remembering Lonne Elder, III, mentor

Years ago, I asked the writer, Lonne Elder, III, what it was like to start on a blank page. This is the sort of thing that one writer would ask another writer.

He said,

"It is like being caught, at high noon, in the store front window of Bloomingdales, making love to my mother..."

I worked for Lonne in the early years of my career. He isn't a household name for the masses, but within the national Black community that grew out of the sixties, he was a lion, revered by the Black intelligentsia. He is most famous for his movie, Sounder, for which he was one of the first two African Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award and for his brilliant play, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, which was nominated for a Pulitzer. He was one of the founding members of the Negro Ensemble Company where the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne, and Lou Gossett, Jr. began their careers. He championed of a whole generation of black performers who broke through into mainstream entertainment during the sixties and the seventies.

Lonne Elder, III

I met him one day when someone sent me over to his house to help him with some typing. I was 23, bouncy and very white. He met me at the door with his signature Swisher drooping out of the side of his mouth, grunted then turned around and walked back into the house. Since he didn't slam the door in my face, I assumed that I was supposed to follow him. He was built like a small bear and he lumbered more than walked. He showed me a desk and a typewriter, gave me some blank paper and a manuscript. When he finished explaining whatever it was that he wanted done, I realized that I had not understood a single word he'd said. This was the beginning of my ebonics education, long before that term was ever coined.

It was a test. Would this skinny, white girl tough it out until the eloquent Lonne emerged?

out of the ashes

 A couple of years ago, a girlfriend sent me this photo with this note attached:

“Steph~

Graffiti at Ground Zero after 9/11

“This was on side of the road at ground Zero in NYC after 9/11. Taken by a gal that I know. It's one of my favorites. I have the original and often find myself staring at it. Can't imagine the horror of it all and yet having the courage & guts to spray paint this...bet it was a #cowboyupgurlz...

XXOO

S"

Her note arrived during my own personal 9/11 when the entire infrastructure of my life had collapsed and I was wandering through my days, confused and stunned like those ghostly, ash-covered pedestrians caught nearby when the Twin Towers collapsed. Notes like this one were lifelines for me. I wasn't alone. And I wasn't dead. I could cling to the love of our "#cowboyupgurlz club" of women who also had risen from a pile of ashes. 

When the playing field of life is flattened, the way it was for our whole nation on 9/11/2001, nothing else is important except saying, "I love you" before it's too late.  

©2011 Stephanie Ericsson

a beginners guide to using facebook...

These days, I've been building a Facebook page for another writer who is a long-time client of mine. My first challenge is that he is used to working with the stone-age tools of pen and yellow pad, but fortunately, he's stumbled around his computer at home and work long enough to acquire a few basic computer skills. Still, to be just starting out on Facebook was like throwing himself into the middle of a stampede without a running jump.. What to do... what to do...

I realized that, in order for him to have a clue about what I was doing for him, I had to teach him about Facebook, which would take a fair bit of time babysitting him at the computer and I didn't think that was the best use of my time. What to do... what to do...

So, I decided to create a lesson plan... the beginners guide to using Facebook covering the basics.

I set about making it with eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs ... with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.

When it was all done, I was proud of my new creation—my bravura it's not but it sure was fun. And useful. At least for that minority of humanity that doesn't know how to use Facebook... poor dears... That's the equivalent of not knowing how to use a fork and knife... or an iphone...

So, if you happened to run across someone who is sadly Facebook-challenged, perhaps this little lesson plan will give them the launch they need to become mavens of social media. If not, they can enjoy the music I put with it.

Your favorite bookstore carries Companion Through The Darkness

Would you like to buy Companion Through the Darkness? Or send it to someone who is struggling with grief? Follow this link to choose your favorite bookstore and it will go straight to Companion's page.

Places you can buy Companion Through The Darkness: Inner Dialogues on Grief by Stephanie Ericsson

confessions of a guerrilla gardener

"I LIVE IN FROGTOWN," I told my friends in New York nine years ago, when I moved to this neighborhood in St. Paul. For them, the name conjured up an image of quaint little village lamp posts draped with baskets of petunias. I couldn't restrain the snort that escaped from me when I heard that. "Trust me—" I said, "—there isn't a Starbucks within miles."

Who knows where the moniker "Frogtown" was coined—but the land used to be swampy and has always been populated by immigrants. Most likely, it was a combination of the name, Froshburg, (frog city) that its German settlers used for it and the ancient and politically incorrect nickname used for the French, who also settled here. Either way, Frogtown was populated by frogs and the name stuck.

Frogtown has never been gentry-fied. It's pure hoi polloi. A bevy of working-stiffs, emigrants & refugees. It's the largest, poorest, youngest, most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the Twin Cities. Without a doubt—it's the 'hood. I got my first clue to this when the neighborhood patriarch, who'd live on my block for the past 60 years, asked me,

"Why would you move here voluntarily?"
Well, coming from New York, it looked like a normal neighborhood to me…and besides, it had a double lot for my passion—gardening—at an affordable price.

Now, I'm not a social butterfly and I'm sure no social worker so if it wasn't for my garden, I never would have met my neighbors. But it seems that if you're always on your knees, digging in the dirt, you're granted a diplomatic passport in the 'hood—anybody will talk to you.

So, in my nine years of crawling around my yard on all fours, I've met just about everyone in Frogtown—little kids stopping by for a drink from the hose on a hot day and ancient Hmong women who grin toothlessly, point at my flowers, nod, and grin again; barefoot hookers coming home after a night's work, carrying 4-inch stilettos; dignified old men in hats pushing grand babies in strollers; gang-bangers looking for lost pit bulls and sleepy mothers waiting for school buses; twitchy tweakers waiting for dealers and dog walkers who keep track of my blossoms. Neighbors—all of them.

But I confess, my garden grew out of my frustrations with all the garbage in the gutters, the ugliness of poverty and the total lack of pride in the neighborhood. Why, I wondered, are rich neighborhoods so clean and ghettos so dirty? 

I remember as a kid, asking my mother if we were poor. She answered without any shame,
"Yes, baby, we're poor." So my next question was,

"Then, how come we aren't dirty?"

"Because," she said laughing out loud, "darling, soap is cheap!"

I never forgot her answer. Poor doesn't have to go hand-in-hand with dirty—or ugly.

But in a place where the relentlessness of poverty sucks away any enthusiasm, where litter blows freely from curb to curb, hopelessness eventually becomes part of the landscape. Depression is a season 

Join The Companions Facebook Group

 
Join other readers discuss their thoughts about grief in the Companions Facebook Group. It's a 'Closed' group, which means that there's privacy to talk about more intimate, personal things. It's a growing, active group of survivors. Read both excerpts of my book and more recent writings of mine and become part of a very caring, authentic community. You'll be welcome.

Back in the Saddle Again

Two months ago, I officially retired as a mother, moved into my own place, and have begun the ‘next phase’ of my life. It’s not unlike being 17 all over again, wondering what I want to be when I grow up. Now I don’t have the tug of raising kids that so completely dominated my life for the past 23 years. As sad as it is to let go, there are such possibilities ahead that I can get a little giddy.

I’ve spent a great deal of time working with Facebook in the past couple of years. I created a Facebook Page for my book Companion Through The Darkness, which led to creating a Facebook Group called The Companions for my readers. After years of hearing from individual readers about their reactions to Companion, I was finally given a way to connect these people to each other—something I believe is critical in healing grief. It’s been an incredible experience to become involved in the lives of my readers, who are the most authentic people that I’ve ever met. I am in awe of how the Internet has given rise to not only the ways that grieving people can find support through a common community, but also with the number of those communities that have sprung up since I wrote Companion, 23 years ago. This has led me to design a series of workshops/retreats, which I will be announcing in the future.

Because of Facebook, I now also hear from students around the world who have read my essay, “The Ways We Lie”, which is thoroughly delightful. This essay, (originally published as the cover story for the Utne Reader’s issue, “The Whole Truth About Lying, Trust Us” [Nov-Dec 1992]), has been reprinted in textbooks for college English for the past 18 years. With Facebook now connecting everyone in the world, students are able to find me on Facebook and start a dialogue about the essay. It’s very rewarding to hear them tell me that this essay changed the way they think about truth and lies, what constitutes a lie and why, and what are the consequences of the lies we tell. Some have said that it actually has changed their lives. Because of all this interest, I have created a new Facebook Page for this essay which is only just up and running.

I’m also building a web-presence for Dr. Stephen Zuckerman, whose first three books I edited in years past. This has meant getting back on the learning curve, something I really love doing. I will post Zuckerman’s pages as they're created.

I’ve decommissioned my blog, Confessions, Thoughts Better Not Left Unsaid, for now, because it needed a major re-design. I will be combining some of that blog into this one. I’m also looking into various web software for blogging to decide which one will suit my needs. In the mean time, I'm blogging here at 'a writer for all reasons.'

It is really great to be back in the writing saddle again. I’m loving it in a way I never did before. I still, however, hate the paperwork!