At the age of eight, I wrote and established my first newspaper in our dinky little neighborhood. Staff members-one person. Me.
Being without a typewriter, I wrote it by hand. Personal computers were a thing of the future. I didn’t tell my parents about it. I desired to spotlight the positive changes in my community and give what I used to call the other people a different light on how they perceived black people. It was a fact that when we made the news, that meant we had done something wrong and was going to jail.
To get writing materials, I went door to door selling the paper to my neighbors. I charged twenty-five cents a piece for each edition.
When my parents finally found out about it through a neighbor who was bragging to them about my inquisitiveness and my ideas, needless to say, they were furious, and I received a spanking that I haven’t forgotten until this day. But, on the other hand, my parents were concerned and worried about what would happen to me if I kept thinking about things that I wasn’t supposed to think about.
Let us fast forward to two thousand and twenty-one. The dream deferred at eight has awoken. It has taken some years. I’ve had to slow my pace when I didn’t want to and quicken the pace when I had found something I like and had no desire to move on. But, the dream was still there. It was deferred but incubating.
Today, I am happy to say I have the privilege to work with THE PIPELINE Magazine and with the woman who has made this magazine what it is today, Nonnie Jules. Beside her is her very talented Editor, Karen Black, and a lady we all admire whom we call Lady Harriet, Harriet Hodgson, with her own personal column. To work with these three has opened doors that fascinate me and extend my writing ability.
Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
I thank God that my deferred dream of writing for a magazine has exploded into something beautiful years later. THE PIPELINE is an RRBC Monthly Publication and can be read by all. The link for the June issue is posted below.
Shalom aleichem,
Pat Garcia
https://therrbcpipeline.wordpress.com
* A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes was copied from Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem