Category journalism

FLOTUS story time

Angel Ackerman 3 Comments

It’s Wednesday afternoon, and it’s been a hearty week. I just finished editing a novel by debut author E. H. Jacobs. Parisian Phoenix Publishing plans to release the book, Splintered River, in September before the upcoming presidential election. Somehow, by the skin of my teeth, I managed to pay all the bills another month.

As a small business owner, there is always a hustle. And while I typically work seven days a week, I love what I do and it often doesn’t feel like work.

And this week I had a special surprise– Armchair Lehigh Valley asked me to cover First Lady Jill Biden’s visit to Allentown, the largest city in the Lehigh Valley region and third most populated city in the state. For comparison, it stands behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Philadelphia has 1.6 million people. Pittsburgh has more than 300,000. Allentown has about 125,000.

Harrisburg, the state capital, has 50,000 residents and is number 16 on the list of most populated Pennsylvania cities. Bethlehem, the center-most city in the Lehigh Valley, is number 7 on the list with 78,000. Lancaster is number 12, which isn’t what you’d expect since Lancaster is known for its Amish communities.

The city closest to my small town is Easton, which is number 41 on the list with 28,000 people.

Anyway, Allentown’s population is 50% Latin, so lawmakers like to stop by to woo the Latin voter. Yesterday, Jill Biden visited Lehigh Carbon Community College to promote Career to Classroom, a proposal from the Biden administration to “reimagine high school” by connecting students to jobs, training and opportunities to learn skills and an associate’s degree while still in high school.

I haven’t attended an event with politicians that required Secret Service in decades. I arrived early, parking at the PPL Orange garage.

I arrived at the LCCC campus in downtown Allentown around noon, and the Allentown police were already outside with the people coordinating the event. Media had to line up along the building after receiving their press passes. The Malinois K9 sniffed our stuff and we headed inside two people at a time.

K9’s have to be high-energy and driven, and this guy was no exception. He played with his toy and barked when he didn’t have enough to do. You could see the disappointment when he didn’t find anything in our stuff, because for him, this was a game and he wanted to find whatever he needed to find to win the game.

Once I arrived inside, the Secret Service scanned my person and another agent checked my bag. He saw my cookie that my friend Laurel had given me in case I didn’t eat. It was a Panera oatmeal berry cookie, which is one of my favorites. The agent looked at me in all his Secret Service seriousness, and said, “Ma’am, all chocolate chip cookies must be confiscated by me.”

“That’s fine, Sir,” I said. “But it’s oatmeal.”

“Then you are free to go,” he said.

I headed into the elevator and up to the third floor. As we arrived, I saw the sign for the restroom. So, I asked the Secret Service agent if I could go to the restroom. I was told yes. When I returned, I entered the room and saw a random sign for “media entrance.” I saw all the video news crews and photographers setting up their tripods. To stay out of the way, I wove farther into the room and sat down.

I ended up sitting with the audience, unintentionally, but got a great view of everything.

To read the article, which the editors at Armchair focused on the workforce development legislation Biden has proposed, click here.

If you want to read a speech only a few words different from the one Jill gave yesterday, click here.

Looking for my tribe

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

So I had two professional meetings today— both regarding professional opportunities. One was a second interview for a niche professional journal, a publisher and sales position.

The other led me to Lehighton, to the Times-News building where I met with some staff members about the possibility of doing some copy editing work for them.

Regardless of how either of these opportunities work out, I had a great day talking to committee people in print media, an industry that has a lot of issues to overcome every day.

But talking to these professionals at these polar opposites of publications, that reminded me of my own passions and what it’s like to connect with others who share that.

Plus…

I love Palmerton, the coal regions and rural post-industrial Pennsylvania.

Welcome February or “Wow, it’s been a month!”

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I didn’t realize– or perhaps deep down inside I did– that I did not write in this blog at all in the month of January. I have written in the Parisian Phoenix blog, on my Substack, for the Lehigh Valley Armchair Substack, for Kiss and Tell magazine, for press releases and social media…

But not here.

I have spent much time applying for jobs, going on job interviews, and following up with second interviews, and working with my authors at our small publishing company, attending networking events, meeting with other writers and professionals, and grocery shopping at discount retailers like Grocery Outlet and the Dollar Tree.

(Grocery budget has been $25/week, but this week I splurged and bought a baker’s dozen bagels for $9.50 at Panera because they have a sale on Tuesday, and I used my CVS coupons and their sales to buy 2 boxes of KIND breakfast bars, a box of Grape Nuts and a box of Cocoa Krispies for $13.)

My personal favorite cheap meal this month has been these gnocchi from the Dollar Tree, served with a cream sauce I made with butter, lemon, and some artichoke hearts (using the oil they were marinated in). The artichoke hearts and the Barber Foods Chicken Stuffed with Broccoli and Cheese came from Grocery Outlet. The whole meal cost me about $3 per serving. And I used up some half and half that was on its last leg.

If it weren’t for car insurance for the teen and heat (I’ve been keeping the house at a balmy 60 degrees since I had to pay for $600 in furnace repairs in December), I have enough clients to keep me afloat indefinitely even after unemployment runs out in about six weeks. But the uncertainty of it all is hard. My biggest faux pas since my lay off was dropping the oil cap into the engine compartment of my car while topping off my fluids before a winter storm.

Luckily, good old Southern Candy and her son came to my aid and he fished it out for me– took him 45 minutes and the promise of the $50 cash I had in my wallet. I could hear my Dad laughing the entire time. I swear he’s been playing practical jokes on me from the afterlife with all of these little mechanical problems.

Like he’s checking to make sure I can take care of myself.

Sometimes, Daddy, I don’t know.

We had two snowstorms in January. During one of which, the first actually, one of the Teenager’s college friends spent the night. (Photo: Here they are at about 10 p.m. having a snowball fight with one of our neighbors, a high school friend of the Teen.) The College Friend hails from Los Angeles, so this was her first snow. And we bundled her up in home-knit hats and gloves and sent her out to shovel and play in my snow boots. Because Lord knows I am not going out in that if I don’t have to.

I drove over to the Bizzy Hizzy, the now nearly empty Stitch Fix warehouse, to show my daughter the old Freestyle and Pick carts that had been set out for the trash. The carts are laminated, corrugated cardboard so I imagined they deflated pretty badly in all the rain. I explained to her how we used to pick, and showed her the pencil cans we used to hold our water bottles and the heavy-duty page protectors that held the pack slips after installation of the Big Ass Fans blew them out of the carts. Three years, evaporated and erased.

I’m still working out with Andrew at Apex Training and meeting my strength goals even if I am failing at my weight goals. The Teen says I need to be more body-positive, but I know I am regularly showing more than 500 garbage calories into my body for the emotional sensation of it. And I also know that as someone with heart and mobility issues, being overweight is not helping.

In good news though, because I share so much about my journal both as someone with cerebral palsy and someone who finds strength training cool and empowering, several other members of my gym are now setting strength goals and strength training into their routines.

While visiting Nan the other day I got to meet a really cute dog. She’s a French sheep dog. Nan and her owner both told me her breed and now I don’t remember. I asked Siri and she suggested a Wheaten Terrier or a Goldendoodle and both of those are wrong. So, I googled French sheep dog breeds and it suggested a few and I immediately recognized the word “Briard.” And it is indeed a dog that would get stuck in briars.

And last week, the Echo City guys and I went out to Pints & Pies for burgers for the guys and pizza for me. It was a very tasty pizza. I have been dreaming of it and the cold Yuengling draft I had ever since.

The fire that proved local news coverage is garbage

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Once upon a time, as the French would say, “il etait une fois…” I was a newspaper reporter. It’s a rare breed of professional that existed before the internet made the job so much easier, before the best news coverage was the team who did it most completely and factually, not the people who got it to their public first. So much “news” is a person standing around reporting what they see, versus doing the research to tell the story. We’ve lost sight of the full story.

This morning, as my alarm went off at 6 a.m., I read some posts on social media that read that people all over the Lehigh Valley were seeing (and posting their views of) a fire in tiny West Easton, a borough nestled among Easton proper, Wilson borough and miniscule Glendon, all part of the 18042 zip code.

I put on my glasses, as dawn threatened to break, and I thought about how bright the sky had seemed when I woke about 40 minutes before my alarm and went back to sleep. With my glasses secure on my face, I saw black smoke and orange glow billowing in the distance.

I walked to my sun porch and surveyed the scene before returning to my lap top to seek reputable news coverage. WFMZ was the only local media outlet who had any coverage of the three alarm fire (which if you know the area, it logically has to be a three alarm fire because West Easton has, depending on the website and the census attributed, about 1200 residents. That’s according to the 2010 census, and other less easily confirmed statistics credited to 2019 don’t seem too different.

So, West Easton has what is common in small communities around Pennsylvania– a volunteer fire department. With fire of this visible magnitude, even without getting the other facts: that it’s an industrial fire, that it might include propane or chemicals, it threatens multiple buildings, it is near the river, etc… (This is also a town that has disbanded and reinstated their police department to save money.) They are obviously going to get assistance from the two professional fire companies near the site.

Both Wilson Borough and Easton City have professional fire stations about a mile away.

This is an expanded version of the original news coverage produced by WFMZ, and they did a decent job. Probably because they are the only local media with a morning show, so they had bodies in the newsroom at 5 a.m. No one else locally does.

Now, I had an 8 a.m. appointment on the other end of the valley. So I called up Google maps to see what businesses were in the area reported by WFMZ. They had mentioned “large warehouse” and “Main Street and Lehigh Drive.” That’s about all the info you need to pinpoint a location in a town as small as West Easton.

The map suggest that the warehouse complex itself contains several businesses: Johnson Motor Lines, Sandt Honey, Lehigh Custom Components and Ferocity Metal. A different map shows Latro Cellular Forensics Lab and Xtreme Custom Coatings.

But the next news “update” was from the new news organization, LehighValleyNews.com, which does not have a print operation, only online, but has recycled many familiar faces from the Valley’s daily print journalism past. I found this post around 7 a.m.– two hours after the fire started– and much of the so-called reporting focused on what casual observers had posted on Facebook and other social media sites.

Speaking of social media sites… There are reports of hazmat crews, exploding propane tanks, air quality issues and, of course, parents terrified to send their kids to school both in the community where the fire is burning (Wilson Area School District) and the one next door (Easton Area School District). There were also unconfirmed reports of fire hydrant failures in West Easton (which, I can’t imagine they have many of them in that general area to start with) and rumors that firefighters had to rely on water from the Lehigh River and pumper trucks from various area fire departments.

From the bevvy of amateur drone and street photography from the fire that I have seen, I have noticed firefighters using river water on the fire, but regardless of the status of the fire hydrants, this makes sense.

Also around 7 a.m., a news helicopter appeared above my house. I assumed, correctly, that it was a news helicopter because 1. it retreated from the smoke instead of going deeper into it to fight the fire. I also guessed it was from Philadelphia, about 60 miles away, because none of our news agencies have the resources for a helicopter. Not in today’s world. It appears that original helicopter was from CBS, followed by two news helicopters for the lunch broadcast. One of which was ABC. Seriously? A fire in a small town in Northampton County warrants this much attention?

The Morning Call, who used to employ me as a print community reporter for its weekly paper and allowed me to freelance for the daily, followed with their piece by 9 a.m. Again, no real news added to the situation, they all appeared to be recycling each others’ coverage.

By the time I returned from my appointment around 9:30 a.m., the view from route 78 suggested that the fire had blanketed the county in a layer of smoke and ash, but the color had already started to pale. In the photo, taken at the route 33 exist, the plume on the right is the smoke, and one can see it traversing the nearby municipalities.

The electricity is out for a wide range of people, creating a lack of traffic lights in busy 25th Street intersections, like by the Aldi and Lidl. It looks like Freemansburg Avenue may be the dividing line for those with power versus those without. And, for the record, the average local driver seems to have forgotten that busy intersections with no signal become a four-way stop. But what I witnessed was a great big game of chicken.

I haven’t called any mayors, or police departments, or fire departments. And I didn’t attempt to get to the scene. Which are all things I would do if I were still a reporter. And I’d call council members if I had to.

And the web reveals that Latro is a lab that helps law enforcement extract data from cell phones. Sandts sells multiple varieties of local honey. According to the Federal Carrier Motor Safety Administration, Johnson carries a little bit of everything and has an unblemished safety record. Ferocity Metal’s Facebook page calls them a metal supplier, though the pictures imply the business is small and specializes in artistic, individualized pieces. Xtreme Custom Coatings is a powder coating business with many positive Google reviews.

It’s now 12:30 p.m. The helicopters have departed and the skies look normal, even if the air does have a strange ash smell to it.

Kudos to the Express-Times for putting a real reporter on the story.

Cracker Barrel & Vitamin D: Blending the Mundane, Building Friendship

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

I started my day by leaving the house at 7:15 a.m. to visit my friends the phlebotomists at Quest Diagnostics. With my history of anemia and fluctuating iron & vitamin D levels, I tend to get iron & vitamin D checks with my annual bloodwork.

My vitamin D was low during my January 2021 physical (22) so I started adding vitamin D + calcium supplements to my diet. With my multi & my slow release iron.

By June, that had jumped to 32. I stayed that level for the next six months. Today’s test would see if I had gained more— 30 is considered normal.

I started laundry before I left so I could wear my new cat t-shirt. I had a much anticipated meeting with social activist-journalist Dawn Heinbach scheduled for the afternoon at Cracker Barrel, a location I thought would be convenient as she lives several counties away. She submitted some material for the Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money anthology. I had some books she wanted. I know she’s a cat person so I knew she would love my French pun cat shirt.

When I got home from Quest, I made an egg sandwich and took a photo to my artist friend Maryann whose mixed media postcards appeared in Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money. She thinks all my food photographs are well-played and pleasingly styled. I told her she’ll have to come for dinner.

I put the laundry in the dryer and eventually changed into my cat shirt. I did some paperwork before I picked up my good friend Nancy to provide a ride to the doctor. Nancy is my poetry editor at Parisian Phoenix Publishing and she’s blind. She keeps me in line both with my writing and my business and occasionally has to make sure I’m facing my disability in an intelligent fashion.

While at the doctor’s office a very senior citizen’s phone went off. The ring tone was the opening notes of Usher’s “Yeah.” I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. He looked mortified. Did a grandchild prank him?

I finished Tylia Flores’ Handi-Capable while in the waiting room. I posted a review on Amazon.

We did a couple other Nancy errands and I pointed out I needed gas in the car, and asked if she’d mind a detour to Wawa. I think Nan made out on that one as she went home sign a turkey sandwich, some sour cream and onion potato chips and some half-and-half iced tea/lemonade.

Somehow the two of us can do absolutely nothing but laugh while doing it.

I spent the afternoon blogging and catching up on some work for the business before it was time to go to Fogelsville for my early dinner.

The sky opened, as they say.

I told Dawn I would hang out in those amazing Cracker Barrel rocking chairs. I didn’t know it would be in a deluge.

Luckily I had my umbrella in my car.

The servers came out and danced in the rain. An old man complimented my Eiffel Tower umbrella and said he and his wife were going there next.

Ever the grammar nerd, I said, “really? From Cracker Barrel right to Paris? I hope you love it.”

Dawn and I had a superb conversation about what journalism should be, and she lives in the geographic region served by my protege at Berks-Mont newspapers. We talked cats— and she did like the cat shirt. And my turkey dinner was disappointing but Dawn and I chatted for two hours. We shared a cup of coffee after dinner before going our separate ways.

I bought the teen a Scooby Doo mug and myself a coconut peanut butter candy that tasted like toffee both in flavor and mouth feel.

On the way home, my 2015 jetta played a horrible prank on me. The gas gauge and miles per gallon/miles until empty screens didn’t display any information. Luckily I got gas with Nan so I knew I had plenty. On the highway. 26 miles away from home.

Upon reaching home, I took care of some correspondence and received an update from my doctor. My vitamin D is now 37!

Could Poetry Journaling be the new Bullet Journal?

Angel Ackerman 3 Comments

My neighbor Sarah asked me to listen to the episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast featuring Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco. The journalist and the musician were discussing creativity.

Tweedy talked about writing first thing in the morning before anything else— no news, no email, no thought. Just words on a page.

Ezra said when he tries that all he ends up with are to-do lists.

Their discussion got me thinking about my own regular journaling practice which I started 30 years ago. In recent years much of what I have noted is done bullet style with occasional deep dives into the events of my life.

But what if I phrased anything I put in my journal as poems? Horrible terrible poems but poems.

For instance, instead of writing “Foster cats Khloe and Louise are getting closer to liking each other every day. They now sleep on the same bed at the same time with only a foot or two between them” it could be something like…

The fleet foot one is moody,
The clumsy one timid. 
The who among them that starts the throaty snarls varies from time to time. 
Slowly, their soft warm bodies 
draw closer to each other, 
ignoring the other princess drifting to slumber in the soft blankets.
When we find them, these insecure beasts of opposing kingdoms, their paws might almost touch.

To learn more about the Ezra Klein Podcast from the New York Times, click here.

Owning up and ripping Sheetz a new one

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

First off, before I even start this entry let me give my poor customer service representative Justin a shout out for his professionalism, patience and calm.

Second, before I get too far let me admit that I have now reached my heaviest ever weight, about ten pounds heavier than my natural set point with no muscle tone left. Push-ups, planks and heel-touch crunches used to be my jam– I could do 20 push-ups, a sixty-second plank and 100 heel touches without feeling tired or compromised.

At one point I had visible abdominal muscles, then I had abdominal muscles like stone beneath a layer of fat. That is now done. I struggle to walk up hill. I have no muscle tone. Where I once used 25-pound dumbbells for my bicep curls, I now huff and puff with ten.

This past year has been cruel.

This is the owning up portion of today’s blog. Yesterday, I woke up exhausted and hot but still motivated myself to do an ab workout. But then, I didn’t quite meet my step goal. And ate half a Papa John’s pizza and an order of their jalapeno popper bread bites. I meant to share them with the teenager but they were way too spicy. And I ate them all, even though they were kinda gross.

Jalapeño popper bread bites

I blame Dominos for the pizza binge as they sent me a push notification that they had two new pizzas–chicken taco and cheeseburger–but both turned out to sound boring and the $5.99 promotion seemed unavailable so rather than order my free two topping I spent $26 at Papa Johns.

The Zesty Italian or Tangy Italian, or whatever pie it was, was delicious in that trashy kind of way (though I hate Papa John’s tomato sauce I am reminded now). And the meal has led to a type of intestinal distress I don’t normally experience. I also gained 3 pounds.

The teenager tells me the pizza was good, but Dominos is better in her adolescent opinion.

Speaking of adolescent behavior, the teenager went back-to-school shopping with the paternal grandparents. She wanted a milkshake from Sheetz for lunch and her grandparents vetoed that and took her to a diner she does not like. I will withhold the name here as it is a fairly popular spot.

So she came home a little upset over the meal situation as she had just had “the worst quesadilla of my life.” She pined for that milkshake as it is 90+ degrees outside and she has marching band tonight.

“Mom,” she said. “If you buy me a milkshake at Sheetz, I won’t eat anything else today.”

I told her to throw in some extra chores and we could talk. She agreed. I downloaded the Sheetz app as these days, I don’t go anywhere without looking for coupons. I went to create my Sheetz account. Now, my husband has the Sheetz card. I have the Sheetz key ring.

The Sheetz card has a security code that the key ring does not.

You need the security card. The app forces me to call customer service.

Customer service tells me I have to find my security code, have my husband call them and say it’s okay, or use the general random Sheetz card.

To which I say, “If I use a random card, I won’t get the points. Isn’t that the point of the loyalty app?”

I launch into a fiery tirade. Because our Sheetz card/account is in my husband’s name, I cannot log into the Sheetz app. I find it odd that a loyalty app would have such strict security. I merely want to look for coupons and then go buy my daughter a milkshake.

Well, poor talented and patient Justin the Customer Service rep tells me, some people have credit card information in the app.

Yes, I say, but this one does not, because this account has never downloaded the app. So it does not have anything in it. I added that I can tell him my husband’s birthday and his social security number and probably the password he used if we ever tried to set up an online account. But he still needs my husband’s permission.

So I tell him that I refinanced my car over the phone the other day, and that I stayed on the line while the previous loan holder talked to my new financer. That I gave them my permission to share my account information with my new bank.

If I can do that over the phone, I should be able to buy a damn milkshake for my kid.

As a compromise, he called my husband at work and asked if he was allowed to give me access to our Sheetz loyalty account. My husband, of course, said yes.

He told the teenager via text that the customer service people didn’t verify his identity. They asked for no proof that he was indeed my husband.

Now let me add that if I were vindictive, because after all my husband and I have been separated for 14 months, why would I go to the trouble to steal his Sheetz loyalty number which is 16 digits, hack into his account, and run up his credit card with Sheetz purchases? Perhaps I would go squander his non-existent stockpile of reward points.

The app apprised me that we had 523 loyalty reward points and Sheetz requires 500 for a free regular milkshake.

I bought myself a pretzel with nacho cheese sauce and while the cheese sauce had a barely perceptible layer of spice to it, it had no flavor whatsoever.

The teenager enjoyed her milkshake.

Their mobile order system is very convenient.

Our social justice tour

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I wanted to come to Washington, D.C., to visit my friend, M. I intended to come last weekend but didn’t because of the forecasted snow storm.

My teen wanted to come, but I rescheduled the trip for this weekend and she had school… so I thought… what if we made it a social justice tour in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

So, I signed her out of school to “explore social justice in our nation’s capital.”

We ended up on the campus of Georgetown University’s Law Center. And had a sandwich nearby where I tried my first pastrami.

I don’t know why I never had pastrami before.

We then attended a rally for Marzieh Hashemi, the African-American journalist and American citizen who lives in Iran and works for the English language Iranian Press. She is also a Muslim convert.

Marzieh recently came home to the United States to visit family when she found herself “kidnapped” by the FBI and transferred to two different detention facilities, where she was not offered halal food nor allowed to wear her hijab.

I had heard Marzieh’s story on NPR’s Morning Edition and saw M posting some updates on her situation on Facebook. When he mentioned a rally and protest today, I wanted to go.

She called her 11-day imprisonment an act of “intimidation” and encouraged all of us to make sure we make a difference with our lives because we will all eventually die.

Meanwhile, my daughter ended up on Iranian TV. See the little blue globe in the photo and the brown haired girl in the jean jacket? That’s my baby.

Check out my YouTube videos of this event:

The beginning of the event:

https://youtu.be/1Bl4A5NoE7g

Marzieh’s son talks about growing up in a home that the FBI raided without reason:

https://youtu.be/BAOPut6jVH4

Marzieh arrives:

Marzieh speaks:

https://youtu.be/ZcgL2Iog0s8

When your writing career carries on without you…

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

 

So today I got an unexpected email from the folks at SAGE Academic Publishing. About four years ago, I wanted to write some short encyclopedia entries for them and they said no because I didn’t have a Ph.D. It was one of the things that made me consider graduate school.

They advised me that if I could find someone to co-author who had the necessary credentials, I could write for them.

I enlisted my college era friend Annette Varcoe, a brilliant scholar in American history and Women’s studies who had a freshly-minted Ph.D. after her name. She allowed me the pleasure of helping her edit her final dissertation.

The topic at hand was one of my favorite places in the world, Djibouti, and the article was based on a capstone project for my international affairs degree I had just completed. She knew nothing about Djibouti but her critical eye brought life to my dream and she got hooked on this region of the world and conditions there. Our first article was on poverty in Djibouti. She approached me a few months later and asked if I would consider doing another on security.

We did. Both pieces were submitted fairly close to each other. We probably wrote them both in 2014. The poverty piece was published in July 2015. I got the email that the second has now been published. March 2018. My career looks current even if I have stalled a bit!

This refreshed my memory that I never actually saw a book review I submitted to Global Studies South. Since my husband is home from work today using up his vacation, I asked him to look me up in the academic databases to which the Lafayette College libraries subscribe.

And here I am!

Journaling across generations

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I started keeping a journal after a writing workshop at University of Pennsylvania that I attended as a high school student. I kept them faithfully for at least a decade, tapered off in my consistency after the birth of my daughter, experimented with forms (most recently adapting a bullet journal style) and renewed my habit in the last few years but still not with the same devotion I once did.

I used to fill a standard cheap journal in a month. Larger, fancier volumes took longer. I color coded a lot of my text. One color for fiction, one color for poetry and another for personal experience. That sort of thing.

The blank ones included sketches. Briefly, I used calligraphy pen and even briefer a fancy fountain pen.

My current fascination is Alphabooks, blank journals in the shape of alphabet letters. I found the A on clearance. My husband had recommended his mother buy me the N for Christmas as it is the second letter of my name, but I fooled them and mentioned if I had the chance I would continue the series with B and write alphabetically.

I also have an affinity for Sharpie pens. I bought a set in August 2016 and they are still going strong.

Eventually, my journals ended up in a box in the attic. Or, several boxes, more accurately.

My now 13-year-old daughter has always been captivated by the written word, always written in notebooks, constantly starting projects and ripping out pages (and never finishing). She has started working on her own stories, but journaling hasn’t held her interest.

 

But she keeps asking to read my journals. I cringe.

I tell her she needs to remember that journals have a lot of angst in them, a lot of unfiltered, unedited thoughts and that what I say in these journals might not always be… well… nice or even what I would say on a different day. And some of my tales might color her opinion of the people she knows, even her own family.

But she keeps asking.
I bought her a nice journal for Christmas. And a HUGE set of Flair pens. She has journaled for 15

days straight. She starts on her journaling journey as I wonder if mine has been worth it. Who wants to read that drivel? There are so many volumes are they worth sifting through? Do I say hateful things?

She asked again. She volunteered to get them from the attic. We sorted through the boxes and at some point I had labeled the cover of the journal with the major events of that time period. I selected a pile of about ten I said she could read.

She started with the journal that included when her father and I got married.

She’s read me excerpts: story ideas I’d forgotten about, adventures and misadventures,

my life as a vegetarian. My favorite thus far has been a poem about my nephew when he was about 3, and a page where he scribbled in my journal. Then my daughter found a journal where she was 2, and I let her scribble in my journal.

So I guess those journals are worth something.