I have been told my writer's blog is not the place to talk politics, but I can hold my tongue or pen no longer.

Last March I had the wonderful opportunity to appear as Abigail Adams at a community college in Silver Springs, MD. I performed my one-woman show in its entirety or in abbreviated fashion several times, stayed in costume as I lunched and walked through the school cafeteria, and then spent the afternoon appearing in some classes.  Of particular interest was a women's studies class. I let Abigail change centuries, and after answering some questions by the young women, Abigail turned around and asked them:  what do you think of a woman for president?  At the time, Hilary Clinton's campaign was in full swing and it looked as if she would be the Democratic Party's choice.  These thoughtful, bright young women had no qualms about expressing their thoughts and opinions.  They were definitely for a woman as president, just not Hilary Clinton.  They thought she was too divisive in a campaign year that needed to represent hope for the future and getting America back on track.  EIght years of a presidency they had no faith or respect for was enough.  They were all strong Obama supporters.  He to them was what Eugene McCarthy was to me back in the late 60's.   It took me back to my first years and slightly before as a voter--to the McCarthy (Eugene--peace candidate, not the Senator from Wisconsin) and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Days, of hope, youthful exuberance, faith that we'd emerge from VietNam as a nation back on track.  The similarities between my 18-21 years and theirs struck me and struck me fast.

I came home so excited by the prospect that young people were again ready to believe in our government, in our choices, in what we represent, and in a future for them.  It made me look at Obama in a totally different way (being in the Hilary demographics prior to that.)

And so we had the Democratic Convention and Obama was proclaimed the candidate and he gave a calm, thoughtful, reflective, hopeful, let's pull together kind of speech.  And I was convinced.

And then came the Republican Convention--or should I say circus.  The choice of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP, the pit bull attacks, the claims of COUNTRY FIRST and back to the ugly, divisive way of politics with convenient truths, lies, partial stories, emotional rhetoric without substance and ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK.  I feel crushed.  And if I feel crushed, I'm thinking what about those young college students, who were so full of hope and belief? 

I am hoping, I hope not against hope, that our country will get out of attack mode and back to reflective thinking mode and not be stirred by emotionalism and abusive untruthful politics.  John McCain and gang should be ashamed.

School has been open for a week here, but August is my slow month, really my vacation month.  Or so I like to think of it that way.  After a busy summer with too many projects and work commitments and personal obligations/ complications, I like to think of August as my personal time to crash and recoup.  After all I have a year of school performances facing me starting after Labor Day.  But then I forget--what about all those projects I've not completed, including the new school shows planned and new study guides, not to mention all the cleaning and reorganizing I need to do to prepare.  And then there are the phone calls and emails of people wanting to schedule and the contracts/invoices to do.  And there are the Olympics to watch.  And all the books I meant to read.  And the tan I never got. And the great shape I was going to get in. And before you know it the month is slipping away and all I want to do is vegetate and take note of all the things I need to do.

Panic is about to set in.  But not just yet.  I'm at the point in my August hiatus (which is not really one) that I can't get to sleep at night.  And I stay up late.  The wee, quiet hours, would be a perfect time for a burst of energy. But I don't really accomplish much.  Do you know you can do do overs in spider solitaire until you figure out how to win the game or realize it's futlie, but in the meantime two hours have passed. I'm waiting for my energy and drive to kick back in. Just one more game.  I look around and see all the incomplete projects--now messes throughout the house and I wait for the urge to go around like a madwoman and accomplish nine tasks at once.  But that's what I do all school year.  And after all, this is my summer hiatus and I'm allowed to procrastinate.  So I indulge.  But this week, I really mean to turn things around.  Or do I?

What a summer!  I've been thinking that I should be blogging instead of playing spider solitaire these anxiety ridden late nights when my brain won't shut down and my body is wishing it would.  My now 91 year old mother has been living with us and I'd love to blog about that experience, which has turned out to be wonderful when I thought it would be stressful.  She is sweet, thoughtful, wanting to be helpful, with a very dimiinshed short term memory, which she allows us to kid her about and she laughs it off.  She sleeps a lot... I had hoped we'd have a summer of reading together her love letters and my father's during their World War II courtship.

However, this is the summer of drought in Georgia but when-it-rains-it-pours in the Kaemmerlen/Gaare household.  We have been dealing with a terminally ill sister-in-law for me, sister to my husband.  And a series of medical disasters since March with only a week or two that hasn't been crisis ridden.  I have been working/reworking my one-woman Rachel Carson show--during the research/writing of  her famous book SILENT SPRING, she suffered one medical problem after another, breast cancer, radiation treatments and chemo, with so many complications keeping her from finishing the book, so carefully documenting what DDT rampant sprayings were doing short term and long term to the balance of nature and ultilmately to the health of all living things.  And at the same time, her body was manifesting itself with the problems she was predicting would affect us all if we continued to use these chemical pesticides/weapons.

My sister-in-law's health is... what we hate to admit... in a steady decline.  She is an end stage renal patient, undergoing hemodialysis 3 times a week.  Getting to that place was a process too--kidneys shutting down, peritoneal dialysis, peritoneal infections, hospitalizations, overcoming one crisis before the next one ultimately set in.  Her 7 week hospital stay this spring was the result of home dialysis, hemo needles that missed the mark, causing a giant hemotoma over her entire upper left side, leading to a staph infection that settled in her heart valves, and at first unbeknownst to us, hiding in her spine.  The vertebral decline led to the second spring hospitilization and spinal surgery and fusion.  Inability to walk. Hospital rehab, then off to a rehab center (formerly called nursing home) for a lengthy visit.  Then seemingly over the hump, positive about her progress, walking some in therapy, the left knee buckled and she broke her tibia and fibula.

The renal disease causes soft bones--falling in her case means something gets broken.  Back in the hospital.  One step forward, two steps backwards.  We start all over, dealing with many doctors, waiting for each and every one of them, trying to coordinate a diagnosis or two or three.  Ordering tests, which means days before the results, waiting for doctors, trying to find out the plan--so much waiting... and in the meantime, the patient lies in bed and gets weaker... Hospitals unfortunately make people sicker.  One thing I have learned is when you have to be hospitalized, get your family to advocate to get you out of there as soon as possible.  Is that the point of all this rambling?  I am supposed to have a point in here somewhere.  It's hard to find the point when you're dealing with the next crisis- in the fix this thing mode and then all will be okay.  But it's never okay. So when do you get to the point?  When is everything fixed?  How long does the light at the end of the tunnel last?  When does reality set in?  No, I think you never give up.  There's always hope.  You give up when there's no longer hope. 

THE HISTORIC OAKLAND CEMETERY OF ATLANTA:  SPEAKING STONES  (must get the title of the book in first.) As Cathy Kaemmerlen, a professional storyteller and author of two published books from the History Press, a small publishing company out of Charleston, SC that promotes book projects about regional history, this is my first visit to a SIBA event.  (As a journalist, I’ve been trained to get in those 5 w’s  and one h up front.  They’re not all in here yet, so read on.)

Wearing the hat of an author still doesn’t sit easily on my head although I’ve been writing since childhood, just not publishing, but researching and writing with performances in mind.  (Have been keeping a journal of my first book signing/book talk experiences, which often end up being an afternoon of people watching and trying not to be invisible and on the other extreme, too pushy–this has the makings of a book in itself or at least a personal story in the storytelling world.) Selling one’s own book, which one has poured heart, soul, and vast amounts of time into is not an easy thing to do.  And of course I wonder why this is necessary- when it should be automatically obvious to all parties that my book is the most fascinating thing out, as you sit there in a huge bookstore surrounded by so many titles that you yourself are drawn to and that are in direct competition with you own. (Doesn’t it appear as if everyone has a book out these days?  Everyone is a writer?  Everyone’s blog is worth reading? )

So, I’ve decided the key is to find one’s niche, just as I have to find my right audience as a performer.  As an actress, I can’t keep the “pretense” act going. I’ve been taught to keep it real.  And what I write about is real people.  I am drawn to ordinary people who have, through no design of their own, been placed in extraordinary circumstances or times and have had to make some key and critical decisions.  Often these decisions involve whether or not to take the high road or the low road. And the final decision made by these real folks from our past, has made a difference down the road to us.

There is no greater place to find a magnitude of these kinds of folks and their stories than in a cemetery.  I live in Atlanta, Georgia, so the cemetery that chose me, the obvious candidate, was Historic Oakland Cemetery of Atlanta, the city cemetery from 1850 (the city’s origins) to 1885 (when a rival cemetery opened due to urban growth and the rise of the Phoenix Atlanta.) No, cemeteries are not creepy places, at least not Oakland, being an example of the Garden Cemetery Movement of Victorian America.  Some 70,000 souls reside at Oakland and to me, a storyteller,that means 70,000 stories speak out to us from their stones. With a little bit of digging (it’s easy to use these sort of puns when you’re writing about cemeteries), you can’t keep up with the amount of material available under your feet. Margaret Mitchell is there.  Bobby Jones is there– probably the most famous residents.  But there are so many others whose stories tell the interconnected history of Atlanta through the destruction of Atlanta during the Civil War and the rise of Atlanta after the war.  There are the movers and shakers who abide there, including Jasper Newton Smith, whose statue sits close to the entry gates and checks out all the visitors.  There are those whose lives ended in scandal, murder, mystery, like the brothers Hill.  There are those who have noble stories to tell, like Sarah Dye who had to bury her dead child in the midst of the Battle of Atlanta.  Profiles in Courage governor John Marshall Slaton sleeps at Oakland.  Digging into his story you unveil the story of the Leo Frank trial.  As then Georgia governor, Slaton made the decision to commute Frank’s death sentence, which caused an outage and a lynching and the rise of the ugly faces of anti-Semitism and the Ku Klux Klan, which takes you to Lucille Frank’s story, as the widow of Leo, which takes you to Sally Slaton’s story as the wife of the governor, which takes you to the story of her prior wedding to Tom Cobb, who committed suicide, which leads you to the story of the Lewis Redline Scandal that Tom Cobb “appeared” to be involved with…And then you are taken in, ensconced by all these peoples and stories of the city where you reside. You are hooked.  It’s your legacy and story too.  We are all connected. 

And so, I assume that everyone will be interested in the stories I’ve unfolded, because how can they not be?  And I get ten minutes on Saturday, September 29th in a room with three other authors who are representing other “elements,” me being earth, to convince all of you, that my book of stories is something you won’t be able to put down.  I’ll be the lady who might be wearing Victorian garb because Oakland is a Victorian cemetery and we all need some attention grabber. And I’ll be bringing to life some of these stories that live well beyond the grave.