Horses in Life and Fiction.

Those who do not know them, fear them, rightfully so. A horse's physical power is far superior to ours. A horse, if so inclined, could easily maim or even kill a person, no matter what their size. Genghis Kahn was killed by a horse.
Yet horses, purely vegetarian, have gentle and generous souls. Their eyes reflect all the beauty and sadness of our world. Once bonded with a rider, patience and respect, will have results that last. Whereas in moments that matter, training through mere discipline often fails. Although many fear men, they pick up on the nurturing qualities of women.
The life and adventures of Dosha, the heroine of my novel, depicts such bond of horse and rider that will last till death will them part, and beyond.

Independent Book Stores Flourish in Vermont

In a state many highly educated readers have chosen in search of a more fulfilling life, these bookstores have turned into community centers for kindred spirits. Owned and run by lovers of the written word, protectors of an art in trouble, those who work there appear like members of an extended family. Should you be a reader, or a writer, or a child ready to start exploring the magic of the written word, you will feel at once at home. I live in a tiny village, yet there are two of these inspiring stores nearby. The bigger one, Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt. (a must see should you come visit this wonderful area), consists of three expansive levels of books, displayed with thought and enthusiasm, of toys and children’s book to inspire the young, and a generous coffee shop where you can meet, mingle and chat. 

The second one, Mystic Valley Books in Chester, Vt., is more of the same on a smaller scale, but worth the visit. Both feature calendars packed with readings by authors and other literary events.

These stores are reminiscent of a time when literature in the U.S. was flourishing. To my mind, having fought the struggle of marketing my own novel for close to a year, they are essential to the survival of literature as an art in our country. Like Public Radio, they deserve our support. We need them as much as they need us. Go browse, and choose them as their place to buy. With both the visit and the buy you demonstrate your support.

HILLARY CLINTON, Role model for today's WOMEN LEADERSHIP.

It took me time to grasp the leadership qualities of Hillary Clinton. I was used to more flamboyant female leaders. Women partisans I knew during WW2. Hemingway captured the type perfectly in Pilar (“For Whom the Bell Tolls”), women who openly confront men. Grandmotherly types like Golda Meir, who didn’t budge from threat and gained the respect of negotiators in male dominated societies. In fact my novel “Dosha, flight of the Russian Gypsies” depicts women of all types, from the needy to the radical to the wise leadership of an elder. I myself grew up liberated, not by choice, but by lack of the normal protections of childhood and young adulthood. So when I found myself surrounded by raging American feminists in the Sixties, I felt the movement was misguided, mainly because many believed in bashing men to elevate women, whereas I felt that a healthy society is one of shared power, equal but different, male and female complementing each other.

Since then I have met women who have risen to the top of leadership in corporations and government positions. I have witnessed many of them mistaking toughness and lack of compassion for leadership. Hillary is of a different ilk, a woman of compassion and a leader with vision. When her husband strayed, instead of breaking up her family, marking her daughter with relationship insecurities for life, and leaving herself remaining wealthy but alone like so many other divorcees for the rest of her days, Hillary opted to work it out. I have watched her carefully stand her ground, getting her points and messages across in male dominated societies. She has been bravely and tenaciously fighting for women’s rights across the world. I even came across notices of Hillary trying to stand by Europe’s most vulnerable and once again viciously persecuted minority, the ancient, once nomadic Roma/Gypsies population.

We have every reason to be proud of our Hillary, hard working, smart, a true woman and effective world leader in her role as US Secretary of State.

Florida: EVICTION OF GYPSY/ROMA FROM THEIR ONE-OF-A-KIND CHURCH

There I sit, long-time Gypsy activist, present at the latest episode of an 11 year old struggle to evict Roma Christians from their church in Broward county, the first all Gypsy church I had ever come across. Nor had I come across a Gypsy leader, this one a Roma pastor, who remained in place defending the rights of his people. In Europe Gypsies have been persecuted for the 600 years they have lived in Western culture, but, this is America, I proudly thought.

The half-circle of county commissioners, deciders of the fate of this very special church, sit on the elevated stage ahead of us and are still dealing with main county business - money money money - thrown back and forth like ping pong balls.

I happen to also be a survivor of and witness to Nazi persecutions, baggage that remains grafted to my brain. So now I am eyeing those in whose hands lies the fate of my religious friends. I have no reason to trust bureaucrats, for the Nazis within all the chaos and tragedies they caused remained superb bureaucrats, everything was done by the book, their book. So now I am eying this set of bureaucrats in front of me with caution. To my relief I note that they are of mixed ethnicity and gender. Seven, I remember, women, two men. White, Jewish, Black. I have 3 minutes to convince them of the symbolic value of this missionary church, its importance reaching way beyond Broward County, for once again, Gypsies, now known as Roma, are being openly persecuted all across Europe. My life has come full circle. So called to the podium, I speak of the renewed, “silent persecution” of Europe’s now largest, most vulnerable minority. How, this pastor is trying to recruit Roma missionaries to go teach Roma abroad to help themselves, the uniqueness of this church. That this is precisely what America stands for, a symbol of what raises us, Americans, morally above all other countries I know and have lived in.

Deliberations resume. The black man, new member on the board, starts speaking on the Gypsies’ behalf, but - backs away. Heigh, I think, he’s new on the block. The one white man, vice-mayor off (I believe) Broward county speaks up, hero of my soul, about the purpose behind the eviction now, there are no permits issued, the Roma are paying their bills, they are a positive presence in an area of rehab centers, looking industrial. So

Why?

The women speak up, misspeak. One young black lady says – falsely so – the Gypsies haven’t been paying their bills, and that she got this from channel 7. Which rightfully infuriates the Gypsy pastor, who has paid his bills, always, he has gone by the book, always. He is not allowed to speak, at first, because he’s not on the list. But then he talks anyway, he has proof of not being delinquent in payments or anything else, ever reminding them

This is a CHURCH!

Question is, I thought, would it have happened to any other church, temple, religious institution involving anybody else but GYPSIES, now called Roma?

Once again, presiding women take center stage: They want to get it over with, be done with it, enough already. Moneymoneymoney, that has changed hands, etc. etc. etc. Once again, flashbacks to my past, where you had a better chance arguing for your life with a fish in the ocean than with a German bureaucrat. So here too, I was horrified at the heartless reaction of these women of different ethnic backgrounds who had been given the power to make decisions of this importance.

Writing beautifully about empty, dysfunctional lives.

There are the easy reads, the romance novels, the blockbuster novels, the mysteries and other genres. So when writers like Jonathan Franzen and the, for me, newly discovered Kevin Brockmeier come along, as a fellow writer I admire their artistic honesty, the achieved mastery of their craft, and that they are able to entice the readership away from the type of writing that is meant, above all, to distract. They, Franzen and Brockmeier, do what literature is meant to do - reflect and thereby translate the lives most of us have created around our existence. Whereas Franzen’s characters seem actively to rise above their emptiness through frantic activities, Brockmeier describes the isolation and loneliness seen through often poetic, longing eyes. What I personally get out of reading their literature, is that the me-generation has left many of us with mostly that, the me alone.

Sonia Meyer, author
Dosha, flight of the Russian Gypsies.

Branded Thief - At Birth!

When I was fist asked, now years ago, to address a small group of people to talk about a subject I have now been writing about for over 10 years, namely to talk about Gypsies, Roma as they are rightfully called now, a matronly lady piped up from the back row asking “aren’t those the ones that steal?” Not once, but interrupting my initially rather academic talk, over and over again, with “aren’t they the ones that steal?” Until, I finally stopped my neatly prepared little talk and rather sharply retorted, “Have they ever stolen from you, personally, Mrs……?” The lady blushed, and I continued with my talk.

The other day in the dog park, I was talking to an educated gentleman, a cosmopolitan European about the present persecutions of European Roma, when to my surprise he started telling me how “these people pick a village clean”. Taken aback, and at this point passionately involved in the Roma cause, I asked him, “please tell me what you have personally witnessed along those accusations toward the Gypsy people!” The next day he approached me and said, “I personally have not witnessed anything of the sort, I guess I have fallen into the trap of repeating prejudicial beliefs.”

Now I want to go over to other side. Imagine yourself being born Roma. Two very close friends of mine, both highly intelligent, both evangelical pastors, both of them had not been denied the privilege of formal education, both self-taught and intellectual by nature. They talked to me about the pain of being dismissed as inferior, even criminal by birth - declared criminal without any justification.

One person close to me actually was pick-pocketed by Gypsy kids in the streets of Rome. I had to explain to him the why. Gypsies in Italy arriving from the Baltic states where they have a history of slavery and severe marginalization, are denied all rights, all possibilities to earn an honest living. The children learn how to steal to survive, because they cannot be thrown into jail. If the parents get caught, leaving their children behind, they will starve to death.

As I have written before, during the war, when food and shelter meant survival, I knew not one person who did not steal. I did. Even the Catholic declared that “Mundraub”, stealing food for survival was not a sin.

Branding a Roma thief at birth is to inflict a deep and lasting wound, a handicap that is hard to overcome. Here in America we have about a million Roma. On a recent radio interview my host remarked “One doesn’t ever read about them in the papers over here,” meaning criminal activity. “That’s because,” I said, “given only the slightest chance they are like everybody else. They are Americans first, Roma by inherited culture; a beautiful culture which I am trying hard to give justice to.”

Prejudice is a dangerous phenomenon. Prejudice can kill, it is killing Roma in Europe as I am writing this. Do not be a silent by-stander, stand up for human rights for all.

The Lure of the Open Road - The Spirit of Nomadism

Like the wild geese I love, come late Fall I pack up to migrate south - 1500 + miles by car. “Why don’t you fly,” a fifty-year young man asked me. “Because,” I said, “for one, I am taking my animals. “ Only 2 dogs now, versus the several horses, 2 dogs, 2 cats and one bonsai tree I used to load up and caravan to the South. “But most of all,” I added, “I love the open road.” Leaving all the unnecessary junk we all accumulate behind, taking only the strictly necessary and driving into change - of weather, of landscape, of people. My mind is wide open as to what lies ahead, the unexpected. It’s like turning your face into the wind and letting your soul fly.

I grew up nomadic. Because of our flight from the Nazis, by the time I was 7, I knew nothing but war and moving on, always moving on - leaving behind memories of massacres, killing fields, ambushes and round-ups. It almost felt as if by walking on you could bury the horror underfoot. So that, for a long time, I only remembered moments of beauty. To this day, the howling of the wolves sends goose bumps down my spine. For then, their howling reassured us that for the moment all was safe, that right then no strange intruder was lurking about. Then there were those moments after the bombs stopped falling, the shooting stopped and the life of the forest resumed in full force. I thought of those years as happy, maybe because I was too young to see beyond our own survival.

The horror started when the so-called “Peace” trapped me in the place where I was born – Cologne, Germany, the place where I was told I must now settle down. A place in ruin, a place foreign to me, infested with rats and crime, a place of defeat, where I had to fester amidst the true horror of it all now out in the open. I had survived the war in freedom, but would I survive the peace forced upon me in a place of entrapment with people I grew up to consider as my enemies. The hopelessness of the war’s aftermath would never quite leave me.

Roma/Gypsies in Romania have lived under hopelessness far greater than what I experienced. Enslaved until 1865, exploited and scorned ever since, when a United Europe opened borders that had confined before, those Roma followed the first sign of hope ever, only to be flung back into a misery greater than the one they left.

Open your hearts to these most vulnerable people who have been part of our Western culture for over 600 years. Unite in the demand for their human rights.