Steven Rios trial...

As I sit in the courtroom waiting on the verdict in the Steven Rios case, I’m considering all that’s happened during this grueling week. Jurors pushed to the brink of exhaustion, attorneys passionate to the point of anger, spectators drained from the rollercoaster testimony of key players. Waiting, listening, watching as jurors request evidence, exhibits, photos…the anticipation is like sitting in the dentist chair with the drill hovering over a pried open mouth.

And it occurs to me…no matter the verdict, the victims will still be victims. Linda will still have lost a son. Libby lost her husband. A son lost his father, whether temporary or terminal. And a city lost its virtue. No matter the outcome, Columbians will be divided, torn by the certainty that their opinion is right. But the truth is, only two people on this planet know what happened on the morning of June 5, 2004, and one of them is dead. With all the facts, the opinions, the judgments, the homophobia, one key detail must be kept central. Jesse Valencia died that morning. He paid with his life, for whatever reason, and no matter his sexual orientation, his indiscretions, and his personal habits, he didn’t deserve to be brutally murdered. Focus is often lost in the heat of battle, but one must never forget what started the war.

Technology in the Classroom

As I sit in the National Writing Project listening to teachers discuss how to implement technology, it occurs to me just how important it is for teachers to reach out to kids through cyberspace.

I think I’m a prime example of what writing and teaching in the digital age has become. My teaching evolves around using Wikis, blogs, Blackboard, and Nings. As an author, I’m currently writing a multi-genre YA novel (a sequel to Dregs) using blogs, chat rooms, IMs, and text messages. It isn’t centered on just that, but it’s about teens, so it wouldn’t be an authentic representation of them if it didn’t incorporate that on some level. To reach my intended audience, I have to enter their world, and a huge part of their world exists in cyber space. We can’t use age-old strategies for teenagers now, because they’ll feel we can’t relate to them. As an author, I want them to read my work, and say, “Man, she gets it…” As a teacher, I want them to listen to what I’m saying, especially since I’m teaching future teachers how to teach. That listening needs to morph into believing, and the only way to truly convince young people I understand their world is to be part of it. As teachers and authors, we’re role models, and we can exist in those virtual worlds just as we do in the real one. (It begs the issue that teaching via virtual reality also allows the less-interactive kids to interact more openly, where limitations can be breached. Shy kids step out of their box, because they can assume an avatar/persona that gives them anonymity.)

When education embraces the world students/teens spend their evening hours immersed in, we might meet on a middle, common ground that allows learning to abound. And my guess is, kids won’t be the only ones learning.

What It Means to Be an American

If you list all the hats you wear in your life…wife, teacher, author, mother…where does American fall? For many of us, it’s near the top of the list. I do this activity with various writer’s group, and inevitably, I find American somewhere fifth, sixth, sometimes seventh on that list. Right now, it hovers closer to the top, because the election always reminds me how lucky I am to have the right to vote, to have a say in what happens in my country. When writers list all the roles they assume throughout the day, the week, the month, their life, somewhere down that list, we all come around to it eventually. Why? Because we know what people who don’t live here don’t…being an American, though sometimes taken for granted, rocks. Freedom of speech, of religion, to chase that elusive dream. We have it all, no matter the downside. But how many of us, on that list, put down Republican? Or Democrat? We don’t, because both McCain and Obama said it Tuesday, in their various speeches. Once this election ended, we must come together, forget our differences, and remember, we’re not red America and we’re not blue America. We’re the United States of America, for better or worse.

If you’re patriotic – whether you hang out on the left, the right, or try to straddle somewhere in the middle – you recognize that when it’s all said and done, we have to remember that one of those labels we embrace everyday is American. If you ever doubt it, watch this video of 6-8 year olds singing our National Anthem at a Texas Tech basketball game last year. It’s one of the most amazing performances I’ve ever heard, and should send that surge through you… Man, I wouldn’t wanna live anywhere else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Ejji0bcE4

My State of the Nation Address…

Yesterday, I read about the shooting at an Arkansas college, and this morning, I just saw where a little 8-year old boy was at a gun show with his dad, along with an instructor. Christopher Bizilj was allowed to fire an Uzi, and when he lost control, he shot himself in the head and died. It’s a miracle no one else died as well. My issue isn’t with the father or the instructor, and not even with Christopher. We’re fascinated with guns, all of us, or shows like CSI and The Unit wouldn’t so consistently be among Nielsen’s top rated. I’m not a Charlton Heston hater, and I’m not opposed to Americans being entitled to owning guns. Clearly, there’s no merit to the ownership of guns equating to violence. In Canada, until about two years ago, they owned more handguns per person than the U.S., yet their crime rate was profoundly lower than ours. And they’ve had one school shooting to date. One. We’ve had literally thousands now, and it escalates to the point that we barely notice them. There have been over twenty already this year. Isolated incidents, maybe only one person shot, maybe no one hurt, just shots fired. The point is, people can own guns. But what purpose do these automatic weapons serve?

I’ve fired an AK-47 while doing research for a novel. Captain Tom Dresner took me shooting, let me shoot it as a semi- then as a fully automatic. It’s legal, and it’s a rush. But the only place I ever see a use for these weapons is in the military. Christopher Bizilj was not in the military. People who go to gun shows aren’t arming themselves to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. Those who end up with these guns, statistically, are gangs and militia groups. So as manufacturers crank them out, they have to know that these weapons are designed for illegal activity, unless they have a contract with the government.

At some point in this country, we’re going to stop dead in our tracks and think, my god, what has happened to us. If you haven’t already. With the economy in its worst state since World War II, us fighting a war most of us don’t even think about during our day-to-day, they only add to crime, drugs, gangs, and unemployment completely out of control. The media uses fear mongering to keep us worried, afraid, but for all the wrong reasons. We should be afraid of losing ourselves, because it’s happening before our very eyes.

Inspired on my B'day

A friend in class last night talked about a writer she'd seen in Atlanta...and that speaker gave a talk about writing as a gas, liquid, and solid. Wow, did that get my brain going.

The idea being: when we have ideas, they're like gas. We can barely see them, they're with us, but vapor-like and have no shape. When we begin writing, they're shapeless, like water. We can put them in different containers (short stories, novels, romance, mystery, etc.) But it is still forming, lacks anything we can quite hold onto. Then it becomes a solid, a complete piece that we can look at, pick up, and begin to wonder what it will take to chisel it to a polished piece... This reminds us that even when we think we're finished, there is always polishing to do.

It begs the question: How many times do I let the gas slip through my fingers and not get it to the liquid stage, much less the solid?

So why am I blogging when there are gases out there just waiting, aspiring to be water?

Difficult Times

The National Book Festival had a different flavor this year, primarily because DC was centered on the bailout talks. Visiting the Holocaust Museum impacted me much as last year’s trip to the Vietnam Memorial did. I think I carried away a different feeling because of the state of our economy.

Republican vs. Democrat aside, we’re in difficult times now, and we run the risk of repeating the 1930s. And then it begs the question – what role did the world’s economic weakness play in Hitler’s rise to power? The Holocaust is a horrific, singular event that is still a black mark on our world’s history, but it isn’t unique in its genocidal scope. Rwanda, Bosnia, and most recently Darfur…it still happens, so perhaps the state of the world is irrelevant. Yet our weakness, being a nation hated by so many others, makes it – and us – vulnerable. It should frighten us. All of it should frighten us. We’re down, and the rest of the world has steel-toed boots. We need to unite, pass the bailout, or we’ll realize we’re nowhere near the bottom yet.

We don’t like the role of being the world’s police, and when we can’t take care of business at home, we can’t even pretend to play it. What then? Darfur needs help, but until we clean up the mess in our own house, it’s hard to see beyond our own front yard.

Help me put www.barribumgarner.com on the map!

I’ve been abducted! Yes, it’s true…I’m currently without my middle initial, because the guy who built my website, Blake Theiss, owns me and I can’t find him…Blake, if you’re out there, email me (barribum@aol.com )! I need me back!! But the result is that my old website, with that pesky middle initial, is currently out-of-order…so in the meantime, PLEASE visit my brand new site at www.barribumgarner.com and get that puppy on the Google map! The more hits it gets, the easier it will be to sidestep the old one. In December, I should own me again. But in the meantime, if you see me wandering aimlessly down the street, help me get where I need to go (that’s a dangerous statement to make, isn’t it?) So as I head off to D.C. for the National Book Festival , I’m hoping everybody who googles me will find me!