Origin Story

When I impulsively decided to set up this Substack blog, I hadn’t given much thought about a title. When they asked me to come up with a title, my mind went back to something from my childhood.

From the time I was a little girl, my father managed WITY, one of the two local radio stations in Danville, Illinois. He also produced commercials (including one that I voiced) and was the sports broadcaster. He loved jazz and I would fall asleep to the sound of his voice doing a one-hour jazz program at night.

I loved hanging out at the radio station. It was a magical and fascinating place to me. Which is why, when I was writing the Jem and the Holograms animation series and had to write an episode introducing a Jem radio station, I named the station manager after my father.

In my teen years, I remember my father’s involvement in community and social issues. He would do a daily opinion piece on WITY, only a minute or so long, commenting on local issues. He called it Remarks by Marx.

So the title I grabbed out from my memory is an homage to my father.

I inherited a strong sense of justice, fairness, doing what is right from him. I’ve taken strong stands my entire life around issues that are meaningful to me – civil rights and fighting racism, standing against censorship, caring for the environment, equality for women and any oppressed group, to name a few.

At one point, my father decided to run for a local political office. He lost. He told me later that when he met with business leaders, he was honest with them instead of telling them what they wanted to hear. He thought that was why he lost.

I loved my father deeply, but I also saw that there was rigidity to his stance. He wasn’t flexible enough to bend a little when bending would help him achieve his goal.

It’s like the old story of the oak and the willow. The oak was strong and upright, but huge storm blew and the oak cracked because it couldn’t bend. The willow bent beneath the wind and survived.

My father was the oak. It left him somewhat bitter and cynical later in life.

As a woman, I had to find other ways, less rigid and confrontational ways, to hold to my beliefs and reach my goals. Mind you, there are plenty of people who would laugh their asses off reading that line about being less confrontational. I admit to being more confrontational than most women. At the same time, as I progressed in my career, I learned the art of give and take, and how to do creative bullshitting. Believe me, creative bullshitting is an important skill in the entertainment business.

I had to learn to pick my battles. There were times when I took a stand and it cost me dearly. And times when it could have cost me dearly, but I won the battle.

The trick is that you have to be willing to fail and live with the consequences of failing. Being able to say “no” to something you find offensive and mean it and being willing to accept the consequences of saying “no”, is a power in itself.

To get back to this Substack blog, I’m not sure how consistent I’ll be, but I’ll give it a try. My nebulous intentions are to focus primarily on writing, the art and techniques of writing, books I’m reading, and related stray thoughts.

Starting with the next post.