| Redemption and the reservation
"Hey," my friend said. "You said you want to come to a place that's a world away from where you're at? "Come to Jemez." Would I be interested, he asked, in a teaching job on one of New Mexico's 19 Pueblo reservations? I would work with high school and middle school students. I would mentor them as they prepared for college, counsel them about friendships, teach them in a classroom and talk about different careers. I could still write, my friend said, whether it was for a newspaper in the community, or . . . maybe I could run my own journalism program. That was the clincher. Within thirty days, I boxed up my life, glanced in the rearview mirror and bid farewell to the Fog City. The giggles finally subside. I explain to Tamara Colaque, a fifth grader at the Jemez Day School, why it's important to believe in things. "Because," I say, "then you can express them through writing, through art, through drawing. If you're writing for a newspaper, those are called editorials. In an editorial, you have something important to say and you write about it. You can make a living that way." She stares back at me, in only that wide-eyed, bewildered way a ten-year-old can. Feeling as if I'm losing her, I launch into a story about how I used to make a living. I share anecdotes about my interviews with charming everyday people, countless weirdoes and academic geniuses. I tell her about the angry bridal shop owner who ran for mayor because the city allowed the Wal-Mart of wedding stores to move into town. I tell her about reporting on the Columbine High School tragedy, about covering riots at my college campus, about a tiny Bay Area Indian tribe stripped of its land and federal status and the government failing to live up to its promises to help the tribe reach self-sufficiency. I talk to Tamara about stories of young lives lost before they even had a chance to start. I tell her about being denied access to the "secret room" at the baseball park where souvenirs commemorating Barry Bonds' breaking the single-season home run record--that had yet to happen--were under lockdown. I talk about the people I interviewed, many of whom I grew to admire and some who today are close friends. "Wow," she says. "Journalism is cool. And you get paid to do that, as an adult?" "Yes, journalism is cool," I tell her. "And yes, you do get paid. Now, that's a whole other story. Let's get back to work." Tamara's deadline--she's writing about seat belt safety--is fast approaching. Redemption and the reservation |