THANKFUL DESPITE MYSELF: GRATEFUL FOR REAL S/HEROES

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Ordinarily, Thanksgiving is the one holiday I look forward to celebrating. This year, I’m struggling with my gratitude sentiments. Don’t get me wrong, I know I have plenty to be grateful for, and a few happenings in the past 24 hours have moved my gratitude needle in the right direction.

I could gush about receiving a treasure from Vinnie Calone or being there for Stephanie Niles’ first Zoom poetry reading at Poetry Near & Afar (thanks to Judy Turek). But those are personal, and there are bigger things than my personal gratification on the list.

Lis McLoughlin, founder of Nature Culture and 
Writing the Land (among many other uplifting things) sent the organizers of the Art Auction to Alleviate Hunger- with proceeds going to Feed the Children- an inspiring email. Here’s an excerpt:

“…I expect this painting will bring a lot more money, but if allowed, I bid $100 on it.”

Can you imagine organizing a charitable auction and receiving such an email before the auction opened? Uplifting indeed!

Apparently, Lis took a sneak peek at the Better World auction site, and she has jumped aboard the generosity train before it has even left the station! We don’t launch the auction until Saturday, Dec. 3 at 2pm EST!

The painting, “Devas de los hambrientos" by JC Wayne (founder of The Poartry Project), that Lis referred to is one of the original pieces created for the online auction, and it was inspired by Heyssel Mariel Molinares Sosa's poem, "Hambre," published on the Poetry X Hunger website.

Perhaps even bigger than that humongous boost, was an interaction I had with Scot Young. You might know Scot as the “Cowboy Poet” who reads while donkeys bray in the background. Even donkey braying can’t drown out the potent poetry Scot delivers more reliably than USPS delivers mail these days. But Scot’s poetry writing, editing, publishing, and teaching (he runs a writing group for youth), despite their outsized value, are not what I am most thankful for at the moment.

As superintendent of the school district in a “rural PreK-12 school that serves 110 children in small no stoplight town of Theodosia in the Missouri Ozarks,” the buck stops with Scot when this little school, in a town of anywhere from 176 – 195 people, depending on your source (188 according to the 2020 US Census), “… acts as a Mobile Food Pantry once a month and hands out a semi-truck load of meat, dairy, bread and produce to 600 people every month.”

According to Scot, students, teachers and administrators have been conducting the Mobil Food Pantry since the Pandemic began. He writes, “The people line up 3 hours before the truck arrives and not one time have we ever been rained out. Let that sink in. There are usually out of state plates in line and several from outside our community but my take is if they are hungry then we are here…. I have been in education over 30 years as a teacher, principal and superintendent and when asked what I remember the most or my greatest accomplishment, it is being able to do this.”

And just in case you want some backup for my take on Scot, here’s an excerpt I snagged from Amazon from a John Dorsey (author of Prettiest Girl at the Dance) quote, as he writes about Scot and his poetry collection, All Around Cowboy: “…Scot Young is a great poet, but anyone can do that, he's an even greater man, so I take it back, maybe he is a cowboy, but let's be clear, John Wayne would never have the balls to be Scot Young." Nothing I could say would top that!

Listen, you can cheer for your winning quarterbacks, your star point guards, your worshipped movie stars or musicians, your favorite billionaires, or whomever you choose to put on the hero pedestal. To each their own. But when it comes to s/heroes, it’s people like Scot Young, Lis Mcloughlin, JC Wayne, Hiram Larew, and the like who fit my hero bill! If I had children, these would be the role models I’d offer them. To those of you I’ve mentioned and to the many of similar ilk unmentioned here, thank you for what you do!

Check out what we've got planned for you and Feed the Children: