Introduction to Vital Writer Services and Elizabeth Herman

Elizabeth Herman has been helping and supporting writers of various backgrounds and ages and in all stages of the writing process since 1998. She completed her doctorate in Rhetoric and Composition in December of 2008. Vital Writer Services is her new business offering coaching, tutoring, editing and proofreading to writers in various genres and with a variety of possible issues. Five percent of each fee will be  donated to non-profit educational service projects around the world, which are described on the ‘supporting others‘ page of this blog. Contact her at 618-559-1641 (cell phone) or hermanbetsy@yahoo.com for more information.

Metaphor and Allegory

On Metaphors, Allegories, etc.: The figurative devices that transcend language and create myth through image are so important to human communication, especially when it comes to promoting understanding between diverse groups in different religions, political spheres, social and ethnic enclaves, and others. I was watching Bill Maher’s comedic social criticism of Religion across the board, entitled “Religulous,” yesterday with my 17 year old son. Even though I laughed a few times, I realized how he mistook the Western religious mythologies by negatively  interpreting them through such an extremely literal lens, rejecting them in such a fundamentalist rationalist way.  His negative view of religion, a view he described as “rational,” actually irrationally ignored and discounted the metaphoric value of myth and the allegorical nature of sacred texts. It was as though he had never heard of authorities like Joseph Campbell or Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who valorize stories such as those Maher criticized as serving a vitally important psychological function.  My own metaphor for myth, a spiritual water fountain if you will, presents a more free-flowing picture of spiritual expression as a creative force, ultimately overcoming conflict to sustain and create emotional and ultimately rational links between truly unified beings trapped in an illusion of separateness.

With such a dim, stereotypical and simplistic view of the spiritual expression of humankind, it seemed like no wonder that none of Maher’s embarrasingly botched  interviews conveyed respect or a sense of dignity to either the interviewees or the audience.

“Looping Exercise”

There isn’t any border to the place I’m at when I realize who I am. I’m so full of love and happiness. I can’t contain my sense of connection with the universe when I listen to the music of someone who loved me. The sound of your voice is so captivating, so mesmerizing, so understandable, so mine. I am in another world. The possibilities become limitless for us, for the future and for the end of time where we can live in the valley of clarity surrounded by fog and mist.

Valley

When the land comes downward and hollows out your mind, the mist and fog gather as white pillowing stuffing like women use on the inside of quilts– with imagination, thoughts arrive as blueprints for the design of life. Your atmosphere is unending, limitless in the air and valley of time. Your hope is felt in the rest and relief you feel as your legs can walk on flat ground.

Pillowing

The pillowing of the imagination walks along with you toward your dancing feet. I loved you and now that you’re gone I miss you so much. I remember your sweet voice in song and I still listen to it. I was so unaware and so blind- I’m still blind to everything else also. Who were you and why do I need to hold on to this childlike love? This hope this dream and this crying tears– when I see your porcelain doll laying on your bed I can’t pretend that it isn’t me full of pillowing– white pillowing floating in like clouds of grace. 30 more secunds until I tell them to stop. With nothing left to say of my own.

Logos

Does all of this make sense to you? When I write with logos, I want you to clearly understand my reasoning, a step-by-step line of thought that proceeds from beginning to end and adds up with correctness and accuracy. I want you to be consistent, and avoid so many of the logical fallacies (for more on different types of logical fallacies, try searching for that key word on google) that trip people up so often. It’s more than the simple syllogism of A+B=C so therefore C-B=A or some such Aristotelian formula. Although mathematical principles can apply, the assembly of a rhetorical argument has to factor in more elements than can be so simply expressed as that. But without a basic sense of logic your reader can get lost to the winds when working to follow your lead in your writing.

Pathos

What kind of feeling will you produce in the person reading your work? If you ask yourself that as you write, it may change how you choose your words. The sounds of the words can create a feeling. Certain vibrations of sound have certain emotional connotations for people. Although their reactions may depend on a variety of factors having to do with their backgrounds, current environment, etc., it’s helpful when writing to make some attempt to predict, based on feedback from others and/or your own sense of the emotional content of sounds, how your audience members may feel in response to how you’ve constructed your text. Remember, as an author, you are inviting your reader into an emotional relationship with you, a big responsibility if you expect that they will listen to what you say.

Freeze Leaves!

An overabundance of basil in the Southern Illinois region at this time of year prompts many of us to freeze our whole basil leaves that we may not be using now in ziplock freezer bags, in order to save them for the winter. They retain so much of the flavor of summer and they are delicious in creamy pasta sauces and other vegetable dishes.

If you are receiving extra basil from friends as well as growing it in your home or communal garden, please consider putting some of it away now. It’s a worthwhile investment in your future, particularly your future of cooking during the cold weather months of 2009-2010. It also prevents wastefulness and can be satisfying for you economically, contributing to the overall positive vibrations and the worldwide economic recovery we are now slowly and gradually experiencing.

If you have comments on using freshly grown food to prop up your mental attitude personally as well as politically, please send them to this blog. And please remember, the freezer can extend the effects of your Victory Garden well into the next year and beyond. Old habits die hard, but they all begin as new habits, so start some good ones today! Please!

Another old friend passes away

Local organic farmer Patrick Sweeney passed away last week after a bout with pancreatic cancer. He always had vegetables ready, and herbs, every Saturday from April through November at Carbondale’s Farmers Market. If anything represents abundance and freshness and health in this region, it’s the outdoor marketplace that contains temporary stands vulnerable to elements like wind and heavy rain. One of the few avenues for touching the weather, and feeling like a live human being who functions as part of a real ecosystem. In other words, Patrick’s work as a farmer in harmony with nature made him closer to life than so many of us. The shortness of his time testifies to the intensity of his closeness to the life force, his ability to channel more prana into the rest of us than most people ever dream of. He is already missed.

Mourning for an old friend

When I was younger I felt better about myself after hearing Michael Jackson sing. I also got a phone call from him in my pre-teen years, when he was an older teenager. It was one of the thrills of my life, and made me feel so good and special. I’ve been watching the coverage of the aftermath of his death in recent weeks. So many people comment on the public implications of his music and his art as well as how people view his unique style of compassion and idiosyncratic love of life. I think of him as the inventor of the phrase “You go, girl!” because he encouraged me so much and always gave me a sense that I could do anything.

Developmental Reading

This summer I’ve accepted a teaching assignment at a local community college, John A. Logan College. The campus has a very pleasant atmosphere, not at all the big, booming feel of the state university.  So far, there have been 5 students in attendance in my Developmental Reading course, a preliminary college preparation in general literacy. We are about to get started on investigating learning styles, time management, annotation and test-taking, all under the larger umbrella of applying reading strategies that will stand these students in good stead as they enter higher education. With SQR3, a classic technique for approaching and absorbing material efficiently, we will survey, question, read, recite and review just about everything we feel motivated to get our hands on.

Clotheslines Transformed

In the mid-90s, the movement known as the “Clothesline Project” began at our Carbondale Women’s Center, a local sanctuary for women in crisis in the aftermath of sexual assault and a shelter for female survivors of domestic violence and their children. Having survived my share of past violent incidents in my youth and at the time being in the process of exiting a relationship in turmoil, I participated in the first shirt-making workshop in my hometown (in the year 1994-95 I believe). The workshop empowered women to create art out of their pain, by decorating shirts to express their own emotions about past experiences of different forms of abuse. The center supplied all the materials and kept experienced crisis counselors on hand as facilitators, with a specific purpose of later hanging the colorful, artistic shirts out on a large clothesline in a busy public place for the purpose of a political protest to end violence against women.

In a further process of transformation, environmental activists now can be heard exhorting people to use clotheslines to save energy at all costs, and at all times (even when it’s raining and/or very cold), for 100% of our clothes drying needs. I understand the importance and the power of purposeful and practical clotheslines, both for women’s issues and for the environment, and I appreciate these activists’ zeal. On the other hand, because of my history as a longtime believer in, user of and promoter of the good potential of clotheslines (in other words, because I feel I’ve earned my clothespins), I’m not going to kick myself for an occasional load of laundry that I feel the need to dry, once in a blue moon, by machine.

Don’t get me wrong, I still feel better about myself for drying outside on the line, and I’m proud of how women, including myself, have begun to hang the toxic effects of their histories of sexual and violent abuse out to dry.  I plan to continue to use my clothesline as much as possible, and during “Take Back the Night” week in October, I love to visit my old t-shirt with the tattered sleeves, the appliquéd eye and teardrop falling down and the words “Open Your Eyes” splayed across it. I’m grateful for the support of institutions like the Women’s Center and Student Environmental Center, because they have empowered me to become active and more confident in standing up for causes I not only believe in, but live for.

So let’s keep using symbols like the Clothesline in ways that empower us to transform our society from a place of sickness, violence and pollution into a place of peace, love and joy. As a way of drying our clothes more naturally, it offers us a way to be ourselves more naturally also, a way to bring the freshness of the earth into our homes and our lives, despite the down side of modernity and our widespread addiction to convenience. At the same time, let’s not hurt ourselves for stepping out into practicality if and when it becomes reasonably necessary also. In the long run, we will change for the positive faster if we do it in a forgiving way, rather than through fire-and-brimstone militancy.

Who is reading this?

What is the best method for visualizing the audience of this blog, or the target market for my business known as “Vital Writer Services” for that matter? I recently received a positive comment on the blog with no hint as to who wrote it. I moved it from my spam file onto the shown page by giving it my ‘approval.’ And yet I can hardly begin to imagine who might have sent it. Was it someone I know? Or a total stranger who just happened to be surfing and happened upon this site? I may never know, but then again, someday I just might.