"Writing by the Seat of One's Head"

By Lynn Biederstadt

Writing, for me, is the result of intense preparation. Of living in the character, the story. And, sometimes, of real wing-and-a-prayer thinking.

Progressing with the work is safer that way; less the product of fickle inspiration. Wanting inspiration ain’t having. Not reliably. So the confidence that comes from total immersion in the created reality is much more reassuring for me. Most of the time, I step into the story already knowing what the story wants to be, what the characters have to feel, what the chapter needs to accomplish.

Most of the time, that preparation is also reflected in these posts. I usually sit down knowing what the topic will be. It’s a process at odds with the fact that I almost NEVER rewrite what one reads here: What you see is pretty much exactly as it comes out of my head.

After nearly 300 posts—most of them offered up daily—sometimes I wonder what more there is to write about (although the daily changes a writer experiences offers as many possibilities as it does challenges.) That “what the hell do I do next?” moment made this morning all the more interesting.

Today, I came to the page with nuttin’. Not one thought, not an idea, not an image, not a word. And this is what came of it. Whether it’s saying anything worthwhile…well, that’s for you to decide. But it was an interesting exercise in self-exploration. An awareness unto itself. A discovery of what can happen when one looks into a mirror and sees nothing reflected there. Through all of it, the love remains. The hope remains. The living, breathing thing that is the word-lover in me remains. That is what I conjure and call upon today.

Maybe there’s more in my head than I know. Maybe not. Writing from the seat of one’s head requires utter and unrestrained trust. One can only hope that the trust is warranted.

Writer Lynn Biederstadt, who lived for 32 years in New York City, is now living in Missouri. She has been writing since she was seven years old and composed her first full-length "book" at age nine. She became an advertising professional at age 18 and her books have been published by Putnam and St. Martin's Press under the imprint and mentorship of Richard Marek. Her books have been translated into four languages. She blogs about writing at skydiaries.wordpress.com.

Writing is Passion.

Welcome to MyStoryLives, Lynn!!

MORE ON SONGS AND POETRY: "Can We Talk About Y?"

Note to Readers: Over the weekend, I wrote about "The Song of the Sea," a passage -- shaped like a poem with "waves" -- that comes from the Old Testament or Torah. The passage -- I heard it chanted on Saturday at my temple -- tells the very famous story of the Jews' escape from Egypt through the parting of the Red Sea. Quite coincidentally on Sunday night, a friend from Virginia called; she proceeded to "sing" her poem over the phone to me. (She hadn't read the post!)

"Can We Talk About Y?" tells the all-too-familiar story of a woman confused about why she cannot break free from the shackles of her obsession over a man. After Roshell finished singing her poem to me, she told me that she intends to get a group of single mothers together to write poetry as they support each other in changing their lives for the better. I am putting them in touch with a wonderful poetry therapist I know.

One more curious thing: when she emailed me the poem, it had the curvy shape of a woman's body; the "Y" of her repeated line looks like a woman with her arms raised, as if asking help from divine sources!

By Roshell Roland-Curry

Can we talk about Y?

My eyes and my ears sent the wrong message to my heart

Can we talk about Y?

My intuition said no and everything else said yes

Can we talk about Y?

When I found he was a lie I still let him between my thighs

Can we talk about Y?

Even though I knew he wasn’t the best I still settled for less

Can we talk about Y?

Even though it broke God's (and my) heart I still could care less

Can we talk about Y?

Everything went gray, and I got depressed

Can we talk about Y?

I was scared to walk away

Can we talk about Y?

I loved him more than I did myself

Can we talk about Y?

I had to have him for myself

Can we talk about Y?

He’s not even the first

Can we talk about Y?

It ain’t his fault

Can we talk about Y?

I deceived myself

Can we talk about Y?

I compromised

Can we talk about Y?

I wished I wasn’t weak

Can we talk about Y?

I sat in that mess

Can we talk about Y?

I let him walk all across my mind

Can we talk about Y?

I didn’t care what my friends and family thought

Can we talk about Y?

He ain’t worth shit, but that didn't matter one bit

Can we talk about Y?

I think so low of myself, I let this mess ruin my health

Can we talk about Y?

I’m imprisoned by myself

Can we talk about Y?

Can we talk about HOW

I will

fix this mess?

Roshell Roland-Curry was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in California and Dallas, Texas. A single mother, she currently resides in Fredericksburg, Virginia with her four young boys. I met Roshell when her younger sister, Rachel Roland, participated in the multi-media arts program (called ARISING) that I ran with four other teachers in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2009. What an exciting program that was! We worked with 25 high school students, encouraging them to write poems and to paint and to sing and to dance (tango!) and to tell stories in response to social issues like homelessness.

How Ironic: On Martin Luther King Weekend, Jews are Reading About Escaping Egypt through the Red Sea!

-- See How Today's Torah Portion LOOKS like Waves in the Sea!--

Maybe you've never seen the Torah before. The Torah -- which is the first five chapters of the Old Testament of the Bible -- is the central and most sacred text in Jewish worship. Here is what today's portion of the Torah looks like. Unlike most of the Torah, which is written in blocks or long paragraphs, this particular portion, called "The Song of the Sea," has a very very special shape and significance.

See how the lines resemble waves?

This is the very very famous portion of the Bible, the story taken from the Book of Exodus where the enslaved Israelites manage to flee from Egypt through the Red Sea. The story is a metaphor for peoples everywhere seeking freedom from slavery -- and not just the slavery imposed on people by others.

Sometimes we are enslaved by our own impulses and desires, our addictions, our limited views of ourselves and our capabilities, our hatred and our biases and prejudice.

In the Red Sea story, the Egyptian Pharoah first lets the Jews go, but then he changes his mind and sends his chariots and soldiers to chase after the fleeing Israelites.

Moses, guided by the hand and words of God, leads the Jews triumphantly through the Red Sea (or the Sea of Reeds, depending on the Hebrew translation.) The waters part, and the Jews manage to get through the sea, but Pharoah's troops get swallowed up by the ocean. This particular portion of the Bible is written as a poem (only one other portion of the Torah is written in poem form.)

"The Song of the Sea" is relayed in a call and response fashion; the verses, like ocean waves, move back and forth in time.

At this morning's services, we learned that the last line of the poem, which you can see here, has a very special structure:

On the left-hand side is the Hebrew word, pronounced "hayom," which translates as "the Sea."

On the right-hand side of the line is the very same word, hayom, again, for "the Sea."

In between these walls of water, in the middle, are the words "The Israelites marched on dry ground." The words amazingly mimic exactly what happens in the passage! The Jews marched between two walls of water on dry ground!

Immediately following this passage is another famous story, where Miriam, Moses' sister, dances with her hand drum and sings a victory song.

After Alan Kaufman, a member of our temple (Hevreh of Southern Berkshire in Great Barrington, Massachusetts) chanted "The Song of the Sea" -- Alan did a beautiful job, as he always does chanting Torah -- we spent some time discussing the passage. My husband, Richard Kirsch, a political activist, pointed out that the Jews fleeing through the Red Sea in his mind represents was one of the first examples in history of civil disobedience.

Indeed, earlier in the service, we had read a prayer by a Rabbi who invoked the Red Sea image in a speech about Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights marches in the South during the 1960s.

On a weekend when we are remembering and honoring Dr. King, it is ironic, but so fitting, that "The Song of the Sea" should be the Bible passage that comes up as the one that we would read. Songs have, throughout the ages, proved so central in the lives of people engaged in rebellion.

What amazes me is how the composer of the Torah, whoever that may have been, would think to turn this very special passage into poetry, and not only that, would make it what we in the literary field would today call a SHAPED POEM.

As we always say on Shabbat --

"Shabat Shalom," may you have a very peaceful day!

BACK TO THE TOP OF THE ITALIAN DOLOMITES WITH ANDREA CEOLAN!

Italian mountaineer Andrea Ceolan and his skiing buddies live at the top of the world.

Or at least, they visit the airy --and snowy -- mountaintops all the time, no matter how frigid the temperature gets.

Fortunately, Andrea takes along a camera to capture remarkable views of these astonishing mountains. And he is happy to share his breathtaking photos with us mortals who occupy the realm below, slogging through ordinary snow and ice on roads and sidewalks and parking lots and streets.

Andrea is the son of my Italian friend, Irma Setti, who lives near Bolzano, Italy just kilometers from the Austrian border. That part of Italy -- with mountains that are needle sharp -- has been back and forth between Italy and Austria through the years.

The people who live there speak Italian, German and English. They eat more polenta than they do pasta. And many of them, like Andrea, are blonde.

Irma -- until she retired a few years ago -- used to work for the Italian postal service. She was officially my penpal when we first "met." But I speak and write virtually no Italian, and her English is a bit limited. So we had our challenges being pen pals.

Mostly we exchanged postcards.

In the summer of 2006, my husband and I traveled to Bolzano -- or Bolzen as the people there say -- and we took one heck of an amazing all-day hike in these mountains with Irma, her husband Elio, their son, Andrea, and Andrea's wife, Claudia, who is expecting their first baby any day now.

This past October, Irma and Elio spent several weeks traveling around the western U.S. Then they flew to Albany, New York, and we picked them up and they stayed with us for a few days. We proudly showed them our "mountains," and took them on hikes in the Berkshires. They told us that we live in "paradiso."

Uh. Paradiso? Well, sure, Columbia County, New York is absolutely magnificent, especially in the fall. But Bolzano? These mountains?

They have plenty of paradiso in their own backyard.

Irma wrote me a few days ago, after I posted the first batch of Andrea's dazzling mountain photos. She told me that she thinks her son is a little crazy, scaling mountain peaks in the middle of the winter the way he does.

Maybe. But Irma, I have to say, I think more of us should be crazy the way Andrea is. Our world would probably be a whole lot better off if we were!

Un milone grazie Andrea!

Thousands of Children Are Starving in China -- and One Incredible Chinese Student in the U.S. Trying to Help

By Jiancheng Zhu

Jiancheng Zhu was born and raised in Shanghai, the largest and historically, the most modernized city in China. In 2006, he was admitted to Nanjing University, one of China’s top three universities; he transferred to the University at Albany, SUNY, a year later, where he majored in economics. When he graduated in May, 2010, Jiancheng was honored with the Award for Excellent Academic Achievement in Economics. The essay that follows is one he wrote as part of his application for law school. The children pictured here are in the Wangguangliang Hope Primary School, in Shagudun Village in the Hebei Province of China. Zhu took all of these photographs. The one below shows a kitchen in the school; shockingly, Zhu says that some of the kitchens are even worse than this one!

In 2006, during a visit to Gutun Hope Primary School, in Gansu Province, China, I witnessed Uygur children washing moldy pieces of bread with tap water and eating the core of the bun. Seeing that I was shocked by this, the Han principal tried to comfort me by explaining that it was not a rare occurrence. He educated us to the reality that there are 2,755 Hope Schools located in the most poverty-stricken areas of China.

These schools, which have more than 300,000 underprivileged students, mainly rely on private donations and scarce government aid. More often than not, local government officials use most of the donations to construct expensive buildings in order to demonstrate their success in office, leaving the schools insufficient funds to pay for even the most basic needs of the students, needs like food and hot water. Pictured here is a typical kitchen in the Hope schools. In some schools the facilities are even worse. I saw one teacher

who set up a stove in the classroom where she would reheat buns that the kids bring to class everyday.

Distraught by all that I had seen, I gathered a group of friends to try to improve the situation of these young students, by bringing adequate regulations and oversight from the government. After our reports were rejected by the local Ministry of Education and the Poverty Relief Office, we realized that reporting one or two of these individual incidents would not be convincing enough to raise awareness about this critical problem; nor would it be enough to bring about the change we wanted so desperately to see. We decided to do a research project on how funds were appropriated to meet the students’ needs. In so doing, we hoped to demonstrate very clearly the magnitude of these injustices and persuade authorities to resolve these fundamental issues. Our research proposal, submitted in March 2007, garnered the attention and support of a an international foundation devoted to youth development. This represented a small victory for our group in that we were granted the right to continue our research under the supervision of that international foundation.

However, our research would have to be limited strictly to possible improvements that could be made on the canteen facility and to the students’ nutrition intake. Despite the limitations imposed on us, we were determined to bring change into those children’s lives.

">I was mainly responsible for gathering information for analysis in two forms: a questionnaire and direct interviews. I conducted a thorough evaluation of more than 1,700 pages of documents which included policies regarding students’ diets, taken from government data in the U.S., Britain, Brazil, Chile and Indonesia. I also developed seven different questionnaires, each uniquely designed to correspond to different regions’ varied eating habits and religious customs. Each was very carefully drafted. A total of 300 questionnaires were then sent to 300 carefully selected representatives of the Hope Primary Schools. According to a staff member of the Communist Youth Committee, it was “the first questionnaire that has all questions regarding the students’ welfare rather than how to make the government look good.

In addition to developing and distributing the questionnaires, I conducted a month-long field study, visiting 27 different schools located in 22 different cities of the six most impoverished provinces. During the process, I interviewed some 27 school principals and 81 students, whose ages varied from five to 12 years. We also had a meal in each school we visited. Four kinds of food were presented at almost every school: flour, pepper, potatoes, and cabbage. In one school, we tried to add beef to school lunches, but the beef was left uneaten by most kids for a reason we could never have imagined: they didn’t know what the beef was!

This astonishing fact was not rare, according to the data that we later retrieved from the questionnaires. During one of the many interviews we had with local government officials, I raised questions about the allocation of the donations. Like most of those authorities being interviewed during our research, this official was evasive at first, and then presented us dozens of reasons why the money was spent the way it was. None of the reasons mentioned the kids.

The seven -year-old boy from Gansu who hadn’t washed his face in six months, the girl we met in Shanxi who had been eating only one scant meal a day, and the principal in Hebei who spent all his income to feed his students kept reinforcing my passion to bring change into their lives. It became an important obligation for me and my colleagues to bring changes, no matter how small, to the lives of these malnourished, sometimes neglected students. We presented our report to the members of the foundation board in July of 2010, educating these officials to the fact that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of school children are starving every day. The board has responded by launching a more detailed and strictly-enforced meal plan for each of the Hope school students. However, changes that are more fundamental are still urgently needed.

This research project has been one of the most important experiences of my life, and it convinced me that I want to continue to make contributions throughout my professional career. I have chosen to pursue a law degree because only through law, can I bring more fundamental change into the institutions that serve and control the underprivileged in China; only through law will I bring the kids and millions of others the help they desperately crave. I am motivated to use my analytical skills and my abilities to work with people of different ages and ethnicities to unveil the truths of otherwise neglected situations. Above all, I was driven by my immense passion and gratification knowing that the outcome of my work might be able to benefit those less privileged.

My passion for public interest and human rights issues stems from my long-time family background. More specifically, my father was involved in political reform in China in the 1990s and my mother has been a devoted member of the China Democratic League for 20 years. I was raised to believe in dissent in a country that stresses uniformity. I am deeply resentful of the status quo in China and the way it favors the rich and despises the billions of poor. I have witnessed the effects of government excesses in my own family: my grandparents were forced out of their homes by the government.

Thirty years ago, my country was demanding technology and advanced business skills; today, what it needs and what the world needs is to have China develop a better legal system and a constitutional government, which I would like to devote my life to bringing into reality.

How Does a Woman Discover the Artist Buried Inside Her?

Seeing Red is here! Buy your copy today! And please join us at a flamenco-book-art party at The Book House, in Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, New York, on Sunday, February 6th, at 3 p.m., when Seeing Red author Claudia Ricci joins flamenco guitarist Maria Zemantauski (whose CD "Seeing Red" inspired the book!) and visual artist Kellie Meisl (whose astonishing image "Shattered Cups" graces the cover of the book). Come have a glass of sangría and toast this unique "collaborARTive" event -- a celebration of three women working hard to support each other's art!



How does a woman discover the artist buried inside her? How does she come to realize, finally, that she has the power to make herself happy? In "Seeing Red," Ronda Cari spends half a lifetime searching for true love, and then she discovers it, in the magic of her own dancing!

To start, total darkness. Ronda driving her sons to basketball practice beneath a splatter of glittering stars.

Ronda eyeing Orion, her hunter, hovering overhead in the inky winter darkness.

The sparkling points that are his shoulders, hips and waist.

If only, she thinks, he had legs. Arms to embrace her.

A face.

Shining eyes, an aquiline nose. Full warm lips.

At this moment, driving east, she notices the belt: how the stars tip downward, pointing right to the yellow lines snaking ahead in the glow of headlights.

Aligned this way, Orion pulls her. The car stays forward, following the curve of the road.

Behind, in the back seat, the boys are bickering as always, this time in a nasty dispute over who skiis black diamonds at Jiminy Peak with more ease. Ronda is holding her breath, intent on not listening.

Silence. Roughly 30 seconds. With one hand on the steering wheel, she repositions the van back on the highway. With the other hand, she gropes for the CD player. Hits it to start. Instantly there arises the clap and agonizing howl of her beloved flamenco. Besides Orion, the Spanish music is her only solace as she chauffeurs the kids endlessly over the frozen hills of Berkshire County.

Once upon a time, in some other life, Ronda believes that she was a dancer in a tiny enclave in Andalucía.

The village sat on a dry hillside, its brilliant white houses capped by tile roofs and surrounded by red geraniums. In that life, Ronda was petite and shapely. Happy living in the arid landscape of southern Spain, dancing her way from Granada to Sevilla, Malaga to Cadiz. She had an easy smile and tiny feet and a blaze of blue-black hair and all of it whipped around her like a soft black shawl.

Orion was there, too, hovering in the vast Andalucía sky, his starry shoulders sparkling down on her own.

****

She shudders. All thoughts are half formed. All thoughts call up memories that make her uneasy and twist at her heart. For years, she gave into so much silly nostalgia. But all it got her was more deeply hurt. More nervous. So upset she saw a psychiatrist. So now, she keeps safe. She doesn’t go too deep. She does the smart thing. She lets the past stay that way. Floating there, somewhere in the mist. She keeps the doors to the attic shut tight. She never goes near the musty boxes with the old baby sweaters, the infant clothes, dusty toys. She knows better than to look at photos or videos of the boys.

She wipes away a single tear rolling down her cheek. In this cold, it threatens to freeze. She pulls out a Kleenex. Sniffles. If Ben Sr. saw her now, he’d tease: “Wow, it sure isn’t easy being a woman, is it?” She’d say, “Ben, please.” He’d shrug, hug her shoulders, pull her tightly to his chest, kiss the top of her head. He loves her. He does the best he can to show it. She knows that better than the maiden name, Cari, which she foolishly let him talk her into giving up. There is no doubt in her mind that if she were to walk out on Ben, he would probably drop dead two days later. After all, it’s not like he could chase down another coed the way he did her. Not at his age, and in his outrageous condition.

Clouds have begun to gather. They form small white ponds that patch the dark sky. Her eyes rise.

Soon Orion

will retire for the night. Frightening, that thought. That even before she returns home, the hunter might disappear. Fighting tears, she pulls the car into the furthest, darkest corner of the parking lot. In seconds, she’s out the door. Keys rattling, she shuffles further into the darkness.

To start, she pulls upright, her back straight and tall. Chest high, arms wide. Hips cocked. Eyes locked on Orion, especially his tilted shoulders. Throwing her gloves down, she holds her key chain castanets, hears the wood crackle in the cold night air. Wheezing slightly, she hums. Out comes the wail, her favorite tango from Camaron’s triple CD, the one Ben ordered from Spain for her birthday. “La ah lo ah lo ah lo ah lo…Flores crecen en el campo…Rosa Maria, Rosa Maria…Rosa Ma riiiiia.”

As she sings, her eyes flood. Weeping, clapping, she lifts her boots in turn, her heels circling the snow packed ice block that is the parking lot. “Olé, olé,” she cries out loud, half wishing she had a crowd. Twirling, she’s got the skirt of her long wide black coat swirling in her wake. Before long, she is feeling the rhythm, the euphoria. And her eyes are dry. They fly up. Orion is still riding in the night sky overhead.

Her back arching slightly, she lifts one arm. Tries the apple pull, the twist that has come to be her obsession.

This time, the fruit falls freely from the tree. Gleeful, she makes a fist, cups it to her chest. It happened exactly the way the Spanish bailaora kept saying it would. “Mira, señora Fallon, just relax. One day, it will happen. Just like that,” the elegant lady promised, snapping her long expressive fingers. “Some things you cannot hurry. You must wait until the idea forms in your body and not your head.”

A smile spreads across Ronda’s face. She bows. The wind blows. Frozen, she scoops her gloves up, yanks them over her ice bitten hands. Shuffling back to the van, she slips inside. Starts the car and then the CD. She steers the van in a wide circle and heads out into the starry night. In two hours, she will be back to pick up the boys.

And then it hits her. Every night, she travels. Guided by the stars, she drives the boys over cold winter roads, forever arriving at new destinations. Never staying in any one location for longer than a few songs. She sets one hand on the dashboard of the Dodge. Pats it. “My caravan,” she whispers. “And me, the gypsy.”

She reaches over. Turns the volume on the flamenco as high as it will go. The music wails. She aches and wanders on, driving extra slow.

READ CHAPTER TWO RIGHT HERE!

Thousands of Children Are Starving in China -- and One Incredible Chinese Student in the U.S. Trying to Help

By Jiancheng Zhu

Jiancheng Zhu was born and raised in Shanghai, the largest and historically, the most modernized city in China. In 2006, he was admitted to Nanjing University, one of China’s top three universities; he transferred to the University at Albany, SUNY, a year later, where he majored in economics. When he graduated in May, 2010, Jiancheng was honored with the Award for Excellent Academic Achievement in Economics. The essay that follows is one he wrote as part of his application for law school. The children pictured here are in the Wangguangliang Hope Primary School, in Shagudun Village in the Hebei Province of China. Zhu took all of these photographs. The one below shows a kitchen in the school; shockingly, Zhu says that some of the kitchens are even worse than this one!

In 2006, during a visit to Gutun Hope Primary School, in Gansu Province, China, I witnessed Uygur children washing moldy pieces of bread with tap water and eating the core of the bun. Seeing that I was shocked by this, the Han principal tried to comfort me by explaining that it was not a rare occurrence. He educated us to the reality that there are 2,755 Hope Schools located in the most poverty-stricken areas of China.

These schools, which have more than 300,000 underprivileged students, mainly rely on private donations and scarce government aid. More often than not, local government officials use most of the donations to construct expensive buildings in order to demonstrate their success in office, leaving the schools insufficient funds to pay for even the most basic needs of the students, needs like food and hot water. Pictured here is a typical kitchen in the Hope schools. In some schools the facilities are even worse. I saw one teacher

who set up a stove in the classroom where she would reheat buns that the kids bring to class everyday.

Distraught by all that I had seen, I gathered a group of friends to try to improve the situation of these young students, by bringing adequate regulations and oversight from the government. After our reports were rejected by the local Ministry of Education and the Poverty Relief Office, we realized that reporting one or two of these individual incidents would not be convincing enough to raise awareness about this critical problem; nor would it be enough to bring about the change we wanted so desperately to see. We decided to do a research project on how funds were appropriated to meet the students’ needs. In so doing, we hoped to demonstrate very clearly the magnitude of these injustices and persuade authorities to resolve these fundamental issues. Our research proposal, submitted in March 2007, garnered the attention and support of a an international foundation devoted to youth development. This represented a small victory for our group in that we were granted the right to continue our research under the supervision of that international foundation.

However, our research would have to be limited strictly to possible improvements that could be made on the canteen facility and to the students’ nutrition intake. Despite the limitations imposed on us, we were determined to bring change into those children’s lives.

">I was mainly responsible for gathering information for analysis in two forms: a questionnaire and direct interviews. I conducted a thorough evaluation of more than 1,700 pages of documents which included policies regarding students’ diets, taken from government data in the U.S., Britain, Brazil, Chile and Indonesia. I also developed seven different questionnaires, each uniquely designed to correspond to different regions’ varied eating habits and religious customs. Each was very carefully drafted. A total of 300 questionnaires were then sent to 300 carefully selected representatives of the Hope Primary Schools. According to a staff member of the Communist Youth Committee, it was “the first questionnaire that has all questions regarding the students’ welfare rather than how to make the government look good.

In addition to developing and distributing the questionnaires, I conducted a month-long field study, visiting 27 different schools located in 22 different cities of the six most impoverished provinces. During the process, I interviewed some 27 school principals and 81 students, whose ages varied from five to 12 years. We also had a meal in each school we visited. Four kinds of food were presented at almost every school: flour, pepper, potatoes, and cabbage. In one school, we tried to add beef to school lunches, but the beef was left uneaten by most kids for a reason we could never have imagined: they didn’t know what the beef was!

This astonishing fact was not rare, according to the data that we later retrieved from the questionnaires. During one of the many interviews we had with local government officials, I raised questions about the allocation of the donations. Like most of those authorities being interviewed during our research, this official was evasive at first, and then presented us dozens of reasons why the money was spent the way it was. None of the reasons mentioned the kids.

The seven -year-old boy from Gansu who hadn’t washed his face in six months, the girl we met in Shanxi who had been eating only one scant meal a day, and the principal in Hebei who spent all his income to feed his students kept reinforcing my passion to bring change into their lives. It became an important obligation for me and my colleagues to bring changes, no matter how small, to the lives of these malnourished, sometimes neglected students. We presented our report to the members of the foundation board in July of 2010, educating these officials to the fact that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of school children are starving every day. The board has responded by launching a more detailed and strictly-enforced meal plan for each of the Hope school students. However, changes that are more fundamental are still urgently needed.

This research project has been one of the most important experiences of my life, and it convinced me that I want to continue to make contributions throughout my professional career. I have chosen to pursue a law degree because only through law, can I bring more fundamental change into the institutions that serve and control the underprivileged in China; only through law will I bring the kids and millions of others the help they desperately crave. I am motivated to use my analytical skills and my abilities to work with people of different ages and ethnicities to unveil the truths of otherwise neglected situations. Above all, I was driven by my immense passion and gratification knowing that the outcome of my work might be able to benefit those less privileged.

My passion for public interest and human rights issues stems from my long-time family background. More specifically, my father was involved in political reform in China in the 1990s and my mother has been a devoted member of the China Democratic League for 20 years. I was raised to believe in dissent in a country that stresses uniformity. I am deeply resentful of the status quo in China and the way it favors the rich and despises the billions of poor. I have witnessed the effects of government excesses in my own family: my grandparents were forced out of their homes by the government.

Thirty years ago, my country was demanding technology and advanced business skills; today, what it needs and what the world needs is to have China develop a better legal system and a constitutional government, which I would like to devote my life to bringing into reality.

On Top of the World with Italian Mountaineer Andrea Ceolan, in the Dolomites!

My Italian friend, Irma Setti, lives near Bolzano, Italy, near the "Dolomiti," (the Dolomites,) one of the most spectacular mountain ramges I've ever been. When we visited a few years ago, my husband and I took a hike we will never forget, stopping periodically along the way below the pointed snowy peaks at huts where the Italians serve wine and coffee and polenta and all sorts of other goodies. Talk about a civilized (and delightful) country, and a wonderful way to hike!

Irma and her husband, Elio Ceolan, have a son, Andrea (and Andrea's wife is named Claudia and she is expecting any day now!) Andrea is an avid mountaineer, skiing in winter, and hiking and biking the mountains in winter. He has posted the most spectacular photos of his skiing adventures on Facebook, and I am fortunate enough to be able to see his albums.

At a time when all of us can use a lift, these photos are remarkably inspiring and uplifting, and a gift to all of us!

Un milione di grazie, Andrea!

LETTER FROM ARIZONA: there are so many guns out there...

To light a candle as part of the vigil honoring and supporting Rep. Gabby Giffords and the other victims of the Tucson tragedy, go to TrueMajority.org. You can read about the vigil here on an earlier post in MyStoryLives.


By Dan Beauchamp

Well, it was another one of those television days, days when the news came in chaotically and was constantly changing, but this was about someone that my wife and I knew, our member of Congress. The first reports were that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and was dead, and for a while that was what we assumed. And then we heard that she wasn’t. And then one of the local announcers at the University Medical School said she had been told that she was dead. And then it was reported that she was “talking” as she was being taken into surgery. And so we waited.

As I watched television I reminded myself that even in a city as big as Tucson (500,000, maybe less), news people are local and they simply never face something like this. Still, there was considerable chaos in reporting the incident. I suspect when the FBI came in they put the fear of God in everyone and told them to button up. You never know if the early reports are correct, but apparently a physician was in the crowd, a former emergency room doc. The doctor was later interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

The physician saw Giffords get shot at point blank range and the physician jumped behind one of the big pillars in front of the Safeway and laid down, playing dead. And then a Giffords staffer tackled the gunman. And the doctor got up and went to help people who were still alive. And the doctor said that what shocked him was that it took 20 minutes or more for the emergency people to get there. The cops were much faster. But later he said he wasn’t sure because time sort of stops for everyone. It took forever for any solid news to get reported.

This intersection is one we visit every time we are in Tucson; our favorite restaurant, the Wildflower is half a block away and Whole Foods where we also shop is directly across the street, on Oracle, a main road in Norwest Tucson going to neighboring Oro Valley. There’s tons of traffic there. It's not that far from a big hospital, and the University hospital is about three miles away. Unfortunately, the area is in Pima County between Tucson and Oro Valley and that might be why there was confusion, if there was confusion.

I should shut up about this, we are 90 miles away in Bisbee but she was a very visible member of Congress and much liked and well known in the small towns of her district, towns like Bisbee and Douglas, and she succeeded a moderate Republican, Jim Kobe, whom we also liked and who was smeared as he left office because he was gay. Her first opponent, Randy Graf, a state representative and influential Republican, and a passionate advocate for promoting gun rights, was the brother of the wife of a former assistant city manager in Bisbee, and expanding “gun rights” was his one big thing in the state legislatures. But Giffords also supports gun rights, whatever that means in practice.

One of Giffords' colleagues in Congress, a conservative Republican in the Arizona delegation to Congress, was interviewed and had very kind words for Gabby but he also said that he has a gun and that many on his staff had concealed guns and carry permits for guns. And another man interviewed later in the day said he was wearing a gun and was in the laundry down from the Safeway, and he went out and saw the man being tackled by people and that if the man had managed to escape he would have shot him.

My wife and I tend to forget that at one of the first parties we went to here in Bisbee, almost 15 years ago, a woman came wearing a pistol and she told us she was in a “Witness Protection program.” Right. We figured she was a little off yet In bizarre Bisbee that's still considered very bizarre. And yet another man in Bisbee, well-known and now dead, rumored to be a former spook, went about with a gun occasionally.

It's not the wild west here in Bisbee; it’s the mining town West and wearing guns seems strange to us, and so we listen to the news as the state legislature keeps legalizing yet another place where it’s okay to wear a gun or to carry a concealed weapon. Most people I know think it's nuts and that people who carry guns are the people who tend to get shot, by accident or not. As the news kept rolling in it seemed like the perpetrator was a little strange, a little cracked in his notes to You Tube and you wonder how he got the Glock semi-automatic weapon but as I recall, you don’t have to have a permit to buy a gun in this state.

For a moment I thought the killing was related to the slain judge, a veteran of the bench in Tucson, a George Herbert Bush appointee who was well-respected, and who had ruled in favor of a civil rights law suit filed on behalf of illegal aliens against a rancher; he had gotten very specific death threats and the marshals guarded him for a month or more, and they told him it was probably unwise to press charges against the four men who were identified making the threats.

A week or so after the election we met Gabby Giffords at a small reception held in a local coffee shop. My wife Carole had worked the phone banks for her in the closing week, and the Giffords' staff person who organized the calling sent us an email to ask us to be there. She is just as beautiful as her pictures, rather slight and very articulate and personable, and very much on top of things. Carole worked for years for a member of Congress in DC and handled the man's re-election campaigns and she said the Giffords' operation was very well run. I talked to the Giffords staff member after the race about the charged atmosphere in many of the border Congressional districts. Giffords said in her brief talk that the turnout in our Congressional district was reportedly one of the highest in the nation. Giffords only won because she took the threat seriously and organized a massive grass roots effort to get the Dems out. Politics is a big deal down here.

We have friends in Prescott who are really tired of all the rancor in the state, and who are thinking of moving back to North Carolina. But we will stick it out. Tucson is one of our favorite towns. I will be teaching at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health starting in 10 days, located next door to where Giffords is hospitalized. I’m sure the first day in class we won’t be talking about the politics and policy for rural health, our course focus. We will be talking about guns and politics, and about the futility of doing much about it.

As we went to bed Gabby Giffords is reported to be doing well and responding to the medical staff and her family is there.

We have lived here in southern Arizona since 1996, with a three-year break when we returned to North Carolina. And as we went to bed I said to Carole, “Just think about all the times during our over 40 years of marriage we have turned on the television because someone in the United States has shot a politician.” And with all of those guns out there, floating around everywhere, it probably won’t be the last time.

After retiring from teaching health policy at the University of North Carolina and SUNY Albany, writer Dan Beachamp moved with his wife Carole to Bisbee, Arizona, and later became Mayor. He keeps a fabulous blog at Tales of Copper City. This piece appeared originally on the Huffington Post.