This is a big year for my family. Between February 4 and March 29, four of us advance on a five: my mom turned 75, I turned 50, my son turns 25 today, and my mother-in-law will be 80 at the end of the month. And then later in the year, my husband joins the fray with his palindrome of our son (he’ll be 52). My greatest joy and my fondest adventures include this kid, and oh, how very fortunate I am. Happy Birthday to my Sweet Pea. Happy Pi Day to you all.
If you’re looking for a good place to make a donation as the year comes to a close, I encourage you to find the free pharmacy in your county. I’m the Vice President of the Board of Directors for Chatham Cares Community Pharmacy, and we’re doing great, important work in central North Carolina. We were awarded the Humanitarian Award from our local NAACP chapter last week, which is super exciting. On December 3, our big annual fundraiser, the Celebration of Lights, will be held. It’s free, but if you’d like to purchase luminaries in honor or in memory of a friend or loved one, 100% of the donations go to free prescriptions for our clients. Spread the word, and do good stuff in your community!
I was super excited to interview Michele Tracy Berger for the North Carolina Literary Review’s fall 2022 issue on Writers Who Teach, Teachers Who Write. She’s an interesting, forward-thinking Afrofuturist who writes about the Black Fantastic, and shares in my love for genre fiction and great storytelling. Check out the article when you’ve got a chance — I won the Randall Kenan Prize for this essay, which was unexpected and delightful.
Read the essay here: Examining Otherness on the Page and in the Classroom with Michele Tracy Berger
Michele’s going to be a guest author at my book club this month. My peeps are excited to read Reenu-Yu and talk to the author. Be sure to grab a copy of her book if you’re looking for something spooky. Don’t forget to leave a great review over at Goodreads.
Happy Hump Day, y’all! I’m excited to bring my one-day Continuing Education workshop, Introduction to Grantwriting, back to Central Carolina Community College. It’s been a long, three-year COVID break, and I’m psyched to get back to the basics. Does your non-profit organization need funding? Do you work in the public school, healthcare, or arts industries? Bet you can get this approved as an off-site workday that’ll be more productive and fun than looking at your office walls all day. đ Sign up today! And spread the word if you’ve got time.
My son is a freelance photojournalist, and he’s been killing it lately. Last week at the 2022 North Carolina Press Association Awards, he took home two awards personally, and his community newspaper raked in a whopping 31.
Last month I had to cancel my daily subscriptions to the News & Observer, NYTimes, and USAToday because our newspaper distribution guy, Ben, was so inconsistent. We missed nearly forty percent of our papers, and it broke my heart. But Peyton, like me, is a journalist and in this industry. My dissatisfaction with the distribution asshole is no reflection on my support and interest in hardworking journalists. Truthful, vetted news from truthful, vetted news sources is crucial to correct information being disseminated in the community. Peyton’s accomplishments bolster my opinion of the importance of real news, and make me a prouder mom than usual because he has embarked on a career of truth telling that is often difficult. The way he sees and captures the world is a game changer
So, Bravo Peyton!
Support your local news outlets, y’all. Support the truth.
*Thanks to publisher Bill Horner III for this spectacular photo of Peyton.
I had to laugh at this full-page ad in the July 19, 2021 edition of the N&O because, in my experience, big tech isnât the most harmful threat to local papers, itâs the distribution company and delivery driver. Iâve been taking some combination of local and national newspapers for the last 25 years. Always in the mix is the N&O; most of the time I get USA Today, and on Friday and Sunday I get the NYT. Itâs expensive, but I like to hold the paper in my hand and read the news. I also have online subscriptions for Washington Post and NYT, but nothing beats a physical newspaper. But Iâm done â my newspaper distributor has broken my spirit and love for the print newspaper.Â
Between Jan 2 – Jul 21, 2022, my newspapers were late or not delivered 32 times. [Important note: May 22 – Jul 18, we had interim drivers who were ALWAYS on time and here, and corresponded by text if there were any issues.] And by late I mean, I had to text the distributor multiple times over the morning because the delivery driver never showed up. Never texted. Some days itâs because the driver was doing who knows what for who knows why (I donât care). It’s not my job to remind the newspaper distributor to deliver my paper. My delivery driver is so unreliable that USA Today has us permanently on mail delivery only. Itâs just not worth it any longer. I’m canceling it all.
And as I prepare this post, both the News & Observer and USA Today sent emails about cheap subscriptions. These rates are a honey trap for a newshound like me, but my good mental health can’t take another week of text-arguing with B.M., or leaving countless voicemails and still being ignored by B.A. My rural address is 42 miles from N&O headquarters on Fayetteville Street, where the paper is printed. It is a literal straight shot down one of the major highways that bisects the state. The distributor is just that shitty.
Here’s my takeaway: if you live in rural communities in North Carolina, you cannot rely on print newspaper delivery. So suck it up, because you can’t rely on high speed internet either. Good luck!
I am overwhelmed with grief and rage and sadness. My heart is broken for legions of women in the near (and far) future who will have to make difficult decisions about their bodies and their lives, at the risk of their mental and physical health. I am enraged at the woman on the supreme court who, as my mother says, âclimbed over the backs of women who gave her all her opportunities.â I am angry at the conservative women Iâve known for years, who migrated from high school and college friends to Facebook acquaintances — who had unplanned pregnancies and abortions as young women and are now cheering with the decision to end the constitutional right to abortion. To those women in particular, I say fuck you. Because if you donât want to have an abortion, then donât have an abortion. Abortion is healthcare.
The supreme court is on a tear this year, and the future is bleak. Be gentle with yourself.
I feel adrift in this shameful nation, so I will rely on the comfort of what I do best: write. I spent years of my life and career as an educator of reproductive and womenâs rights. Women of child-bearing years, listen up: YOU are responsible for managing your parenthood. Of planning your pregnancy. Whether youâre in middle school or your mid-forties, YOU are on the hook for your own body. And unless youâre ready to begin a family, be smart. Educate yourself on the variety of birth control methods available. Talk to your physician. Get a prescription for birth control pills TODAY. Talk to your partner. Prevent unplanned pregnancies and STDs. Use a condom. Abstinence-only education endorses reproductive ignorance. Woman up!
Barrier methods:Â
Short-acting hormonal methods:
Long-acting hormonal methods:
Sterilization:
– – > Here’s a list of U.S. companies offering abortion travel benefits. Check the list and buy the shit out of their products because consumer-buying power speaks volumes.
– – > Here’s a list of U.S. companies offering abortion-related benefits.
– – > Plans in the Health Insurance MarketplaceÂŽ must cover contraceptive methods and counseling for all women, as prescribed by a health care provider.
Find help if you need it:
If you don’t have anybody to ask about birth control methods, HMU.
Today we’re celebrating our 28th anniversary. We’re the atomic number of Nickel, the atomic mass of Silicon. We’re the standard number of tiles in a box of dominoes. Our binary representation is 00011100, and if we were a 28-sided polygon, we’d be called an icosikaioctagon.
But when you delve deeper, you’ll see that we’ve worked hard to have a good, happy, adventurous life together. We’ve raised the world’s most amazing son. We’ve raised and survived the world’s best dogs, Penelope and Maggie … and most recently added Daisy Marlalade to the family. We’ve got both of our mothers. We’ve got our sweet LeighRoy. Life is good. We’re so fortunate, and we’re so thankful. And 28 years is a huge fucking deal!
I’m excited to announce I’ve been awarded the Randall Kenan Prize for my interview essay âExamining âOthernessâ on the Page and in the Classroom with Michele Tracy Berger,” in the 2022 North Carolina Literary Review.
Dolly R. Sickles is the winner of the 2022 Randall Kenan Prize for her interview essay âExamining âOthernessâ on the Page and in the Classroom with Michele Tracy Berger.â The Randall Kenan Prize is sponsored by the UNC Chapel Hill Creative Writing Program for the yearâs best essay on or interview with a new or relatively new North Carolina writer, accepted for publication in NCLR. Glenis Redmond, poet-in-residence at the Peace Center for Performing Arts in Greenville, SC, and former mentor poet for the National Student Poetâs Program, selected Sicklesâs essay on Berger, saying âIn her writing, Berger does the heavy liftingââproviding space for others, as well as reflecting, as an intentional mirror for others to imagine themselves in both the present and the future. The author of this essay was eager to find out whether Michele Tracy Berger is more a writer who teaches or a teacher who writes. With countless published stories and a novel coming out this year, we find there is no definitive line between the two. Berger is ever-present in both fields.â Sicklesâs interview essay will appear in NCLR Online Fall 2022.Â
A freelance writer and teacher, Sickles is the author of childrenâs books and romance novels. Her subject for the Kenan Prize essay, Michele Tracy Berger, is a Professor in the Department of Womenâs and Gender Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, who publishes both scholarship and fiction. Bergerâs 2017 novella, Reenu-You, is an example of the speculative fiction by African American writers that she talked about with Sickles.
http://www.nclr.ecu.edu/news/2022-3-NCLR-Honors.htm
Well, our hearts were broken on January 5 when our sweet Maggie May died, but a couple weeks ago we adopted a new little Jack Russel Terrier, Daisy Marmalade. Sheâs a firecracker!
The Doctor is IN 