Tonight on Realgoodwords: After You

Say you have a best friend. This person knows you better than ANYBODY. Knows you better than your parents, your spouse....

and suddenly that person is gone.

What then? What if it turned out that you DIDN'T know that person as well as you thought?

Julie Buxbaum's new novel is "After You". It is described as:

The complexities of friendship. The unraveling of a neglected marriage. And the redemptive power of literature...Julie Buxbaum, the acclaimed author of The Opposite of Love, delivers a powerful, gloriously written novel aboutlove, family, and the secrets we hide from each other, and ourselves.

Is the American Dream alive?

Picture this: fresh out of college, a star basketball player decides to NOT live in his parent's basement, but try an experiment. An experiment not in hallucinogenics but in the AMERICAN DREAM.

That's Adam Shepard.

Adam, largely in response to Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" wanted to prove that the American Dream is alive and well. So he set out on an experiment. Here were the parameters of his "from scratch" life:

*He would take with him $25, a tarp, a sleeping bag, an empty gym bag and the clothes on his back

*He would take the train and be dropped somewhere randomly

*Within 365 days he had to have a furnished apartment, a car, $2500 and be in a position to move up in his job

Did he prove his point? Do you think the American Dream is still alive?

I'll be talking with Adam this week on Realgoodwords... in preparation for Adam's visit to northern Minnesota. He'll be speaking at Itasca Community College on Wednesday September 23rd at 12pm at Davies Theater on the campus of Itasca Community College.

This week's show

This week I talk with author John Shors about his latest novel "Dragon House". It's the story of Iris and Noah - two Americans in Vietnam who open a center to house and educate Vietnamese street children. Reviewers have said that the question that echoes throughout this novel is "how can we be better?"

The other book I'll feature this week is also about how to make ourselves better: whether we're a teacher, a a parent or a student. The journal of first year teacher Esme Raji Codell "Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year" has been re-published 10 years later. Described as"a rash, petite, white lady who roller-skates through the halls and insists that her fifth-graders call her "Madame Esmé." But it's not all fun and games: she introduces us to children who fling their desks and apologize in tears, and at one point, after reporting a disruptive student to her mother, who subsequently thrashes the young girl, she dry heaves into her classroom's trash can."

So it's not book-related!

I can't help it, it was pretty exciting - last week in Homer, Alaska and Tom's GIANT fish!

Thanks for listening and responding

I got a great email from a listener today, about the interview I did with Jody Allen Crowe about "The Fatal Link - the Connection Between School Shooters and the Brain Damage from Prenatal Exposure to Alcohol". Thanks Gerry!

If you missed the interview, you can listen here.

Heidi-
Thanks once again for the great job in the interview with Jody Crow.
I'll pass on his book title to many others.
It's that time of year to head back and teach at HCC and this
information will fit right into my drug course.
Thanks once again for providing such a vital link in people's lives.
Gerry

Go to where the silence is and say something

Author Amy Efaw (rhymes with Hee-Haw she told me!) told me that her mission statement as a writer came from a NPR report she heard by Amy Goodman where she said: "Go to where the silence is and say something".

In many ways both the authors on this week's Realgoodwords have done that. They are talking about what we are AFRAID to talk about. For Minnesota educator and author Jody Crowe, that silence is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the link to school shooters. For Amy Efaw, it is young girls getting pregnant, having their babies and leaving them in motels or bathroom stalls or dumpsters.

Here's some startling findings about fetal alcohol syndrome-
A MN study identified women who were at risk for drinking during pregnancy...
the risk factors were:

Single
College educated (most likely to drink)
Working in high level white collar jobs
Younger (college aged) or older (35-45)
Affluent (over $50,000)
Living in the Metro

As Jody said in our conversation, this is clearly NOT just a native American issue.

Amy Efaw's young adult novel "After" is about a teen who has a baby and leaves it in a dumpster. Here's some of the statistics about teenage pregnancy.

Each year almost 750,000 teenage women 15-19 become pregnant.

The U.S. has the highest rates of teen pregnancies and birth among comparable countries.

In a year, over 365 babies are found abandoned.

Both authors on this week's show are saying something. That's for sure.

MN author Julie Kramer's new "Missing Mark"