Why I wrote novels set in Nazi Germany, #3

This video digs a bit more into the T4 pogrom and Nazi propaganda.

Nail salon refuses a woman with cerebral palsy, so Walmart employees pamper her

Angela Peters of Burton, Michigan is an artist and poet. She also has cerebral palsy. A familiar face at the Burton Walmart, Peters drove her power wheelchair into the nail salon within the store last week. The salon refused to do her nails because she "moved too much," their description of her movement disorder.

The scene was witnessed by horrified Walmart cashier Tasia Smith. She spread the word among other Walmart employees, including Ebony Harris who works at the Subway within Walmart. Harris offered to do the woman's nails herself. Other employees helped out by buying the nail polish and other supplies. Peters chose her colors, and Harris got to work. 

Tasia Smith captured the scene and shared it on Facebook. Harris later said, “She moved her hands a little bit and she kept saying she was sorry. And, I told her don’t say that. I said you’re fine.” Harris doesn't want bad publicity for the nail salon, but agreed to share her kindness because she wants others to do the same. "She wants to look pretty," she said of Peters, "so why can't she?"

As for Peters, she is delighted with her manicure. Smith, Peters, and Harris have already lined up a dinner together to cement their newfound friendship. 

Grocery store clerk allows man with autism to help him stock shelves

Jordan Taylor was just doing his job at Rouses Market in Baton Rouge, LA, stocking shelves and cooler cases. He noticed a man and his teenage son, and as he later told a reporter, "Something in the back of my mind was just like, 'Ask if he wants to help you.'" Taylor did as his heart directed, and the teen accepted the offer to help stock the cooler while his father and sister videotaped.

Why? Because the teen, Jack Ryan, is autistic. Interaction of this type is difficult for him. But with Taylor's gentle instruction, Jack Ryan stocked the cooler case for 30 minutes, which his dad Ed calls "a miracle." 

Ed asked Taylor what plans he had for the future. Taylor shared his hope to become a teacher, and Jack Ryan's sister Delaney promptly set up a GoFundMe page. In just one day, over $92,000 has been pledged to offset Taylor's future college expenses. 

And what might be the best outcome of all - Rouses Market has offered Jack Ryan a job stocking shelves.  

Two vets log 15,000 hours driving other vets to appointments

At 85 and 70 years old, Mel Ortega and Bernardo Jaramill might be content to stay home and relax. Not these two retired army vets. They volunteer their time with Disabled American Veterans, driving disabled vets to appointments near their home in northern New Mexico. Both men remember the camaraderie and mutual support they received from their fellow soldiers, and they see this as a way to continue to serve.  

Since starting to drive for DAV in 2002, Ortega has logged over 10,000 hours - an amazing 200,000 miles. Jaramillo joined the effort a year later, driving over 5,000 hours and bringing the pair's total volunteer driving miles to 300,000.   
“When I was wounded in Vietnam, my brothers in arms, they never left me or the other guys behind,” Jaramillo said. “I don’t intend to let ’em down. I don’t care from what war, we gotta serve them, because they served us.”

Father-son business shatters stereotypes

Like most people, John Cronin wondered what he would do after graduation from secondary school. He approached his father, Mark Cronin, about going into business together. Mark has a history of helping niche business start-ups and was delighted to entertain John's ideas. He made it clear that the passion for the business product or service had to come from John; he would provide the business know-how.

John's first idea was a food truck. This was scrapped quickly, as neither of them can cook. John's second idea was a 'fun store,' and Mark encouraged John to define what product he thought would be fun to sell and fun for people to buy. That's when John hit on the idea: we should sell socks.

John loves socks, the crazier the better. He has a long history of wearing holiday socks, character socks, socks with sports images, etc. Mark agreed to the business idea and John's Crazy Socks was born.

The business launched locally on Long Island in December 2016, with John delivering orders in person. That same month, their fledgling online store shipped over 400 pairs of socks.

Their company's mission, spreading happiness through socks, extends further. They donate 5% of their profits to Special Olympics. They have also partnered with Down Syndrome Awareness, Autism Speaks, and William Syndrome Awareness to donate a portion of the sales of socks with each organization's special designs.

Over a year later, John's Crazy Socks offers over 1200 styles and sizes of socks, each of which come shipped with a handwritten thank you note and some candy. To date, the company profits are over one million dollars.

In writing this post, I did not mention something you might think important. John has Down Syndrome. 

12-year-old invents app to help people with disabilities find accessible businesses

Alexander Knoll may be 12-years-old, but his father says he has an old soul. A few years ago, Alex watched a man in a wheelchair struggle to open a store's front door. The man's situation bothered him and got him wondering - what if that man had been able to search ahead of time for a store that had better accessibility? Would he have taken his business elsewhere?

Like most inventors, Alex identified a need and is working to satisfy it. His idea was simple - create an app which acts as a clearinghouse for information needed by people with disabilities when they access their community. Availability of braille menus, ramps, automatic doors, accessible restrooms, wheelchair-friendly restaurant seating, etc. would all be found within the app, a one-stop site for disability-friendly businesses.

The idea has won awards sponsored by the Discovery Channel and 3M, and has garnered Alex invitations to speak at national and international tech symposiums. He and his Ability App have been featured on TV programs, including TD Jakes, NBC Nightly News, and Ellen Degeneres. Alex is raising money on a GoFundMe page to finish the app development and marketing, which should be helped along by Ellen's contribution of $25,000.

An idea filled with compassion from the heart of a 12-year-old. We adults have much to learn.

Fill the seats at the Paralympics

Yesterday marked the opening of the Paralympic Games in Rio. The 11 days of competition between world-class athletes are notoriously under-reported in mainstream media, especially given the hype of the Rio Olympics last month. And yet the athletes' personal stories of sacrifice and struggle to reach their elite competitive status are just as compelling as their able-bodied counterparts. More compelling, I would argue, because these individuals do it all with a significant disability.

So I was disheartened to hear that ticket sales to watch the Paralympic events in person were slow - only 12% had been sold as of mid-August. That would mean empty stands and sparse crowds to cheer on the efforts of these incredible athletes.

Greg Nugent decided to do something. A former marketing director for the 2012 London Olympics, he created the hashtag #FillTheSeats and set up an account to receive donations through Generosity on IndieGoGo. Nugent plans to use the money to buy tickets for Brazilians, especially children, who could not afford to attend otherwise.

As of this writing, the campaign has raised over $200,000 of their $300,000 goal. Because of Nugent's decision to do something right, the athletes will receive the enthusiastic support they deserve, and thousands of people will see events which may inspire them to achieve their own goals. Because one person decided to act, everyone wins.

Quotes, pt. 3. Why I write

I write to document my heart. The process begins with curiosity, a tentative 'what if' connection between fact and imagination.

When I learned that people with disabilities were targeted in huge numbers during the Nazi era, I began exploring the literature. Sure enough, an entire pogrom called T4 was devoted to extermination of people in residential facilities for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled. My questions took form. 'What if a young Aryan became disabled? Would they have become a target as well?" As I moved along the research journey which dominated my free time for years, a fictional character took shape. She is Sophie Adler, a shy member of the Hitler Youth who is also a skilled photographer. Her story, Risking Exposure, will be published in September.

The story of Sophie is fiction, but the fate of thousands of others like her was not. Their tales have not been well-covered in Holocaust literature. The field is filled with horrific stories of extermination of Jewish citizens, but few titles explore the other targets of Nazi persecution - people with disabilities, people who are deaf, homosexual, Communist, Romani (Gypsy), and Jehovah's Witness. Since I have spent a lifetime working with people with disabilities, I knew my storyteller's heart would create a tale about one of them.

Other writers answer the question of 'Why I write' more succinctly than I.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.... It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless.”―Harper Lee

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts. – Lloyd Alexander

A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought if he had not started to say them.
-William Stafford

What I've done right

That list of learn-as-I-go mistakes begs the obvious question: Did I do anything right?

Of course I did. Give myself a virtual pat on the back.

1. I kept my original protagonist, the setting, and her problem. Sophie, Munich, and the fate of the disabled in Nazi Germany are the foundation of my story, and I haven't strayed from that.

2. I researched my setting and her problem before, during, and after my first draft. I've learned more about Nazi Germany than I ever wanted to know, but the best research I did was tactile - I went to Munich with Katie and walked where Sophie would have walked, explored and smelled and tasted until I felt her heartbeat and heard her voice. I went to the Library of Congress and wore white gloves to examine actual era photographs. I opened the crackling yellowed pages of Nazi newspapers and read first-hand reports of the parade at the end of the novel, saw the way it was portrayed to the people, and photographed columns of text to translate at home.

3. I decided to tell the story in Sophie's first-person voice. As soon as I did, she began to speak.

4. I decided the story I'd originally planned was too cumbersome, too complicated, and the fantasy elements felt forced. I ditched the fantasy and multiple story lines in favor of a straight historical fiction story. Honestly, I still like those fantasy elements but they don't belong in this story.

5. I didn’t set a time frame for finishing the book, just a time frame of writing for 10 hours per week.

6. I allowed myself many many rewrites and didn’t hang onto beloved words, scenes, or characters. But I saved the various versions of my story as it evolved, and I plan to use some of my favorite deleted characters and scenes in future stories.

7. I read a lot about writing, attended the Dietrich Theater Writers Group regularly as a reader and critiquer, went to writing SCBWI workshops and conferences, and read well-written books. As I surrounded myself with writers and works that shine, I absorbed.

8. I took in everyone’s advice. But I took to heart only the advice that resonated with me. I'm not writing this book by committee. It's mine and Sophie's.

9. I loved Sophie and committed myself to telling her story, regardless of how many rewrites it took.

10. I kept practicing, kept writing. I didn’t see changes in my writing skill week to week, but gradually, I have improved.

11. I haven’t let setbacks or (many many) rejections get me down for the long term. When I'm frustrated or stuck, I put the work aside for a couple weeks. That freshens my perspective and increases my objectivity. Then I can tackle it again.

Next up, and the last of this series - what I'll do different next time.

Politics, budget cuts, and the same old same old

Disclaimer: When it comes to politics at a state or national level, I'm a cynic. In my view, few people run for major office because of some altruistic desire to improve the conditions in which we all live; they do it for power and to massage their inflated self-importance.

That said, I think most state and national politicians cater to two groups of people and projects, the ones they're most familiar with and the ones whose advocates holler loudest. The first group is often large business interests, as seen by Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Corbett and the way he limply handed the state over to the natural gas drilling companies without taxing their profits. He acquiesced a bit by allowing local municipalities to tax if they so choose, but that doesn't help the overall state coffers.

Now he's got to balance a budget, so he's doing what the big guys do. He proposes 20% cuts in funding to groups who don't holler loud, who don't massage his ego, and who don't vote. Community mental health and mental disability services, drug and alcohol outpatient treatment, homeless assistance, and child welfare grants are the victims of his choice, in addition to everyone's favorite target, public education.

What vulnerable populations learn by your proposal, Governor Corbett, is that their safety and their health and well-being are less important than the hand-shake deals you make with big business. As Ann Landers said,

Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.

Better be careful, Governor. You're character is showing.

Raised in a German household, pt. 3

One of the things I learned on this journey of reading, watching documentaries, and listening to survivor interviews was that people who were Jewish were not the only targets of Nazi aggression. Gypsies were also rounded up and sent to work camps or killed, along with political prisoners (anyone who spoke out or acted against the Reich), people who were deaf, homosexual, physically or mentally disabled, or mentally ill. This first happened to German citizens inside their own country, all part of the horrific Nazi push toward 'racial purity.' The violence escalated as the Wehrmacht pushed into other countries - those citizens were considered lesser humans too, just on the basis of nationality. But it all started with that single concept: 'The only people worth anything are the ones just like me.'

Here in 21st century America, we know better. We teach cultural diversity, we practice religious and ethnic tolerance, we have laws that uphold the rights of all people, regardless of persuasion or ability. Right? Not so fast.

This week, I met with a highly educated woman who expressed this concern (paraphrased): "My son rides the school bus with those children in wheelchairs. I don't want him to catch anything from their germs, because their germs are different than his."

I don't want to minimize the experiences of victims of the Nazis by comparing them to a transportation request, but to me, the attitude is all too familiar. Intolerance is intolerance, like the crazy culture of George Orwell's Animal Farm, where one of the laws posted reads: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

So intolerance and prejudice are alive and well in America. I personally believe that prejudice against the disabled tops the list.