Join the Hunt
The Hunt for Frederick Douglass. A project planted in my heart when I randomly came upon some writings from this great man and was thunderstruck by the relevance of those words to today. Words from a most divisive period in our country. My immediate desire was to amplify them and serve as a platform for his words and realizations he was prompted to write about during his time on this earth. But that is another story to be told in another blog posting on a different day.
I was prompted to begin this, my first blog/dialogue/opine/post, by a passage I read this morning on another author’s blog that moved me greatly. It is from Ron Glodich, a renown high school football coach who happens to have a new book himself. I was blown away by his fortifying perspective regarding the coaching of young men at the high school level. If you have ever played on a sports team or coached your kids in soccer or basketball or little league, or taught a class or given piano lessons, you know the powerful impression a teacher can have on a young person’s life. Participating in sports as a young person is not about winning or losing. It is not about championships or try-outs or trophies. It is about mastering the art of realizing your potential -which lays dormant inside us all - until a great motivator, mentor, teacher, parent, or coach puts a match to that large pile of kindling and sets a world of possibilities ablaze in a young person’s heart-Possibilities that may have nothing to do with the subject or the sport.
I love the way Ron frames his team’s expectations with his first talk by saying ‘no one is going to make a living playing football’.
“Not one of you, let me repeat that, not one of you are going to make your livelihood as an adult playing professional football. I have been doing this for 30 years and that fact still holds true at Marine City high school. You must have clear priorities here, and your schoolwork is priority number one. Then you need to ask yourself, why the heck am I going to bust my ass in 90-degree heat? The answer is simple... you are going to learn things during the process that will serve you well for the rest of your life! The greatest thing your will learn this season is how to evaluate yourself and how to develop a plan to ensure you will improve in certain areas.” To align these young people with the intent and purpose that playing sports can mean to their growth and development into productive, successful human beings, husbands, men, fathers, friends, community leaders is so inspiring that I feel compelled to share it as the focus of my very first writer’s blog. I highly recommend you read Ron’s Author Blog (https://www.ronglodich.com/author-blog).
Now what does this have to do with my book, The Hunt for Frederick Douglass?
Subject-wise, not a thing.
My book is a novel, a hold-on-tight, fast-paced adventure that takes place at the dawn of this country’s bloodiest war – and its only Civil War. However, both our books share a very important fact. We both have the same publisher, Susan Sember, Silverlight Press (ThroughPenandLens.com ) .Ron Glodich’s book happens to be published by my publisher, a fact which makes me so proud. As they say if you want to see what you are like as a person, then look at your friends. The same holds true with writing. To see what kind of writer you are, look at the other books your publisher has selected to publish. What I see when I do that is how blessed I am to have the same publisher for this amazing writer
