Katrina

I am sick at heart today. As the sun rises on the devastation in the Gulf, I can sense the loss and heartache that pervades that place. I can feel civilization tumble back into the dark ages. There's help coming but one by one, the people point to places where there is only rubble and dirt and say to the cameras "This was my home."

Today has been declared a day of prayer. I propose that every day become a day of prayer. Every moment we all are held hostage to the forces of nature. There is nowhere in the United States that people are immune to the forces of the planet. The east is pounded by storms; earthquakes, fires, and volcanic activity can shake the west. No one is impervious to the forces that shape the face of this planet every day.

As the full impact of Katrina unravels, the cost to all Americans will become clear. Insurance will be impacted; the results of having an oil-based economy will become painfully apparent. Gas is expected to hit the $4.00 a gallon mark easily. In addition, the hurricane season ends in November. We have three more months of this.

It is important to understand that we don't live in a vacuum. We live in a global ecology. As we try to assert our version of reality on each other, Nature comes forward and makes our little arguments moot. There is nothing to do in the face of all this destruction, but to lift up our hands to God and give the future up to His grace. When we can, we need to give to organizations who are trying to do the best they can to give our fellow Americans the aid they need to simply survive.

I get paid tomorrow and will be giving something to the Red Cross then. If all you can afford is your prayers, we all know what a mighty thing that can be and please, light a candle for the people who have been impacted by this storm. The news will be showing film from the area for days to come. Sit with those people in your mind and heart and be with tem in their travail. Go stand outside wherever you live sometime today and thank God for your home, your family, neighbors, and friends. Thank God for your life.

A Katrina Red Cross donation page can be found here:
http://www.redcross.org/

Help the People in the Gulf

The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists these organizations for those seeking to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina:

Donate cash
American Red Cross (800) HELP NOW (435-7669) English; (800) 257-7575 Spanish

Operation Blessing (800) 436-6348

America's Second Harvest (800) 344-8070

To donate cash or volunteer
Adventist Community Services (800) 381-7171

Catholic Charities, USA (703) 549-1390

Christian Disaster Response (941) 956-5183 or (941) 551-9554

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (800) 848-5818

Church World Service (800) 297-1516

Convoy of Hope (417) 823-8998

Lutheran Disaster Response (800) 638-3522

Mennonite Disaster Service (717) 859-2210

Nazarene Disaster Response (888) 256-5886

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (800) 872-3283

Salvation Army (800) SAL-ARMY (725-2769)

Southern Baptist Convention -- Disaster Relief (800) 462-8657, ext. 6133

United Methodist Committee on Relief (800) 554-8583

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/30/help.agencies/index.html

I Wrote it Now What

I Wrote it, Now What?
Article by J.M.Lamoreux

I have written a book. I decided one day to collect all my short stories that I'd scribbled together in classes at Truckee Meadows Community College and put them in book form. Good idea. I collected them up, worked them, and began the first steps in a process that I still have no clue about. Considering the complexity of "the book business," I'm not ashamed.

What qualifies me to write this article about writing? I have written a book and now I need to decide what to do next. I'm not alone in this dilemma. The reason I'm not alone is that electronic publishing and Print on Demand (POD) technology has caused thousands of "wanna be" writers to answer their own question, "I wrote it, now what?" Here's your chance to see it in print...do something.

I chose the self-publishing route because I believe the book itself is a work of art, and I want to control its look as well as its content. Everyone has his or her reasons. The book is a small one, illustrated with ninety-four pages and letter size (in the print version). The title is "Patient 444 and Other Short Stories." The stories are inspired from ghost tales in the Reno/Tahoe/Carson City area. Having lived in that area for over twenty years now, I am privy to "local legends" that step outside the more familiar "Mining Towns of Nevada," or "The History of Prostitution in Nevada," writer's trade.

I write horror based on the essence of stories passed down by word of mouth (or what I call "folk horror)." I think it's edgy. My book deals with things like ghosts in a next-door apartment, a spirit in a haunted gym, and ghosts in river water measured at a Water Master's house, predator ghost wolves at the Donner Memorial in Truckee, and oh yes...a haunted mall bathroom and more. "The Egg" won "best fiction" in 2005 along with a student award from Truckee Meadows Community College. It was published in the TMCC College literary and art magazine, "The Meadow." It's included in my book. The proof version of my creation sits on top of my scanner right now. Nice work if I say so myself. But it's only part of the answer to my original question.  

Maybe this is "Phase Two?" Many of my stories were work-shopped on one of the writing groups on Yahoo that I subscribe to. On "ticket2write," there is a nice clutch of experienced and beginning writers proving an excellent resource for reviews. The story goes there to its second audience. It's at this point that my original question begins to drum up partial answers. Here's where I learn how well my story reads to other eyes.

A significant fact operating is that each person who reads my story rewrites it in his or her head. It's their treasury of memories, images, and experiences that they bring to my words. The other thing they are scanning for is flow, what causes a reader to stumble. Workshops are good...trust me.

Ok, I have all the notes and comments down, I use them to rework what I have, and I launch my creation again. Again, it comes back to me with flaws that I thought I had handled in the revision. There's a reason that we are told by people who have been through this process to "Get a human editor." I get one, but I can only afford $150.00 for a "first-read, light-edit." It shows in consequent reviews.

Now I have to pause and reassess. I ask myself, "Is your story still at the stage where you're entertaining yourself and maybe a few close friends, or would you like other people to be able to read and react to what you've done?" If you stop and think through that question, examine the markets, hang out with authors and publishers on mailing lists and listen...not talk, you begin to get a sense of how that question is shaping up for you. The harsh reality packed into the statement "I wrote it, now what?" is staggering. Your book sojourns into a sea of millions of others. As you launch it from the shore, you can see it being swallowed in an ocean of similar publications. It's depressing; go on, it's all right to say it.

I published my book through Lulu.com. On the one hand, I am told this is the "Kiss of Death." Things published through a "subsidy" are not vetted. Anyone can do it. It's thought that the subsidy publisher produces a little gold, a lot of mud. I can see where that might be the case, and yet now, as I hold my book in my hands, a part of me wonders if I am looking at gold or mud. "I wrote it, now what?"

It seems I always manage to ask the hard questions after the fact. But that's how it can happen in an era where publishing your thoughts and ideas comes so easy...and the vetting of your work so painfully hard.


J.M.Lamoreux is the award-winning author of "Patient 444 and Other Short Stories," his short story "The Egg" won best fiction in 2005. He is a student at Truckee Meadows Community College. His official web site is at www.jmlamoreux.com.      

    

Prayer for the victims of the storm

Heavenly Mother, heavenly Father, I feel your grace in me this evening burning like a million suns. Your hand has risen out of the sky and reshaped the land and turned the world over into chaos. Your power has swept out of the grey heavens and hattered lives, and the earth has risen up to reclaim itself from civilization.

But one by one human beings come forward to be living examples of your love. And from the destruction of the storm in the silent morning human hands rise up to embrace human faces, and the city rebuilds itself. Men and women work together to restore their lives, construct new homes where the old one have been destroyed. The sun rises on a land already in the throes of reconciliation.

The energy of this moment hums in me. The power from the sky and the human heart vibrates in my jaw. Let the peace that comes rushing into my heart this moment rush to the lands that have been decimated by the storm, and in the quiet morning...as the water gently resides and the earth settles back into self healing processes, from the center of this Circle let the breath of God come like a flood of wild white doves, and let us stand in the glory of the sun...and let us be healed in its golden, perfect light.

May God anoint each head that saves a life, hauls away the rubble for a stranger, feeds the displaced, comforts the frightened, rebuilds on the foundations of those stricken, wasted homes. Let this moment be for gratitude, for appreciation, for unconditional love...let this moment be for Humanity.

Let us pray.

You who are greater than us
You who move night into day
Remember your children in the morning
When nature has spent itself
On our fragile lives.

Remember those who have died
And comfort those who have survived
Keep the animals safe, (the children need them)
And help neighbor care for neighbor
Friend care for friend.

In the rubble of this terrible day
Among the ruins of our lives
Let Jesus walk there alive and present
In the hands and hearts of strangers
Family and friends.

We acknowledge the awesome power
That is inherent in this part of Life
But we are grateful for the peace that follows
And the humanity that comes together to help and rebuild
Human face to human face, human heart to human heart.

Bless the people in the Gulf region tonight
And keep them safe
As the day settles
And the storm returns
To the silence of your great and waiting heart.

Pray for Louisiana

Pray for Louisiana

I've been watching pictures today and the pictures from the gulf are tragic. I thought it was good that pets helped children get past the fear as they stayed in the shelters. This is pretty bad. I keep hearing that this weather pattern is not due to Global Warming. Then someone says it is due to Global Warming. Then someone says this is just a bad year weather wise and right behind that satellite pictures show the glaciers melting in the Arctic. What I wish is that poltics would stop obscuring the truth to important questions.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Hurricane Katrina weakened slightly as it pummeled the Gulf Coast Monday, but the powerful storm still had plenty of punch as it swept towards Mississippi with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph.