Yesterday was a hard day. I was lucky though, I had a class to teach. A roomful of like minded people who wrote their way through tears and anger. Some of the writing exercises I had prepared a few days before turned out to be timely. A line from a Mary Oliver poem as a prompt: “There is so much to admire, to weep over./ And to write music or poems about.” and a line from the introduction to The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, “What is the woman in the photograph afraid of?”

Jeri brought in a letter to her daughter that she had just written – “The most painful thing to me as a woman of color – and as the mother of two daughters of color who are immigrants to this country….” and she wrote of being afraid because her childhood was filled with racism and being bullied. How she was called an “Oriental” and a “Jap” back in the days when America was supposed to be great.

But all of us writers are lucky. We can get back to work, to our job on the page. We have a purpose in life. This morning on NPR Richard Russo was interviewed and talked about how a writer’s job is to entertain, instruct and to bear witness. And how he was now going back to work, as a writer, a father of two daughters (and here his voice started to break, mentioning how they bought pantsuits to vote in), and as a grandfather.

Back to work. Bear witness.

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If you’re in Pasadena or close by, come join us at Vromans for a writing workshop this Saturday – 11/12/16 – at 9:00.