BY PAMELA JO BOWMAN, MESA ARIZONA - Who knew writing would be so hard?! Give me a topic and I can spew about it!
We have been researching and writing a new screenplay for two months. After doing all the preliminary work we have spent the last two days with all our notes and steps and character sheets layed out before us and what do we have? Fifteen (15!) pages! Come on!
Learning how to write with another person is painful! You discuss ideas and thoughts and then the one with their fingers on the keyboard types whatever she wants! That works because I can’t remember what I thought anyway!
Today I had a meltdown. A girly moment if you will. I was at the keyboard and Cyndi made a … suggestion. I started to feel my insecurities creep up my spine and collapse it right there. I suggested she type for a while. I think I had too many Butterfingers and M&M’s. Cyndi explained that she wasn’t being critical. She wanted to toss out ideas and see where they went. Well, she found out where they went … NOWHERE! So tomorrow we are trying a new approach. No chocolate for Pam and an open forum where no idea is a bad idea. Listen and then feel what is right to write. I like part B of that, but no chocolate? Who’s idea was that? That is a bad idea!
They weren’t that much more expensive. I bought them with a smile in my heart. She would be okay. She knows what she wants and she is going for it. She wasn’t being spoiled or selfish. She wasn’t hurting anyone or anything. She was stating her want, not mine or her father’s or her friends’. Wow! Amazing!
The Indians we spoke with reported that no one practices the old ways any more. But we discovered that they really do. Traditionally, the tribe was responsible for providing for each family. In the Pima tradition, food stores would be shared and the tribe would build a “sandwich house” for each family. A sandwich house was made of adobe sandwiched between lumber. (Note: This photo is me standing outside of a sandwich house in Sacaton.) Nowadays, the tribe is still expected to build each family a home, but now it is with casino funds and can take a number of years (like 20) for the distribution of funds. They told us that, eventually, the tribe builds their home. On the Paul Simon song, the last verse says,
Mother’s day, some unexpected business issues, the heat of Arizona or some combination of all of those things that have contributed to my state of mind — I am feeling a little sad. In all the eulogies and speeches this month one idea keeps surfacing. The idea of leaving a mark in society. The idea of not being forgotten.
BY PAMELA JO BOWMAN, MESA, USA - “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”
My frame of reference has been movies like DANCES WITH WOLVES and THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. As a child I loved watching John Wayne movies on Dialing for Dollars. I have always loved the “Cowboy and Indian” movies. Today’s excursion made me realize how those movies tried to capture many cultures and traditions that in most cases don’t even exist anymore and probably never existed then. My romantic notions of Indian life has been altered to reflect the reality of reservation life. They are not the mysterious strong independent people I had imagined. No, it is worse, they are human just like me. They have problems and issues and concerns, just like me.
I tease Cyndi that she is tired of censoring my writing and so she has arranged for my own blog. In all truthfulness, I am grateful for the freedom to write without connecting it to Africa, film or MCC. Sometimes I had to be a tad creative in finding a connection to an idea I was having or a thought I was developing.