Mma Has Passed Away

Mma passed way last week. We buried her this past Saturday. We held the funeral service at home in Phokeng; attended by hundreds of mourners including former students in a career spanning 43 years, her friends, neighbours, former colleagues, members of her professional associations and relatives.

Mma & my younger bro on her 75th birthday this April

Her passing was unexpected for me, because even though she was sick for a long time, she didn't seem to have gotten worse and I thought we would manage her chronic conditions for many more years.

She  had a lot of energy the weeks before  her passing.  Then suddenly she was very poorly and  I called medical emergency people, but she was gone by the time they arrived. 

Emotionally, I'm not dealing with it yet. It was easier for me to focus on the practical aspects of the loss because then I have something to do and I spent the past week working with my siblings to plan and project manage the funeral service, with a number of smaller events inbetween (church services, memorial service etc). Now that that's done, I'm working on the next step. It's probably going to involve a lot of writing, though there will be other things too.

E Is For Encouraging Our Children To Love Reading

Source: pbs.org

Three years ago, before I moved back to Phokeng, I was heavily involved with READ South Africa, an organisation formed by local writers, editors, publishers and librarians to encourage South Africans to read locally published books and to be well-read.

I mostly worked on the Facebook page, updating it, initiating and monitoring discussions on various book-related issues.

One of the issues that came up was how we could encourage our children to love reading. How do you foster that love for books, so it's not only something that they do because they have nothing else going on, but something that they actively seek as part of their life moving forward?

Many people who "liked" the Facebook page gave suggestions, which I collected at the time, hoping to write an article, maybe even an ebook, on the subject.

Unfortunately, the article never happened, as my priorities soon changed and I did not use Facebook for the next couple of years. Still, the material remained in my laptop, and I've now found the opportunity to publish it.

The weather these days reminds me of my childhood

By Pamela Moeng

The weather these days reminds me of my childhood. I remember trudging home on hot autumn afternoons, crunching dried gold and russet leaves underfoot, kicking horse chestnuts ahead of my little feet, and relishing in the smell of burning leaves in someone’s garden.

Those childhood walks are long gone now, but the deciduous trees in Johannesburg, with their flaming branches, bring back those glorious hours, right after summer and a heartbeat away from the winter chill.

There’s a certain slant of light, said an American poet – Emily Dickenson – and I find that especially true of autumn days. The quality of light on a brilliantly blue-sky autumn afternoon is unique. Afternoons are still sweat inducing, but mornings and evenings bear the brisk air that is a harbinger of winter.

In front of my little bungalow a few deciduous trees stand sentry along the street. As the year unfolds, the trees change their wardrobe and each season brings a reminder of girlhood days, memories created when the world was as small as a rural valley between two worn down mountains.

Clothed in green tips, the trees herald spring; in summer their lush green plays host to birds nesting; in winter their stark branches scratch the sky like claws; in autumn they drop gold and russet jewels to the grass below.

As the years pass, remembering where I put my car keys is a challenge, but the memories of those hours growing from childhood to young adult and beyond are as crisp and clear as the autumn sun. How I loved to listen to my grandparents talk about when they were small, and now my children want to know what it was like so very long ago when I was a child.

They can hardly believe that television was not a 24/7 presence or that telephones were all landlines – what else could they possibly be? MacDonald’s was still a mom-and-pop outlet in a small town in the USA instead of a pop culture presence around the world.

So many things have changed, and yet so many things remain the same. I listen to the giggles and shouts of the two little boys who live next door. Asking daddy a million questions; crying for mommy when one of them falls. 

A lifetime and a continent away, children remain the same. And autumn days are still hours of gold and russet jewels drifting from the trees to make a crunchy carpet underfoot. 

What do you remember from your childhood? What sparks your return to the child who still lurks inside?

Update: There's Even Big Writing News In My Long List Of Past & Upcoming Events

I know I've been rather quiet on the blog but there's been lots of good stuff happening in real life. I'm just going to make a list of them to give you a quick update:

1. Durban was wonderfully relaxing. I left my laptop here at home, so I could spend more time actively engaging with the family and not be tempted to spend too much time online. It was hard... and I did borrow the family computer to check my emails but that's about it.

2. Baby's 13th birthday party rocked. She has made lots of friends in Durban and they all came and they had fun. The party started at 4pm and only ended at 21h30. They felt so grown-up, having a party into the night. But there were lots of adults to watch the kids and they were all very well-behaved ( although they did tease us a bit about pouring vodka or brandy into the fruit punch). I was so proud of them.

3. The trip back to Joburg was exhausting. I thought I was going to be able to just resume my life but I needed a few days of just doing the necessary tasks to keep the business going. Also had a couple of client deadlines, so those had to take priority over blogging here.

4. I'm in the process of signing up with a well-known publisher to take on a big freelance publishing project for them. Basically, my company is going to oversee the writing and publishing of 12 books for them. LOL! That's not a typo - I do mean 12 books. Starting with commissioning the writers, working with illustrators etc. It's a big, big milestone for my company. We sign the contract near the end of this month and then start the work immediately. I'm still trying to work out how the work is going to affect the progrss and scheduling of my self-publishing projects, what capacity I'll gain or lose and whether some projects will have to be pushed back until the commissioned books have been submitted to the publisher. Time lines are also very tight, so I have very little wiggle room. The project takes me in the direction I wanted my career to go for a long time... though I did think it was going to be slow and would have to be one book at a time, not 12 to start with:-). Yeah, I'm very excited.

5. Pam left South Africa on Friday to go visit her family in the US of A. She's coming back at the end of June. I have one or two blog posts from her, and she may send me more.. or not. Anyhoo, don't worry about it if she remains quiet this month. She'll be back.

 

The newly painted kitchen. The contrast
between the old kitchen & new one is huge!

 6. I spent Sunday working with our local renovation group to paint my neighbour Deidre's kitchen. Zahn Hughes ( friend and neighbour), who's home decor and paints effects specialist, has put together a group of local residents to work on each other's homes. Basically, the home-owner buys the material, members show up on the designated day and we will scrape off walls, prime, paint, distress, work on the garden, sand floors, lay tiles and whatever else one needs to improve their home. Membership is open to anyone who lives in our suburb. The only  cost to the home-owner, other than buying material, is to provide munchies for the tea/coffee break and to work at other members' houses when it's their turn.  The next project is renovating Gaynor's office. My kitchen is also in the line-up to be renovated by the group.

Anyhoo, I'm looking forward to the coming week.  It's going to be a very busy week and I also  have  some guest posts that ended up stuck in my drafts rather than getting published in my absence. Big apologies to the guest writers; I'l publish your posts this week.

And a big thank you to Lori Widmer for her guest post on building a better writing business. I hope those of you who do some freelance writing/ want to go fulltime actually bought her book, so you have something solid to guide you.

Changing Jamie By Dakota Chase

I've just finished reading Changing Jamie by Dakota Chase, and it's a sweet, coming of age/coming out story that I think many teenagers should read.

The ebook tells the story a teenaged boy who has come to the realisation that he's gay and comes out to his mother, school and falls in love with Dylan, a popular athlete at their school. Dylan does not fit in the stereotype of brainless jock, so the boy's road to finding each other and coming has no major dramas.

The story arc that interested me, and inspired me to blog about the book, is the story of Billy, Jamie's best friend who is openly gay and dates older men. It later emerges that Billy is a bugchaser - i.e. someone who knowingly and act actively tries to get infected with HIV. I'd never heard of the word bug-chaser before; even though I've been writing about HIV infection and prevention for years. I guess we never stop learning hey?

If you want to learn more about bugchasers, click here.
Buy the ebook on Amazon

P.S. If you have a teenaged child/nephew/niece/child of friend, get this ebook for him/her, even if he/she is heterosexual. It's a good book, gives lots of useful info about HIV and prevention without being preachy.

But, if you're looking for a book that gives strong insight into the worst that can happen when a gay child attempts to come out/family unwittingly finds out that their child is gay, read Hate by Martin Clement.

Hate is the story of an 11 year old boy who kissed his best friend. Five years later, he and his family are now trying to deal with the emotional devastation from that day.

Parts of the book made me cry, so keep some tissues handy. And nope, I've never met these authors and they are not paying me to say nice things about their books. They don't even know I'm writing about them:-).

Anyhoo, here are some links to online dialogues I'm currently engaged in:

READ SA - I asked authors writing in SA's other official languages to introduce themselves and their published works.
Love - stories in a time of HIV & AIDS - For those of you who watched Monna oa Motsamai, what did you think of the film?
Kwanda - Tell us about your cause. What do you want to do to help your community? What makes you choose this particular cause?
OneLove - Your partner, who you thought was with you exclusively, tells you he made someone else pregnant / your girlfriend tells you she's pregnant and that you're not the father. What would you do/say?

What's The Point Of Buying A Book?

I’m doing a very quick survey for a publisher on reluctant readers and I was horrified to find out that one of my relatives who I thought had a nodding acquaintance with books was no reader at all.

In fact, his views on books, and willingness to pass those views to a child, made me consider that he's not as sensible as I thought he was.

The following is a scene took place this past weekend while we were visiting my family in Phokeng. Baby was just chilling, reading AIR HEAD – BEING NIKKI, by Meg Cabot.

Adult Male Relative: Why do you read so much?
Baby: Because I enjoy it.
AML: [grunt]And what do you do with the book once you’ve finished reading it?
Baby: I put it on my bookshelf. Then whenever I want to read it again, I can do so.
AML: I really don’t understand the point of buying a book. Once you’ve read it, you know the story and there’s no point of reading it again. It's a waste of money, and you might as well throw it away afterwards.

"How can you learn anything new if you never read," I wanted to ask him. I would have understood if he at least non-fiction in a variety of subjects, but he told Baby that he only reads material that has to do with his job.

I decided not to interfere while Baby tried to explain why reading was important to her, and why good books were worth reading again. Sadly enough, AML blew off her explanation, saying he had better things to do with his time and money than spend them on books.

Now keep in mind that AML is in his early twenties. I shudder to think about his spending the rest of his life - and it could be a long life - never reading a book unless he has to. Grrrrrrrrrrr!

OK, now tha I got that out of my system, my question to you as a reader, writer, blogger and parent is this: Put yourself in Baby’s shoes. How would you have answered the question?