This police officer dances, feeds, inspires kids

Positive connections mean a positive influence on lives and neighborhoods :)

My blog, reinvented

Like many people, I’m horrified by recent events in America. I’m sickened by the headlines and can barely watch the national news. And I wonder about the media’s continued emphasis on these terrible events. I’ve been asking myself:

-          What’s the impact on us as individuals and as a society when we’re inundated by tragic news?

-          Is our collective moral compass skewed by this horror overload?

-          How long can we reach into our well of decency when craziness, greed, and people behaving badly are given the spotlight?

I can’t sit by idly. I need to be part of the solution.

It begins right here, right now. This blog is now called One Right Thing. I plan to showcase examples of positive behavior, people who choose to do one right thing in difficult or threatening situations. These are individuals who obey the Old Testament edict “…to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God,” regardless of their religion, race, age, or walk of life.

I'll start by sharing this story. When shooting broke out last week in Dallas, a group of people did One Right Thing and surrounded a baby stroller to protect the little one inside.  

Work with me to spread positive, encouraging stories that emphasize the best of humanity. If you have a story for One Right Thing, please let me know at authorjeannemoran@gmail.com

New connections and a new book

One perk of our move to a new area is the chance to make new connections with people and organizations that matter to us. For me, that includes a finding a church home and a community of writers. We seem to have found a church home, which is awesome, and the library system led me to a terrific, established writers group. Unfortunately for me and my ongoing need for writer-ish infusions, they only meet once a month. Through my membership in SCBWI, I connected with two other fledgling writers' groups which have great potential. I located a member who I'll meet for coffee next weekend, and already met with fellow author Corinne Smith. Corinne and I chatted over breakfast about our books and the trials and tribulations of publishing. That single meeting lifted a veil from my eyes - uncovering the marketing angle.

What Corinne has done is create a uniform approach to her online persona. Her website clearly shows the coordination between her presentations, her publications, and her activities among Henry David Thoreau scholars and fans. Quite impressive.

Corinne is a generous guru who, by her example and her willingness to share links and info, has started me on the road to understanding how best to present my work and myself in the marketplace. I'm so grateful!

All that marketing info got my wheels turning. With the upcoming release of my first picture book Mikey and the Swamp Monster created with illustrator/graphic designer extraordinaire Michael Rausch, we're developing ideas about how best to handle the marketing. We have to 1) engage kids in the idea behind the story with activities and manipulatives, 2) allow parents to see that the book encourages imagination and imaginative play, and finally 3) get the book into kids' hands. The ideas are flying fast and furious - and fun!

Hopefully, all will be in place for an early August book launch. I'll keep you posted!

Five-minute stories

A couple days ago, I watched this terrific TED Talk. In it, Matthew Dicks shares a strategy to increase story ideas - documenting a single event each day of everyday life which might translate into a five-minute story. He's been doing this daily for several years and has found his awareness and attentiveness has grown. Not only does he find fodder for his storytelling passion, he enjoys life more fully than before. All because his radar is ready to find memorable moments and jot them down, an exercise he calls 'Homework for Life.' Sounds appealing, so I tried it.

Yesterday's memorable moment occurred as I sat on the deck. The day was my kind of perfect - 80 degrees with a gentle breeze and iced tea. Somewhere behind me children played ball, their cheers and laughter filling the local quota of joy. Before me were a dozen travel brochures for river cruises, train trips, and other tours Michael and I long to take.

My delight in the present moment wasn't diminished by looking forward to a future trip. My enjoyment of planning the future trip wasn't diminished by my pleasure of my present setting. Present and future were equal. What a joy.

And yes, Matthew Dicks, I wrote that one down.

The change in one lifetime: attitudes toward children with disabilities

Amazing changes have occurred in my lifetime, changes in just about every aspect of daily life. When I was born, the minimum wage was $1 an hour. Our parents made us drink whole milk and eat liver because it was good for us. Smoking was considered chic, and cough medicine with codeine was available over the counter. We had no child car seats, and I don't think we had a car with a seatbelt until the early 1970s. Our family was like most - one black and white TV centrally located in the living room, which had to be shared by all family members. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I was recently reminded of just how different our society is another way - our attitude toward children with disabilities. I know something about this first hand. You see in 1958, my younger sister Joyce was born with hydrocephaly.
In those years before shunts were medically available to manage the excess cerebral spinal fluid, the parents were either (a) not told what might be wrong and the newborn was just sent home, or (b) told the child was hopelessly retarded (ah, terminology, another huge change in my lifetime) and should be institutionalized. That way, it was explained to the shocked parents, they could move on with life as if that child were never born.

If parents decided to raise the child at home as my parents did, God bless them, they got little or no support. Back then, many people believed that giving birth to a child with a disability was God's punishment for the parents' sins. There was no agency providing guidance or intervention, no child-sized adaptive equipment, no clinic or moms' groups giving support. My mom sewed together cloth diapers and rubber pants because incontinence care items for a child over preschool-age didn't exist. Even a basic right such as education was denied Joyce and others like her until the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now known as Public Law 94-142) was passed in 1975.

Since Joyce didn't walk until she was 5 years old, we often brought her out into the community in an over-sized baby stroller. Yes, people stared and pointed and tsk-tsked, and adults pulled their children away as if Joyce had something contagious. And yes, all of that affected me, shaped me. I learned early on how to speak my mind, and for good or bad, I've been that way all my life.

But the point is this - in the last 50+ years, our society has learned how to accept children with disabilites and support them and their families with appropriate programs, therapies, and education. Not necessarily embrace them, mind you, but accept them for what they are, loving and love-worthy human beings endowed by their Creator with the same inalienable rights as everyone else.

This video is a prime example of that positive change. We're not yet where we need to be, but with every passing decade, we're getting closer.

If you love a child with a disability, give a prayer of thanks for folks like my parents, Joyce, and the generations who struggled and lived happy lives with the people they loved, regardless of what their doctors and their society said.