There's Always a Chess Game Playing Out in the Basement

 Something New I Learned and Can’t Wait to Share…

Well, I’m not sure if it’s brand new.  It’s always brewed below the surface.  However, what I have come to understand more and more everyday is that there’s always more than meets the eye.  Whether it’s workplace politics, the publishing industry, the entertainment industry, education politics, domestic politics, geo politics, etc., there’s always more than meets the eye.

Sometimes I wonder why I can’t connect with coworkers. Sometimes I wonder why a manuscript won’t gain traction even when the notes I receive are positive (from multiple editors or my agent.) Sometimes I wonder how and why a movie gets made or a concert is performed that seems under par. Sometimes I wonder why the school board and/or the superintendent makes policy that seems counter to common sense and works against the best interests of children. Sometimes I wonder how anyone can observe this current presidential election without some hesitation and/or acknowledgement of the absurdity playing out right before our very eyes. And in regards to geo politics, I indulge myself in an analogy that there is always a chess game playing out by the powerbrokers (both corporate and their elected government representatives) in the basement while the rest of us are busy running around playing Chutes and Ladders with zeal as if our very lives depend on the outcome of that boardgame. There’s always more than meets the eye.

Image Credit www.pngmart.com/image/19220

Chutes and Ladders

Children know this.  It is perhaps why I choose to spend my day with 4 and 5-year-olds. They intuitively understand that there is a bigger picture and they wonder about it.

Years of experiences have brought me to these conclusions:  Experiences as an activist in electoral politics, direct action, grassroots organizing, policy work, campaign work, lobbying, and international travel as a delegate.  Slowly, pieces have revealed themselves. A peek into a world that operates beyond most of our day-to-day existence. I’m not advocating for conspiracy theories.  I am supporting healthy skepticism. Question and hear multiple sources. Be curious.  

I’m at an age that I remember what life and access to information was like before social media and 24-hour streaming news stations. I can remember a time before the information age took hold and dictated how we interact with information, giving the illusion that we have access to all information whenever we ask for it. I began my journey in journalism when the news had a few broadcasts a day. CNN was in its infancy. (Then, I made a left-hand turn into education and writing/entertainment.) 

Before we had 24-hour access to “news” and everyone potentially was the truth keeper of information, we knew that we never had the full story.  And, that facilitated wondering. The illusion of unlimited access has made us blind believers.  We believe that we have the ability to know everything whenever we want.  We think it is a mere click away on the tiny computers that we hold in the palm of our hand.  I am certainly guilty of sharing posts without checking all the facts, pretending to be a reliable news source.  A confession that I must admit is embarrassing for a former journalism student who believed that I was going to join the 4th arm of democracy. I believed that the newscasts/newspapers that I wrote, was news that would give viewers/readers the information they would need to make informed decisions about their everyday lives. It was never the whole picture but I think we knew it wasn’t. And now, the genie is out of the bottle.  Artificial Intelligence is coming in fast and hard, taking us potentially deeper down the rabbit hole.  Will we ever return to wondering?  Will we ever return to knowing that we don’t have the full, expansive, and everchanging picture? Will we ever think about that chess game in the basement while we play Chutes and Ladders upstairs? There’s always more than meets the eye.  Never stop wondering.

By Zeena M. Pliska

Through Hazel's Eyes:

   As a child, I had lots of female heroes. They lived in the biography section of the library. Amelia Earhart, Clara Barton, Jane Addams. These women were daring and brave, breaking the female norms of their day. They had something else in common.

   By the time I was born, they were all long dead.

   I didn't realize as a pre-teen in 1960's Mississippi that I lived within fifty miles of a woman who would become one of my adult heroes.

    When I did school visits in connection with Yankee Girl, it was a twenty minutes of Civil Rights history.  Lynchings, bombings, segregation, and of course, the Ku Klux Klan. After all that, the first question during Q & A was always, "Weren't there any good white Mississippians? Did anyone stand up for the black people?"

   The first time I was asked, I hemmed and hawed and said I was sure there were, but I couldn't think of any.  I explained how dangerous it was for white people to take a stand. People kept their "different" views to themselves.

   By the next school visit, I had thought of someone. Yes, I did know a good and brave white woman (Alabamian by birth, but who lived in Mississippi).  Her name was Hazel Brannon Smith, a woman who was a journalist (a female journalist!), publisher, owner and editor of four small newspapers, mostly in Holmes County, Mississippi.  In 1964, she also became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing.

Hazel Brannon Smith in her newsroom, circa 1965

    I first heard of her through the four-page weekly, The Northside Reporter, my parents subscribed to. Each week there was an editorial column called "Through Hazel Eyes" written by Hazel Brannon Smith. I had never encountered a female journalist who wasn't a "society writer," relegated to what used to be called "The Women's Section": weddings, engagements, debutant balls, soirees and "ladies' club "meetings. This Hazel lady wrote about important things--like rights for black people, voter's rights, police brutality. She felt the same way about these events that my parents did: horrified. It was as if I had found a new friend. Up until then, I thought we were the only white family in Mississippi who thought these things were wrong.  Now, I had Hazel!

  I later learned that Hazel Brannon Smith owned The Northside Reporter..  The Reporter's office was fire bombed by the KKK in 1964.

   Even at 10 I knew about the Pulitzer (after all, I planned to win one myself some day!) I was so happy when my friend Hazel, won it for "Through Hazel Eyes." First female winner for editorials. Big stuff! Big news!

  But as Paul Harvey (a favorite in my neck of the Mississippi woods) used to say "And now the rest of the story."

  Starting in the late 50's, Hazel's columns took what the locals called "a radical turn." That meant she not only wrote editorials supporting the Civil Rights Movement, she presented the facts of unsavory incidents of white violence toward blacks. (Those stories never showed up in The Jackson Daily News, or the state-wide paper, The Clarion Ledger--both owned by the same family, and once labeled "the most racist, segregationist newspapers in the country.")

  Because Hazel was becoming all unhinged and dishonoring her "southern heritage," the White Citizens Council in her hometown decided to teach her a lesson. (The Citizens Council was a more upscale version of the KKK. Council members were white collar, professional men of the community---former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was a member.) The WCC began publishing their own newspaper to compete with Hazel"s. Within two years, Hazel's paper was in financial trouble as her advertisers defected to the Citizen's Council paper. Then, as a final flourish, the WCC engineered the firing of Hazel's husband from his job as county hospital administrator.

   Friends in the civil rights community took up a collection to keep Hazel's paper going. She limped along until she was awarded the Pulitzer for "steadfast adherence to her editorial duty in the face of great pressure and opposition."

   Winning the Pulitzer only enflamed the Citizens Council more. They organized a boycott of Hazel's few remaining advertisers AND her subscribers. She had no choice. One by one, she sold off her papers. Within twenty years of winning the greatest prize in American journalism, Hazel was no longer a newspaper woman.  With time on her hands, she helped out with The Jackson Advocate, the weekly for Jackson's African-American community. It was a volunteer job that involved driving 100 miles, round trip, several times a week.

    Hazel Brannon Smith died in 1994, at the age of 80.  She had no survivors.

    And I am left with a mystery. How did a woman, raised in segregated Alabama ("The Heart of Dixie" is still part of the state's license plates), a sorority girl at the University of Alabama, seemingly the average career woman of her place and time...how did she transform into a Civil Rights crusader? As of this month, there are only two biographies of this amazing woman. Many people who consider themselves scholars of the Movement have never heard of her.

How did she become the woman of "Through Hazel Eyes"?  Perhaps there is a hint in Hazel's own words:  I'm just a little editor in a little spot.  A lot of other little editors in a lot of other little spots is what helps make this country.  It's either going to help protect that freedom that we have, or else it's 
going to let that freedom slip away by default.

   I wish she were here and writing today.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Wednesday Writing Workout ~ NEWSPAPER STORY STARTERS ~ !

.
Howdy, Campers!

Before we get to today's Wednesday Writing Workout, I wanted to share author and bookseller Elizabeth Bluemle's latest post on her Publishers Weekly blog, ShelfTalker.  It moved me.  It's called "The Best Author Letter Ever."

Yes, Virginia, we--authors and teachers--can change a child's life.  Here ~ in case you need to dry your eyes:

And now, on to today's Wednesday Writing Workout!  But first some background:

Last month I was fortunate to participate in the beautifully organized Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival in Hattiesburg, Mississippi...

April Halprin Wayland, Robyn Hood Black, and Irene Latham
play with food poems for their panel, 

“Take Five! Create Fun with The Poetry Friday Anthology"
photo by Beck McDowell

...where I met the wonderful Beck McDowell,

 Author Beck McDowell

...author of the eerily timely novel, This is Not a Drill (Penguin), published just a few weeks before Sandyhook.

Beck gives us today's 

NEWSPAPER STORY STARTERS

1) Give this exercise about 20 minutes.

2) Divide the class into groups of two or three.

3) Let them choose newspapers and magazines from a stack you've brought in.

4) Their job will be to select a news article and make up their own story using the article as a starting point.  They'll add characters, twists, etc. to create an even more engaging story.

4) Each group elects a spokesperson.  The spokesperson shares a two-to-three minute synopsis of the "story" they've outlined, beginning with what the article actually said so everyone knows their starting point and how the group changed it.

Beck says, "...you're demonstrating where ideas come from and how a real event can trigger a story idea that's ultimately totally different from the original."

Thank you, Beck!

 BONUS: while writing this, I came across
"102 Ways to Use Newspapers" in the classroom. 

Monkey combs his favorite paper for story ideas

P.S: My Writing Picture Books for Children class in the UCLA Extension Writers Program (which I've taught since 1999) started this week.  I hope to use the newspaper exercise in class this quarter.  Let me know how it works!  And if you have any suggestions on how to make it more effective, my students will be most grateful--please take a moment to scribble a comment!

Finally, don't forget: there's still time to enter our blogiversary giveaway for a chance to win one of four $25 gift cards to Anderson's Bookshops. See this post for details.


And after you've entered, take five minutes and do a free write.  Remember to breathe...and to write for the fun of it ~

picture of Monkey and drawing of dancer by April Halprin Wayland. 

posted by April Halprin Wayland