX2Ik30zOBMEuD3WVPMu60x9Llwms1dkaAlrI8P8HAQ">Slap Ya Mama</a> seasoning on top, for pretty.
Not too much, just enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">If you
have any fresh (<i>not freeze dried, don’t even think about pulling that mess out
with me</i>) green onions or scallions chopped up, put a couple of those on top
too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Have
another mimosa and share your delicious Cajun Eggs Benedict with someone who
deserves a great brunch. This recipe serves between 6-12, depending on how you
split up the meat & tomato mixture.
Maybe invite a few ladies from the book club. If you do that, be sure to
have more than one extra bottle of Prosecco, too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Go take a
nap because Lord knows in a few hours the house is gonna be a mess and you
gotta supervise the kids and take them to school tomorrow. Have the housekeeper clean up the kitchen
while you nap. Sure it’s Sunday and she was planning to go home to her family
but she can still get there after brunch. Have her stay longer to watch the
kids and keep them quiet because all that cooking gave you a headache. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-58362237537547413662015-12-11T11:36:00.002-06:002015-12-11T12:01:24.497-06:00Mariposa Audio Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLkxa5eHoqfTMnNKM6HSkyUW3yS5F0X7hloItH8ZC8iJG7S9u4ASab5FhjBs5xOvXnLgvGsoTyNK4UTH5F-cuHkAj0Nt9cZbdQiBqzOT4qwyIP3KrGSaBes8PHWL0ONbtM4NTF6karNqw/s1600/audiobook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLkxa5eHoqfTMnNKM6HSkyUW3yS5F0X7hloItH8ZC8iJG7S9u4ASab5FhjBs5xOvXnLgvGsoTyNK4UTH5F-cuHkAj0Nt9cZbdQiBqzOT4qwyIP3KrGSaBes8PHWL0ONbtM4NTF6karNqw/s320/audiobook.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I have totally forgotten to post this offer on the blog.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Mariposa-A-Love-Story-Audiobook/B018QOVS3O"> <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: large;">My <i>Mariposa </i>audio book, narrated by the amazing Renata Friedman, is available on Audible, right now</span></a>. </b><br />
<br />
And if you get a brand new membership to Audible, and use your first free credit to buy Mariposa, and then you send me a copy of the receipt showing your purchase along with your address, I'll send you a FREE print copy of both <i>Mariposa </i>and (when the publisher gets it to me) <i>Hoodoopocalypse</i>!! I'll also throw in a free copy of the <i>Mariposa </i>prequel <i>Lady in Blue</i>.<br />
<br />
So go check it out, get a membership to Audible today, and listen to Mariposa on your long holiday drives. You can get the app free on your phones, and it's an amazing way to pass the time instead of listening to "Baby it's Cold Outside" YET AGAIN.<br />
<br />
If you're an I-Tunes person, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/mariposa-love-story-children/id1063479149">you can find it there, too.</a> The Audible offer above doesn't apply, but you still get an amazingly performed book. And my eternal gratitude.....Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-11871665515890897002015-12-05T08:44:00.000-06:002015-12-05T08:44:16.590-06:00Book Blab Today: Slipstream!A few writers & I are doing a new thing where we are talking about different types of writing, the challenge of indie publishing, etc. It's on a new platform Twitter is creating called Blab. If you have a Twitter account already, it's easy to sign in and watch us. It's not so much about sales or promotion, but the nitty gritty of the craft-- it's writing talk, mostly.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi31zcRaFUoNT_9uz_7piafhWwpqIpc3ET_oHFa4hyphenhyphenlSZQd20ZmPU6vdUzgYCmNAvy5bo94alF_XFJ_3RTi1eYgW22y_9Xu5IQPmWBhwE-MTOGV9D0kkmqwEAIBxPGC4GUmFc3nCzO7uMs/s1600/slipstream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi31zcRaFUoNT_9uz_7piafhWwpqIpc3ET_oHFa4hyphenhyphenlSZQd20ZmPU6vdUzgYCmNAvy5bo94alF_XFJ_3RTi1eYgW22y_9Xu5IQPmWBhwE-MTOGV9D0kkmqwEAIBxPGC4GUmFc3nCzO7uMs/s640/slipstream.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://blab.im/kim-wells-speculative-fiction-chat-slipstream-1">Today's chat will be about defining "Slipstream" fiction</a>,</span> persistence in spite of or because of negatives in publishing, and anything else we can come up with. It's pretty fun, and if you come during the live stream, you can chat with us, too, ask questions, etc. Come hang out if you have an hour free today! Come check it out!<br />
<br />
Our "old" blabs are here on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/view_all_playlists">YouTube where you can see what we've talked about before, if you're interested in that, too. </a><br />
<br />
Oh, and just for fun, here's last week's blab:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/I20CTgBNanw/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I20CTgBNanw?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b>Come Play With Us!! </b></div>
<br />
<br />Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390822337154589022.post-24690475252263776152015-12-01T09:08:00.002-06:002015-12-01T09:09:35.086-06:00Blog Tour!For December's release of the Mariposa Audiobook, and in honor of Mariposa's ONE YEAR book birthday, I'm going on a blog tour! I'll be doing interviews, having reviews, etc, on various awesome blogs all over the Internet. The first one, today, is on <a href="http://www.mythicalbooks.blogspot.ro/">Mythical Books</a>, and they'll be talking about my sources for Pinspiration for Mariposa. You can see the Pins I made for the locations.<br />
<br />
You can also sign up to win one of five free downloads on Audible of the amazing audio version of Mariposa, narrated by the brilliant <a href="http://www.renatafriedman.com/">Renata Friedman</a>.<br />
<br />
Finally, check out the banner links above where there's a Rafflecopter to win the FREE KINDLE FIRE! That I'm giving away as part of the big December promos!<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/u8wWa70P7ck/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u8wWa70P7ck?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Let's Do This!!</span></div>
<br />Kim Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13229171015368730607noreply@blogger.com0