In 2012, when Elizabeth and I launched WordSisters, we weren’t sure where this adventure would take us or if we could keep up the discipline of posting once a week. Our original motivation was attracting agents and publishers, but soon we were blogging for the pleasure of writing. We had things to say and stories to share. 10 years later we’re still writing!
Through the years, more sisters in writing joined us: Cynthia and Bev are regular contributors, while Brenda, Jill, Jean and Rosemary have occasionally posted.
Our insights arise from our lives—mothering, working, aging, living through COVID, reacting to events in the news, planning our futures and setting goals. I’m proud of the breadth of topics we’ve covered and the connections we’ve made with strangers all over the world .
Most of all I’m proud of us for persisting. For being here long after many bloggers have faded away.
One of our strengths is the variety of voices, styles, and subject matter each of us brings. In that spirit, here is a collection of best-of posts. I hope you’ll enjoy sampling them.
My first public relations job after college came with a workstation equipped with an IBM Selectric Mag Card Executive machine. In the 1970s this was the equivalent of leaving a simple bicycle outside only to find a stick shift European automobile locked to the bike rack on your return.
Marquette University’s College of Journalism still used manual typewriters. The Milwaukee Journal where I did stringer reporting had manuals. I saw a few electronic typewriters, maybe even Selectric, during an internship. My first, professional job was with an engineering company owned by a husband and wife. I was their first PR department. The executive secretary presented with this $3,000 or more marvel said she would leave before she used the thing. Of course, the new college graduate was the logical place to stash a purchase that didn’t work out.
The machine had a selection of font balls, so it was possible to jazz up a document. It had a magnetic storage card to store what seemed like an amazing amount of work, about one printed page. There was a correction ribbon. Overall, the start of desktop publishing. Except no one knew that phrase.
I battled that machine for almost a year. Learning engineering lingo and understanding the company’s products was a steep curve for someone used to covering suburban governments for a newspaper or writing press releases and speeches for a healthcare nonprofit. The wife-owner was my manager, and she had all kinds of uses for the fancy typewriter including menus for her garden club, invitations for fundraising dinner parties, their son’s class papers. I spent hours and hours teaching myself how to use the fancy Selectric. I hated the machine, and the job.
Through decades of desktops and laptops, of cables and wi fi and Bluetooth, I’ve figured how to use the next generation of technology. I probably master about ten percent the capability of each computer, printer, or apps.
Last month I turned away from replacing a fitness tracker with another fitness tracker and bought an Apple Watch. It is an unbelievable piece of technology. I can receive and answer phone calls, text messages, alerts. It pings when it is time for me to breath, stand, move. I know the current temperature, air quality, and UV. Eventually I’ll figure out how to turn off some of those amazing, but useless, features and figure out why I can’t change to other albums in my account or listen to audiobooks when I walk. No rush.
Grudgingly I should probably thank my first employer who threw me overboard into technology without a life jacket.
Aniya Allen’s funeral was June 2, 2021. Six years old, the newspapers said she wore a sparkling tiara in her small pink coffin. The second to die of three young children caught in gun violence in Minneapolis this May. One is still in hospital. On a local television news show, young Minneapolis school children talked about being afraid to play outside or go to the park or to see friends. They asked, begged, demanded that older kids and adults put down guns and give peace a chance and kids a chance to grow and dream.
Unfortunately these two families are not the only ones who have lost their very young children to the senseless and unexpected gun fighting of young men with disagreements that should have been resolved with discussions, even strong words, maybe fists. Not guns shot in an alley. Not a shootout on a street corner where parents drove home from grocery stores or taking a child to McDonalds. These babies cannot be replaced, these families’ broken dreams cannot be rebuilt.
A child’s funeral is about the saddest gathering on earth. Eulogies for a child describe their smiles, their bright eyes, their wonderful laugh, their love of sports or dancing or swimming, their helpfulness, of pride in being a big sister or brother. All the ways a young child’s life should be talked about when families gather for birthdays or holidays, but not in a solemn church or temple service while mourning the one resting in a small pink coffin.
We have all lost Aniya Allen and Trinity Ottoson-Smith and the other 1,600 children and teens dead because of gun violence. So many broken dreams.
