My Contribution

All this disruption I have been suffering in my thinking, my anger at the way people are acting, the greed, and disassociated way people are treating each other has made me look for a way to play my part in making little changes.  I have an idea and if I can afford to do it, because I doubt there will be few if any to contribute their time to this, I will.

I have written several picture books in my lifetime and they are nothing incredibly special.  They are solid little stories with cute characters.  They might be good enough to publish but then only children with money or parents who spend time to take their kids to the library will have a chance to read them. 

I want anyone who wants to read them to have access to them.  I would like to say I could print them myself and give them away to kids who have no access to computers but that is beyond my means. Maybe someday.  For now I am planning to put them, pictures embedded with the story, onto a website.

It will be a simple site that the kids or their parents can flip the pages one at a time and read the story. This is not about making money; it is about sharing.  We used to share and help each other and some of us still do.  

I come from a time before the government built had built so many fences in free programs that we were trapped into their commence pen forgetting how to make our own way.  So many feel trapped and afraid to take a terrifying step away.  It is a scary step to take, I too have had to depend on government help and those first steps away were scary but I took them. 

Sometimes the desire to have everything taken care is nice but like when you quit something you have a dependency on you begin to realize how much better you feel.  How much freer you are to make choices that do not threaten your safety net.

When I was younger, a family of my own, atTthanksgiving I would make a dozen pumpkin pies.  I would buy Halloween pumpkins on Halloween eve when they were cheaper and prepare them to be used in thanksgiving pumpkin pies.  All but 2 or 3 of these pies were for the neighbors.  Two days before thanksgiving I would start cooking so on Wednesday the kids and I would take one to each of the neighbors. 

Why?  Because they were good neighbors, friendly and we looked out for each other.  It was how neighborhoods functioned.  They weren’t like family but it was like a neighborhood family.  Looking back I never thought about the real importance of knowing your neighbors.

Anyway back to my plans to make a little change.  I want to give something, something from me, a little of my imagination.  I want to share with my new neighbors – the world.  I want be one of those out there in the world to let children know there are some people who still have time for them. That sharing is something we can all do it little bits without feeling we are bleeding our lives away for others.

This will be a little volunteering I can do.  My hat goes to all those who have time or find the time to volunteer.  I love writing.  I don’t get a lot of extra time to write with work, etc, so this will be my way of volunteering my time.

This is a plan, which will involve the need for illustrations, which I will do for lack of an illustrator.  I can draw and do basic painting and will do my best. Hopefully someone will come along and save the public from my artistic endeavors and do some illustrations for me.  We shall see and I will remain hopeful.  I know I will not be the first to do this ,and hopefully won’t be the last but it is a little something I CAN do.

Whining and complaining is not the same as doing so doing is going to be a focus.

There is one thing I have not thought of.  As sad as it is not every child has a parent or person to read to them.  When I have it all ready to upload onto a site. I want to find a happy voice to read the story for a You-Tube video.  This will not be an excuse not to create some quality time with our kids but it will make it available to kids who have no one to read it to them.

Wish me luck.