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Hebron Reflection: Special Treatment

by Kathleen Kern

A few days ago, my teammate Alwyn and I were sidetracked by phone call as we left for a food shopping trip.  Another international monitoring group here in Hebron asked us to check out a

Offending snacks photographed by EAPPI after the staff person was finally released by the soldiers.

Offending snacks photographed by EAPPI after the staff person was finally released by the soldiers.

situation at the container checkpoint that separates the H-1 area (under nominal Palestinian control) from H-2 (under full Israeli military control) in Hebron.  Soldiers had stopped  a staffperson from a kindergarten near Qurtuba School who was bringing in a box of snacks for the children, which apparently the soldiers running the checkpoint deemed a security risk.

The staff person had been there an hour by the time we got there and would be there for more than another before the soldiers finally let him go.  In the meantime, Alwyn and I became involved in another small human drama.  A young man with Down’s Syndrome came through the checkpoint.  The soldiers were searching most bags at that point, so I don’t know if initially they decided to be extra thorough with him, but perhaps because he made them uncomfortable, something compelled them to make him take his belt off, pull up his shirt, take off his shoes, and pull up his pants legs.  They also went through the newspaper he was carrying page by page to see if it concealed anything.IMG_9434-002

He continued up the hill afterwards, belt in hand, cursing.  He would try to put the belt through the loops of his pants, then start re-enacting the scene of his humiliation again and again, yelling and shaking his fist.  Alwyn and I joined him and tried to calm him down.  An older man came by to help him with his belt, and through him, we learned the young man’s name, Abed*, and that his father had died recently.

What seemed to restore his good humor was showing him my shopping list, and telling him, in Arabic, what we needed to buy (apples, bananas, milk etc.)  He sat with us as we waited for people from the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme to relieve us.  At one point he nudged me with his elbow, smiled, and said in Arabic, “I’m Jewish.”  “Really?”  I asked.  The smile widened, nearly splitting his face in half and he nodded vigorously.

Before I joined Christian Peacemaker Teams, I worked with developmentally disabled adults.  I have thought over the years I have worked in Hebron, that while people with mental disabilities here sometimes suffer worse treatment in the form of mockery on the streets than they do in the U.S., they often feel that they are more a part of the community than the people I worked with did.  Still, I guess I do expect that soldiers are going to make special allowances for a young man like Abed, and not assume he is a criminal, which seems to be their default assumption for most young Palestinian men in their twenties.  I know that soldiers have taken away boys as young as seven or eight on suspicion of throwing stones.  I worry what a strong young man like Abed might face behind that gate where Israeli soldiers take the boys and men they detain.  And I worry that we might never really find out what happens to him if they do.

*Not his real name

Pictures–Pretty! Apartheid Wall–Yucky!

by Markie

Hi Kids!

Before we left Bethlehem a couple days ago, we visited the wall that Israel built around Bethlehem. Israel said it was going to build it for security between Israel and Palestine, but the wall isn’t built along the border of Israel and the West Bank.  It goes inside the West Bank and has confiscated thousands and thousands of acres of Palestinian land.  It surrounds Bethlehem on three sides.

Ever since the Wall went up people from all over the world have been painting pictures on it and writing angry or sad or hopeful or happy messages on it.  Kathy and I took some pictures.  Can you find me in them?

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Some artist called Banksy who’s supposed to be a big deal did this.

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People who get really angry at the wall throw burning things at it. I got kind of dirty posing on it.

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Some mystery CPTer wrote this on the wall and no one knows who! My teammate Cory and I went looking for clues!

IMG_9409We came to a neighborhood that was almost completely surrounded by the wall.  A woman whose home had been surrounded by the wall came up to us and asked us to look at her shop.  She had designed some really interesting things.  One was an olivewood nativity scene with a wall separating the wisemen and shepherds from baby Jesus, Joseph and Mary (you could take it out.)IMG_9412

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IMG_9414When we got home, I was really dirty! So Kathy gave me a bath. Now I am all sparkley clean!  Hurray!IMG_9417

 

Meetings in Hebron, Meetings in Bethlehem and Girl stuff

by Markie

Hi kids!

Kathy and I have been going to a LOT of meetings  in the last two weeks.  It’s so hard to sit still for that much time!  Maarten Van der Werf from the Netherlands taught us about Nonviolent Communication for the first week.

Martin's on the right, talking.

Maarten’s on the right, talking.

Then we went to Bethlehem so the team could plan it’s work for the next three years with the help of Gerry O’Sullivan. I like the part where we drew pictures.  Gabriel drew the best one.  Kathy tried to draw one with two CPTers watching children going through Qitoun checkpoint to get to school and it didn’t come out so well.IMG_9374
I also liked going out to lunch with people.  Tarek, the Palestine Project Support coordinator can eat chicken every day!

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Tarek is in the white shirt.

But most of the meetings were really confusing. People talked and talked and talked and talked, IMG_9378and broke into small groups and talked some more.  Then we thought we had a plan and realized we didn’t and had to talk some some more.

 

 

 

We had a one day off in the middle of the week.  Mona was sick of her hair and there is a hair stylist in Bethlehem she really likes so she and Kathy decided to go there. Kathy got her hair cut short.

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Mona got her nails done (She says she can do a better job herself IMG_9383at home) and then she got her hair cut and styled.

 

 

 

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She was thinking about changing the color, but the stylist convinced her not to .

Finally on the very last day, Gerry was able to organize everyone enough so she could put together Christian Peacemaker Team’s 3 Year Strategic Plan 2013-2016.  Hurray!

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Well that’s all for now. Next time I’ll write about our trip to the wall in Bethlehem!  More pictures!

P.S. The plan ended up being 40 pages, but this is the news release the team is going to put out about it:

 

CPT Palestine makes plans for new work

CPT’s Palestine team will continue to remain based in Hebron, a microcosm of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, and make human rights promotion a focus of their work, but plan to expand their work into new peacebuilding enterprises over the next three years.

Most of the full-time CPTers (Israeli authorities had denied Jonathan Brenneman entry into the country three times on September 17, 24 and October 9) and several reservists gathered for a five day retreat in Bethlehem from 9-15 October 2016.  Under the guidance of professional facilitator Gerry O’Sullivan, they produced a three-year strategic plan, in effect through the year 2016.

New goals will include

  • making plans for Palestinian national delegations, with a long-term objective of increasing the number of Palestinians on the team
  • becoming more deeply connected with Palestinian and Israeli partners and campaigns that are addressing the wider context under which Palestinians live
  • encouraging the creation of a “City of Nonviolence” in the H-2 area of Hebron that will be a model for other Palestinian regions supporting nonviolence
  • Working towards the organization of a civil society based on nonviolent  principles to prepare for a time when nonviolent actions increase in strength and frequency
  • providing a forum for Hebronites to discuss common challenges of the occupation
  • Providing nonviolence trainings for university students and teachers and parents of schoolchildren who pass through the checkpoints CPT monitors
  • Developing an introductory programme geared toward Hebron’s context to transform how people look at conflict and tools for addressing it
  • Providing nonviolence training for trainers.
  • Researching and publicizing Israeli denial of entry for Palestinians and internationals

Tarek Abuata, Palestine Project Support Coordinator notes, “”CPT Hebron continues to be committed to building equal transformative partnerships with our Palestinian partners in Hebron, and we continue to be committed to re-envisioning and giving our work new life through our faith”.

 

 

 

Yummy foods I have been eating in Palestine

by Markie

Hi kids!
I have been at SO MANY MEETINGS with Kathy the last two weeks. The team in Hebron has been learning about Nonviolent Communication and is in Bethlehem this week making plans for its work next year and it’s interesting if you’re human I guess, but I’d rather be out having fun.

So while Kathy’s in meetings I thought I’d talk about some yummy foods I’ve been eating.  IMG_9311

About a week ago, some German Mennonites stopped by and Kathy talked to them about Hebron, then they took us out to lunch at our favorite chicken and salad place!  Konrad, the leader of the group who’s wearing the shirt with the peace sign worked for Mennonite Voluntary Service in Cincinnati, Ohio.  I especially liked the pink salads!

 

IMG_9313IMG_9315The next night Gabriel, who’s from Santa Catarina in Brazil made some yummy macaroni and cheese for dinner and a special Brazilian dessert called brigadeiro made of cocoa, butter and condensed milk. Then he stuck eight spoons in it and we ate about half of it.  Gabriel finished the rest the next day.  Here’s a picture of Maarten an JoAnn eating some with me.

Cory had some days off and went to Tel Aviv in Israel and found some custard fruitIMG_9366 in a shop there.  It was her favorite fruit when she lived in India.  This one wasn’t really ripe, but it was still VERY yummy.  Cory says when they’re really ripe they taste and feel just like custard in your mouth.  I really, really, really want to eat a very ripe custard fruit.  Patrick, our teammate from Wales says they look like dragon poop.

Well, that’s all for now.  We had a day off from the strategic planning and stuff happened, but Kathy forgot the camera cord for downloading pictures.

Some call it Firing Zone 918, I call them Jinba, Al Fakheit. . .

Some call it Firing Zone 918, I call it Jinba, Al Fakheit, Isfey, al Fakheit, al Majaz, at Tabban, Jinba, Mirkez,  Halaweh and Khallet Athaba’

On Saturday evening Kathy, Gabriel and I took a taxi to Yatta to spend the night with the family of Mufid, who usually drives people from Christian Peacemaker Teams, the International Solidarity Movement and The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel to visit schools in an area that Israel calls Firing Zone 918. We had fun with Mufid’s children, especially LeamIMG_9317

IMG_9325Her big sister Leal and brother Odai taught me the Arabic alphabet.

Then the next morning we went out with another driver (not sure why we didn’t go with Mufid) in a car that the Japanese government donated through Unicef to pick up kids to take them to Al-Fakheit IMG_9334School. These kids live in very tiny villages far away from Yatta, so they either had to move to Yatta to stay with relatives to go to school or just not go to school. But now they have schools in Jinba and Al-Fahkheit they can go to. CPT, ISM and EAPPI ride with the driver into the area these villages are because the Israeli military does not want these villages or schools to be there and causes problems for the drivers.

IMG_9329Sunday morning, they were stopping drivers ahead of us, and our driver was nervous. The soldier told all of us to get out of the car. The soldier started asking the driver questions in Hebrew, and the driver said he didn’t speak Hebrew. So they started talking to him REALLY LOUD in Hebrew. I wanted to encourage them to think about rainbows but Kathy said she didn’t think it was appropriate. Gabriel said that the car had diplomatic plates and that Unicef wanted us to accompany the car, so the soldiers finally let us through.

Then we picked up the children–seven for the first trip. The driver IMG_9333makes three trips to get them all to the school. While the children waited for the other children and the teachers to get Al Fakheit, they played soccer.IMG_9335 Their ball didn’t have much air in it, and they built their goalposts out of these rocks, but they still had a lot of fun.

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GOOOOAL!

When the teachers got to the school, all the students line up according to what grade they were in and did exercises.
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Road to Jinba

IMG_9365Then Kathy and Gabriel walked a long way to visit the school at Jinba that was built for younger children. Kathy fell on her face and hurt her knee.

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School at Jinba

The school at Jinba is smaller than the one at Al Fakheit, and only younger children go there.

I hope nothing bad happens to Jinba, Al Fakheit, Isfey, al Fakheit, al Majaz, at Tabban, Jinba, Mirkez,  Halaweh and Khallet Athaba’. I hope that these schools an the homes and wells and caves and animal pens are not destroyed. I also hope that the Israeli military stops practicing bombing and shooting near these villages, because it’s scary for the children and animals. The Israeli government said one of the reasons that all the people here have to move (except for the Israelis living in the area) is that it is a nature reserve, and the wild animals and plants need to be protected, but how can you protect plants and animals if you’re bombing and shooting? I talked to a gazelle about it and she agreed with me that that’s just silly.

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Looking at the South Hebron Hills from the school at Al Fakheit

Well that’s all for now. Back to doing school patrol in Hebron tomorrow!

Hurray! I’m in Hebron!

Hi Kids!
Well it was quite a trip here! it took 26 hours to fly from Rochester to Detroit to New York to Nice (that’s pronounced “Niece” so I liked it a lot, because Kathy’s nieces were the first ones that introduced us) to Tel Aviv. Kathy spilled pumpkin spice latte on herself in Rochester and almost forgot her coat and computer cord. In New York at JFK airport, the server dropped her organic wheat crust and hormone free cheese pizza on the floor, but then said Kathy could have a free Fiji water. IMG_9299 The bottle said it had a uniquely soft mouthfeel because it was filtered through volcanos, but Kathy was thinking that drinking water flown from Fiji to New York probably left a pretty big carbon imprint, but then her new teammate Corey Lockhart told her that in an airport it’s probably silly to worry about a bottle of water’s carbon footprint.

In Nice, Kathy was just going to take a little nap, because the seats let you lie down, but she ended up sleeping four hours.IMG_9300
You could see the Mediterranean Sea from the waiting room!

Our first night in Hebron, Tarek cooked a yummy meal of fish, potato, onions and salad. To my left is Joanne from Chicago, Corey from Kentucky, Mona from Ramallah, Palestine (She’s the team coordinator), Tarek–originally from Bethlehem, Palestine and now from Washington, DC (He’s the Palestine Project Support Coordinator), Gabriel from Santa Catarina, Brazil, Martin from the Netherlands and Alwyn from England.

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Tarek also brought some yummy Turkish delight! People will understand Narnia better, Kathy thinks, if they eat this.IMG_9309

That’s all for now! Adults might want to check out my new twitter account @Markie4peace.

Angels at the airport

And lo, the Lord did put in my path two quarrelsome angels, who argued loudly with each other as they left the airplane from France and with the woman at passport control in the Tel Aviv airport, and though she did send them away, verily, they returned each time the young woman did ask me a question to dispute with her most vexedly in Hebrew. Three times they did return, during the time of my questioning, until the young woman gave me the paper that did allow me to enter and catch the taxi to Jerusalem.

Jonathan reading Flannery O'Connor while waiting at the border

Jonathan reading Flannery O’Connor while waiting at the border


So after weeks of anxiety, and seeing my colleagues turned away at the airport and the Jordanian border, my entry into Israel was remarkably anticlimactic. For an idea of what my teammate Jonathan went through when the Israeli authorities denied him entry at the Jordanian border, check out his blog. His ordeal was also written up in the Electronic Intifada.

I was happy to catch up with my friends Ya’alah and Netanel last night in Jerusalem, reconnect with my teammates and meet new teammates this morning (actually haven’t met them all just yet.) Just now, I thought I was feeling pretty awake, but then I started to unpack, saw the bed, and crashed for a couple hours.

So I was lucky. But that doesn’t solve the basic problem: Palestinians invite organizations like Christian Peacemaker Teams to monitor human rights abuses in the West Bank and Israel, which controls all the borders entrances into the West Bank, will not let these volunteers enter. Palestinians should have the right to invite whomever they want to come to their country. Unarmed pacifist volunteers are not a threat to anyone’s security. There’s no question that the Powers that Be simply do not want us reporting what we see.

You won’t know where I’m going till I get there

I will soon be leaving for a field assignment with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). For those of you who don’t know me well, I work most of the year for CPT from my home in Rochester, NY, editing releases from workers staffing our projects in Iraqi Kurdistan, Colombia, North American Indigenous communities, etc.
Markie
At least once a year, however, I spend some time in the field, so I am alerting my blog readers that I will soon be shifting my writing into a more political mode (maybe I should say “even more political.”)

Those of you who know me well know why I am not going to go into great detail here about the whens, wheres, whys and hows of my travel. I will post more of an explanation for those of you who don’t once I get to my destination. Those of you given to prayer—I would appreciate prayers for an open and loving heart should I encounter people on my journey who don’t want me to get to where I’m going.

I will have my traveling companion Markie with me, who will probably post some of his adventures on Facebook. He has encouraged to wear this lucky unicorn necklace. I am hoping it makes me look inoffensive.

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Pitch Madness

indexTwo weeks ago, I participated in author Brenda Drake’s “Pitch Madness” contest, in which you have 35 words to “pitch” your novel followed by the first 250 words of the novel. Mine was eliminated before it reached the literary agent round. I’ll include it below. I think the first 250 words could have lead the early readers to believe that it’s a religious novel, as opposed to a novel with some religious characters in it, but it still seems like a strong opening to me.

Anyway, this week Drake sponsored #Pitmad, in which authors could pitch their novels within the constraints of a Twitter post—140 characters, which had to include the hashtag #pitmad, and the genre. You weren’t allowed to post more than once an hour and if an agent favorited your tweet, you sent him/her your submission.

Here were mine, which did not attract any agents:

#pitmad Dissident recounts struggle w/wife to bring down fascist U.S. regime, how his infidelities devastated her Dystopian/literary

#pitmad Islam Goldberg-Jones recounts how he cheated on wife as they brought down fascist US regime. Dystopian Literary

But then I discovered #FAKEpitmad, which had offerings such as

Britney visits an exotic foreign country and finds non-Americans have better things to do than facilitate her self-discovery. #fakepitmad

Really Average Girl attracts Really Hot Guy with murky past who wants her for no reason we can understand. #FakePitMad

For some reason, over the course of four hours, fake pitches kept popping out of my head. Given that I am leaving the country at the end of the month and am REALLY pressed for time, I consoled myself by thinking they really did only take seconds to produce. So here they are, from most to least recent.

His coal black eyes looked down at her from the dune. She would follow his path now. THE WAY OF THE GERBIL #fakepitmad

When Nazi cult resurfaces in Indianapolis, Chief Detective Lisette McCoy thinks “Stupid History Channel” #FakePitMad

“We will never get past the race issue,” said the hare to the tortoise as they stared into their whiskeys. #fakepitmad
I confess I plagiarized this one from a framed cartoon in my office.

When evil Christian Romance antagonist folds ingénues into his arms he actually turns them two-dimensional #fakepitmad

Buffy Slayeresque heroine attracted to Westboro Baptist fanatic picketing her church. Hilarity ensues. #NA #fakepitmad

Migraineurs discovered to have epic powers to heal planet. Will they choose to live w/projectile vomiting? #Fakepitmad

Very pragmatic woman with spastic bosom must deal with people under assumption she is always overwrought #fakepitmad

Slave laborer in oil fields eventually discovers he is mining sebum from blackheads of giant human’s nose #fakepitmad This got me an “ewww from a fellow participant.

Susan, polydactylic cellist from Labrador, must enter the ring with Yo Yo Ma. Only one will leave alive. #Fakepitmad

Jane Austen, sent forward in time, gets job working for Amnesty International; Told her reports too wordy #Fakepitmad

Modern retelling of Book of Judges with gender roles reversed. Whose cutting up the concubines now, guys? #fakepitmad

An exiled elf returns to compete for the hand of her love with a troll offering 8265 REALL FOLLOWERS!! #Fakepitmad This pitch relates to the fact that the #pitmad feed was beset by spammers after awhile promising thousands of followers for twitter accounts. I sort of assume that authors I haven’t heard of who have like, 20,000 followers have bought them from these people.

One piece of encouragement I took away from the lack of response to my pitches were some agents’ responses to the pitch madness contests:

Sarah LaPolla ‏@sarahlapolla 12 Sep
I don’t mind things like #pitmad. They can be fun & force you to conceptualize your novel. But a full query + sample pages is always better.

• Jim McCarthy ‏@JimMcCarthy528 12 Sep
I’m always looking for new clients, but I need more than a sentence to gauge interest. Content over concept, people. #pitmad
• Kate McKean ‏@kate_mckean 12 Sep
@JimMcCarthy528 This is exactly why I don’t think these are very helpful events for writers.
12 Sep
@kate_mckean I saw someone tweet that she was giving up on writing today to focus on it and thought BAD CHOICE! BAD CHOICE! #pitmad


My pitch for the original Pitch Madness:

Kathleen Kern
The Price We Paid: My Life with Hoshea Weber and the UPS Underground
Genre: Dystopian Literary
Word Count: 103,000

Political dissident Islam Goldberg-Jones recounts in prison memoir how his infidelities devastated his wife, the iconic activist Shea Weber, as they participated in the struggle to bring down the fascist (U.S.) Christian Republic regime 2065-2086.

I came to God late in life. It was not because I feared hell or longed for heaven. When you finish reading this account, you will understand why I have some anxiety about reunions with the people I’ve loved after I die. Ironically, it was the Christian Republic that in the end made me a believer, when it put me in solitary confinement. By the second year, my sanity had eroded to the point where I thought if I were talking to something besides myself, it meant that I was less crazy. So I began praying, and after about a week of rambling on to some invisible deity (saying essentially the same things I rambled on to myself about), I finally felt a presence in my cell. But it wasn’t God; it was Shea, praying for me, and then her parents, and then all the Wayvers on the outside who had the mistaken belief I was a hero. Sometimes I could almost make out the words, but mostly, I felt those prayers in my chest, breaking the iron bands of fear and depression that made breathing difficult. It would be a while after that before God and I spoke, and I believe that I was ungracious enough to tell him/her that I was much more impressed by feeling the connection to people praying for me than I was with direct contact to the Divine.

Yes, I was angry. Apparently, God decided to work with it.

Twitter 1.5 (or so)

Haven’t blogged because, as usual, I’m entering seven months worth of bank statements into Quicken instead of having set up a time on the calendar to do it monthly. I’ve also spent about six hours in the last couple weeks with Jim Loney getting his feedback on my novel, which I wrote about in my last blog entry, and there’s been a trip to Boston and the garden, so actually, no, I don’t feel guilty about not blogging.

But I thought I’d note here that I’m getting better at Twitter, and it’s not twitter-confusion2through the account I started because sources told me it’s mandatory for authors, especially self-published authors to have one. It’s through my work with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), which, to save time, I’ll call a human rights organization.

I edit the releases that come in from our field projects in Iraqi Kurdistan, Colombia, Palestine and with Indigenous communities in North America. Our interim director, who formerly was our Outreach Director and guided our communications, suggested that I could start reposting our releases, which automatically appear on our Twitter account, with hash tags.

I was enjoying finding ways of drawing in audiences to our work that might not think to follow it. For example, a lot of environmentalists and animal rights activists are concerned about how palm oil corporations are decimating old growth forests and killing orangutans. I thought they might also be interested in how the corporation Aportes San Isidro was attacking the community of subsistence farmers, Las Pavas in Colombia, in an effort to drive them off their land, so I used the hashtags #PalmOil and #PalmOilKills for our Colombia team releases. For our work with the Elsipogtog First Nation in New Brunswick who was resisting the SWN corporation doing seismic testing on their traditional lands, I knew the #fracking hashtag would draw in the wider anti-fracking crowd and the #IdleNoMore hashtag would group the resistance of the Elsipogtog nation with a much wider Indigenous resistance movement across North America.

Then my interim director told me that a more media-savvy CPTer told him that I shouldn’t just repost titles with different hashtags; I needed to repost something a little different with each link to the team’s release. And once I knew that, it began to get fun.

For example:

#SOUTHHEBRONHILLS URGENT ACTION: Ask U.S. Secretary of State Kerry to heed Israeli jurists’ and writers’… http://dlvr.it/3lY9G7
https://twitter.com/cpt_intnl/status/363733579156557824

could become

#JohnKerry’s probably not listening to the right Israelis. Ask him to listen to these jurists: http://dlvr.it/3lY9G7

#JONESBOROUGH,TN: Activism, War, and the #MilitaryIndustrialComplex http://dlvr.it/3kWTxb #DepletedUranium #Aerojet

could become

Why are those working against #DepletedUranium in #Jonesborough TN area having tires slashed? http://dlvr.it/3kWTxb

#ALKHALILHEBRON REFLECTION: A better than usual Friday (8 August 2013) http://dlvr.it/3nkg6N

could become

“#TGIF” said no Christian Peacemaker Team member in #Hebron EVER. http://dlvr.it/3nkg6N #AlKhalil #IsraeliOccupation

When I first started on Twitter, I was told that I should put out at least four tweets a day and following each other was one way independent authors could support each other. I began to notice that my twitter feed was deluged with tweets by some of these authors, including one of my self-publishing “mentors.”

Here’s the thing. I have an eye condition that makes reading normal size fonts painful. I have to zoom everything to 300 percent on computer, so I will never follow twitter on a cellphone. And on an average page I only see about 12 tweets at a time; so if someone is touting their novel over and over, or zealously retweeting “tips” as they’ve been told to do, it really clutters up my feed.

Neil Gaiman wrote about this Twitter phenomenon in the last Poets and Writers (crude language alert):

I do it because I like it and it’s fun. And the fact that I like it and it’s fun communicates itself…People who are interested are going to sign up and stick around and follow me because I’m obviously enjoying it. If you are not enjoying it, for God’s sake don’t do it. There is nothing worse—sadder, more bleak, and more pitiful—than somebody who signs on, follows a hundred people, then sends out fifty to sixty tweets saying, “please read my book.” It’s like a sad little mouse, peeping in the corner… If you want to do it, you join. Talk to people. Talk to your friends. Talk to famous people. Talk with anybody you’d like. Twitter is completely democratic. If you’re a dick, people will notice you are a dick. If you’re nice, people will notice you’re nice. If you’re funny and smart, people will respond to the funny smartness. And if you want to get something read: Establish, be there first, and then say to people who are interested and like you, “By the way I’ve got a book coming out,” and people will go, “Oh, we’ll go and check it out then.

So I’ve started to unfollow the people who hog my feed. I tend to keep the ones who make me smile. I’m interested in literary agents of course, but I drop the ones who reject me unless their tweets make me smile.

I thought that once I started unfollowing, my follower-ship would also drop steeply, but it hasn’t. I currently stand at 318 followers. I am following 857 people/ entities. I figure that means I am a good listener—or whatever the word for tweet receptor is, tweetor? To be a good listener has a better connotation than to be a good follower, right?