Bullying; Powerful Video and Voices From Youth

This post is another keeping of the promise to the sparrow.

April is the Month for remembering the Value of Children and that high risk children and families need support...in all ways our hearts can find and every day. (April:National Child Abuse Prevention Month)


I was so impressed with this video and message from Youth wisdom, I wish to share.




An Excerpt from Rising Sparrow, Jane Marla VerDow

Content I had done all that could be done in these first hours, proud and at peace,I sat down to breathe, book in hand, and cracked the cover of Dear Daisy with the intent to read the story I had written.
An author, first book…heart open to explore what pages had transformed to become, now bound between hardcover. Discovery, exploration, touching land…all of this I felt…

Still…Life does not stop for this. Life has a way of not allowing itself to be edited out. I can’t tell you what page I was on when the phone rang. I can tell you not more than one-third way through I learned that where the author ends a book is often times not where the story chooses to end. A sparrow, one close to my heart, too overcome and challenged by this world, had fallen to the ground. Disbelief how life had written this epilogue chapter...days later I returned and continued to read the story I had written sensing this sparrow reading by my side. The author’s copy of Dear Daisy will forever hold my tears.

As for the fallen sparrow?
I had made a promise as we read Dear Daisy together, him There, me here…
I would not ignore nor turn my back on sparrows needing voice. Their song, his song would be heard.


Jane Marla Ver Dow
Author, Rising Sparrow Press


Books by Author:
Dear Daisy tells my story...Rising Sparrow is "my new shoes"

Autographed Books by the Author are Available

Content Synopsis/Dear Daisy

Dear Daisy, nonfiction, reads as life is presented day- to-day and by seasons. The author, a gifted storyteller invites the reader into the world and relationship between a Colored illiterate Migrant Woman sharing her wisdom with a boss man’s child under cherry and apple trees during the early 1960's. Daisy, an Angel on Earth years later mystically reappears an Angel from Heaven to guide the grown child on her pathway back Home.

Dear Daisy tells a story 2000 years old yet reminds us how challenges continue to play out and that we each contribute to writing the story.

As the story begins, the author caught in a personal struggle of survival under conditions felt oppressive, writes to Daisy. As the reflective search for self and path unfolds, the 9-11-01 story strikes as a Holy War between extremists of Nations. Before the dust settles, 10-28-01 brings world chaos personal. Living the assault aftermath, the author struggles to forgive and declares through writing an Epistle as part of her emancipation pathway that violence as a rightful expression and worship of God is not the God of her faith.



Previous writing on this blog, Click Labels for this post

(Sample)
http://storytellersandwriters.blogspot.com/2007/03/promise-kept.html

Bullying, Harassment, Assault, Teen Suicide, Bullying the Bully ...When do we reach Enough?

Teen Bullying: Special Series
by Lucinda Franks

Lucinda Franks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who was on the staff of the New York Times and has written for the New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review and Magazine. Her latest book is My Father's Secret War, about her father, who was a spy for the OSS during World War II.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-31/teen-bullying-special-series/tmz?obref=obinsite

I strongly encourage you to read through comments following each post. Ponder this question: Any wonder our children are lost and bullying is the epidemic and escalated violence that it has become?



As for the fallen sparrow?
I had made a promise as we read Dear Daisy together...now, yet
another There, me here…
I would not ignore nor turn my back on sparrows needing voice. Their song would be heard.


Editorial as written by author, Jane Marla VerDow to newspaper (2004)

Not Just Kids Play
"...Though our emotional shock is focused on the attack(s) may we remember that failure to provide, failure to act is an equal atrocity under terms of child abuse laws. As I read her article I noted: 2nd grade to fifth grade (time), multiple attacks (events to document), progressive violence (pattern), children reporting and demonstrating symptoms (victim voices), adults knowing (witness), policies written (criteria). What proof of circumstance are we looking for or who’s voice are we waiting to hear before action can lead towards a path to peaceful resolution?..."

"...Before we drift back to sleep dreams may we open our eyes and ears to realize that this is not an isolated event reported one day in a newspaper, our newspaper. Bullying is real and children are unprepared to face this alone or to resolve what society creates on pathways where justice is denied. We all are invested in the outcome. By what higher standards will we each hold ourselves accountable? Time will tell the story. While time passes and the Summer Sun provides its light may we reflect upon this question: Are we so concerned with how our Institutions look to a community that we fail to wonder how we appear to our children?"

Jane Marla Ver Dow
Author, Dear Daisy, Rising Sparrow Press



(Full Post:

For additional related posts on this blog, click Labels school violence, bullying, Rising Sparrow

My Youngest Reader

“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”
-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt


As promised yesterday I’ll now tell you the story of my youngest reader as first told to me by his mother.

Seems the copy of Dear Daisy that she had purchased went missing, only to appear in her 3 year old son’s hands. At first, no reason to think this strange or out of the ordinary, after all, little ones do have a tendency to pick up things around the house, that is until they come of the age where one would wish they would… But, I digress.

Seems this pattern continued. Not an issue until she wished to sit down with her copy to read. She asked for her book. In his 3 year old way he made it clear the answer was, “no”. Reasoning with him that he could have the book back but that at this time she wished to sit and read her book, his answer remained the same, this time “my book” being the answer.

From what I’ve shared so far…one would have the picture formed in mind that the book stayed missing each time, stashed someplace only he knew it to be. Well…that is part of the picture, and my first image as I listened to her storyline.

Seems not that the book was missing…hard to miss an object that the child insisted on carrying around the house with him, even taking the book with him in the car. Following him and watching, the mother discovered that those times when he wasn’t carrying the book, he was putting it in his bedroom closet. Knowing his age she thought it best to continue going about their days without pressing the issue.

Cleaning one Saturday morning, she ventured down the hall towards his bedroom. On a cleaning mission, she glanced in noticing he was sitting on his closet floor, holding the book open, reading his book. She then shared with me that her son of three was not a child prodigy capable of reading at advanced levels, in fact he was delayed in speech, barely, if ever speaking. Their origin language is Spanish, and growing up in an English-speaking neighborhood, she felt maybe his speaking delay was confusion over which language he should speak.

Curious what he was doing, and to ask the obvious question, she went into his bedroom only to find that he wasn’t reading. He was listening, or so it appeared from the look in his eyes and the tilt of his head. The little one, a nonreader was holding the book upside down. These things a mother would notice.

Still, she asked her question. “What you reading?” “My book,” his answer. With that answered, she went back to cleaning the house. Moments later she realized that her son was talking to someone, so she went back into his room. “Who you talking to?” “The kid,” his answer as he pointed.

Imaginary friends, weren’t they always the best? I’ll admit that was where my mind thought her storyline would end.

She went on to tell me that the next day she heard her son for the first time speak his own name. Actually, the way she told the story, he declared, “MY NAME IS….” (“MY NAME” said in Spanish”)

His companion and “imaginary friend” not imaginary in any conceivable way to this child playing, sitting, and walking beside, also had a name.

The next week his Grandmother went to a party and brought home balloons tied to a weight rock. The 3 year old passed up the balloons but insisted on the rock weight. The storyteller told me the rock was the same color as “my book”. Now, I, and maybe you, also would think this just coincidence.

The storyteller went on to tell me that she overheard her son talking to his imaginary friend the next few days, and his side of the conversation suggested that he was knowing the storyline I had written in Dear Daisy. The book was being read to him. The story, she had not been reading to him. The story, that he insisted his imaginary friend was reading to him…

I wrote to a friend telling the short email version of this story. I also filled her in on this little boy’s mother who is very open to her son’s mystical mind and ways. In this email I wrote, “The stones may just start talking.”

A Publisher's Path

Daily on the publishing path I searched both the author and publisher within how to stay true to my writer’s heart and purpose; how to honor Daisy; how to stay true to the voice of children; what niche to follow for sales; and was Dear Daisy a book that could be confined to a niche?

The sparrow There reading beside me here I sensed as I read from Dear Daisy.

Dear Daisy….
I can only hope the seeds that I plant will inspire others to plant their own dreams. I intend to keep planting seeds as long as I’m here on this big ol’ Earth. I guess once a farmer always a farmer on some level. That’s what the work I’ve been doing and getting looks like to me, planting seeds. That seems pretty appropriate for Springtime, wouldn’t you say, Daisy?

Mis’ Jane

Easter was early that year. Palm Sunday, 2001 I went to Church. The sermon was the story of betrayal, otherwise known as the Easter story (my interpretation). Told there, the story of the donkey, the beginning hints of betrayal yet to occur, the hope for the end of the story of salvation and triumph, and the “stones that wouldn’t be silenced”.

Dear Daisy…
That touched me. Think about it Daisy, even if the people were silenced, the stones would speak.
The service also spoke out for justice and mission for programs sprouting to help the youths of today face the violence on their streets and within their schools. My mind, my ears, my heart hears and feels the stones talking. Can you hear the stones, Daisy?

Columbine, then school after school added to the nightmare list. Just goes to show what people, even kids will do when there doesn’t seem to be a next town to walk to. That is a hopeless, lonely place in a human heart. I know that feeling but fortunately for me and for others, walking to the next town was always possible on some level. We, as the adults, need to teach kids about all these towns to walk to because they are stuck in the middle and they may overlook that “next towns” exist. I was blessed to have a vivid imagination, plenty of walking space, a sense of humor, a creative mystery-solving mind. I taught myself to have an outgoing nature, seeking out people to talk and walk with. I taught myself how to walk. I never stopped believing in “next towns”.

Children of our culture today are very enclosed in their environments, long hours of structured activities and “work”, and absolutely every moment of their day is routine or a competition with their peers or with some standardized statistic. Every piece of their lives is a measure of their “self” against something.

Today I write; hearing the sparrow sitting There knowing we are always a child, regardless of how old we grow.

Today, first days of Spring I planted seeds on my path and I wonder what seeds will sprout;
I wonder, too from days long ago planted which survived the cold of a Northern winter.

Tomorrow…I’ll share the story of my youngest “reader” and the story of the day the stones talked.

Promise Kept to a Fallen Sparrow

Opportunity to live true to my promise came June, 2004.

A school violence/bullying article appeared in the local paper. I wrote the reporter/columnist and senior editor and mailed a gift copy of Dear Daisy to introduce myself and to explain my interest in the topic.

Though word count exceeds printability as an editorial for your newspaper it is my understanding that longer editorials/topic comments are featured in the Speaking Out Section.
I am familiar with the case reported and am aware of the multiple efforts of the family to seek help and resolution. Over the course of similar time frame, I have been aware of other cases of similar circumstance and pattern occurring within our local schools. The numbers “unreported” publicly, suffered silently by children and families represent the voices still waiting to be heard. No doubt, the great works and words of (Reporter/Columnist) to seek truth and to shed light on patterns of behavior have given us opportunity to challenge systems that fail and will serve as a catalyst and platform for these children seeking voice. On behalf of those children may I say, "thank-you".

Dear Daisy was written as my personal account and to serve justice pathways, a voice for children. Bullying can have dire consequences and it is not just a kid’s game. I offer a gift copy in hopes that it will shed light on violence patterns, systemic responses, efforts to silence victims, and mostly to assist children speaking out against the attacks and violence to speak their truth of how systems charged with managing groups and Institutions continue to fail.

I look forward to all of your future articles and follow-thru efforts working to speak out against violence among and against children. May our community not fall back asleep before constructive efforts to resolve for our children can take root.

Sincerely,
Jane Marla Ver Dow


Editorial as written by author to newspaper

Not Just Kids Play
“Bullying can have dire consequences for children”(Santiago)
June 25, 2004 in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle nudged us awake. Though our emotional shock is focused on the attack(s) may we remember that failure to provide, failure to act is an equal atrocity under terms of child abuse laws. As I read her article I noted: 2nd grade to fifth grade (time), multiple attacks (events to document), progressive violence (pattern), children reporting and demonstrating symptoms (victim voices), adults knowing (witness), policies written (criteria). What proof of circumstance are we looking for or who’s voice are we waiting to hear before action can lead towards a path to peaceful resolution?

With tax dollars and school budgets always in the news, number of school days strategically calculated to collect Monies, have we fallen into the psychological trap of previous Institution failures? Are we still viewing children as property? If Mandatory Reporting Laws hold Professionals accountable to be the watchdogs of family violence and abuse, does not the same spirit of the law apply when violence has been discovered or reported within their Halls or on property?

We live during the information age yet fail to communicate at basic core levels and fail to read current events beyond the front page. Before we as a community engage in the old divisive battle, the traditional taking up of sides with efforts to victimize the victim and block learning, structure, support and assistance to all victim(s), could we see clearly that children on both sides of this conflict are victims with needs. In our attempts to come to a place of mental acceptance and clarity or to find our comfort distance the question always surfaces just before our judgment: why this child? The answer: because one was in crisis and needed to be heard and the other child was the only one listening.

It is time to ask questions and to seek answers. Are we in a situation of “good” people caught too late asking the “right” questions? Has the “common sense” management and education of children lost its place buried within the collection of statistics? Did denial set-in? Denial will not reach truth, yet truth will rise. It is time for adult ears to listen. Children are screaming “ENOUGH!” Paper programs and flush money will not solve this. One Institution cannot do this alone.

We question why now at the close of this school year would this information rise to our consciousness? Summer vacations are in our hearts. This year closes and we put things away. Next year gives us hope to start over. Maybe the answer is simple. Summer is the time of growth.

Grow we must for the seed that has been planted is the seed of self-contempt, isolated and vulnerable pathways, self-defeating choices, and could at any moment manifest to retaliatory-justice seeking explosions. It is the seed of destruction of the good works we do, the means to the end once again out of balance with false promises to those investing in our education missions and believing in the foundation stones laid by family. If we open our hearts summer can be a time to reflect, to see the contrast reality between light and shadow. It is time to choose wiser the seed we plant.

While Rochester slept, the Supreme Court has already spoken. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor provides perspective under Title IX and defines the burden of responsibility to provide safe and equal access to our publicly supported Institutions and Programs. How will Rochester interpret? How will our community meet this challenge?

Before we drift back to sleep dreams may we open our eyes and ears to realize that this is not an isolated event reported one day in a newspaper, our newspaper. Bullying is real and children are unprepared to face this alone or to resolve what society creates on pathways where justice is denied. We all are invested in the outcome. By what higher standards will we each hold ourselves accountable? Time will tell the story. While time passes and the Summer Sun provides its light may we reflect upon this question: Are we so concerned with how our Institutions look to a community that we fail to wonder how we appear to our children?

Jane Marla Ver Dow
Author, Dear Daisy, Rising Sparrow Press

First Reviews

Searching for paths to sow Dear Daisy was literally feeling my way in a publishing world I knew nothing of firsthand. I read and searched and researched but most of all I spent time in reflection of what my heart mission would be and remain. At times this appeared in contrast to how the World said it should be. Each footstep, I introduced Dear Daisy to those on my path and awaited reactions and responses while I walked the road ahead.

Readers held Dear Daisy in their hands and I took pause when they revealed what page they were on, what story or mystery drew them to question. I waited for the children on that road to reveal their voices, their songs, and the echoes of their hearts.

Reader reviews came and somehow, I had connected. This truth was a mystery, in part even to me. It was this language of heart I most wanted to further explore.

Initial reactions of readers closest to me?

Immediate family was very supportive of my writing.
Mom “never before stayed up to read, any book” …alone in the darkness of night to catch a glimpse of light or enlightenment…an understanding of someone she thought she knew…all these years….
Dad couldn’t have been more of a father in that moment. Marketing…“you’ve just got to…the world needs this message…”
Sister…“I grew up with you… shared memories. I never knew you. Now I do.”
Her favorites: the Epistle…and the Lakeshore story.
Aunt: “Your grandfather would be very proud.”

Stories of locals who purchased the book?

Never did I anticipate hearing this next (ironic really) Spiritual based…Golden Rule…“I haven’t finished reading it yet. My book was stolen by…”

I joked that my promotion would have to include I had in fact increased the local crime rates. Theft was not my intention yet pride flooded my heart each time I heard their confessions.

Some readers…opened and discovered themselves or at least a part of themselves they had never taken enough time, became silent enough or quiet enough to read. Then again maybe it was a sense of contentment and the quiet time sitting there under the trees with Daisy and a young child who never quite grew beyond those moments regardless of how many days passed in between. Was it such moments and permission to be in such moments that the reader’s child decided to tag along?

Older weekly “church-going” Christian readers surprised me speaking out against their “modern” religious experiences.
One said, “I go to the place where we worship money. Building a building that no one seems to know why we are building or what the building will serve. Still mission money, money we have promised to aide others is behind schedule.”

I sent a gift copy to my advocate friend (support against violence in churches).

Dear James Evinger,

…It is true. I have written my book, Dear Daisy and forged the path to self publish. I chose the self-publishing route because I’ve always admired those of our history that delivered the message of their times despite “commercialism” and “limits”. I guess I am a rebel. I admit it.

Rising Sparrow Press was officially born December 2003 and now web site can be found at http://www.risingsparrowpress.com/.

I am in process of writing a second book, Rising Sparrow, a sequel to Dear Daisy. Still writing, far from final editing stage. Some of my writing is “too mystical” at times even for me and though true to my experiences, much of the World would believe it to be fiction. So I may have to write a third book, the true mystical stories of my life, label it “fiction” and call it, (“_________”).

(Of course the publisher in me edited out the title on this blog!!!!)

…I anticipate in the very near future expanding the web site writing on topics to promote nonviolent resolution pathways and to serve justice, speaking out about our times, and also to serve my passions for history and exploring the voice of ordinary day-to-day folk. I know I am a storyteller at heart and most wish to find my path to this mission.

…Hope you enjoy Dear Daisy. Once again, thank-you for being there when the World was throwing mud.

Keep in touch.

Jane Ver Dow


His response and review?

“I’m writing to thank you for the copy of Dear Daisy. It’s amazing and profoundly written. Thank you for your courage and the risk you took to create it. (But that is you, isn’t it!)
It’s direct, honest, truthful, personal, and always looks at the larger principles. It’s engaging and thoughtful, and so it has taken me awhile to complete it- I’d put it down because it forced my own reflections. May God’s Spirit continue to guide you.”

James Evinger


Honored and humbled would be the words my heart defined for my confused mind. This level of support I simply was not prepared to receive. It was this language of heart I most wished to leave behind as my personal legacy.

As for the fallen sparrow?
I had made a promise as we read Dear Daisy together, him There, me here…
I would not ignore nor turn my back on sparrows needing voice. Their song, his song would be heard.

the sparrow song

Having already read the story through rewrites and edits and mostly having lived the story one too many times, I chose the first hours of the next few days delivering and mailing gift signed copies to a select few. During this window from delivery to formal copyright date, I returned to my prepublication list and materials created for promotion that I had written waiting her arrival. Narrowing my niche,uncertain this being “the first” what my niche was, I selected a couple dozen reviewers. Heart open, I sent them on their path.

The transition from the withdrawn, quiet life of an author to the active, competitive-driven world of the publisher took energy and adjustment time. I had preplanned. I had pre-selected. I had created promo materials before I ever felt Dear Daisy in my hands. Transition from author to publisher, first steps had been taken.

Content I had done all that could be done in these first hours, proud and at peace,I sat down to breathe, book in hand, and cracked the cover of Dear Daisy with the intent to read the story I had written.
An author, first book…heart open to explore what pages had transformed to become, now bound between hardcover. Discovery, exploration, touching land…all of this I felt…


Still…Life does not stop for this. Life has a way of not allowing itself to be edited out. I can’t tell you what page I was on when the phone rang. I can tell you not more than one-third way through I learned that where the author ends a book is often times not where the story chooses to end. A sparrow, one close to my heart, too overcome and challenged by this world, had fallen to the ground. Disbelief how life had written this epilogue chapter...days later I returned and continued to read the story I had written sensing this sparrow reading by my side. The author’s copy of Dear Daisy will forever hold my tears.