Apologies

Well, dear friends, I've been sadly remiss... I've clearly ignored my blog.

Truth is that I've been blogging elsewhere (shame on me!) and busily writing my two new books.

March Storm is my sequel to January Moon and the 2nd novel in my Del Carter Calendar Series. It's getting off to a good start but the research took a great deal of time -- and cost me emotionally -- because the subject matter is more than grim (animal abuse and dog fighting). As always, I do far more research than necessary and what I've learned is not always -- and could not possibly be -- all in the book. It's really only a wedge to open and sustain the story so don't think the book itself is grim. I hope it will be as entertaining and suspenseful and ultimately rewarding as January Moon. But as you know, I like to write fiction that educates as much as it entertains.

The other book I'm writing is non-fiction. It's what I call an adult history book and I like to say it will be loaded with all the history you never learned in school but need to know now... the information will hopefully help you make some sense out of our current political battles and culture wars in America. I've titled the book "Daylight & Deja vu" because it should shed new light on old topics that are still unresolved and and serious in today's world (thus the "deja vu" -- you'll "see" it as it was "before" and look at it again as it is "now"). My plan is to group my essays thematically (labor, immigration, the Great Depression, race, WWII, etc.) and roll them first as small ebooks and then reorganize them into a larger work that will be a fairly significant book-length work (in print and digital). 

As to my blogging over at the Pragmatic Progressive Forum -- well, what can I say? I admit I've lost focus here at the Windy City Author and need to ascertain why... I suspect it's because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do here to begin with and was easily derailed. As a result of my blogging at PragPro I've learned a lot about myself and realized that what I really love to do is write about history and currrent affairs.  I especially love to use my knowledge about history to help inform where we are as a people today.

I've also learned more about the art of blogging and think it's helped improve my skills as a writer. Well, so we'll see; the jury is still out on that.

I don't want to abandon "The Windy City Author." I've decided to reinvent it but am not yet certain how... still need to give it serious thought (your feedback is welcome).

In the meantime, while I work on that, I've decided to re-post here the articles that were published at Prag Pro.

Please read, share and comment and I'll get back to you.

:)

Understanding Black History Month -- or any other

The other day I posted about Black History Month. I think it's interesting that it drew the attention of Canadians and I received two emails from even further away, Guatemala and Japan (not sure why they chose to email but they did and that's OK). The lady from Japan, a country with virtually no racial or cultural minorities, was fascinated by Black History Month; she asked if America has designated other months to celebrate its other minorities.

Yes, in fact, we have:

March: Women's History Month
May: Asian American and Pacific Islander Month & also Jewish American Heritage Month
September: Hispanic American Heritage Month (it begins September 15 and ends October 15)
October: Filipino American History Month
November: American Indian Heritage Month*

I've been thinking that we can look at these months as remembrances of human failure, slavery, oppression, even genocide, or we can look at these months as national celebrations about human endurance, achievement, and triumph. If we look at these months with an emphasis on the former, then we may fail to see the latter but surely it doesn't work the same in the reverse: if we study the latter, then we will have to also study human failure, slavery, oppression, even genocide, in order to savor the full richness of that people's endurance, achievement, and triumph.

We need to remember, though, that it is never all about "them" -- no matter who you are, the stories about other people are also about you. We are all inexorably intertwined. Certainly, the heart of the story must remain about the minority or we risk co-opting them (yet again) by the larger more overpowering story. But my point, however, is this: we are all in this together and always have been.

If Blacks have been robbed about the truth of their vastly rich heritage, so have those who are not Black, for there are parts of their history that have shaped our stories in immeasurable ways.  So it is with the Jews, Hispanics, Asians, Islanders, Filipinos and Native Americans, as well of course as all those of the female sex. The history of the one is the history of the all.

So, if you're under the assumption that Black History Month or Hispanic History Month -- or any of the other specially designated months -- are nothing more than fanciful creations to serve as political sops to a minority group: think again.

Understand that the majority has been robbed of its history as surely as the minority and it's going to take a long time for the history books we use in our schools to finally reflect an accurate telling of Western Civilization and American history. As I write this today there are forces in America that are determined to control the story, even at the cost of fabricating it totally.

I understand that it's very, very hard to let go of information we've been instructed to remember; information that may have been brow beaten into us or passed down to us from our parents. Historians in training learn this first hand when they're forced to confront how little truth they were originally told. Learning about our real history or the broader truths of history comes as a shock to all of us.

But if you want to really know who YOU are, then you also need to know who THEY are -- because as I already said, we're all in this together.
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* My list may not be comprehensive