Year End Comeuppance

 

Yesterday, the news was that Pakistan is releasing Omar Saeed Sheikh, accused killer of WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl, after 18 years in jail. He was acquitted of that murder this summer, but because of appeals is still being held in jail.

That news would ordinarily not pierce my protective white coating, but for a few variables.

It was on my radar because the person who edited and published my first two novels, Sarah Crichton, edited and published a book written by Pearl’s wife, Marianne, about the Pearls’ relationship and the search for him after he was kidnapped. So, I was interested in Omar Saeed Sheikh because of that association.

Maybe not interested in the way you’d think.

No, it was because the death of one white journalist from the whitest newspaper in the US was elevated to a place in my psyche when, for fuck’s sake, he was in a war zone. Lots of folks get kidnapped, tortured and killed, if they find themselves on the wrong side of an idea in a war zone.

Not to minimize HIS death, but not to minimize the others’ either.

He was in the elite that rules the world. And good for him, really. But his story is only interesting, to me anyway, in that you can be part of that elite ruling class and still get killed doing your job.

But I’d be more interested in knowing Omar Saeed Sheikh’s story. He risked everything too. What was he thinking, beheading a journalist for the WSJ, powerful mouthpiece of the most powerful nation in the world. Is he crazy?

I just read that John Mulaney has entered rehab. Another advantaged white dude taking up real estate in my brain, and I’m to waste my few remaining strands of 2020 sympathy on his cocaine and alcohol addiction?

And what about all the space devoted to Lori Laughlin not being able to sleep in prison, serving a  sentence that was just a slap on the hand, then even that was commuted to basically an overnight.

The point, and I do have one, is this: Right now, at the end of 2020, I’m sure you noticed, we’re in big trouble. We got to fix the world.

And I don’t think that stories about advantaged white dudes and dudettes in trouble is going to help us figure things out. Those are fairy tales, bro.

Big lesson of 2020 is that we got to take care of our neighbors, our physical neighbors, and hope that the energy from that effort ripples out to the larger world.

We got to listen to each other.

We got to tell each others' stories, so we know we’re not freaks, we’re not “the only ones who think that way!” or the only ones who committed a particular atrocity.

We all have atrocities in our suitcase.

I can’t tell you how many people write to me (as publisher and editor) saying, “I don’t know if I can say this, it’s so awful.” You know what? I haven’t heard an original story of horror, abuse—self or other—since I started this racket.  If we were less ashamed of things that we have no control over—“My mother is really my aunt!” (oldest one in the book)—spent more time forgiving ourselves for not being heroes, and more time congratulating ourselves for just getting a grip, we might advance as a species.

Mostly, we have to tell each others’ stories. Get the horror out and the joy out and let’s acknowledge that yes, maybe Daniel Pearl is some kind of hero, but so is my friend and BHBW author who is hobbling together a zillion sales in freezing temperatures so her small business can come through the other side of this pandemic. So is my friend and BHBW author who, right before Christmas and right when his dance career was taking off, had his Uber license suspended because they were updating his background check and found his background wanting. Extraordinary people at the mercy of systems and forces they probably don’t even understand because they don’t have the price of admission to those parties to figure out what is the what.

Or what about the woman who discovered that the medical industrial complex had nothing to cure her auto-immune disease, so figured out how to cure herself. Or the young man who spent everything he had in a court system that doesn’t think fathers are good parents, but nevertheless prevailed and got his kids. Those are the stories I want to hear. Blue Heron Book Works is interested in the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. People who can’t pick up the phone to fix their fuck-ups.  People who don’t have a pile of cash to land on if they’re pushed out of the plane.  And people who, nonetheless, prevail. These are the people who have our ear and our megaphone, whose stories will help us figure things out.

We have a great line-up for our readers in 2021. Stay with us to find out more about the world’s most interesting people.  Because here is where you’ll meet them.  Happy New Year, everyone.