The Final 50th Anniversary Post: Remembering the Kent State Shootings of May 4, 1970

On this date in the year 2070, someone will be writing about how the Great Coronavirus Pandemic of fifty years earlier changed the world and why we are better off for it in some ways, worse off in others, and how mystifying it is that there are still those lingering issues that haven’t yet been settled. And, isn’t it about time we finished the job and stopped repeating history?

Anniversaries are important to make sure we ask those questions. It’s why, over the past two years, I’ve written posts about the anniversaries of so many events that shaped the world during the time frame of my novel The Fourteenth of September and still resonate today: the Bobby Kennedy Assassination, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Moratoriums to End the War in Vietnam: October 15, 1969 & November 15, 1969, the First Draft Lottery and the Kent State Shootings.

This will be the last anniversary post on the history behind my novel; the cycle is done. The story takes place roughly between the first Vietnam Draft Lottery and the Kent State Shootings, two seminal events that book-ended a six-month period wherein I’ve always felt the character of my generation was formed, including its early feminism. The novel ends shortly after Kent State when the country fired on its children, the turning point incident in support of the war when the country went too far and knew it.

Fifty years sounds so long, but in many ways has gone by so fast. What we haven’t learned in that time frame is legion. Just this past December, the Washington Post published a report, “At War With The Truth,” about the war in Afghanistan, that sounded like the playbook for Vietnam: falsified data to show we were “winning,” admissions that the strategy wasn’t working, and the objective unclear. On the positive side, we learned to treat our vets with respect, to never have another draft, and we keep coming close to electing a woman president. Two steps back, one step forward, another we just can’t seem to get quite right.

We are still so in the thick of this pandemic that, yes, it’s difficult to focus on anything else. But it’s illustrative, on today’s anniversary, to consider how we might try to learn the lessons of how to be the admirable country we consider ourselves to be, the first—or the fifth—or the fiftieth—try instead of so often falling back into the hamster wheel of history.

A high school friend of my vintage found this recently among his late mother's things. He had no idea she'd been a protester.

"RIGHT ON, Mrs. Gustafson," It worked.

Following is a post I wrote on this day two years ago, that includes the story of what happened at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, and why it still matters today. In rereading it, I see that we were only thirteen months into the new administration, dealing acutely with school shootings and already hearing about alternative facts and incredible re-interpretations of reality. I asked readers to look ahead and think about what would be on the conscience of the country on this fiftieth-anniversary date to which we should also be saying “No, that’s not who we are.”

The issues have changed, but not the question. How we’re dealing with acceptable percentages of pandemic deaths and knee-jerk 180 turns in policy that impact lives and livelihoods. I ask again. Haven’t we learned how to be better than this. Are we ready again to stop and say, “No, that’s not who we are?”

The following published on May 4, 2018 under the title:

Remember Kent State, May 4, 1970: An Iconic Moment For A Generation... A Coming of Conscience for a Country

The Iconic Kent State Photo

Recently, while promoting the fall publication of my novel, The Fourteenth of September, which takes place during the pivotal 1969-1970 years of the Vietnam War, I was asked if—of the many iconic moments in American history that happened during that time period— one had impacted me more than any other.

I paused to consider the word iconic... icon — a symbol. No question. It was the Kent State Massacre, a symbol at the time of the total chasm between the government and the youth it was supposed to be protecting: the bridge too far that blew away most of the remaining support for the war, though it’s death throes dragged on another five years. 

48 Years and We Still Remember

Every May fourth since 1970 there has been media coverage of the shootings, always featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio with arms outstretched in agony and disbelief, kneeling above the body of twenty-year-old Jeffrey Miller. An iconic image of how we felt. Agony and disbelief. This is America? How had it come to this?

We know the facts: The National Guard fired into a crowd of students protesting the war’s expansion into Cambodia. Sixty-seven rounds over thirteen seconds killing four, wounding nine, permanently paralyzing one. The massive national student strike after. A turning point in how the country viewed the war. It was just too much to kill kids. 

Early Alternative Facts

It all began with a lie—and it was bald-faced. Nixon was elected because he said he'd end the war—something his predecessor, Johnson, hadn't been able to do. His Administration said we were winding down. Hard as it may be to believe from the vantage point of today, media was limited. We only heard one side and assumed what we were told was true—though obviously that was disavowed later on many levels, most recently in the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War.

But, suddenly, on April 30, 1970, it's announced we just bombed Cambodia. It was earth-shattering. The war was being accelerated, not contained. Of course, there were protests; of course, they were full of anger; of course, those protests would be on a campus where the populations of draft-age men were among the largest. We had just been through the roulette of the Draft Lottery and the news about My Lai. Nerves were raw, the rage was high.  Above all, trust was waning, and this Cambodia lie just wiped it out. How could we believe anything the government told us ever again?

And then, to top it off, unbelievably, students were shot dead at one of those protests. It was the very definition of a word we were just beginning to use to describe what we thought were mind-expanding experiences: surreal. 

The Memorial to Jeffrey Miller, Bordering Where He Fell, on the Kent State Campus

Where Were You When You Heard?

I think many people of my generation can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about Kent State, just like all the assassinations that punctuated that time—King, the two Kennedys. I remember walking into the Student Union with a few others and being shocked to hear my friend, Tommy Aubry, screaming from the top of the stairs, “They’re Shooting Us! They’re Shooting Us!” We didn’t know what he was talking about. He pointed to the only television set in the Union and ran past us to shout the news to others.

We didn’t believe it at first. Who would? They must have shot over their heads. It had to be an accident. Surely no one was actually dead. It was too fantastic to comprehend... until we had to. The truth of it was horrible. It wasn’t enough that we could be sent to Vietnam to die; we could die here.

They Could Shoot Us, Too!

I came across a quote by the survivor, Gerald Casale, that summed up a student’s point of view. “It completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of people I knew...”

Abraham and Isaac Sculpture in Commemoration of the KENT STATE Shootings, at Princeton University

In an era of embryonic diversity awareness, it was astounding that supposedly the most cherished of us all were now being killed just outside a quiet Midwestern town. Anything could happen next. Casale founded the band Devo, creating music and a movement as a result of his experience.

I have a chapter in my book you can read here that’s based on what happened at the campus I was on. It was not something I had to research. I still remember every second.

Within days after the shootings, the National Guard actually did arrive on my campus, and we thought we were also going to be killed—another chapter, another iconic situation. We were still teenagers and most of us had been pretty sheltered, but now we understood what it must be like for those fighting for civil rights in the south, for anyone living day in and day out in any country at war. It was a sobering lesson. We were truly in what we called "the war at home."

According to the final report on the Kent State Massacre by the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest: “It was unnecessary, unwarranted, inexcusable”—an iconic symbol of the war that caused it.

A Coming of Conscience Moment. America Said No!

The subtitle of my novel is “A Coming of Conscience,” because it was a time when we weren’t just growing up and Coming of Age. In addition—by the way we chose or were forced to cope with the situations presented by the Vietnam War—we were each defining our own character. We were each faced with decisions where integrity could—or should—trump consequences (pun intended). Would I go to Vietnam or to Canada?  If I join ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) am I being realistic or complicit? If I put my head in the sand and try to ignore it all am I being apathetic, cowardly or just understandably self-preserving?

We’re in a period now where we’re questioning our leadership and taking our positions on matters to the streets in massive marches. It’s our right and our privilege, and they don't fire on us—we feel safe. One reason is that on May 4, 1970, the country looked aghast at the bodies of those dead children and decided that this was not who we were. This was not our character. It was a coming-of-conscience moment for the country.

It all reminds me of watching Apocalypse Now, a brilliant film that I admired greatly but could never see a second time. Viewing it made me feel I’d personally been through the war. It told the Heart-of-Darkness story of Colonel Kurtz, who embodied "the horror," as he put it, of how we would actually have to behave to win such a war. In the movie, the government has sent an assassin to eliminate him, because as a people we couldn’t accept that Krutz is what we’d have to become to do what Washington considered so essential—continue as the country that had never lost a war.

With Kent State, the horror rang through every level of America. Is this what it’s come to? We answered, “No.”

 May 4, 2020, will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre. Over the coming years, let’s remember and honor what happened at Kent State. And, in this current moment of dubious facts, incredible re-interpretations of truth and Never Again, let’s think of what else is on the conscience of the country to which we should also be saying, “No, that’s not who we are.”

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October 15, 1969: The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. A Pause for Reflection in a Polarized America.

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The anniversaries of seminal events that rocked our world fifty years ago are coming hot and heavy this fall. Today, we remember a time when we tried a reasoned strategy to attempt to deal with a generation-defining issue in a country as divided then as we are now.

TIME Magazine Cover: Vietnam Moratorium — Oct. 17, 1969

By the time of the Moratorium, America had been involved in Vietnam, in one way or another, for nearly ten years. Any initial objectives for the war were long gone, the domino theory relegated back to the game it was named after, the war’s progress descended into body counts, the goal now so incrementally small that there was no big picture left or possible. Our defense secretary was telling us that if we killed more Vietnamese than they killed Americans, it was a good week. Period. The Killed in Action Numbers came out on Thursdays.

It was pretty universally agreed that the war was a disaster. What wasn’t agreed upon was what we were going to do about it. Half the country felt we should stay in Vietnam until we “won,” because America had never lost a war. The other half felt that we should cut our losses and get out—those losses being so obvious in the form of body bags containing young adults (many just teenagers) we were seeing each night for the first time on television, on the nightly news, just before dinner, when the numbers of killed and wounded on both sides were announced with a chart, like sports scores. No one could not know—or pretend not to know—what was going on.

On October 15, 1969, America was stuck in an existential dilemma. Who were we if we stayed in Vietnam? What were we if we left? Lines were drawn at the dinner table; people couldn’t talk to their own relatives; friendships were made or lost depending upon which side of the argument you were on. The country was at a loud and strident impasse—no one was budging. And the policies of our new president, Richard Nixon, despite campaign promises, were alarmingly close to those of his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, who’d abdicated the presidency because he couldn’t figure it out.

One Day in October, Two Days in November, Three Days in December. . . A Strategy That Should Have Worked

THE NORTHERN STAR, NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY, OCTOBER 1969

A moratorium is defined as a delay, a postponement, to give time for reflection. The plan for the Moratorium that October was to apply this concept to ensure the country didn’t stumble blindly ahead in a direction that might be wrong. It was to be peaceful: to put the war on pause, while we reflected about how we had arrived at this point. How did the war begin? What were we trying to do? How could we bring it to an end? The theme was grief, sorrow, and solidarity, rather than anger and rage. It was important to demonstrate that a war protest didn’t have to be violent and destructive like the one at the Democratic Convention. Instead, the tent was wide and had room for anyone with doubts about the war and the direction of the country, knowing this cut across all segments of age, race, and economic status. The concept was to build a groundswell—to engage the widest representation of all groups and factions. You didn’t need to be a radical to be against the war. Your desire to end a war that had lost its way was the common thread.

And it worked—huge groups gathered in Washington (250,000), and cities across the country. The idea was to expand it month by month, to increase participation and demonstrate the widespread support across all subsets in the country—civil rights organizations, churches, business groups, universities, unions—to end this war that affected everyone. After all, who didn’t have a connection: a child, a boyfriend, a student, a brother, a cousin—some family, some connection, anywhere. A war experience enters the DNA of a country, our DNA. Our lack of power over its escalation gripped us all: it was time to build our side of the argument. What were Communist dominoes and saving the world for democracy, versus the loss of actual lives? Did we need new ways of looking at conflicts—of considering more carefully how we got into them, and the points at which we needed to get out? Just what were the ethics of unwinnable wars?

Students Went on Strike

The way this played out on college campuses—which represented the largest concentration of draft-age men—was in the form of “strikes.” Students were encouraged to skip classes and attend informal education sessions about the roots of the war, the options for protest, how they could regain power over their lives. Since Vietnam had been around through most of the students’ childhoods, they had grown up with it, and now were in it, without really understanding how the country had ended up where it was. It was time to revisit the Gulf of Tonkin, the French involvement, the anti-communist fear that ensnared John F. Kennedy. Or, to learn about them for the first time.

Ken Burns traces all this beautifully in his PBS series The Vietnam War, but back on October 15, 1969, no one was piecing it together, talking about what it all meant, what was really at stake, perhaps, versus what had previously been wagered in other wars. We needed new comparators.

Teachers were encouraged to suspend their syllabus of the day and discuss the war with students. The chemistry teachers balked, but the history and political science professors were in heaven. Students came, the straight (in the old definition of representing the norm) and the freaks. People were talking. Check out the excerpt from The Fourteenth of September that takes place on that date, and you’ll see that it was an opportunity for people to talk about what they felt, to finally ask their questions, to face their fears, to begin to understand rather than just react.

Time magazine said the Moratorium had brought “new respectability and popularity” to the antiwar movement.

The Aftermath

The Moratorium was a huge pearl in the string of events that eventually led to the demise of this long national ordeal, that would take until 1975—six more years—to conclude. Though the administration retaliated with Nixon publicly stating that “under no circumstances will I be affected,” he was. The event led to Vice President Spiro Agnew’s infamous speech when he called anyone against the war “effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals” (which would have made an exquisite tweet in today’s world). Significantly, it also resulted in Nixon’s defining “silent majority” address, asking for the support of what he assumed was the vast heretofore quiet bulk of Americans for his Vietnam policy—that we had to stay and win. Peace with Honor, he called it. He conceded the point that South Vietnam wasn’t important, the real issue was that America would lose face. This was startling. From then on, the country knew what it was in for, what side he was on. And each of us had to decide what was more important—an escalating number of soldiers killed with no objective or end in sight, or maintenance of a perfect victory record?  As a young person with your life or that of your friends on the line, you had to wonder if it was worth it when some old guy said it would hit us in our pride. We did not think this was a compelling case for the carnage, not a decade into this war, with a possible additional decade ahead.

Conversations were stirred up, assumptions were being challenged. It was a brief illuminating moment. We learned a lot. It was a start.

Power to the People

We all looked forward to the next phase of the Moratorium on November 15, 1969, which was to be the biggest March on Washington ever. We were empowered and activated to change the world. It felt so good, finally, to think that we could be heard. Illusions about this would be shattered as events progressed rapidly through the end of 1969/1970, but it’s instructive to remember that there are moments when progress did happen, and that it takes so painfully long. We paid a price for not listening to each other back then.

March at night to the White House, led by Coretta Scott King, part of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam

It makes you wonder if we need a Moratorium today—a time for reflection, to really think about the character of the country. Who are we if we continue on our current path? What are we if we choose another, hopefully better, one? We lose all when we stonewall and stop talking to each other. Perhaps our Moratorium is the impeachment process? It could be. Let’s be open. The sin of what happened fifty years ago was that we took so long to do what was inevitable in ending the war. The horrible price was in loss of life and damage to our national integrity. Our DNA is still frayed. There are echoes of what is at risk at present today in our country. There is a war going for our integrity. But there could be hope.

 Like Judy in The Fourteenth of September who went through a Coming of Conscience journey to a decision where integrity trumped consequences, there are a lot of people today who are or who need to make a similar Coming of Conscience decision. Whether you agree with them or not, you have to admire their willingness to risk personal consequences for doing the right thing. We need so many more of them. The country awaits how this current Coming of Conscience moment will resolve—not just how it will be written about in the history books, but how will happen right now.

We can still change the world. . . if we listen.

All power to the people.

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LATEST UPDATES & NEWS

Integrity Trumps Consequence

“I have learned that I am not afraid to stand up for others, even if that means standing alone.”

— Coming of Conscience Scholarship Applicant

"I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. ... I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant."

— Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

Carl Sandburg Literary Awards Dinner

As I was about to cross the stage at last week's Carl Sandburg Literary Awards Dinner I realized I should have provided period-specific music from The Fourteenth of September as background. Turns out I didn't need to—watch and see what they came up with.

Limited Time Only! If You Haven't Had a Chance to Get a Copy, Stock up Now for Yourself or Gifts.

She Writes Press has teamed up with NewInBooks and BargainBooksy in celebration of #NationalBookMonth. For a limited time only, from October 18-27 the eBook version of The Fourteenth of September price will drop to $0.99.

Coming of Conscience and Fighting for Roe by Rita Dragonette

Check out my latest op-ed for Ms. Magazine: “Fifty years from now, the future cannot look like the world we've already changed.”

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The First Anniversary of "The Fourteenth of September:" The 50th Anniversary of Everything That’s In It 🎂

It’s been a year since the publication of my debut novel, The Fourteenth of September, and I can’t believe it either. To answer so many of your questions, yes, it has done well (outperforming the average independent book, I’m told) and continues to be of interest. It’s fulfilled all my hopes and dreams, and I’m humbly grateful for the wonderful year I’ve had due to the support of many of you. I intend to continue the ride as long as it lasts, however wild. This last quarter of 2019 alone is filled with the fiftieth anniversaries of so many of the seminal events of the time that are dramatized in the novel: the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, the first Moratorium Against the War, the March on Washington, the first Draft Lottery. Their commemoration shows us how the decades can seem very long ago, and yet as short as a heartbeat, with in-your-face reverberations today.

To be honest, everyone is right when they say publication is not for sissies. Though incredibly affirming and rewarding, it’s also been, in the favorite words of the colorful Joe Dragonette, “three yards and a cloud of dust.” To my surprise, the part that gets so many writers, the marketing, was often overwhelming even to my PR veteran self. But the biggest challenge was always that my topic was so fraught on so many levels. Me, being me, I just couldn’t begin with a simple starter novel with a few characters and a feel-good climax. And that made the hill I had to climb pretty high, though a few major things did finally break in my favor.

 Following is top-line some of what I learned during the year of the launch of The Fourteenth of September.

Vietnam is No Longer the Voldemort of Wars

read the first chapter which takes place September 14, 1969

Timing is everything, and there was a long period when I thought I’d totally blown mine for publication. The book took thirteen years to write (and that’s once I actually put fingers to computer) and I suffered through many questions about why I was writing about Vietnam—a subject no one cared about, I was told. It was the Voldemort of wars, as one of my book-launch salon participants put it: We lost, there were atrocities, and we treated our vets badly. Nothing anyone wants to revisit. And besides, it’s the past, not relevant for today. Why waste your time?

Fortunately,my au contraire moment was created by Ken Burns (The Vietnam War PBS), Steven Spielberg (The Post), the writers of This is Us, and other popular culture curators who reminded us at the fifty-year point after the war that it was time to look back, learn, and even—be still my heart—be entertained. In addition, with the interest in women’s issues and diversity, there was increased openness to new points of view. As a result, once I published, I became part of the zeitgeist. In fact, the New York Times recently pointed out that three of the current bestselling novels are also at least partially set in 1969, with Vietnam themes or plot points: Summer of ’69, Mrs. Everything, and Chances Are…, the latter of which is actually about three college buddies whose lottery numbers pretty much determined their lives.

Unfortunately, world events have lined up to show that if not examined, history will always repeat itself. So alas, counterintuitively, what’s uncomfortable for the country makes The Fourteenth of September more relevant than ever. It was chillingly familiar when Pete Buttigieg reminded us in the second Democratic Debate that wars are “very easy to start and very hard to end.” He was referring to Afghanistan, but the echo to Vietnam, that limped on five years after Kent State turned the country firmly against the war, was loud and clear.

It’s time to embrace the subject of the Vietnam War as we would any in history. Check out the article I wrote about this for Independent Publisher: “Five Reasons Why It’s Okay to Write about Vietnam Today.”

Vietnam Is Still a Tough Subject, but Not One to Shy Away From

—People actually do want to talk about Vietnam, given the opportunity. In over thirty events during the past year, I’d say, men, in general, are eager to share their particular stories—how they did or did not get out of the draft, the near-miss life-saving efforts of helpful doctors, the miracles of lost or destroyed draft documents. They also remember where they were on Lottery Night—in a bar, huddled around a TV in a dorm, in a pool hall—afraid to listen, feeling powerless, their destiny out of their hands. They shared stories personal and painful as if they’d been just waiting for an opening. They talked about what got them through—tales and talismans. The real-life model for the character of Wizard in my novel pulled the remnants of his draft card out of his wallet and reassembled them on a countertop to show me they never left him.

—Women are mixed. They usually don’t feel they have stories of their own and start with those of their men: fathers, uncles, husbands, sons, students, relatives relegated to the dark and never talked about. Once they “claim” their experiences, their stories are as compelling. One woman told me she’ll never forget picking up the paper on the front porch the morning after the second draft lottery to read that if she’d been one of her five brothers instead of a girl, she, too, would have the lowest lottery number and been off to Vietnam. Many were apologetic—they’d been focused on raising kids, or writing papers at college amid the chaos, or just keeping their heads down and their lives moving forward as the world was blowing up. One of the most telling comments was from a seventy-nine-year-old woman in Wisconsin who came up to me after a book club. “I got married young and didn’t go to college,” she said as if I’d judge. “My husband was on the road as a salesmen five days a week and I was overwhelmed raising three kids. I thought all the protesters were entitled rich kids, causing trouble.” She thanked me for showing her their perspective as she revised her own.

—Young people are very curious. Not so much Millennials, who find it hard to relate, but Xers and younger who say they want to hear more about a subject no one talks about or teaches. They haven’t heard about the Lottery and have a hard time believing that it happened as it did—like a game show on television. They instinctively feel that Vietnam is an important part of their history and that others have decided it’s not to be shared. They want to understand why.

It Still Hurts. Time Helps but Doesn’t Heal.

—Vets are still angry. Some violently so. Several of the comments to my Facebook Ads were pretty hot, by vets viscerally reacting to nothing more than the photo of a protest sign and the name of a female author. I tried to engage with a few to tell them the book wasn’t anti-vet, and one did respond, thanking me. But I had to pull back on my audience target, realizing I was pouring kerosene on a wound that was still open.

—Vets are still profoundly hurt about how the war was conducted and how they were treated. Callers-in on radio shows spoke primarily about that. They were anxious to share. I was willing to listen. My attempts to donate some proceeds to The Wall or Vietnam Vet organizations were mysteriously rebuffed. One sympathetic man finally told me it was too much of a reach. The Vietnam Vets were focused on supporting vets of subsequent wars, so they wouldn’t be treated poorly like they had been. When I brought book copies as giveaways to my high school reunion, I had to start by saying the book was anti-war for that war at that time—not anti-vet.

When my publicist emailed with a link to a review of The Fourteenth of September in The Veteran I held my breath. To her, this had been an obvious media target, but I knew better. Now, I’m more proud of this than any other I’ve received:

Few books have taken the time—and space—to examine so thoroughly the collegiate antiwar movement in small-town America. The story held my interest and reminded me of what was going on in Pullman, Washington, around the same time. The tone rang true in every line.

I was interested in the impact that the draft lottery and its rippling effects had on a generation heavily influenced by the chance uncertainty the lottery had on hundreds of thousands of young people. I had barely paid attention to the lottery because I was one of the young men drafted before it was instituted.

This novel opened my eyes to issues that my thick skin and my age had protected me from. We are admonished to read this book and weep, and I actually did shed a tear or two of sympathy.

If you’re like me, after you read this well-written novel, it will be difficult to put it out of your mind.

We Can Still Be Surprised by the Past

In one of my book-launch salons, I met Pam Tarr, daughter of General Curtis Tarr, who was the much-maligned “inventor” of the modern draft lottery. I didn’t know her history but had been warned she’d attend and I should be prepared for tough questioning. That didn’t happen. She was open and sympathetic to the story of characters protesting what had been her father’s program. Later, she told me about how the objective had been laudable—to come up with a uniform, fair program versus the uneven and “bribable” local draft boards than in place. Her father and her family had been vilified and taunted. She told a story of how President Nixon had urged her to be brave. Her best friends were the daughters of Ehrlichman and Haldeman. It had been a hard adolescence and she felt it hadn’t been fair to her family. And, of course, she was right. War does so much unseen damage to so many unappreciated victims. Many of the overlooked are women and girls. I’m hoping she and I will be willing to work together on this story at some point.

Historical Fiction Is a Pathway to Understanding

I’ve always felt that we learn our history through facts and nonfiction, but we understand our history through narrative—where we can actually feel ourselves in the shoes of a character we can relate to and wonder what we would have done. Then, we can begin to know what it was like to weigh the stakes and dangers against the valor and objective, and consider what it was like to live in another time: to make a fateful decision in the narrow vision of a single person’s experience of the past without benefit of the panoramic reevaluation of the present.

Historical fiction typically takes place at least fifty years in the past. The Vietnam War, as a subject, is now just squeezing into that category by its chin hairs. It’s complicated. Living people bring the lens of their authentic, yet specific involvement to the story. Some feel that unless they had their own experience of Vietnam this story wouldn’t be relevant. This story is only for a Boomer audience of a specific age, in this micro-targeted world. Right? 

And yet, we openly welcome stories of topics of which we have no living experience—the French Resistance, German prison camps, home-front US—in stories like The Lilac Girls, All the Light We Cannot See, The Beantown Girls, The Lost Girls of Paris. Members of book clubs press novels on me about other wars they see as parallel and relevant. People send books, poems: Pandora’s box has been opened. Vietnam is as relevant as today, as nostalgic and fascinating as the yesterday of World War II and all the history that’s gone before. The stories the War has to tell are compelling, gut-wrenching, instructive, revelatory, and

. . . entertaining. The Fourteenth of September, for example, is full of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the time. It’s impossible to write about 1969-1970 without being a bit uncomfortable, yes, but also with singing and celebrating.

It’s time to open ourselves to the narrative. Over the next few months, as we commemorate the pivotal events of fifty years ago, this blog will utilize The Fourteenth of September as a lens to allow you to experience this chaotic and prescient time from the perspective of the nineteen-year-old you once have been, will be or still are. And, to consider what you would have done then, and may yet need to do, again in the near future.

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When Integrity Trumps Consequence

“If we strive to normalize courtesy, integrity and making moral decisions we can inspire others to act in a similar manner. I am committed to making these practices a standard of human experience: encouraging change one by one, creating a better world.”

— Coming of Conscience Scholarship Applicant

Common Sense Gun Control

"Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We're not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore."

— Beto O’Rourke

Audiobook of "The Fourteenth of September" Now Available: Leave the Reading to Us

Now that I have your attention, I will fess up that the novel has been available as an audiobook via Amazon since the book launch back in September of 2018. However, since I didn’t do any specific promotion on the format, it has just been sitting around, quietly, with modest purchases by experienced audiobook fans who knew how to find it. It’s time I gave it some love.

The Casting Cloud

The audiobook deserves its solo spotlight, given all the time and attention that went into producing it, but also because its development challenged me as an author in ways I’d never expected.

Right off the bat, the process of choosing a narrator sounded like great fun, but in practice it was unnerving. I can see why authors so often hate the films that are made of their novels. As a writer, you spend years picturing and “hearing” specific faces and voices in your head, and it’s very hard to envision, if you will, a stand-in. Very. 

Though I was asked many times to narrate the The Fourteenth of September myself, I felt it needed a voice for my nineteen-year-old main character, Judy, that sounded the right age. The casting process for identifying potential narrators was exceptionally efficient. Over sixty professionals sent audition tapes based upon an excerpt I had provided. Just pick one, easy-peasy, right?

Hardly. I did have the foresight to hire an experienced producer to help me with the project—primarily because I was totally focused on the all-consuming production and promotion of the paperback and e-book. We both thought it would be a piece of cake. Not so much.

Thankfully, my producer winnowed the audition tapes down to a dozen for me to review to make it an easy afternoon project. Instead, it was... just... too much. All those voices—all good, all young, all saying the same thing, all sounding so... SIMILAR, but not at all like Judy. I felt instead that I was listening in on a gaggle of her friends at the Tune Room, the site of so much of the story’s action. I finally had to do what I’d been hoping to avoid—listen carefully to each audition over and over, trying to pick the voice I thought I’d want to listen to for hours on tape, but actually found myself looking for reasons to eliminate, so the last person standing (or in this case, talking) would be the obvious choice. It was a bit like shifting through great candidate resumes back in the day but with higher stakes for me and my story. I finally got it down to three, and the producer and I compared our choices and picked a final voice. Whew! I was ready to turn the nuts and bolts over to my producer to get back to the world of words on paper. But no such luck.

Nailing the Voices

Before I could walk away, the producer sent me the recording of the first two chapters, where each of the large cast of characters appeared at least once, to ensure the narrator had the voices correct. I was appalled. None of the voices matched the characters in my head. And all of them—male and female—had two things in common. They were PERKY, and the inflection of every sentence went up at the end. To borrow the vernacular, we SO didn’t talk like that back in 1969. We were happy or sad, sarcastic or whiney, enamored of the curse-word vocabulary we were trying out like truck drivers now that we had left home, but we weren’t full of endless pep every minute. We were never, ever PERKY. And, not being interrogative-loving French, we preferred to swallow the end of our sentences and let the words descend into unintelligible mumblings that our elders would struggle to understand perhaps, but we would never go UP. After all, that implied asking permission, and in Judy’s era we were more likely to be trying to disappear, be sullen, or have POWER. Oh, the Valley Girl of it all. I considered removing the word like from anywhere in my manuscript. It wasn’t there much, but somehow, after listening to the narrator, it sounded as if it were. I can fix this, I thought.

Author as Actor... Not

After years making business presentations, I told the producer I would settle this quickly. I recorded my own voice reading my own first two chapters, filled with my own intended tone and inflection, so easy then for the narrator to imitate, right? I was sure I’d be great. I’d once harbored an inclination toward the stage. The narrator would probably be in awe, and I needed to be prepared to keep her dauber up by reassuring her that she could do it, perhaps not as well, but she’d be fine.

Again, a surprise. I virtually slapped myself in the face. First of all, it was exhausting. Forget the character voices: I could hardly manage to keep the energy of my voice up let alone on inflection pitch for twenty pages in one sitting. And I... there is no more politic word to use... sucked. As the narrator might put it, “I am SO not an actress, ya know?” I couldn’t listen to myself, and above all, I DIDN’T SOUND LIKE JUDY. It was so hard to wrap my head around that. A few decades on or not, I deep down inside guess I thought the words in my mind would come out the way I heard them, sounding like Judy, and Wizard, and Vida, and David, and all my other characters. It wasn’t age, it was... like listening to your voice on the telephone. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Judy. Instead I sounded vaguely like a more nasal version of my sister and the guys sounded like cheery kids, not the voices I needed to communicate the sarcastic bravado in the face of fear that ruled the story’s Draft Lottery time frame.

I feared what the narrator would think when she listened to my version; suddenly I felt that I was the one auditioning. “You call this acting?” I could hear her complain. “Don’t give it to her,” I said to my producer in a middle-of-the-night, follow-up email. Too late. “It did confuse her,” the producer admitted. “I think her narration is fine,” she added after a long, diplomatic pause, asking how I wanted to proceed. Someone needed to listen to the narration chapter by chapter as it was recorded, to be sure it was accurate, words weren’t dropped, etc. “It was critical,” she said.

I humbly told the producer to take me out of the loop and just run with the project. Like Puff, this little dragon sadly slipped into her cave, realizing that there was a reason I had chosen the boardroom over the stage in my earlier career.

In the end, I came to see why movie directors ban authors from the set. We are pathetic, not capable of suspending our belief. We are in love with the vision we put in words, yes, but also the one in the netherworld between the words we write with our inside voice and how they are delivered out to the world. Mere mortal actors/narrators who cannot hear inside our minds will never rise to this impossible-to-articulate ideal. And in fact, once I was out of it, things proceeded just fine; as pointed out by my producer, the narrator may not be “me,” but she is Judy. And isn’t that the point? I was a bit taken aback—after all, there would be no Judy without me—but of course she was correct.

Listen to an excerpt from the audiobook.

A message from Marissa DuBois, audiobook narrator.

At this point audible Judy is doing pretty well. See listener reviews on Audible and Goodreads, and listen to the excerpt. And also hear the narrator, Marissa DuBois, talk about her excitement for the project in this interview. Then, check out the audiobook yourself, which is available on Amazon on the same page as the other formats for The Fourteenth of September. One tip, be sure to turn up the speed when you listen, Judy has a lot to say... she needs to talk fast.

Audio Is Cooler Than You Think

My first audiobook was my own novel and that helped me catch the bug for my long, fair-weather walks along Lake Michigan and car rides. The more you use it, the more you think about where to use it. My trainer listens to audiobooks while she cleans her apartment, an idea I can absolutely get my head around. I’ve begun to inventory life activities that don’t require paying attention.

Above all, to my friends and family who tell me they support my story but just aren’t “readers,” or who only read nonfiction: Please try The Fourteenth of September on audiobook, and Judy’s voice will make it all go down in an exciting way. Let me know what you think... and about new creative ways to listen. I personally, for example, think my brother should read it during those endless hours of home repair and tinkering in the garage. I mean, he’s already on engineering-genius autopilot—he can listen to a story at the same time, right?

Time flies when someone’s telling you a story.  For me, the audiobook experience is like Mrs. Sellen, my first-grade teacher, reading us Dr. Seuss’s The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Its like a personal movie. They talk and you imagine. You know, just like a book. Hands free. Enjoy!

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LATEST UPDATES & NEWS

When Integrity Trumps Consequences

“At a candlelight vigil after the 2016 Election, in a world absolutely intent on being divided, there we were, together. Since then, when people disagree with me politically, I have learned more from listening to them that I ever would shouting over them. I've changed my major to education and found that my students respond to positivity, encouragement, and understanding with passion and excitement.”

— Coming of Conscience Scholarship Applicant

Common Sense Gun Control

What do we stand for and how far are we willing to go to ensure our safety?

— A Coming of Conscience Moment for the Country

ULC Chicago Authors Book Feast

I'm honored to have been selected as a Featured Author at the ‘Book Feast’ on Oct 22, 2019.

Book Cover of the Month Finalist

The Fourteenth of September was voted as a finalist for the AllAuthors August ‘Book Cover of the Month’ competition. Still hoping for a win in round three.

SWP 2019 Indie Publisher of the Year

She Writes Press was awarded Indie Publisher of the Year by the IBPGG as part of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

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Coming of Conscience Scholarship Recipient Announced

Isabel Odom-Flores & Rita Dragonette

As I wrote back in February’s blog post, the Coming of Conscience Scholarship that was created in the spirit of the journey of the main character, Judy Talton, in my novel The Fourteenth of September had attracted a record-breaking 200+ applicants. The scholarship was open to all students (undergrad and graduate) at Northern Illinois University (NIU), the real-life model for the fictional university in the novel. It was designed to encourage meaningful activism and bold personal responsibility. Applicants were asked to write an essay to describe their understanding of Coming of Conscience, to share an example of a Coming of Conscience moment of their own, if possible, and, above all, to indicate their plan for how they will use their degree to help change the world. Essays were evaluated by a faculty committee established by the NIU Foundation, who chose the final recipient.

I’m very pleased to share with you that the scholarship has been awarded to nineteen-year-old sophomore Isabel Odom-Flores, a Communication Disorders major, in the College of Health and Human Services.  

A Generation Committed to Giving Others a Voice

"Coming of Conscience is as simple as 'doing the right thing' and as difficult as realizing 'your whole life depends upon it'"

— Scholarship Applicant

Isabel’s essay was one of so many who told the stories of lives changed by brushes with injustice, tragedy, and violence as well as the day-to-day courage it takes to live a life of integrity. If anyone is worried about how committed the allegedly self-absorbed younger generation is to making a difference in the lives of others, these stories will disavow any concerns. Students wrote, not surprisingly, about bullying of all kinds, cheating, sexism, and drugs, but also about abuse, gun violence, difficulties with trusting the police, and overcoming restrictive cultural norms in first-generation immigrant households. In the main, applicants had faced situations that inspired them to train for careers in law, political science, and advocacy to help address what they feel strongly are injustices and issues that must be overturned. A second majority of those are going into medical school or nursing and teaching to help those who need assistance. The commitment to using the personal fear and rage of what they went through to help others is universal.

Many are unexpected: A young woman who still had to fight to convince her parents to let her go to college. Another who became a nutrition major after the death of a young, obese cousin because of the unhealthy diet of a culture. A Christian aspiring actor and singer who turned down a major role in a play because of skimpy dress, who is now a dance major dedicated to art with modesty. Each is a story of integrity trumping consequences. Some have learned the hard way.

As one student put it. “Do I regret the choice I made that hurt others and eroded their trust and confidence in me? Most definitely. Do I regret the lesson I learned and carry with me each day? Never.”

Isabel’s Coming of Conscience

With Judy Ledgerwood, Acting Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences & Ray Earl-Jackson, Director of Advancement, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Coincidentally, as Isabel and I discovered when we met recently, she and the fictional Judy Talton share a struggle to be able to afford to go to college, the life-line of a scholarship that could make all the difference in their futures, and issues of integrity that could cause them to give it up. She’s agreed to allow me to share her story in this post. Read full essay here.

In her essay, Isabel Odom-Flores recounted a painful yet instructive moment of Coming of Conscience. She always knew that college was going to be hard to pay for and was “going to take any help I could get.” As a gifted softball player, her answer came through athletics when she was offered a scholarship to play on a new team at her community college, joining other girls who were excited to play the sport they loved as well as pay for the education they sought.

It soon became obvious the promised funds were to come “later,” according to their coach, and in exchange for serious ongoing harassment. After a year of this, Isabel was faced with a dilemma, turn the coach in and give up her scholarship, putting her future and that of the other team members at risk, or, as her teammates urged, just put up with it for the vital scholarship money—a #METOO moment at the tender age of eighteen.

“I was signed to be on full scholarship for the next school year. I was promised sophomore team captain and a starting position. I had worked hard the last ten years to become a leading student-athlete in college. I knew all of that was at jeopardy if my coach were to lose his job.” But she realized that someone had to put a stop to this. “Harassment in the workplace is wrong. Harassment in schools is wrong. Harassment everywhere is wrong.”

She tried to turn the coach in twice—once as a single, complaining voice that wasn’t believed—and mustered amazing courage to try again, finally and successfully, by convincing the team to join her in a collective complaint. The coach was let go, the integrity of the softball program restored… but the team members each lost their scholarship money. Isabel had already used the money her parents had saved for her education and was struggling to apply for burdensome student loans.

At the same time, the payoff in integrity was character-forming. Isabel now knows her mind, and has found what she calls her “firm voice” and plans to use it. Her plan for her Coming of Conscience scholarship money is to ultimately obtain a master’s in speech-language pathology to help others, literally and philosophically to have a voice.

“I will advocate in my workplace for anyone who is experiencing harassment anywhere. Spreading knowledge on what qualifies as harassment and what does not. Spreading knowledge on how to file a harassment claim under the equal employment opportunity commission. Spreading knowledge will break down the barrier that separates people from staying quiet to finding their voice.”

“I have grown to have a firm voice and use it when there is an injustice. I especially feel compelled to advocate for other women. Equality and harassment in the workplace or anywhere must be taken seriously. I will never again turn a blind eye in any setting.” 

I’m particularly glad to learn that the Coming of Conscience scholarship will more than compensate for the scholarship funds Isabel lost through her decision of valor—a contribution to the voice she will never again question.

A Coming of Conscience Journey

What a surprise, Ruth Sender, Isabel's grandmother met me at the Wheaton Author's Fest to thank me for funding the scholarship.

I had a bit of a push-back on using A Coming of Conscience as the tagline for my novel. But I was convinced that Judy’s story, a metaphor for what the country was going through during the Vietnam years, was beyond a typical Coming of Age. The latter follows a young person on their journey through complications from which they emerge ready and resilient enough to face the world as an adult. Judy goes through this as well. However, her journey is deeper: the issues she weighs are beyond her maturity and experience and will define her character for the rest of her life. Coming of Conscience works better. As Isabel and the other applicants’ essays illustrate—this is a complex world of diversity, 24-hour news, and social media that amplifies everything, where character is being formed at an increasingly younger age. We watch world figures hashing out issues of integrity every day on the news. Children are listening… but as these applicants demonstrate… they are also learning.

We Can STILL Change the World

My intention for the scholarship was to allow young people to take pride in the hard decisions they’ve had to make and use them to become bold and active, never settling for something that they can impact. The world will always need changing for the better. I’m ever so much more confident after reading these stories. I’ll be sharing excerpts with you in future posts.

These brave young people are on the front lines of the future, as we have been. I couldn’t be more proud and confident that history doesn’t have to be a hamster wheel and we won’t need to keep starting over.

Coming of Conscience: A character-defining personal decision or action where integrity trumps consequences.

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Women’s History Month: A Matter of Standing

Standing: status, rank, position, station, level, footing, reputation, estimation, stature, eminence, prominence, prestige, esteem, illustriousness, importance, consequence, influence, distinction, noteworthiness, validity, sway, clout

The women of new congress

Women’s History Month isn’t an anniversary I typically celebrate or to which I pay much attention. Early in my career, in fact, like so many of us, I worked hard not to differentiate. Making an issue of being a woman in the workplace seemed to underline the very differences I was trying to equate. However, as I type this, I admit to feeling ashamed of myself and that—though I’m dying to meet Gloria Steinem in real life—I hope she doesn’t inquire about the details of my feminist record. It’s there, but in my younger years I did work harder for what seemed more immediate, achievable goals, like ending the Vietnam War. I would say I don’t feel tragically ashamed, more like the descendant of a suffragette being admonished by her ancestors: “Do you realize what we went through?” I’ve always been on the right side—but not raging. I wanted my career and achievements to speak for, not themselves, but for me. I had earned that standing, regardless of gender, I felt. Looking back, after learning how hard it was to be heard, even when you did everything right—even way beyond right—I wonder what on earth I was thinking about. Why did I feel I had to prove anything?

Standing: That Which Is Assumed for Others Often Needs to Be Earned or Proven for Women

Lori Lightfoot (right) and Toni Preckwinkle, run-off candidates for mayor of Chicago

Shame is certainly not the word I apply to this past year. This is a shout-it-from-the-rooftops time. From the speak-up success of #MeToo to the feminism of Congress (I love saying that) to the fact that in my city of Chicago, we are going to have an African-American woman as mayor. She might even be a lesbian. Those aren’t the reasons I’d vote for a mayor, but it’s all pretty cool to see that the field is feminine, so the choice is gender neutral. I’m hoping the campaign will be civil and issues-oriented. The road is rocky ahead, as we can already see from snide comments about these remarkable women. Yet, to be standing tall on this road is significant.

The Issue Is Long-Standing

The extraordinary and hard-earned events of the year aren’t, however, why the standing of women has been on my mind. I launched a novel in the fall, The Fourteenth of September, a woman’s story of Vietnam. I’ve been talking about it across the country and answering continuing questions about why I would write a book about that war from a woman’s point of view: What was my intention? Why would it matter? How could there be a story if women weren’t even in the war? Their lives weren’t on the line, were they? These aren’t judgmental questions, they come from a point of genuine curiosity, and an eventual thrill that there even is a story about women during that war.

The discussions have been like peeling an onion. The first comments are usually from men, sharing their experiences of the Draft Lottery, but then, slowly but surely, the women’s questions begin. They have stories of experiences as well—of impact, not combat. As the queries deepen, so do my answers, and I find myself going back to my childhood where issues of inequity began for so many of us. Mine was a bit unusual, so the disconnect was clearer.

Both my parents were in World War II. My mother actually saw much more action than my father (I’ve always loved saying that). She was a nurse, a first lieutenant, overseas for three years. My father was sent to Panama, out of the war, and came to Europe after D-Day but in time for the Battle of the Bulge. I don’t want to compare their experiences and assess which one had it worse, since that will undermine my whole point, but the details are significant to set up the issue.

Edith Finnemann Hoey, 1st Lt., Army Nurse Corps

My mother had stories (and scrapbooks) that we pried out of her years later that were amazing: in Patton’s army, helping perform meatball surgery in twenty-hour shifts in a tent on the front, dipping her cup into a tub of cold coffee to keep awake before rotating behind the lines for a little rest before it would start all over again; part of a team on VE day that liberated Stalag 11 in Heidenheim, Germany. As the daughter of Danish immigrants she could understand German, and when the captured men smiled and called the Americans names—just like in the movies—she giggled that she could wait for the killer moment, then answer back in their own language, showing she had understood all along, stunning them that this twenty-six-year-old farm girl could smack them back in place. It was cold in Heidenheim, and the prisoners had little clothing. They were huddled in the fetal position to keep warm . . . for years. Her job, as head of triage, was to take their limbs and try to pull them apart to see if there was any range of motion, any hope for life. Just take a moment to imagine what that would be like. But she didn’t want to talk about it. Not, we thought, because most vets didn’t, but because she had found that “no one wanted to hear it.”

When conversations began, she was usually shut down with “but you were just a nurse.” It was my father who was the sanctioned target of a bullet that could kill him, so his stories were the real war stories. My mother didn’t have the necessary standing to be taken as seriously, so she went silent. Eventually she began to agree—maybe what she’d been through hadn’t been that important after all. Maybe her contribution hadn’t been that significant.

Even as a child I remember thinking it so odd that the war experiences of my parents would be assessed and weighed differently. It didn’t make sense. They were equally brave and patriotic. What they went through was equally dangerous and horrific. Why would a scale be applied? Though my mother’s life could also have been lost, it wasn’t technically on the line. She didn’t have standing. Therefore, she didn’t have respect. And yet, though I could imagine my father shooting someone, I couldn’t picture him having the patience and compassion to slowly coax frozen limbs away from bony rib cages and out into the light.

Do We Need Standing for Respect?

When it came to Vietnam, the war of my generation, I was surprised to see similar circumstances happen firsthand. In the antiwar movement, where so many women were involved, despite early feminism it was often very hard to be taken seriously. In the depths of the terror over the Draft Lottery, you could participate, organize, empathize, comfort, but—as you could be told in a snap—you could never really understand what the guys were going through because you would never face a bullet or wonder if you could kill someone. We were often marginalized, just at the point when we felt we were breaking through with our own contributions. We didn’t have the standing to be taken seriously.

The Fourteenth of September is a story of those women. My intention was to pose a female dilemma with the same gravitas and emotional intensity as the decision the men had to make about going to Vietnam to die or to Canada, another kind of death. I call it a Coming of Conscience novel. I wanted to explore how a woman would approach the decision of integrity trumping consequences, how she’d weigh the same factors of duty, security, future, and conscience. It’s as close as I could come. I wanted to give my character Judy the standing she deserved, and, I suppose, however little and late, my mother.

Before my mother died, she talked about how disappointed she was. She’d felt her daughters would fare so much better without the many restrictions of her time. Though there’d been a lot of change, she thought that in her long ninety-year lifetime, we’d have settled this issue of standing.

Standing Tall

My mother has been gone for over a decade but would have been gratified about the achievements of women in this year, celebrated in this Women’s History Month. We’re far from settled, but we are certainly standing taller and perhaps, at some point, we’ll naturally loom so large we won’t have to think of it at all. And someday Women’s History will just be History.

In the interim, I won’t let it pass. I’ve scheduled posts and Facebook ads on the issues I’m writing about, and I’m celebrating. Today, I totally assume standing for my story, for my “record,” and I’m standing up—just like Mom.

My mother, sometime in the 1940’s, standing tall and fearless. I have no doubt she’d pull that trigger.

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Thank You: The Coming of Conscience Scholarship Is Fully Funded with 200+ Applicants to Date

SOCIAL GIVING CAMPAIGN

Coming of Conscience: A character-defining personal decision or action where integrity trumps consequences.

The tag line for my book The Fourteenth of September, which came out this fall, is “A Coming of Conscience Novel,” a designation intended to echo yet distinguish it from the typical coming of age experience. In the story, which takes place during one of the most difficult times in our country’s history—The Vietnam War—the main character, Judy Talton, is plunged into a dangerous journey of self-discovery. She ultimately makes a character-defining decision with huge ramifications for who she is and what she will become. Her dilemma parallels that of America at the time: What are we if we stay in Vietnam? Who are we if we leave?

I call her decision a “Coming of Conscience,” which I define as an issue of character—when integrity trumps consequences. One of the concerns at stake for Judy is the hard-won scholarship that is her ticket to the independent future she desperately desires.

Paying It Forward

In the spirit of Judy’s journey, as part of the launch of The Fourteenth of September, I initiated a social giving program to fund a scholarship at Northern Illinois University, the real-life model for the fictional college in the novel. The scholarship is intended to encourage young people in today’s equally challenging times to engage in meaningful activism and bold personal responsibility. It’s to be awarded to the student who best demonstrates their understanding of what Coming of Conscience means to them, and their plan for how they will use their degree to help change the world in whatever way their beliefs guide them.

When the program was launched, I asked you to help me fund the scholarship either by sharing my posts or a photo of your copy of the novel, or by making a short video to share your own personal Coming of Conscience moment. For each involvement I donated money to the scholarship fund, and some of you also gave direct cash contributions.

I thank you so much for your participation and I’m happy to report that the $10,000 scholarship is fully funded and that there are a record-breaking 200+ applicants.

We Can STILL Change the World

WATERGATE PROSECUTER AND MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR, JILL WINE-BANKS.

Back in Judy’s day, young people spoke out and ended a war. Here in the present, we’re faced with many issues and choices… all of which have consequences, many of which involve integrity. Now more than ever, we need Coming of Conscience moments to define the character of each of us, and of our country.

The essays of the scholarship applicants speak of dreams and plans that are bold and meaningful, and I’ll share some of them in future posts. Meanwhile, thank you for your help in making those thoughts crystallize, the first step in making change happen.

Help grow the Coming of Conscience Scholarship at Northern Illinois University and inspire more talented students toward activism and growth into their personal, social and political maturity. For information on ways to give, please call our toll-free number, 1-877-GIV-2NIU (1‑877-448-2648)

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Thank You: The Fourteenth of September Is Off to a Great Start

The Fourteenth of September debuted this fall and has become a well-reviewed, award-winning and reader success, poised for a second printing as I write this. The three+ month launch period was a whirlwind, with nearly twenty events, parties, salons and speaking engagements, from New York to California, DeKalb IL to Chicago. Click for details on awards, reviews, media coverage and more photos from events and salons.

This wouldn't have been possible without my very valued "village" of salonnieres, event sponsors, bookstores and the incredible interest and support of friends and associates from all aspects of my life — close and extended, past and present. I thank you all. Your support has been overwhelming.

It’s all still going strong into 2019 with an audiobook, speaking/reading events, salons and lots of interest from book clubs, which is very exciting. I've also begun a second novel, set in San Miguel de Allende, where I'm going in February for research, and will dive into seriously in March, when I’ll spend a month at Ragdale, my treasured writer's retreat. I admit to being a bit bleary-eyed at the pace of all of this, with an as-yet-to-be fulfilled resolution to achieve the ever-elusive work/life “balance.” LOL

I appreciate you all being part of my journey. I hope to keep it interesting. Meanwhile, I adore each one of these smiling faces. You’ll be seeing more in future posts.

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December 1, 1969: A Date Which Will Live in Irony

First birth date being selected in the First Vietnam Draft Lottery

Forty-nine years ago tomorrow was the date of the first Vietnam Draft Lottery, the day the phrase “to win the lottery” became, not a prize, but a death sentence. It was also a marker for a generation not unlike December 7, 1941, the date of the Pearl Harbor attack, characterized by then president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a “Date Which Will Live in Infamy,” a phrase which itself featured an ironic word referring to the dark side of famous. Perhaps that’s what war does to us? Keeps us mired in subtext, unable to talk straight.

I named my debut novel The Fourteenth of September, the birth date of the Number One lottery “winner” drawn on 12/1/69—straightforward, and crystal clear. All irony upfront and intended.

When Your Birthday Became Your Destiny

CLICK TO SEE VIDEO CLIP OF ACTUAL LOTTERY DRAWING ON 12/1/1969

It was the day a new program was implemented to determine the order of the draft-age men who would go to Vietnam at a time when the life expectancy under fire could be as low as six seconds. Pieces of paper with each of the 365 days of the year were placed into individual plastic capsules, mixed together in a giant container and pulled out, one by one. If your birthday was the first date pulled, you were Number One, and so on. If your number was 100 or under, you were most likely a dead man walking, on your way Vietnam. If your number was 300 or higher, you were considered safe, and could feel free to “live your life as you’d planned,” and also, according to President Nixon, stop protesting the war, which was the whole point. If you were in the 200s, you were in limbo. The new system would be “fair,” they said. And, in fact, the definition of a lottery is “an event with an outcome governed by chance.” And chance is always fair, right? Just like destiny.

But it’s also something you can’t hide or protect yourself from. All you could do was hold your breath and pray as you waited to hear your birthday, a date once so joyous, to be called in fateful order. You’d never think of it the same way again.

A Real-Life Horror Story

Click to read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”

I’d already learned not to trust the word lottery. The first horror story I’d ever read was “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson’s Twilight Zone-like story of a drawing where the “winner” is stoned to death. It was magnificent and terrifying. I read it in school, as so many of us did. The New Yorker just ran it again for Halloween and I shared it, netting an angry comment from a Facebook friend who’d had the wits scared out of her by being forced to read it in sixth grade by a teacher she still can’t forgive.

That’s how I’ve always felt about the actual Draft Lottery. It scattered our wits to smithereens. And, though people with high numbers felt they were “lucky,” and if pressed you’d had to concede it was “fair,” no one thought it was humane. Even today, it’s still impossible to forgive.

All those capsules with “winning” birth dates, mixed up really good, chosen, opened, and pinned in order to a bulletin board. Seriously? Regardless of how it worked out in the end, on December 1, 1969, the Draft Lottery presented as a sick game show to determine who would die first—and on television! This was a formal government program being administered as a spectacle. Not quite Wheel of Fortune, but right up there. Hunger Games without the panache. How had this already surreal war come to this? I was astonished at the time, wondering if Jackson would demand royalties for having her concept usurped by the military. The last line of “The Lottery,” sums it up best. “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.”

The Stories We Still Carry

milo ventimiglia in Vietnam Arc of NBC's This is us

During this fall’s launch of my novel, which coincides with the time frame of the build up to first Draft Lottery, I’ve had many audience members share their lottery numbers, or those of their fathers or other relatives. I get emails with only a number in the subject line: 151…263…319… and from a surprising number of people who were born on September 14. Those of the time still want to share their stories of chance won or lost, survivor guilt, close calls, friendly doctors, fortunate injuries, mixed-up records, turning the upper age limit of 26 just in time, being thankful for once in their lives for being too short, too tall, too fat, too thin. All are touching, surprising, different. Many comments are about the generation gap between patriotic WWII parents and Vietnam-era children, who knew this war was very different but not how to articulate it to be understood by mom and dad. Some are terrible: a friend called his father with his 300+ number and instead of rejoicing was told he should now be a man and enlist. Some are wonderful: a business leader’s father told him later in life that he’d had it all planned that if his son was drafted, the entire family would move with him to Canada.

Those of one generation want to share; those of another have questions. Younger audience members are curious. They want to know the details; they can’t believe the details. They can’t believe no one talks about this. Lots of them saw the lottery episode on The NBC television program This Is Us back in October. The show is in a story arc where a son is seeking to learn about his father’s experiences in Vietnam so he can better understand himself and the dynamics of his own family. That’s it in a nutshell—why it’s important to remember and understand history. It teaches us, if we confront it unafraid, for the lessons it holds. It also shows us we still don’t have the answers we didn’t have back then.

The Stories We Have Yet to Tell

The story I tell in The Fourteenth of September is a rare female point-of-view of that time, specifically of women on college campuses. There, the largest concentration of draft-age men in the country were their classmates—frantic and furious—waiting for their lottery numbers, and for the long war to end before they graduated or flunked out and their numbers would kick in.

Lottery Night from a women's POV, as read by the author 10/4/2018

I spent December 1, 1969 being nudged out of the communal television room in my dorm. The Lottery drawing would be telecast that evening. The room was small with limited seating. No room for the girls who’d gathered there for support. We couldn’t possibly understand what the guys were going through, or so we’d been repeatedly told. That wasn’t fair either.

I vividly remember the day I came up with the idea for the female protagonist of my novel to have the same birthday as the Number One. Read the chapter here. I’d long been seeking a dilemma for my main character that would be as emotionally intense as what the men of the time were going through—a way to exemplify how deeply, and equally, women were involved, not because their lives were on the line like the men, but because their generation was on the line. We were all “in it” together, side by side.

I don’t recall the sequence of events that led to the aha! moment, but I do remember thinking the title idea was good. I had dinner with a friend that night and told her. The shudder that went through her was all I needed to see. That shudder is what I want every reader to feel. That with the flip of the chromosome coin, anyone could be Number One. On December 1, 1969, we were all Number One.

But that’s still only one story of women of the time. At a recent book event I met the daughter of Curtis Tarr, the government official charged with revamping the selective service system which, until it became the Draft Lottery, had been insufficiently random. Tarr had been vilified during the day, the target of many of the people I wrote about in The Fourteenth of September. She remembers suffering through it as a teenager, about it being unfair. There are so many stories we’ve been afraid to tell.

The Fourteen of September is one; perhaps hers will be next.

The Lessons of the Lottery: It’s Time for Another Coming of Conscience

In a famous Star Trek episode, the population of a planet in a future world took pride in the fact that they’d eliminated war. Instead, after times of political conflict when war would be inevitable, it was instead simulated by computer. After, individuals identified as those who would have been casualties had the war been “real”—would get notices to report to extermination centers, where they would obediently submit to painless and efficient deaths. They were so proud they’d come up with such a civilized way to conduct war without damage to their fine cities.

Throw birth dates into a container, draw lots from a box, computerize casualties, create volunteer armies of those with few other opportunities. Civilized? You’d think we’d have figured it out by now.

War may be pointless, as the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War illustrated so well, but it’s apparently also irresistible, as evidenced by the rapidly multiplying hot spots around the globe. It’s also ever random. Anyone can be in it. With a blink of an eye, one less chromosome, or an emotional tweet, we—or someone we love—can become a soldier deployed to a war zone, a refugee fleeing civil strife in Syria or gang wars in Honduras, or their mothers facing loss. All of us casualties of chance.

How we choose to confront war/conflict shows who we are—our character, our conscience. Do we unite or separate? Sacrifice our young or disadvantaged, or find a better way? Chance is the lottery of life. As long as someone is in a war, we’re all in it.

The subtitle of The Fourteenth of September is “A Coming of Conscience Novel.” It’s about the development of character. My female protagonist’s journey of self-discovery mirrors what the country was debating at the time. Who are we if we stay in Vietnam? What are we if we leave?

On this anniversary day of the Vietnam Draft Lottery, the country is in another Coming of Conscience moment. We’re again fighting for our character, on many fronts. What do we stand for today? What are we to be relied upon for and by whom? When does integrity trump consequences? We’ve come full circle in the hamster wheel of history. How ironic.

Back on December 1, 1969, I’d never considered what my own number would have been had chance dictated I’d been born a boy. I looked it up as I was considering the title for my novel, hoping it would be a single digit, for optimum dramatic effect. I was born on November 4. I would have been #266…

I would have been in limbo…

With no more control over my life than a Central American mother fleeing certain death for her children, a poor inner city kid who enlisted for college money stationed in the Middle East, or a war orphan in Yemen.

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Fifty Years Ago Today: When the Whole World Finally Started Watching

They always say that Vietnam was the first war we saw in our living rooms as we watched the nightly TV news. I don’t recall those images as much as I should have, but I absolutely remember the night I watched the war at home—as I sat on the ’60s-splashed orange-flowered couch in the living room—when the police jumped out of the paddy wagon and began beating young people. This was happening in my hometown, only an hour from the suburb where I lived. And I was watching it with my mother—a World War II veteran. It was when the generation gap disappeared for us for a brief moment. It was the first time we agreed in months, and the last time we’d agree, for a long, long time. This was inexcusable. This was not America.

Another Golden Anniversary from the Year that Turned the World on Its End

It was fifty years ago today that the Democratic Convention in Chicago was held, finishing off a long reign of the Democratic Party that began with the great hope of John Kennedy and ended in tragedy—with major achievements undermined by an inability to end the Vietnam War. It also shattered the image of Chicago as the City that Worked, super-charged the antiwar effort, and polarized the nation.

Until the violent images appeared on television, I remember that, though the war was heavy on our minds, it was hard to get really engaged around the convention. It seemed the country’s leaders were offstage or running out of gas just when we needed them the most. The two candidates of hope were gone or fading. Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated, and after that, Gene McCarthy seemed to have lost heart and energy.  We were left with Hubert Humphrey, the VP of a president that by this time was so reviled and exhausted he gave up and didn’t even try running for another term—and Nixon. I was too young to vote, but I knew that whatever happened, it would be my age group the next administration would be putting on the line.

Meanwhile the Vietnam War was Raging

There’s a lot of coverage that will be coming out today, talking about the specifics of what happened here in Chicago during that time, and why. There’s already been pretty heavy examination. The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern just finished a remarkable series on “The Media Legacy of Chicago ’68,” that reminded us that this is where the phrase “The Whole World Is Watching” began. The convention was also the first instance of politicians claiming what we now call “fake news” and vilifying the media. It was the event that caused police to be trained ever after in crowd control and, significantly, it was the first time raw footage went right to broadcast: No editing, no editorializing—YOU WERE THERE. Twenty seconds of film of cops jumping out of a paddy wagon and clubs doing what they shouldn’t be doing, and more and more after that. We’d see worse soon enough at Kent State. But this was first. This got the attention of the world. This was a police state in Chicago: Vietnam on Michigan Avenue.

We Were Already Pretty Spooked

By the time of the convention, we were in the eighth month of a year that every quarter had brought us a new horror—from the Tet Offensive to two assassinations. We weren’t numb yet; your faith that regular life would—had to—prevail was still pretty strong. You felt like if you just kept your head down... you could duck until it all settled back into rationality.

I’d just graduated from high school and made a bargain with myself to get the thing I most wanted—the future promised by a college education—but from the military, the entity that was involved in what was to become the greatest tragedy of my generation. A year later, the "deal" seemed almost Faustian to my teenaged self. But at the time I was trying to make it work. My induction ceremony had taken place only a few weeks earlier.

My mother had encouraged/pushed the move (it’s what she’d done), and she wasn’t broaching any second thoughts. Both my parents were vets from “The Good War” and couldn’t really see that you couldn’t say that about this war... until we saw the paddy wagon pull up.

I remember my mother covered her mouth with her hand and held it there, long after the clip played—this woman who had weathered twenty-hour surgery shifts in field hospitals on the front and the liberation of a prison camp.  We were both stunned, both grasping for a comment that would encompass the horror of the moment. When her hand came down, she couldn’t look at me—her gaze was still fixed on the screen. There was just a deep, long sigh. I joined her. We sighed and nodded. Words wouldn’t bridge the gap, but this did.

My Coming of Age

I think it happened in that moment, quick and profound. I spent the rest of the summer winnowing the piles of what I was planning to bring to my new dorm, from clothes to record albums. I fixated on those, for some reason. I knew the Beatles had to come with me, but I was going to college, maybe I should listen to more grown-up music—maybe it was time to give up childish things.

I chose a Johnny Mathis album, one of Sinatra’s, and gave The Association Greatest Hits to my ten-year-old brother.

Nothing actually changed between my mother and me, but when we argued in the future we were both aware we knew better. We were aware that way down deep we agreed at least on this one fact—“my” war was nothing like “her” war.

Eventually, I gave up my military scholarship and took back my Association album. My brother called me an Indian-giver, and I bought him a new one. We both still have them.

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First Look: Premiering My New Book Trailer

It’s time to take a break from marking all these important—but sad—anniversaries of events that happened around the time frame of my novel and share some fun stuff as I move toward the fall publication of The Fourteenth of September.

Grab Your Popcorn

Sylvia Perez Productions, the namesake company led by the multi-talented television news anchor, video producer and long-time friend, has assembled a powerful trailer that capsulizes my complicated story, sets it firmly in its historical time frame and underlines why it’s important. Take a look.

Chew Fast—It’s Only Two Minutes

Discover & share this Reactions GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

Share Your "Review"

Let me know what you think. 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

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The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy: Three Strikes and the Early Hope of a Generation Is Out

This year has presented a lot of where-were-you-when moments that are impossible to keep from reflecting upon. And, if you miss one, just catch the CNN special on 1968: The Year That Changed America and you’ll be immediately transported.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Unlike that of his brother, five years earlier, I don’t remember exactly where I was when I heard—but I do vividly recall the next day. I was in study hall, supposedly getting ready for what would be the last finals of high school. I was wearing a green skirt. I remember because I kept staring protectively into my lap, away from my books and the tense eyes of others, darting back and forth across the aisles of desks, anxious to commiserate. I couldn’t keep my mind focused and resented that I had to. How could we be expected to study, I screamed in my head? Or even take finals, or even be in school with all this going on? Another Kennedy dead, two months after King. This is happening here, in our country, not some remote third-word place I couldn’t picture. I was terrified. We were terrified.

It Was Supposed to Be the Best of Times…

Senior photo 1968

I was a senior and it felt good to be a high school top dog, finally. Years of tension for me and my family about being able to afford college had been wiped away a few months earlier when I hit the jackpot with a full-ride, four-year scholarship. Whew!

All the exciting senior events had been such fun, and portended early skills and success: the mini-musical I’d written for the annual Variety Show had been a hit, the Moby Dick float I’d designed for Homecoming had won the best-of-parade prize. I’d made my own dress for Prom. I was in choir and Madrigals and we preformed like mad and medaled at state contests. I ran the hot dog concessions at the football games and got an early taste of what it was like to be in charge. There were home teams to support, dances to attend, my first Hike for the Hungry. It was the last burst of childhood, the thrill of college awaited and I wanted to enjoy every minute.

…And Had Become the Worst of Times

But over it all was a pall—a growing drumbeat of dread. I received the letter informing me of my scholarship in February, a few weeks after the Tet Offensive—one step forward, two steps back. We didn’t really understand the rapidly changing details, but suddenly Vietnam was everywhere you turned. Tense, generation-gap dinner table conversations about the war and civil rights went dead silent after King was assassinated, with fear we wouldn’t be able to respect each other if the wrong thing was said out loud. Lyndon Johnson had abdicated the Presidency… Wow. At school, we talked about the racial “situation” in social studies, our choir director wrote a beautiful song, A Prayer for Peace, and we performed it at a special assembly, anxious for healing. The tension continued to crank—classmates were turning eighteen and would be eligible for the draft.

But there was new hope around peace candidates and those who could calm race relations: Gene McCarthy and especially, Bobby Kennedy.

I Admit I Chugged the Kennedy Kool-Aid

My mother was a Kennedy fool and it rubbed off on me. She read everything printed about them, often in publications that resembled movie magazines or today’s People, and relentlessly followed their exploits on television. We were surrounded by Jackie’s fashion choices and conspiracy theories about Jack’s assassination. They were fresh, tragic and irresistible. We felt proprietary and protective about them. I was already tremendously excited about this new world I was about to enter as an adult, filled with space exploration and the British Invasion. When Bobby decided to run for President I transferred this enthusiasm onto him, regardless of the fact that at seventeen, of course I couldn't vote myself. 

Our high school held a mock convention that spring. Students with acting chops took over the roles of candidates including George Wallace and Richard Nixon. McCarthy was the preferred candidate among most kids my age and supporters showed it off, parading around the upper levels of the gym with banners and chanting. But I was “loyal” and stuck it out, lonely on the main floor, with my Kennedy ’68 sign and button. I wore a one-piece, culotte outfit in turquoise, with matching tights. I was hot… and hot for the hope represented by Kennedy.

I loved the words on a poster that eventually ended up on the wall in my college dorm room: “I dream of things that never were and say why not.” Yes, I thought. Yes! Yes! That was how we’ll go forward into the world.

And then Sirhan, Sirhan turned that Yes into No. It was devastating.

 

Abraham, Martin and John... and Now Bobby

The videotape of the assassination was frighteningly close to what we’d seen before—another Kennedy, another head wound. Our memories still retained images of Lee Oswald being gunned down by Jack Ruby, the shot on the balcony in Memphis. People being murdered on TV! The Bobby blow was horrible, but it was the pattern that shook us: three assassinations, here, in the United States. Who would be next? Certainly, Ted Kennedy if he decided to run some day: Don’t Do It!  The environment was not unlike how we feel about today’s relentlessly repeating school shootings. Disturbed people could surface out of nowhere, with crazy logic, for a cause that made sense to only them. It could happen anytime, anywhere. The Democratic Convention was coming to Chicago in the summer, my city, my home. Leaders ripe for the pickings. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when, for the next one. Brace yourself.

The last 45 RPM record I ever bought was Abraham, Martin and John. It was recorded by Dion, of Runaround Sue fame—that had always been one of my favorite songs, and now so was this very different tune.

Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby,
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin and John.

Take a listen here to Abraham, Martin and John. Have a tissue handy.

A Generation Bookended by Tragedy

I’ve never forgotten that June day in Study Hall. It was the week before graduation and I was about to launch out into a world that had been so enticing, and now was so terrifying. I’ve thought about it over the years and feel that third assassination was the moment that finally scoured off all feelings of childhood safety. I think we, as a generation, were gut punched at our most formative moment. After, there was a tremendous rage and energy to use all the upheaval to change to world. Yes, much of it was necessary and ultimately positive—and I participated enthusiastically—but a lot of it was born in the violence of three symbolic murders. By the time the Vietnam War finally sputtered to a pointless end, many of us were disillusioned with our inability to make enough of an impact. We moved into the Me Generation. Let’s focus on something we can control—ourselves and the lives of those we hold close. It became a time of Nixon and there were no politicians to trust as we trusted Bobby.

I feel that for those of us who came to adulthood in that fateful time there has always been a pull to return to the optimistic work of changing the world. I’ll come back to it some day, we think, when my career is set, my children on their way, when those things under my control are settled. That’s when I’ll regroup and see how I can make that difference after all. Then came 9/11 and the world is a scary place again. The assassinations and the missing World Trade Center—the violent bookends of our generation, as I see it from my armchair.

I reject the notion that we’re whiny boomers, that we blew it and we’re done. There’s no doubt we’ve upended every status quo with every decade we’ve passed through. And, there’s still a lot of world to change, and energy to do it. But there's nothing like that feeling of limitless hope and possibility, of first love. Ours was cut short, in June of 1968.

Like with any tragic figure cut off too soon, there’s been a lot of speculation over the years. If Bobby had lived and become president, would he have gotten us out of Vietnam sooner? Would he have eased the path to civil rights? Would the world have been different? Would our lives have been different?

Isn’t it pretty to think so.

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Remember Kent State, May 4, 1970: An Iconic Moment for a Generation... A Coming of Conscience for a Country

The Iconic Kent State Photo

Recently, while promoting the fall publication of my novel, The Fourteenth of September, which takes place during the pivotal 1969-1970 years of the Vietnam War, I was asked if—of the many iconic moments in American history that happened during that time period— one had impacted me more than any other.

I paused to consider the word iconic... icon—a symbol. No question. It was the Kent State Massacre, a symbol at the time of the total chasm between the government and the youth it was supposed to be protecting: the bridge too far that blew away most of the remaining support for the war, though it’s death throes dragged on another five years.

48 Years and We Still Remember

Every May fourth since 1970 there has been media coverage of the shootings, always featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio with arms outstretched in agony and disbelief, kneeling above the body of twenty-year-old Jeffrey Miller. An iconic image of how we felt. Agony and disbelief. This is America? How had it come to this?

We know the facts: The National Guard fired into a crowd of students protesting the war’s expansion into Cambodia. Sixty-seven rounds over thirteen seconds killing four, wounding nine, permanently paralyzing one. The massive national student strike after. A turning point in how the country viewed the war. It was just too much to kill kids.

Early Alternative Facts

It all began with a lie—and it was bald-faced. Nixon was elected because he said he'd end the war—something his predecessor, Johnson, hadn't been able to do. His Administration said we were winding down. Hard as it may be to believe from the vantage point of today, media was limited. We only heard one side and assumed what we were told was true—though obviously that was disavowed later on many levels, most recently in the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War.

But, suddenly, on April 30, 1970 it's announced we just bombed Cambodia. It was earth-shattering. The war was being accelerated, not contained. Of course, there were protests; of course they were full of anger; of course those protests would be on campus where the populations of draft-age men were among the largest. We had just been through the roulette of the Draft Lottery and the news about My Lai. Nerves were raw, rage was high.  Above all, trust was waning, and this Cambodia lie just wiped it out. How could we believe anything the government told us ever again?

And then, to top it off, unbelievably, students were shot dead at one of those protests. It was the very definition of a word we were just beginning to use to describe what we thought were mind-expanding experiences: surreal.

Where Were You When You Heard?

The Memorial to Jeffrey Miller, Bordering Where He Fell, on the Kent State Campus

I think many people of my generation can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about Kent State, just like all the assassinations that punctuated that time—King, the two Kennedys. I remember walking into the Student Union with a few others and being shocked to hear my friend, Tommy Aubry, screaming from the top of the stairs, “They’re Shooting Us! They’re Shooting Us!” We didn’t know what he was talking about. He pointed to the only television set in the Union and ran past us to shout the news to others.

We didn’t believe it at first. Who would? They must have shot over their heads. It had to be an accident. Surely no one was actually dead. It was too fantastic to comprehend... until we had to. The truth of it was horrible. It wasn’t enough that we could be sent to Vietnam to die; we could die here.

They Could Shoot Us, Too!

I came across a quote by the survivor, Gerald Casale, that summed up a student’s point of view. “It completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of people I knew...”

Abraham and Isaac Sculpture in Commemoration of the KENT STATE Shootings, at Princeton University

In an era of embryonic diversity awareness, it was astounding that supposedly the most cherished of us all were now being killed just outside a quiet Midwestern town. Anything could happen next. Casale founded the band Devo, creating music and a movement as a result of his experience.

I have a chapter in my book you can read here that’s based on what happened at the campus I was on. It was not something I had to research. I still remember every second.

Within days after the shootings, the National Guard actually did arrive on my campus, and we thought we were also going to be killed—another chapter, another iconic situation. We were still teenagers and most of us had been pretty sheltered, but now we understood what it must be like for those fighting for civil rights in the south, for anyone living day in and day out in any country at war. It was a sobering lesson. We were truly in what we called "the war at home."

According to the final report on the Kent State Massacre by the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest: “It was unnecessary, unwarranted, inexcusable”—an iconic symbol of the war that caused it.

 

A Coming of Conscience Moment. America Said No!

The subtitle of my novel is “A Coming of Conscience,” because it was a time when we weren’t just growing up and Coming of Age. In addition—by the way we chose or were forced to cope with the situations presented by the Vietnam War—we were each defining our own character. We were each faced with decisions where integrity could—or should—trump consequences (pun intended). Would I go to Vietnam or to Canada?  If I join ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) am I being realistic or complicit? If I put my head in the sand and try to ignore it all am I being apathetic, cowardly or just understandably self-preserving?

We’re in a period now where we’re questioning our leadership and taking our positions to the streets with massive marches more than ever before. It’s our right and our privilege, and they don't fire on us—we feel safe. One reason is that on May 4, 1970, the country looked aghast at the bodies of those dead children and decided that this was not who we were. This was not our character. It was a coming-of-conscience moment for the country.

It all reminds me of watching Apocalypse Now, a brilliant film that I admired greatly but could never see a second time. Viewing it made me feel I’d personally been through the war. It told the Heart-of-Darkness story of Colonel Kurtz, who embodied "the horror," as he put it, of how we would actually have to behave to win such a war. In the movie, the government has sent an assassin to eliminate him, because as a people we couldn’t accept that Krutz is what we’d have to become to do what Washington considered so essential—continue as the country that had never lost a war.

With Kent State, the horror rang through every level of America. Is this what it’s come to? We answered, “No.”

 May 4, 2020, will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre. Over the coming years, let’s remember and honor what happened at Kent State. And, in this current moment of dubious facts, incredible re-interpretations of truth and Never Again, let’s think of what else is on the conscience of the country to which we should also be saying, “No, that’s not who we are.”

Publication Date: September 18, 2018

Now available for pre-order.

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Cover Reveal: First Peek at the Final Book, Counting Down to September 18 Pub Date

I’m quite excited to introduce the cover design for The Fourteenth of September, the novel I’ve worked on for so many years. I have to admit, it’s pretty thrilling to see it come to life, and I AM palpitating more than a bit…

I must say, the journey to this final cover has been a surprisingly challenging process. I probably should have known this, coming out of over 25 years in marketing. Looking back, when the cover is done it seems so obvious, like the title. However, after years of wrestling this complex story into a narrative, and naming it (thank you, Gary Wilson), and now again having to digest it all into a single image with the power to instantly engage the reader who would most love, enjoy, and relate to it? Well, that clearly required a specific eye and expertise far different from anything I’d done before. 

I knew the cover design would belong in the bailiwick of the publisher. And yet, I kept trying to envision it. I pestered early readers and designer friends about what they thought. I was both excited and full of trepidation as I handed over this book, my baby, with a leap of faith that the publisher would find the perfect image. I soon found myself, irony of ironies after all those agency years, as …the CLIENT… of those who knew far more than I about the type and images that are most alluring, that will still pop in thumbprint size in Amazon. In short, who knew way more than I could imagine. I was happy to defer. My publisher, She Writes Press, began work in November.

BACKGROUND ONLY. THEN: AUTHOR, GET OUT OF THE WAY

Fortunately, rather than have to figure it out myself, I was asked only to share my thoughts and any preliminary ideas I may have had. Fun as this was, it also underlined how formidable the task. I soon realized that, just like with the manuscript, it would be so easy to tip the balance and make this look like fan fiction for a Peter Fonda movie or, worse, a full-out Full Metal Jacket/Apocalypse Now story of men at war in-country, instead of a woman’s story, on campus. The cover needed the gravitas and familiarity of recognizable Vietnam imagery, but not the male combat or psychedelic ’60s assumption.

I was worried about the crowded field of iconography: helicopters, soldiers in a jungle with rifles. All very masculine and, to tell the truth, overdone. I struggled to make a list of what to eliminate for consideration: imagery that was hackneyed (a peace sign? please), just as I wrestled in the manuscript with dialogue for my characters. I couldn’t have everyone say “Hey, man,” even though in real life they actually did. And not everyone could have a musical name, like my protagonist, “Judy Blue Eyes,” but some could. Above all, we had to steer clear of the ’60s flower-power, fat Peter Max lettering. The war was not a “happening.” Balance was key, or there was danger the cover could send a completely wrong message about the actual subject of the book.

An Idea in Vogue

In December, based upon the roughest hint of a thought from me about flowers in a National Guard gun, the crack design team at She Writes Press was inspired by, of all things, a 1945 issue of Vogue magazine that ran on V-E Day with a beautiful, impressionistic illustration of pastel flowers seeming to grow out of the bayonet of a rifle. I was immediately taken by the surprisingly feminine image of war and felt it perfectly depicted the woman's point-of-view message of my story.

They added the period-specific typography used on a draft card circa the 1969 timing of the novel, and creatively stacked the words “September,” “Fourteenth,” and “Dragonette,” all with virtually the same number of letters, as if I’d chosen them intentionally for that purpose. There was some concern that the “feel” was too ’40s, and we experimented through January and early February with more era-specific images, but the impressionistic illustration won out. Women have always been a vital part of any war. This cover would work. The design was approved and final art was underway. I had a terrific story idea to pitch to Vogue lined up, merchandising ideas identified, and, significantly, we had time to spare in the publishing cycle.

Love and Ruin

GREG samata, eighth-grade boyfriend

I was totally in love with my cover. But then, to show that the road to great ideas is rocky, indeed, though the image was on a site offering it as available for licensing, it required an unanticipated “extra” layer of approval from the estate of the original artist. Though that illustration had been commissioned originally by a newsstand magazine, the estate felt that its use on the cover of a book for sale, was too “commercial.” (I can't even show it here). At the eleventh hour, permission was denied and we were back to square one, but worse…by now it was March, and we were facing an immediate deadline to get advanced review copies published in time to ensure critical reviews and long-lead publicity.

A collaboration began where both She Writes and I scrambled to tap our resources. Though my luck was running badly, my life remained charmed in at least one key area. My eighth-grade boyfriend (true story), Greg Samata, is a world-class graphic designer. When I went to him for advice, over tomato soup at Beatrix, he vaporized my stress and told me (as he did with my website) that he would handle it, not to worry. The publisher agreed.

PAUL sahre, illustrator

Greg called his friend, renowned illustrator Paul Sahre, to render the original idea into a ’60s-specific depiction and add his genius. The She Writes design team then took over to incorporate it beautifully into their original, elegant design and add mysterious but wonderful finishing touches to ensure optimum reproduction in any medium, as well as made room to include a wonderful blurb from best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard. Finally, She Writes held the presses, and we were able to include quotes from late-breaking Kirkus and Foreword Clarion reviews, along with additional blurbs from authors Peter Golden and Barbara Shoup, to polish off the back cover. Within two weeks we were back in business and on deadline, if under the wire. My great thanks to the entire expanded team. My nerves have yet to completely settle, but I’m in love again.

Better Than Vogue

Despite my affection for the original illustration, I must say the final cover is better. It’s a beautiful and provocative image of the feminine flowers of peace growing out of the hard metal of war, the conflict of Judy’s coming-of-conscience decision that will define her for the rest of her life. I’ll be curious to hear what you think.

Available Now for Pre-Order

The novel is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and Apple iBooks for delivery on the publication date of September 18.

To celebrate the launch of the book, there will be a series of events in Chicago and New York. If you’re in either of these cities, save-the-date invitations are forthcoming, and I hope you’ll join me in person and get the book at one of the parties so I can sign it for you. Or, pre-order and bring it with you. I’d love to celebrate with you live.

If you’re elsewhere, I’d encourage you to order as early as possible. All pre-orders will be recorded on the drop date of September 18, and the more I have, the higher my “best of" numbers will be on the various sites—and the greater will be the interest in publishing my next book (yes, there is one, more on that later.) This way you’ll all be both enjoying the book (fingers crossed) and supporting my new writing career.

Thanks for being with me on this journey. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.

Lovely, Rita*

*Even better than Judy Blue Eyes

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Hell No, Never Again. We Are All In The Shot Together.

Watching the news on Valentine’s Day about the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, my mind raced back ten years—Valentine’s Day 2008. That year, too, broadcasts broke a story of horror mid-day, shattering a holiday celebrating love. A young man with a shotgun and two pistols had killed five students, injured seventeen and shot himself at my alma mater, Northern Illinois University, in a lecture hall where a few decades earlier I had taken many classes. More than one student in my preferred section of seating didn’t make it. At any random stroke of time one of those casualties could have been me, could have been one of my friends, could have been my second cousin who was a senior at NIU at the time. I wasn’t there, but I was. I was in the shot. It goes without saying the 2008 shooter was mentally unstable. You don’t kill kids if you’re fine. But nine years after Columbine, all I could think of was how did he GET THOSE GUNS? Why did we in a modern society HAVE THOSE GUNS?  From then on I voted with my anger. A pro-gun stance by a candidate was no longer just “on the list,” it was enough to reprioritize a lot of other issues. As an adult, I had standing—the power of a vote. I’d waited a long time for that standing, thought it was enough. Thought, as we said back in the day, the system would work if we were just part of it. Alas…

Hell No, We Won’t Go

Back in 2018, I put down the remote, and my mind raced again, back farther to a time when I didn’t have that power, to a time when, like the Florida kids, I didn’t have standing. Those issues of that era propel the characters in my novel, The Fourteenth of September. The details were different, but the essence was the same—a complex issue standing in the way of life for children. In the time of the Vietnam War, another generation were teenagers. The average age of draftees was nineteen; voting age was twenty-one. Life expectancy under fire was measured in seconds. We were being killed, and those who should have protected us—our government, our institution—were mired in what ifs and, as we said, were “part of the problem, not the solution.” Our WWII-era parents were upset but not so much that they were mobilizing to successfully vote out the hawks. At Kent State, legal guns were turned on us. No, not the same as mass school shootings, but we knew what dead kids dropping around us felt like. We knew how the endless series of more and more dead bodies terrified us, whether in a jungle far away or in a school demonstration gone bad. Yep. Got that. It could be me. Or, you right next to me. We were in the shot. Remember?

THIS IS BS! … but in good way

Emma Gonzalez: presidential potential some day?

Today, Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, and a generation of other young people are also without standing and very much in the shot. Gonzalez, a wonderfully outspoken girl from Marjory Stoneman Douglas called it like she saw it, and she’s right. She cuts through the crap of all the “why not” reasons—"The Domino Theories” of gun control—and gets to the core of how it should be seen—as bullshit!—and I finally feel that real change has a chance. The response of these amazing, angry kids from Florida is so tragically familiar, and wondrously hopeful. 

For the first time in a long time, all the ingredients for real action are in place.

Fear—they’re targets and they’re being killed. Anger—they aren’t being protected by the government and institutions that are there FOR THAT REASON. Disappointment—many parents are trying to vote out the gun guys, but the lobbies are strong and multi-issue voting hasn’t worked. Outrage—those of us with influence have had enough time and sufficient opportunities to do something, and we haven’t. Lack of power—they don’t have the vote. And, it’s personal. They are in the shot.

Abbie Hoffman & david hogg: too good at this? must be Professional instigators or actors really?

These are the factors that in my day stopped a war. These are the factors that ended racist Jim Crow laws in the South. Today, these are the same factors that can stop guns. These kids are making us understand, with fury and social media, and more than a few tricks from our day. I smiled in solidarity as they walked out on March 14th, and plan to do it again every 14th, just like our Moratoriums Against the War.

Things are already starting to turn. There’s even talk of moving the voting age to sixteen. As Laurence Steinberg said in the New York Times on March 2, “The proposal to lower the voting age is motivated by today’s outrage that those most vulnerable to school shootings have no say in how such atrocities are best prevented.” Sound familiar?

 

 

Wild in the Streets or Protesting at the Polls? Our Choice

In 1968 a popular movie  came out called Wild in the Streets. Kids took over. The new President was only twenty-five. People who hit thirty were dosed with LSD, draped in white togas and left to wander through the forest. It was a cautionary tale. Things can get pretty outrageous when you aren’t being listened to. No BS.

I don’t think we should get rid of everyone over thirty, nor am I ready to say the voting age should be sixteen without a lot more thought. But I am here to say that we—the anti-war generation—knows how to do this, and we can help by marching with and voting for these kids, in their place, on their behalf and in every sense of the word.

We Can Still Change the World

This all means we can STILL change the world. That rallying call was the obligation of my generation—our noblesse oblige, if you will, for being the first generation living in enough freedom to follow our passion. We knew how to do it—we stopped a war. We lowered the voting age to eighteen. We didn’t think we could do it, but we did.

These kids can stop the mass shooting war raging around them. But without standing, they need our help. This is a time for marching and voting.

Be their proxy. This week and beyond vote for candidates who know where guns belong—and where they don’t. Join the students in the streets on March 24th. Join them anytime on social media. With all of us standing for and beside them, even the NRA can stand down. And the world will change.

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It’s Official! My Novel is to be Published September 18

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Though it’s been in the works since April, I’m very excited to be able to officially announce that my debut novel, The Fourteenth of September, will be published by She Writes Press on September 18, 2018—the closest date possible to the actual title of the book.  Sometimes the stars align!*********

For those of you who haven’t heard the story by now, it’s about a female recruit, in college on a military scholarship during the Vietnam War, who begins to have doubts. She goes underground into the counterculture, and risks family and future, as she’s forced to make a choice as fateful as that of any Lottery draftee. The story is ever so loosely based on a character-defining personal experience of my own that happened during that critical time frame between the first Draft Lottery and Kent State, one that I’ve always felt defined our generation and cried out to be examined from a woman’s point of view.

Early on, as I worked on the novel, there were a lot of obstacles—mostly questions about the relevance of the Vietnam conflict to Millennials, to anyone. Fortunately, the recent Ken Burns documentary Vietnam has returned the subject to the zeitgeist with a vengeance. Unfortunately, current events have underscored that the past is our best teacher, but we really do have to listen. Bottom line, the timing of release of this novel has worked out for the best.
 

Judy Blue Eyes or Lovely Rita?

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All that said, this is a small, personal story of a young woman’s Coming of Conscience, at a time that is one of the most exciting and devastating times in her life, and the history of the country. There’s much more about it on my web site www.ritadragonette.com, including new chapters and the play list of songs that pepper the narrative, as they did the times. It’s not all tough stuff, there’s nostalgia and humor, and if you’ve ever been nineteen, you’ll empathize with my main character—Judy Blue Eyes (I just couldn’t use Lovely Rita, though I was tempted). And, now that I’m on the subject, I must admit I did shamelessly steal aspects of real people I knew then—a gesture, a way of speaking, a suggestion, even a claim to have written the phrase Let It Be before the Beatles. They may recognize themselves, but it’s all done with affection, if also irony.
 

She Writes … So I can

I’m very excited about She Writes Press an award-winning, independent publishing company that supports SheWrites.com, the largest global community of women writers, but appeals to ALL readers. I’m psyched about their mission, their distribution, and their philosophy of partnership with their writers.
 

Early Accolades

I’m also very excited about the support I’ve received so far, including a wonderful cover blurb from the insanely successful, best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard.

Jacquelyn Mitchard

“It’s been said that in the anti-war movement of the 1970s, the men stormed the barricades and the women made the coffee. Rita Dragonette has written a strong-hearted and authentic novel about a naive young girl and her struggle to reconcile the dissonance between the world she sees and the world she was raised to believe in. Judy is truly a quiet hero; you won’t forget her.”

–– Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Two if By Sea
www.jacquelynmitchard.com

I’ll keep you informed, through this blog, about progress on the publication, marketing, and availability of my novel. 

I appreciate the support I’ve received from so many of you over the very long gestation of this novel and look forward to celebrating publication. For now, please put The Fourteenth of September on your reading list or book club schedule for September. I’m up for events of all kinds. I’ve been waiting over forty years to talk about this story. I’ll be anxious to share.

How I'm feeling about Publication

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What a Mini-Skirted Watergate Prosecutor Represents about Relevance

This is the second blog post in the series #Re-Radicalized, spotlighting inspiring individuals who are newly recharged by the current political environment to change the world.

The Re-Invention of Jill Wine-Banks

The Mini-Skirted Prosecutor

When I first met Jill Wine-Banks about five years ago we were both writing books about topics we’d been told repeatedly were no longer of interest—me about the Vietnam War and she about the Nixon White House. We both felt we might have missed our windows, but I was much more skeptical that hers was ready to be put out to pasture. After all, she was the one who interrogated Rosemary Woods, the White House secretary responsible for the notorious missing 18½ minutes of the Watergate tapes. I felt Watergate was right up there with the Nazis in terms of perpetual interest—the creative gift that keeps on giving.  How could she doubt herself?

Let me back up. First of all, to meet Jill you need to do a double and triple take and think, no way could this woman have been around and in her prime back in the early 1970’s Watergate days. She looks way too young and still so striking that it’s easy to imagine her in the mini-skirt she got so much flack for back in the day. (She was dubbed the "mini-skirted prosecutor,” and eventually auctioned the garment off for charity it had become so famous).

I certainly hadn’t realized, as the Watergate hearings played on television in the background of my waning college hippie years, that there was a young woman in such a spotlight. It was still relatively early in the feminist movement and many were suspicious of her appointment as simply a coy legal strategy—bring in a woman to question a woman, rather than a big bad guy. And here was this very young woman, with blond hair and (apparently) really great legs, please!

Boy, she showed them.

I’m reminded of the words of a former client, the late great Jewel LaFontant, the former head of Refugee Affairs for Bush 41 and often both the lone woman as well as person of color on the 17 corporate boards on which she served-- a “two-fer, not a token,” as she called herself. “I have never NOT walked through a door that’s been opened to me. But once you take that step it’s all you.”

Going to Court

With Watergate Jill (then Wine Volner) burst through that door with a bang that resounds through today. The steps she took were giant, as she parlayed her success into an incredible list of achievements: first woman General Counsel of the Army, Illinois' first Solicitor General and first female Deputy Attorney General of the state, first woman EVP/COO of The American Bar Association, Executive at Motorola and Maytag. After an equally impressive list of not for profit/social advocate positions she has championed causes in education and social services, most recently serving on the US Department of Defense Subcommittee investigating sexual assault in the military.

Jill never stopped fighting, particularly as an outspoken critic of sexism. An early iteration of her book was as a memoir contrasting what it was like to be at the pinnacle of success and attention, yet still facing sexist attitudes and practices in both professional and personal circumstances.

The book was to be her point of view on Watergate and its legacy, a perfect coda to her impressive career.

And Then Came Trump

Today, legacy is no longer the issue – Jill's mission is to prevent history from repeating itself, and she is driven.

As aspects of the new Administration’s political situation grew progressively more familiar, Jill knew she had the credentials and a unique voice.  She honed her messaging by participating in the Op-Ed Project which encourages new voices on world issues. The resulting editorial, “Comey’s Firing is as Bad as The Saturday Night Massacre,” was published with dazzling speed within days by The Chicago Tribune, and Jill has spent the months since fielding media calls and making regular appearances on MSNBC, CNN, ABC, Politico, The Huffington Post, Canadian and Australian television and more. And it’s only the beginning. On July 5 she made her debut as an official MSNBC contributor. As she puts it, she's been "re-invented by Donald Trump."

She also has a new working title for her revised book: From Watergate to Trumpgate.

With Justice Breyer and Bob Woodward

Jill’s message is clear: We learned lessons back then. We know better now. It can’t be allowed to happen again. She, along with the others on the prosecuting team, had felt that Watergate was a perfect storm of circumstances, an anomaly that could never recur, even as they watched as the laws that passed to protect us from another Watergate, including the Special Prosecutor law and campaign finance reforms, were undone by The Supreme Court or left to expire

She’s appalled yet clear eyed about the parallels between Nixon and Trump in terms of what we were unaware of then, and must be aware of now. Others may point out the differences, but her role is to point out the similarities. As she said of a recent, and remarkable, ABC 20/20 special in which she appears, Truth and Lies: Watergate “substitute the word ‘Trump’ every time they mention ‘Nixon’ and you’ll be astonished.”

Nothing is Irrelevant

The Authors

What I say is that Jill will never be irrelevant. An early feminist pioneer, today she's a leader who understands the obligation we have to learn from the painful lessons of history to keep from repeating the mistakes of the past. That’s the only way to  move forward and change the world.

I asked Jill several years ago if she ever considered running for office. “I’m too thin-skinned,” she said.  My response? “Please!” I asked again recently, given her new profile. She thinks maybe local government. In her seventies, it’s not a start… it’s not even a re-invention for a lifelong fighter...it’s a renaissance. Bravo, Jill.

PS. My favorite part of Truth and Lies: Watergate is learning that the burglars were caught because their lookout was watching television—the program was “The Attack of the Puppet People.”

Need I say more?

I hope YOU will. Please engage and comment.

Marching In Solidarity, But Not “In Fashion”— Why Didn’t Vogue Call Me?

On January 27 I wrote a blog titled “A 48-Year Déjà Vu” about the similarities between the post-election Women’s March and the march to end the war in Vietnam in Washington DC on November 15, 1969. I’d been at both and have just finished a novel about the latter.

I commented on the longtime gap between issues that were compelling enough to get me back on my feet, and the “wake up” from my “radical sleep.” To illustrate my argument, I’d carefully combed through a circa ’69 photo of me in a protest march and lined up a corresponding shot from today.

The post was heartfelt. I received many comments (yes, a few about my hair) and reestablished connections from long ago. We were still all in it together.

Out Of Fashion, But Not Out Of the Question

Recently, in the May issue of Vogue magazine, of all things, I turn to a page labeled “Nostalgia” and see an article titled “March With Me,” comparing the author’s dual experiences of marching in DC long ago against the war, and this January against the potential loss of women’s rights. Great minds, yes?  

Photo credit: Vogue

However, next to the article was a photo of what can only be called a Yardley girl from the ‘60’s. She’s what we all wanted to look like—doe-eyed, with long, stick-straight hair and hip clothes of the moment. Though the caption indicated she thought her “protesting outfit” was the essence of cool—bell bottoms and turtleneck—I was incredulous. This shot had all the benefits of professional hair, makeup and lighting, as well as a stylist who hung those sunglasses so insouciantly low on that skinny circumference of a hip. And the arch of her wrist as if she’d just flipped that glossy hair—seriously? She wouldn’t have lasted a mile marching in that getup.

But I read the article anyway and was surprised at how much our experiences had in common. The author, Pilar Crespi, had participated in the anti-Vietnam War March on Washington of 1967. That was two years before the one I attended and prior to the outrage of the Tet Offensive, The Democratic Convention and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy that jolted my class out of high school at the end of 1968 into a truly frightening world.

As I read her story, and as I’ve recounted in previous blogs, I kept thinking about how so little changes, so few lessons are learned and the hamster wheel of history just keeps going around. Pilar’s (I’ve now forgiven her photogenic self) experiences were spot on with my own. Despite the photo caption, her actual ’67 march outfit consisted of “genuine” bells and a blue work shirt—I had one of those, but marched in ‘69 in a fatigue jacket found in a Salvation Army resale shop in the small town where my University was located.

Like Pilar’s mother, mine had also been appalled by my evolving radical appearance, pointing how much more flattering my previous stretch pants and mohair sweaters had been versus these clunky jeans. My mother just didn’t get how much clothes credentialed you in those times. I also didn’t tell my mother I’d gone to Washington—well, not until after the fact, when the phase I was in required appropriate mom-baiting.

The tone of our ‘60’s marches was also the same—male—and the focus, early feminist “lady-like.” We never would have worn pink (that was for out-of-touch sorority girls), made anything solely a women’s issue (we were equal in the struggle), or discussed body parts of any kind.  In this year’s Women’s March, the tone was welcoming and friendly, the colors politically pastel, the men supportive, and the anatomy right up there in all the made-for-TV posters and on our pussy-hatted heads.

We had even both been spurred by the Women’s March to call our congress representatives about the same issues—the Muslim travel ban and the Affordable Health Care Act. We were SO aligned.

We Still Have the Power To Galvanize

My in-the-day fashion moment
Photo credit: Karen Thompson

What struck me above all, was how Pilar noted that our focus back then had been singular—to end the war, a generation-galvanizing stance that ultimately touched us all.  Today, we’re both concerned about the multiplicity of the urgent issues—from the environment and women’s rights to immigration—and question how we’ll focus to make the proper impact on each. I wonder, is there a thread we can work through and pull these concerns together like we did over the Vietnam War?

That observation is similar to my additional concern about diversity.  At the Women’s March in Chicago each speaker welcomed in turn every potential subsection represented by the women’s faces in front of her--transgender, queer, Hispanic, immigrant, previously incarcerated, single mothers, African Americans, victims of abuse, etc.—versus our overarching, and all encompassing female umbrella. And yet, SISTERS, it’s our commonalities that will provide the strength for change, not all these differences, right?

Finally, though both Pilar and I had been warmed by seeing the daughters and granddaughters who marched alongside us in January, we are objective about the difficulties for the quest ahead. Can we galvanize to the same degree as in the ‘60’s and fit all our issues, however diverse, under one powerful effort? 

We can figure this out, Pilar. We have this in common—with our generation, with our gender.

So, I’ll bury the hatchet over your radical-chic and admit you were/are Vogue worthy. My look, back in the day I’d say was March worthy, save a few sporadic fashion moments.

Do you think there’s a photo shoot in it?

Any chance you hung on to that cute little tunic? I’m afraid my hat bit the dust long ago.