hannie’s spot. all hannie.

This post is written to a particular someone, but mainly written to the collective world because I think it needs to be said.  I’m a little tired of the “detractor” crowd and those who don’t believe, or those who’d rather turn their head and act like they don’t know me.  Let’s take a moment, and let’s analyze, from perspective, or rather, what I see from particular person mentioned before.

Particular person writes, just as I do.  However, particular person has to write under two different missives, which I would find incredibly hard to do, but I have had to do before in my lifetime.  How, you ask?  I had to write for a college newspaper, knowing horrible secrets that I would have much rather exposed but knowing had I exposed them, an entire pillar of Kitsap County would crumble and crumble hard.  And it was something told me in passing, something I couldn’t discuss on the record, or get proper verification on because no one would dare go on the record about it.  I was told that in no uncertain terms would it ever come to light ever, that if it did, it would be the end of any and all career I ever thought or dreamed of having in Kitsap County would be.  Blam. Gone.  Powerful people would silence me for a long long time.  I tell you what, write with that sitting under you.  It’s not a nice place to be, not now, not ever.

What was my breaking point in leaving the Olympic College journalism program?  What finally drove me over the edge, when I had been doing everything within my being possible to please every bit of the faculty, staff, and administration?  I walked when I had a “conversation” with a member of administration, who, upon finding out I had become editor of the college paper, decided that I was too much of a liability to the campus and the community at large.  I didn’t ask for the conversation but it was had nonetheless.  I was told that I was going to write to only happy and positive things that happened on campus, that I was going to honor every request that came across my desk from every department on campus or that the ASOC was going to pull our paper’s funding and that our paychecks would be cut as well.  I thought about what she said for one second.  Then, without a second thought, I told her that you know, I wasn’t part of the publicity machine for Olympic College publicity department and she had a department that was being paid as such.  So use them for that purpose.  Have the ASOC pull our funding, in fact, please, pull my paycheck which was perhaps one of the lowest of any student worker on campus while you’re at it.  Now that I’ve told you my opinion, I’m going to go have a emergency staff meeting to announce our conversation we just had, what my response was to your demands, and what their options are.  Pretty much, I can guarentee you’ll have no staff left standing when I’m done with this.   Have a great day.  (Funny thing, I did this, and hm, I was right too.)

I hated the idea that I was being told to write straight news, yet, on the other hand, I was being told to hold incredible secrets and be “hush-hush”, and then the end breaking point was being told to write “happy happy” only.  Journalism is never “happy happy” only.  I wish that I could pull open any major paper and have it be filled with “human interest” stories that had great happy endings.  Even now, you’re losing much of the paper crowd in favor of the electronic “paper-free” era and I’m incredibly guilty of taking advantage of that early on in the game.  And even with saying that, if you’re geek enough, your word can stretch far and wide in so many ways imagineable, it’s incredible.  (No, I’m not dropping word on this, but I have helped some who I believe in get their word further faster.  You bet.  My favorite phrase, or one of them….”when you get, give.  when you learn, teach.  pass it along.” by the great Maya Angelou herself.)  And sometimes, journalism takes on a slant, intentional or not, but it takes a slant.  Example, me, incredi-democrat.  I make it very clear.  Fox News, deathly-Republican, doesn’t even have to say it.  Kitsap Sun, still trying to decide.  But there is that running under-current of something, isn’t there?  You really have to breathe life into journalism these days to get it to sell sometimes….you do.  You have to have a sense of creativity, vision, and all that while holding true to a stylebook (and yes, for the love of Buddha, I OWN ONE.  I just choose not to act like I know what it is or what it’s used for.  I have that right, yes I do.  Sure, I could have walked back and gotten my little piece of paper that said I had an awesome grasp of journalism but you know what, I chose to live life and have a couple kids and a messed up marriage and well, life life and meet some incredible people and live some outrageous experiences along the way.  We all have choices.  Do I think the paper would have made the difference in what I write today, or how I view life, or anything?  Thinking about it all, hm, yes I do.  I think that it would have restricted me in what I could and couldn’t have said personally and professionally.  I’m not sure I could have been as willing and able to give that up.  Wait.  I take that back.  I have children.  When the difference comes between making a dollar to ensure that your children have a roof over their head, food in their tummies and a warm blanket and clothing to cover them, you’d do about anything, including going against your own moral set….if the price was right.  Sorry, but my children are very important like that.

And this, my dear used to be acquantance, almost friend is where I’m going to slap a reality check on you just as you have slapped one upon me.   I know where mine is and I thank you for it.  However, I’m going to lay a heavy dose of it upon you, and I hope you see and understand where I’m coming from, and know that I give it to you not under the pretense of hate, because that’s not where I come from.  I come to you from one writer to another, and I see where you are and know where you can go.  Some of us need a helpful nudge.  I hope that I’m nudging you by what I’m writing here.  I hope that what I’m writing also helps me to some respect as well, to be a better writer than I’ve been in the past few months, because that’s essentially what I see coming from you.  I see “Johanna, you can and should be writing much better, but you can’t and aren’t, so I draw the line in the sand here.  You need to see and know that you can and will produce better.”  Okay, so I’ve seen.  What I ask of you is that in the future, if you see this, you write me personally and you word it to me personally, instead of just bowing out of the picture gracefully.  I don’t do gracefully well.  If you could ask Mr Gray, he’d tell you himself that I don’t take the “sugar and roses” approach and each time he took my copy covered in red and threw it across the room and said “unacceptable” and walked off in a room full of people, he did so with great reason.  He knew I didn’t do “sweetness and light” very well.

So here’s my story.  I had a boyfriend, and he was in the Bainbridge class of hm, 1986, I want to say.  His family was rather prominent in Bainbridge circles, and his mother thought I was just the most horrid vile creature alive because I had a child when I was 18.  She flat out told me I was welfare trash and I was going to amount to nothing because you know, I grew up in South Kitsap county, and that’s where all that welfare trash lives anyways.  No kidding, downtown Winslow, she sure said this to me.  Anyways, one day, we were going through boyfriend’s high school yearbook for his senior year. (edit: I read person’s “about me” page and realized that we *both* could make the Kitsap Sun’s “Code 911″ portion of the paper had I left it.  Thank HEAVENS you make the distinction of saying “I was raised on Bainbridge Island, didn’t grow up there.  Seriously, it makes you a better all-around person, suffice it to say.  Are we still on for the “Code 911″ moment?  I’ll take the candlestick in the study with Colonel Mustard.) Rows upon rows of well coiffed sprayed down monkey suited boys and prom-dressed beauty queens until you get to the end.  You get to the end of the senior class and there’s this guy with absolutely big hair and more makeup then I would wear in say, hm, five years.  Out of the entire yearbook, he would have been the only one I would have spent any time even wanting to talk to.  Bainbridge Island always had its reputation of putting out snobbish elitist types, and this yearbook surely spoke to that, but the boy at the end screamed “screw that”.  And guess what?  Unfortunately, that boy is long ago passed away, and I cry because it was his own demons that killed him in the end.  I look across the harbor right now at Bainbridge and I think about him, and I think, you know, Bainbridge should not be remembered for its snobbery or its uppity-ness, it should be thought of for its unique-ness or the diversity of the culture you can find there if you really look.

Oh, now ex-boyfriend’s mom.  Funny thing.  When I came home post Katrina, and she saw me on the front of the Kitsap Sun along with the same baby that she hm, chastized me for having so long ago, she called my ex-boyfriend crying and bawling about how “happy” she was we all evacuated safely.  Ex-boyfriend reminds her of the “white welfare trash” comment she made to me and told her about how he had personally volunteered to fly the kids and me home himself because he knew I was in bad shape financially, but emotionally and physically as well and knew he needed to do what he could to save the kids and me.  He says she cried more.  And he said that he told her something about judging yourself before judging others.

Oh yes, now I could go and say, well well, snobs of Bainbridge Island, yes, they all are.  But I’ve seen and met different.  Even you could say the same thing and you’ve been (again, edit, see before…please forgive me) there.  Dang, I should shut up and get to the real point here, right?  Just as you have caught me on the “writing strangely” thing and I am sincerely working to correct that, I’m going to challenge you.  Are you truly sincerely happy doing what you’re doing right now?  We know where you are and where you’d like to go.  Is it time to take the plunge and make the jump yet, or are we still just holding the line and waiting until it’s just the right time?  And are we taking the plunge because we’re taking ourselves back and our moral set, or because it’s “just the right thing to do”?  I know, I have a ton of important questions, but I ask partially out of I’d love to know and partially out of perhaps your answers will help me on a couple of important decisions I’m going to have to make real quick here.   You tell me.

Last but not least, some depeche mode to chew on.  And a good one, at that.

I would tell you about the things
They put me through
The pain I’ve been subjected to
But the lord himself would blush
The countless feasts laid at my feet
Forbidden fruits for me to eat
But I think your pulse would start to rush

Now I’m not looking for absolution
Forgiveness for the things I do
But before you come to any conclusions
Try walking in my shoes
Try walking in my shoes

You’ll stumble in my footsteps
Keep the same appointments I kept
If you try walking in my shoes
If you try walking in my shoes

Morality would frown upon
Decency look down upon
The scapegoat fate’s made of me
But I promise you, my judge and jurors
My intentions couldn’t have been purer
My case is easy to see

I’m not looking for a clearer conscience
Peace of mind after what I’ve been through
And before we talk of repentance
Try walking in my shoes
Try walking in my shoes

                                                                        -30-