It's Done! (sort of)

On Monday I finished my novel, the novel I started in 1995. Six to eight drafts later and six months of writing fifteen hours a week and it's done (sort of).

So what's the next step? Two close friends will read it while I'm gone to Wyoming for the Rainbow Gathering. Hopefully, when I come back, all I need to do is some line edits and then I can start looking for an agent.

It feels anti-climatic and scary. I'm not sure who I will be if I'm not the person working on the stories of Sapphire and Lauren. Can I let them go? Will I have empty nest syndrome? Only time will tell.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me along the way!

The Seventh Generation and Barak Obama

For many years, I have tried to live by the creed of dedication to the seventh generation.

Depending on who you listen to the concept is either a foreshadowing of Native people's return to sovereignty and re-centering human culture around the needs of the planet or living your life in such a way that you are protecting the interests of the seventh generation in the future. At twenty five years a generation, that's 175 years from now. There are days when the changes we need to enact in our daily lives seem overwhelming and trying to survive another year, seems enough to worry about, let alone protecting the planet for the people who will be born in the year 2183.

Tuesday night my mom and I watched Barak Obama's speech acknowledging that he has become the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee and hopefully the next President of the United States of America. We all know this is a historic moment, but while we watched him, I reflected.

My mom immigrated to the United States in the early 1950s, encountered segregated beaches in New York and New Jersey, witnessed the birth of the civil rights movement and gave birth to me in 1960. Mr. Obama was born one year later according to some sources on the Internet so he and I are of the same generation. If the generation of our parents, the ones who registered voters in the south, the ones who desegregated schools, the ones who marched on Washington, DC are the first generation, then Mr. Obama and I are the second generation and the third generation is of voting age today and dreaming of a new world.

I have grown up with the civil rights movement, the images on television, the bitter words spoken in fear of change, the courageous men and women who dared to fall in love with people not of their racial background, and the hopes of people who raised bi-racial children in a world not yet ready to accept that love is more important than color. The changes seemed painfully slow and yet, collectively we are miles away from where we were in 1958.

From this point forward, I will look at the quest to care for the seventh generation a bit differently. While walking the road for the children of 2183, we are changing the lives of the children who will be born in 2033. I only hope we live up to the that which the world demands of us today.

Just a shout out to the men and women who will be writing thoughts like these in the year 2058. May we have done all that you expected of us.

What's Wrong with the US Government

Today's rant is about the postal service.

I have a friend in Wyoming hiking and camping. He's been there for three weeks and is planning on staying for another two months. I promised to send him his mail from time to time, but never know where he's going to be.

My friend called me the other day and said "send it General Delivery to Pinedale, Wyoming." I put everything in an envelope and rode my bike to the Pacific Beach Post Office to mail it. They couldn't help me. Apparently the United States Postal Service has no ability to find the zip code for general delivery in Pinedale, population under two thousand people. Now Pinedale is a small town as are most towns in Wyoming so I know there's only one post office. I told the postal worker this and she asked her co-workers and they all decided I needed to go to the Midway Post Office, which is six miles away. Now six miles to you rural folks might not sound like much, but for us city folks, six miles of stop signs, traffic signals and up and down hills and back again in under an hour (when I had to be home) wasn't going to happen on my bike. I guess I could have ridden home, started up a car and driven there, but then it would by seven miles there and seven miles back getting close to rush hour.

I felt like I was in the twilight zone. If a person cannot not obtain a zip code from a United States Post Office, then where, I ask, would I find one? So I rode my bike three blocks to the library, got on the library computer, went to the USPS website and searched for the zip code for the street address of "General Delivery" in Pinedale, Wyoming. And I had the zip code.

Then I had to go back to the Post Office to mail the package. Am I the only person who sees something wrong with this picture?