Writing In A Messed Up World

People are worried and scared, and not just in America. Seems like the whole world is a mess right now. So what's a writer to do?

At 5:21 a.m., twenty thousand men, women and children parted like the Red Sea to let a young man pass by. It was a beautiful August morning in 1936.

Flanked by deputies, followed by a Catholic priest, the young man walked through the silent crowd and stopped at the base of a platform. Silently, he sat on the first step and pulled on a pair of clean new socks.

Slowly, Rainey Bethea climbed the thirteen steps and stepped onto a large X painted on the platform. He turned his head to the east and silently watched the sun rising. When asked if he had any last words he shook his head.

A long black hood was pulled over his head, followed by a heavy hemp noose, oiled to tighten faster. As a deputy leaned into the lever, the trap door fell eight feet.

He barely swayed when his neck broke. His cheek dropped to gently rest on his shoulder. Fourteen minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

The mob charged the gallows. Pulled the hood from his head. Chipped at the gallows for souvenirs while the crowd roared their encouragement and on the fringes of the crowd, vendors hawked food and drinks to the hate hungry crowd.

Wielding pen as sword and club, angry journalists turned their wrath on the town, painting horrors that needed no embellishment except blunt truth and fact.

One news report said:

"CHEERING, BOOING, EATING AND JOKING, 20,000 PERSONS WITNESSED THE PUBLIC EXECUTION OF RAINEY BETHEA, 22, FRIGHTENED NEGRO BOY, AT OWENSBORO, KY., YESTERDAY. IN CALLOUS, CARNIVAL SPIRIT, THE MOB CHARGED THE GALLOWS AFTER THE TRAP WAS SPRUNG, TORE THE EXECUTIONER'S HOOD FROM THE CORPSE, CHIPPING THE GALLOWS FOR SOUVENIRS.”

The issue was not Bethea’s innocence or guilt.

It was the subhuman behavior and mob festivity journalists took issue with.

They cried out for an end to public hangings and because of the massive public outcry that followed, public hangings were immediately outlawed in the state of Kentucky. Other states hurried to follow suit and change swept America.

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling

Lev Vygotsky was a psychologist who got into university by literally winning a lottery. When he applied to the University of Moscow in 1913, only 3% of students were permitted to be Jews. He was a Russian Jew. They drew his name.

He was fascinated by the intersection of art, communication and how we think, learn and change. His dissertation was titled "The Psychology of Art," and his book, "Pedagogical Psychology," was about how we learn from each other and change.

None of his writing was published until after his death.

Because the Russian government had banned his work. They didn’t want people reading what he was researching and writing.

Vygotsky died in 1934 of tuberculosis, two years before the hanging of Bethea, but his work wouldn’t be published until the 1960s, well after the death of Stalin.

He died never knowing his work would have an impact on the world of psychology. Posthumously, he become known for the psychological framework he called cultural-historical activity theory, which is about the connection between human learning, understanding—and activity.

He said our mental and cognitive abilities are shaped by language.

We don’t learn by someone telling us what we don’t know.

We don’t learn by being lectured, he said.

We learn by sharing stories.

It has always been writers who shaped the world.

Journalists bleeding ink, yes. But also authors and books. Telling stories that sneak under the radar, crawl into our minds and change the way we think.

1984, by George Orwell.

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir.

Man’s Search For Meaning, by Viktor Frankl.

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison.

We don’t learn by being lectured. We learn by sharing stories.

I will never change your opinion by lecturing you about politics or Donald Trump or Harris or Biden or Vladimir Putin or Republicans or Democrats. I will never change your opinion by screaming about president Musk or Russian shills.

But I can tell you I have a cousin in the Ukraine. I met her on Ancestry. Woke up one day to a message that said hello Linda, I found your ancestry tree and your Baba is in my tree, too. She is my family too. When your Baba fled to Canada, mine did not.

I can tell you she was scared. Tell you about a little boy scared to go to sleep and I can tell you about the day the emails stopped coming. How I would log in every day and pray there’d be a message but there hasn’t been. Not since the bombs. And I hope one day. One day. She will say we are okay. Just had to flee. But I don’t know.

I can promise you sending email to Canada is not at the top of her priority list. If she’s alive. And I can tell you Ukraine 24 is a charity President Zelensky launched to get funds to people faster than big charities like United Way or Red Cross.

He set it up because when the stories of what’s happening in Ukraine started hitting the news, of children crying in the night, of houses falling on innocent civilians, readers read the stories, left comments that said but please, how can I help?

This is how we affect each other. How we affect change. With stories.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.” —Margaret Mead

In 1992, Perry T. Ryan, a former Kentucky prosecutor, documented the hanging of Rainey Bethea in a book entitled "The Last Public Execution in America."

Mr. Ryan, I beg to differ.

I give you George Floyd. An execution more public than almost any other.

I give you Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and so many more. I give you a list so long it hurts my heart to see how tiny the scroll bar is.

I give you Kevin Whitrick, who logged into a chat room to say he doesn’t want to live anymore because he got divorced, misses his twins, got injured in a car accident and if all that wasn’t all too much already, his dad had a heart attack and died. And to the chants of "F***ing do it. Get on with it, get it round your neck" — he did.

Because now? We have the internet.

And it’s beautiful and it’s also dreadful and awful because collectively, it is us.

The gold rush is back and everyone has something for sale because side gig is a way of life in a world where no one earns enough and if that’s not bad enough, now the frenzied mob is also wielding words as sword, club and noose.

Flat earthers and climate deniers. White supremacy and holocaust deniers.

Your body, my choice.

Man haters and woman haters.

The president of America wants my country. Not because of immigrants and drugs like he says, but because of the natural resources we have. And the planet isn’t dying, but it just might be trying to get rid of us and I’m not even sure I blame it.

The world is a mess. It is.

I want to say I don’t know what to do about it. But I do.

The solution isn’t to lecture and finger wag and create yet more division. The solution is that same as it’s always been and always will be. To share our stories.

Mr. Rogers told a nation of kids that when times are scary, look for the helpers. Turns out storytellers are the helpers and thank you for proving that, Mr. Vygotsky.

If you are seeing too much negativity, too much divisiveness in your feed, I urge you to read more human stories. Go follow Roman who is my friend and co-editor and never fails to move me with his writing.

And Kyrie Gray who writes Guffaw and makes me laugh and runs History of Women with me over on Medium.

And Julia Hubbel, who doesn’t just inspire me, but sends me so many visitors I could weep in gratitude. And Erica Manfred, who calls herself Snarky Senior and is right up there with Julia sending droves of love. And Chelsea Marie who creates an endless stream of writing prompts to inspire writers in the crazy world we live in.

And if you made it down here, please say hi in the comments and maybe tell us what you write about. Because when the world is crazy, all we really have is each other. And our stories. And our stories have more power to move people and change the world than all the preaching put together. Never stop writing, okay? Never stop. ❤️

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If you like my writing, I also write on Medium

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