Silver Lining interview: Ariel Gore! Pt. 1

*In 2008, the Silver Lining zine goes online here at Just Eat The Cat! I'll be posting interviews, poems, essays, and other writings from friends around Chicago, Austin, the U.S., and the world at large. It's great stuff -- and better late than never! To kick things off, here's my interview with Ariel Gore, the author, zine publisher/editor, and Hip Mama who largely inspired Silver Lining (the zine and the Chicago writers group by the same name). Thank you, Ariel! And thank you to the contributors and readers for their talents, support, and patience. Viva 2008! - Erin

Erin: The Silver Lining zine's theme is making delicious, hilarious, rockin', and generally badass lemonade out of the lemons life inevitably hurls at us. Can you think of a specific silver-lining situation in your past, where you went from feeling downtrodden to feeling triumphant?

Ariel: Well, that's what it's ALL about, isn't it? I mean, you are born! What a fuck over! You get this human existence and you're wailing about it for a few minutes, and then you just have to say, well, all right, looks like I'm going to be here for a while, and the landscape IS strangely beautiful, I guess I might as well see if I can spread some love around. For me, success has been ALL about taking what the world told me was my handicap and turning that into my strength. Being a teen mom, you learn that real fast. When you have a kid as a teenager--ever an older teenager like I was--you can either be what the world tells you you can be, which is nothing, or you can just pack up and run away in the night and go to college and do your thing and be a bad-ass--sometimes awesome and sometimes tired and messed up--mama. The world told me I should be ashamed of myself, but I flaunted it: Yeah I'm a teenage welfare mother.

Your latest book is one of the best guides for writers I've ever read (and I've read tons). Would you give us a tidbit of writing advice you wish someone had given you along the way?

I'm so glad you like it! I think writers have to reimagine themselves as BOTH artists AND entrepreneurs. We have to dream big and work harder. We have to CREATE a context in which our work matters and makes sense. If you think of the beat writers or any creative community like that, they invented that grouping for themselves--they didn't wait around for some publisher to say, Hey, this might fit into a new little sub-genre I've been thiking about...

What do you think is the best advice for writers that, alas, must simply be learned the hard way?

Well, most writers are very sensitive. We dream of publishing and we dream of our work being loved and appreciated and accepted--and often our work is very personal so we interpret that love and appreciation and acceptance as being very personal, too, and when it all works we are happy and fufilled, but taking the praise personally sets us up, because someone is going to hate what we put out there. They are going to write shitty reviews of our genuine effort. And how can we not take that personally? Worse, someone is going to suddenly feel like it is his freaking CALLING to take us down a notch, and they're really going to get personal and ugly. This is more about being a public person than being a writer, but when you publish--even if only ten people read your work--you have become a public person, and humans are very, very cruel to each other.

Where am I?

Just after my last post, I began my new job as literacy director for Open Books. I love this job like I love chips and salsa (but with the added satisfaction of making the world a better place instead of just making my stomach ache). I am not giving up on this site -- stay tuned for guest blogs from writers around Chicago and beyond! But for now, I just wanted to let my readers know that I haven't forgotten you, I wish you a wonderful holiday season with your families and friends, and until I write more original content again, I hope you will keep up with me in the following places:

Open Books

Open Books blog

The Hidden Mitten

All things Erin

LOVE & ADVENTURES,
Erin

AUSTIN: The most adorable, rewarding half hour of your life!

Other potential subject lines for this post: "Won't someone think of the children?" and "This post is not about a rock show." ;)

Anyway, friends, have I got some fun for you! School has been in session now for three weeks, and teachers know enough about their students now to utilize volunteers. At Travis Heights Elementary, where I was a first grade teacher before I moved, they have a wonderful program called HOTS (Helping One Thunderbird Soar). It pairs an adult (YOU!) with a kid (GUARANTEED TO BE CUTE AND HILARIOUS AS HELL!*) who needs practice reading. All you do is show up for half an hour each week to sit and listen to your "reading buddy" in the colorfully cheerful yet suitably peaceful school library. (Remember how nice it was to be read to as a kid? It's still awesome as an adult.)

I was a HOTS mentor the year before I got my teaching certification and it was the best half hour of my week, every week. And you will be a highlight of your reading buddy's week -- giving a young child something extra to look forward to at school and, in some cases, the only grown-up who will give them undivided attention all week long. Think about that.

You don't have to be a teacher or anything remotely related -- you just have to be there for a kid. And in the end, I swear, you will feel like they're the ones helping you as much as vice versa. It's a truly crazy world we live in -- a world where Britney Spears somehow gets more attention than nuclear warheads accidentally flown over our country -- and this is a small but vital way to put your time into something that truly matters.

FYI, Travis Heights is located just south of downtown (between 35 and Congress, around Woodland/Annie) -- easy to get to and from on a lunch hour or before work. Oh, and the librarian who runs the program is a badass member of the Texas Rollergirls, so any friends of mine will probably love her. :)

If you're remotedly interested, you can message to ask me questions or just call the school at 414-4495 and ask for librarian Julie Underwood (AKA rollergirl Vendetta Von Dutch!). You can also go to my Myspace top friends and message Amber or Sarah -- both of them are going into their 3rd year as HOTS mentors and I know they love it!

The kids need y'all, and at the risk of sounding like a Texas car salesman (I can hear the voice in my head), you'll be glad you made the call! I gay-ron-tee!

LOVE & LITERACY,
Erin

P.S. -- CHICAGO folks, don't feel left out! I'll be back next week with info on how you can do your heart good by volunteering at Open Books. :) EVERYONE ELSE, call the school nearest you and ask how you can help. I'm sure they need you, too!

* Seriously, ask Amber about all the hysterical stuff her reading buddy told her this week during "getting to know you" time.

Aug. 22, 2007: One of those perfect days.

Friends and readers, I am so excited I can scarcely sit still. My husband Patrick is almost done with his tour-de-force video game, John Woo Presents Stranglehold, the plumber has almost repaired the gaping black hole and corresponding rubble pile that has been my shower this week -- AND I JUST GOT A DREAM JOB!!!!!!!

I have known about the job possibility for months (and mentioned it around but didn't want to jinx it too much by writing about it). I wish I could tell all my friends about this face-to-face, but if I did, I'd pass out from the adreniline. So now that it's official, I can spill my guts! . . . (drum roll) . . . Yours truly is now the Literacy Director for Open Books! Excuse me for a second while I woo.

[WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!].

You may recall I wrote about my love of Open Books in a column for Chicago6Corners.com back in the spring, and I also worked with them on the recent blogathon raising money for Blue Gargoyle literacy center in Hyde Park. Quite simply, I love this organization. I am so thrilled to be joining the team as a full-time director. The mission -- fun with literacy -- is as close to my heart as it gets, and while I love writing peacefully in my lovely apartment, I'd rather do that as a side thing like I do my band. I'm happier that way, creatively. Less pressure (on my brain and my bank account). In the 8 years since I graduated from college, I have been (in order) a newspaper reporter, a day camp counselor in the Rocky Mts., a legal editor for the Texas Legislature, a 1st grade teacher, and a freelance writer slash uber volunteer all over Chicago. I had actually been crying to Patrick that, while it's been a huge blessing to have a year to work from home on my book and bands, I wished I could get paid to do the work I do as a volunteer. And then BOOM! I found this job a few days later.

Can you imagine my excitement when I first read the following online?! . . . Open Books, Chicago's first nonprofit literacy bookstore, is looking for the ideal person to create and direct our brand-new slate of unique literacy programs. Open Books is a two-storied vision: a funky, fun, colorful, and eccentric treasure trove of 50,000+ used books on the first floor, the sale of which fund a range of adult, family, and computer literacy programs upstairs. Our 8,000 sqft facility in the heart of the South Loop, including two state-of-the-art classrooms and a 15-seat computer lab, will open to the public in spring 2008. This is a dream way for me to combine my obsessions and experience with writing, reading, volunteerism, teaching, and community organizing!

The founders are two totally kickass women: smart, funny, creative, awesome co-workers-to-be. I could go on and on about what they've accomplished in a short time and what our dreams are for Open Books, but you'll just have to come see it for yourself as a volunteer! (Oh, the fun we will have in the name of a good cause! For example, inspired one afternoon by a whistling window on a U-Haul we'd just filled with donated books out, the executive director Stacy and I did nothing but sing songs with whistling in them -- or whose lyrics mention whistling, such as "Whistling in the Dark" by They Might Be Giants, which doesn't actually have any whistling, surprisingly. Thus I am going to have a boss with whom I've already harmonized on the chorus to G-n-R's "Patience." Yep. Rad.)

On top of everything, after I got the official job offer today, Stacy, Becca (the PR director), and I went over to see our new office at Chicago and Franklin. It's so cool! Hardwood floors, TONS of windows, a shower in the restroom (so I won't smell so bad after riding my bike to work every day), walls painted lots of gorgeous bright colors, and MY VERY OWN OFFICE (with its own window, too) for the first time in my life (since reporters just get desks in the middle of the bustling newsroom and teachers share their "offices" with a couple dozen kiddos, both of which have their charms, but still). I even got to pick out paint colors for each wall today (shades of sunshine yellow, tropical reddish-pink, and periwinkle blue, of course), and on Wednesday the three of us are going to IKEA in the bookmobile to buy whatever furniture we want! It's our choice because the place is new. AHHHHHH!!!!!! What is the word for being so completely beyond stoked that you could explode? (We'll also be stopping to pick up a giant, old-fashioned card catalogue that a library is donating. We'll keep our pens and post-it-notes in it, but mainly we want it around as a reminder of how much we love libraries and gloriously nerdy stuff like the Dewey Decimal System.)

My first project will be to work with a group of autistic teenagers who want to volunteer with us. We will teach them how to sort and categorize the boxes of donated books -- a task they chose because it's well-suited to their particular needs and skills. They'll get the satisfaction of contributing to their community and we'll get help with one of our biggest tasks (organizing the slew of storage units full of donated books that will eventually become the Open Books store). I'll also be helping Blue Gargoyle revamp their computer lab and, most importantly, creating a kickass slate of literacy programs for Open Books itself. I want our facility to be as beloved and beneficial on the south side as 826CHI is in Wicker Park.

Anyway, sorry this blog is so long. I just had to share my excitement about this next phase of my professional life. Plus I want a thorough record of this spectacular feeling -- that if you dedicate yourself to your passions and give your time and energy to your community, there is that wonderful chance that it can become your life's work.

LOVE & LITERACY,
Erin

P.S. -- CHICAGO FRIENDS, please come celebrate all this with me when I'm back from Seattle. Advance tickets for the Hidden Mitten shows in the first week of September -- marking mine and Garrett's birthdays, and the imminent birth of Melanie's son -- will be at doubledoor.com and Ticketweb for the show at the Note with Arks. Get your tix and put 9/4 and/or 9/7 on your calendar! AUSTIN FRIENDS, I hope to see you at Club DeVille and Elysium on Sunday, Sept. 9 for more revelry. Did I mention I will be STOKED and CELEBRATING? XOXOXO :)

Eric and Angel, pt. 3

(Continued from previous post . . . )

I suppose there were things I could've told Eric and Angel about myself that would have explained, at least a little, why I was hanging out with strangers at the grocery store on a Saturday morning. Like how I must've subconsciously missed being a Girl Scout in the South, helping folks cross the street and carry their groceries. Or how I worshipped my parents, who were always involved with stuff like Meals on Wheels and the Vaughn House, an organization in Austin that helps people with multiple disabilities. Maybe I could have talked about how when I was a little kid, Mom, Dad, and I adopted a fluffy stray cat from an alley behind a club and named it Hearne, after our friends Bill and Bonnie Hearne, a couple of folk singers who had been playing there and who were both legally blind and physically challenged. And I definitely could have talked for hours about Joe B. Friedel, the great-grandfather who was larger than life to me until he died when I was 16 and whose eyes I never got to see.

I had always known Grandpa Friedel to be completely blind, since he was shot by a friend in a hunting accident in his 20s. Some of my fondest childhood memories include him: going for walks in the tiny town of Graham, Texas, when my family visited every summer, him using a cane like Eric and me holding on like Angel; playing dominoes together at the kitchen table (the black pieces dotted by white indentions Joe. B. could feel); buying hair metal magazines from the Woolworth's and reading them in the living room while Grandpa sat in his easy chair; listening to his famous stories of running a soda stand at the county courthouse downtown; laughing hysterically when he returned from the town square one day with my tiny sister Meg, boasting of how he had asked the clerk for a marriage license for the two of them (who were not only related but about 80 years apart in age). Once, the town newspaper, the Graham Leader, published a photo (near Meg's and my favorite section, the police blotter) announcing with joy that my sister, my cousin, and I were coming for a visit.

I could have told Eric and Angel all that. (I also could've told them that sometimes I wonder if I'll ever fit in anywhere like I used to in Texas and that helping people makes me feel like at least I'm doing what I can to be a good neighbor.) But I really just wanted to hear their stories and bask in such a beautiful friendship, so I kept myself to myself. I didn't even really think about all of the above until I finally made it home from the gym.

My time with Eric and Angel today wasn't some epic event. I doubt I changed their lives at all -- they were doing just fine together without me and I'm sure they still will. But meeting them was special to me, more than words can say. A beloved family member is nearing the end of his life right now -- this post is already too long, so I'll save that for another day -- but suffice it to say that lately I've been thinking a lot of about disability, illness, and how we handle life's challenges. I've also been thinking, as I tend to do, about how to make sure this life is lived to the fullest. Eric and Angel were a ray of sunshine in my day, an example of what's really important in this too-short life. I hope they made it to the park today. I hope Eric feels at home in Texas. And I hope Angel gets to visit him there.

Eric and Angel, pt. 2

(Continued from previous post . . .)

After hustling to catch up with the two friends at the intersection, I said hi, and we exchanged the usual neighborly pleasantries. The tall man was named Eric and he had one clear, dark eye and one cloudy, white eye with bloodshot veins like red lightning cross-crossing the blue iris. The smaller man, Angel, had two eyes that looked like his friend's stormy one. They could have been about 30 like me, but lacking all the usual Wicker Park trappings -- Art+Science hairdos, skinny jeans, "vintage" tees, and too-cool-for-school expressions -- it was truly hard for me to tell.

When I remarked about what a beautiful day it was, I was half talking about the breeze and half talking about these two people, holding onto each other in such an unselfconscious, public display of friendship. As we crossed Milwaukee Avenue to the store, Eric grinned and said, with no self-pity or sadness in his voice, "If I had the fare, I'd take Angel on the bus to the beach." It was so sweet, my heart could barely take it.

I didn't need anything from the store and I didn't want to be a (bigger) weirdo, so we said our goodbyes and again I started walking away. Again I made it only half a block. Our minute just didn't feel like enough. What if I was supposed to meet Eric and Angel for a reason? I raced back across the street to the Aldi, said an awkward "hi, I'm back and I'm procrastinating on going to the gym," and offered to take over for the security guard who was going to help them shop. Of course, I'm really glad I did.

It's not like anything superspecial happened. They didn't whisper the meaning of life to me while we picked out flavors of chips (original Pringles for Eric, sour cream and onion for Angel), and I had to run and ask the security guard where the chicken legs were while the guys waited in the aisle for me, holding onto the cart as other shoppers maneuvered around them. I felt a little stupid. But still. If I had just gone to the gym, I would have always wondered about Eric and Angel.

Turns out they'd been friends a long time, since they'd met at a job that had since laid them off. Eric lives near me but he's moving to a tiny town ("only 12 blocks long!") outside Lubbock, Texas, next week. He's got family there. Angel lives in another area of Chicago and was just coming to Wicker Park for the day to visit his friend. "Maybe I'll take Angel to the park today," Eric said. Angel vowed to go to Texas to visit, too, even though I'm not sure how he'd afford it. He told me about living in Florida for two years and losing his house because of a girlfriend. "People don't help each other enough and sometimes they try to take advantage of us, even though we don't have anything." "But we get along fine," Eric added. I wanted to know about why they were blind and where they lived and all that stuff, but I knew it would be crossing the line, even for me, to ask all that.

(To be continued . . . )

Eric and Angel, pt. 1

Today I met two people who reminded me that friendship is what makes life worth living. Their names are Eric and Angel, and I hope someday I see them again -- even if they won't ever be able to see me.

I'd just seen Patrick off to work after our morning walk, during which I'd been lamenting again about how people can be such jerky drivers. It never fails that someone almost mows me down on Wabansia Street even though they have a stop sign AND had just had the same sign a block before (meaning they'd gone from zero to daredevil speed in just a few feet for no good reason other than, I don't know, wasting gas). I was tired from rockin' out last night with the Hidden Mitten -- indeed fairly convinced I'd given myself whiplash thrashing around during the "Meltdown" outro -- but I was dragging my ass to the gym anyway. Another spacey Saturday, waiting for Patrick to get home from work.

And then I saw them: two blind men trying to navigate the bustling, construction-clogged streets of my neighborhood. One was tall and black and lumbering, tapping condo walls and parking meters with his cane. The other was smaller, Hispanic, with curled wrists and a labored gait, the results of some handicap or illness I couldn't place. They linked arms and held onto each other, smiling in the sunlight as they walked, slowly but surely, down my street. Other people whizzed by on their weekend jogs or coffee runs, and as I passed the men in the crosswalk at Wabansia, I heard one say kindly to the other, "We're almost to the Aldi." Apparently, they were going grocery shopping together at the discount store down the way.

I walked half a block in the other direction and had to stop. I know it sounds crazy, but I was trying not to cry. I wish you could have seen these two -- so good to each other, just in a simple act most of us take for granted, walking to the store. I don't know if it was the writer in me or the whole daughter-of-a-social-worker thing, but my heart absolutely ached to know these men's stories. I knew turning around was ridiculous, but there was no way I could go to the stupid gym now. Not by myself, on such a gorgeous day. Not to bop up and down to vapid dance remixes and futilely obsess over those five last mythic pounds every woman wants to lose. Not with my emotional wiring.

I have recently, officially come to embrace my mantra -- that everyone we meet can teach us something, impact us, maybe even change the course of our lives or the world. Of course, it helps that I like to talk to people, and that I believe strongly in following your heart and going with your gut. So I turned around.

(To be contined . . .)