One time when I was on the road doing some storytelling, I read a newspaper that was full of stuff that I thought had to be made up. Of course it wasn't. It was "real." So I underlined the headlines, one after another. And then cut them out of the newspaper and taped them into my journal and they looked like this --
Two die as car speeds off lift-bridge into river
Woman believed to have stolen baby
Police kill wandering emu in suburban St Louis
Man bites panda; panda bites man
Cat kills dog; man kills cat
Hawk attacks people
Voters decided on instant runoff
Maintenance man wins 163 million
Space station receives toxin scare
Bismarkers want world snow angel title back
***
Yes, the whole voyald, as William Saroyan once said, and all the people and animals
in it hopping and popping and scrapping. I am siding with the five-year-old Jamaican girl
who read her own one-line poem on a stage where I was proud to be part of a program with
Cedella Marley and our daughter, Mariah Fox. So what did the little girl read?
She stood before hundreds of people and shook a plastic bottle full of uncooked rice
and said in a very loud voice:
"Stop the violence NOW!"
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