Sunday, March 28, 2010

Reading and Me

In cleaning out my living room today, I found a piece I must have written many years ago. It's undated, and has no indication of its context. Maybe I wrote it in some writing class. I have a faint recollection that it may have been in response to hearing about a book entitled "Ruined by Reading" which was published in 1996. Anyway, here it is:

Ruined by Reading? Au contraire!

Three times while I was growing up, my brother and I were taken from one family in one place and sent to live with other people in a different city. It was not easy getting used to new places and new caretakers, and books were my constant and trustworthy companions: Nancy Drew mysteries, Robert Heinlein science fiction, and Andre Norton fantasy. The bookmobile was my treasure trove. Books could be counted on to take me out of whatever boring, scary, or strange place I was in and put me into another place: a place where children belonged to loving and stable families, and mysteries were solved and quests were successful, and evil people were either converted to good or defeated. Books were my friends; they made me feel safe and strong.

Later I came to enjoy reading Elizabeth Goudge and C.S. Lewis, and Peg Bracken and May Sarton. I raided my father's library and read everything from The Tin Drum and James Bond thrillers to Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. My mother's library included Mary Stewart, Agatha Christie, and Ngaio Marsh. These books fed my spiritual aspirations and gave me household hints, the satisfaction of having completed a difficult book (regardless of how little I may have gleaned from it), and many hours of entertainment and comfort.

Not just books, but several forms of communication have always been important to me. I was singing solos and in choirs, and leading worship services before I was ten. I competed in public speaking in high school and studied languages and music in college, but went to law school when I became serious about earning a living. Nevertheless, I was performing in reader's theater, singing, and leading worship during law school and beyond, while finding my way into legal publishing - first as a writer and now as an editor.

I can make sense out of the most obscure and abstruse statutes and judicial opinions; I can analyze what they're trying to say and write it out in a comprehensible and well-organized way; and I can take the output of lawyers whose forte is practicing law, not writing about it, and put it into sentences and paragraphs that are much more reader friendly.

When I get home from work, I'm still interested in reading, but not in working very hard at it. Escapist fiction is what I like best: science fiction and murder mysteries, especially those written by and about women. I also read spiritual, psychological, historical, and other non-fiction. Books are my talismans; I do not leave the house without at least one book. If you could see the overflowing bookcases and stacks of books in my home, you would not doubt that books are my friends.

Monday, March 22, 2010

We Win One, and I Need a Break

Every time I type this, it disappears. This is the third time, and then I give up.

I'm about to leave for Green Gulch Zen Center for a few days of meditation for Jewish social justice activists, and I really need the break.

Saturday morning, before I was out of my pjs, came a call from the director of the San Francisco Organizing Project asking if I wanted to be interviewed on TV as a supporter of the federal health care legislation. I expressed willingness, and the reporter called me and showed up almost immediately with her cameraman, and away we went. Time elapsed between the first phone call and the end of the interview - one hour. It went well enough, I thought, and I set my DVR to record it at 5 pm, which is when the reporter said that it would air.

Then I went off to Emeryville to meet Jan and see Alice in Wonderland in Imax and 3D, followed by dinner with new acquaintances. Only one sentence of mine made it into the television piece, but they spelled my name correctly. The main thrust of the piece was that voters in Pleasanton were mostly unhappy that their Representative to Congress had just decided to vote for the health reform bill. The piece continued:

But those backing the bill say McNerney is not alone. They will support the congressman even if many of his constituents do not. "I hope the people will come to realize how courageous and valuable a vote that was, and will rally behind him and will support his re-election," said Dana Vinicoff with the San Francisco Organizing Project.

Sunday, Jan and I got my car washed and bought piles of staples at Costco, had lunch, watched some of the health care debate on CSPAN, then went to synagogue for me to conduct the evening service and us to attend a benefit for Rawandan women in the form of a discussion between authors Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. These authors, it turns out, had been married at this synagogue when it lived on Danvers Street. They were enlightening, intelligent, and very funny, but the best line of the evening was when their designated Congress-watcher broke in to announce "It Passed!" We all applauded and cheered, and the evening nearly broke up then and there.