I have let everything get in my way to pursuing this new project. I went to the beach in New Jersey for a few days. I've met new friends with whom to have lunch or dinner or attend a play or a movie.
I've cleaned out my drawers and closet, getting ready for fall. I've gone shopping. I also have continued my volunteer projects and of course I go to the gym. Those activities will continue but why has this project stopped exciting me?
In every season I will have distractions and choices to make. My life is full. I have organizations to which I belong. Each one has meetings and meetings to prepare for meetings. When I wrote my previous two books I was confined to a space and a time where I had fewer distractions and a serious obligation, which was caring for my husband who had Alzheimer's disease. I was living in Mesa Arizona where the sheer number of distractions was greatly reduced.
But most of all, I believe, I was so dismayed and so full of despair about the world I live in today, that I felt, when I saw the 1938 Projekt that here was something I could chew on, get lost in, and be distracted from the awful state of affairs I see in my country today. I have all of these letters, documenting more of the personal atrocities perpetrated on my own family that need to be addressed, remembered, memorialized. I now know that there is a memorial at the site where my grandfather was shot and I know he was murdered by the Ustasis, a fascist group who came into supreme power in 1941 when Croatia was formed from Yugoslavia.
I haven't stopped working entirely. I have found a translator for the letters which I have sent to her. She has returned three of them so far. Reading more carefully, I discovered I have a postcard written by my uncle, in french, from Paris to his sister in Basel, Switzerland.
This will get done, but first I have to work to get people to vote in the November elections. I have to sign petitions to save our children and our families from deportation that my family endured. I have to march to protest limitations on every woman's right to choose what happens to her body. I have to be vigilant and this week I have hope. The justice department and the courts of law in this country will prevail. We will not have our democracy derailed by a would be oligarch whose corrupt dealings are being exposed. I see that from the darkest of nights there comes a dawn.
I've cleaned out my drawers and closet, getting ready for fall. I've gone shopping. I also have continued my volunteer projects and of course I go to the gym. Those activities will continue but why has this project stopped exciting me?
In every season I will have distractions and choices to make. My life is full. I have organizations to which I belong. Each one has meetings and meetings to prepare for meetings. When I wrote my previous two books I was confined to a space and a time where I had fewer distractions and a serious obligation, which was caring for my husband who had Alzheimer's disease. I was living in Mesa Arizona where the sheer number of distractions was greatly reduced.
But most of all, I believe, I was so dismayed and so full of despair about the world I live in today, that I felt, when I saw the 1938 Projekt that here was something I could chew on, get lost in, and be distracted from the awful state of affairs I see in my country today. I have all of these letters, documenting more of the personal atrocities perpetrated on my own family that need to be addressed, remembered, memorialized. I now know that there is a memorial at the site where my grandfather was shot and I know he was murdered by the Ustasis, a fascist group who came into supreme power in 1941 when Croatia was formed from Yugoslavia.
I haven't stopped working entirely. I have found a translator for the letters which I have sent to her. She has returned three of them so far. Reading more carefully, I discovered I have a postcard written by my uncle, in french, from Paris to his sister in Basel, Switzerland.
This will get done, but first I have to work to get people to vote in the November elections. I have to sign petitions to save our children and our families from deportation that my family endured. I have to march to protest limitations on every woman's right to choose what happens to her body. I have to be vigilant and this week I have hope. The justice department and the courts of law in this country will prevail. We will not have our democracy derailed by a would be oligarch whose corrupt dealings are being exposed. I see that from the darkest of nights there comes a dawn.
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