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.
