First Amendment Blues

By Laura P. Valtorta

Recently I’ve been pondering our American right to free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment, and how our American outlook makes this difficult to achieve sometimes.

The first time I thought about this, I was showing one or two chapters of my memoir to a writer at the University of South Carolina whose work has been accepted by the literati as worthy of publication. That doesn’t mean he’s a bestseller. His writing is considered worthy.

This fellow read my chapters and told me I had better watch out about writing against certain current beliefs. I should think twice about stating “there is no such thing as race,” for example. That might not be accepted by publishers.

Biologically speaking, my statement is true, and scientists realize this. People have varying shades of skin and different eyes. If humans were actually divided into “races,” we would not be able to have sex and reproduce together. The categorizing of people has resulted in untold evil, but I guess I’d better not anger publishers by stating any unpopular observations.

Also, Americans are not allowed to talk about communism. The subject of communism and who is communist is discussable at any coffee bar in Italy. Communists were American allies during World War II. Italian communists are quick to distinguish themselves from Stalin, but otherwise they’re pretty comfortable talking about their beliefs. They believe in following the law. Most of the Sam’s Club-type stores in Italy are communist cooperatives. You buy a membership and get discounts.

So when did communism become a taboo subject in the United States? Back in the 1950s with Senator McCarthy? It’s just a political party.

I would prefer to live in a county where I can write and say what I believe, as long as it’s non-threatening. If I happen to agree with Governor Haley once in a blue moon, I’d like to be able to say it without getting jumped in a dark alley or threatened by email. Freedom means honesty and elasticity of thought, even when the subject matter is unpopular.

A Spark of Inspiration

By Deborah Wright Yoho

People we know spark a writer's passion. My mother has been a puzzle to me since earliest childhood. Her name was Rose.

Mom never downsized, having resisted all my cajoling to please, please deal with her three bedroom house crammed to the rafters with stuff. She was a hoarder, perhaps not interesting enough to be featured on TV, but bad enough. Since she died eight months ago, I have been dealing with her leavings. Mom, why did you do this to me?

I started with her kitchen. In the refrigerator, packed wall to wall, top to bottom, lived twelve packets of sliced cheese, all of it outdated, the oldest moldy package two years old. In a cabinet, I found nine cans of expensive Melitta coffee, six bottles of olive oil, and five jars of gourmet orange marmalade. Mom, you couldn't afford to stock up on such things!

I don't think she did. I realize only now her memory was compromised long before her last hospitalization. How many times had I helped her put away bags of groceries? How often had I struggled to find room in that fridge? Yet it had never occurred to me she had been buying duplicates of favorite items she had already stashed away.

My mother was a collector. Angels and elephants, tablecloths, costume jewelry, five different sets of Christmas dishes, knick knacks from our travels. But plastic bags, bread ties, dried up ballpoint pens, hundreds of clothes pins? She had been using an electric dryer since 1967.

In her basement, Mom saved all our Samsonite suitcases. A family of Air Force vagabonds with three kids, we had a lot of suitcases; none of them had wheels. She also kept all the curtains she ever hung in more than a dozen different homes. I won't discuss her clothes, except to mention 82 pairs of shoes.

My mother's last ten years weren't so easy. You could tell by her stuff. She saved four diabetes glucometers and three blood pressure cuffs.

I am by now expert at solid waste disposal and recycling. Half a dozen charities recognize my car when I drive up. I know which brand of trash bags is the strongest and how to organize a garage sale (I made $600). I survived sore muscles, sleepless nights, and long-distance arguments with my brothers. I now suffer from myopia, having focused for weeks on handling, cleaning, sorting, folding, packing, lifting, loading, and unloading.

I left her underwear drawer for last, unable to touch her fragile, lovely lingerie. Underneath her sizeable collection of lacy slips, I found my reward, a photo album I had never seen before. Clinging to the faded pages, my parents, circa 1946 - before the kids, before they were married, before the moves, before all the stuff.

Memoir Treasure Trove

By Laura P. Valtorta


As I write my memoir, I find there is no lack of subject matter, especially when I want to make things comical. I study the people around me and ask, “Who’s funny?” The answer: everybody.

My husband, Marco – we call him “Ocram” when he’s flapping his arms in disgust over some picayune problem. My son’s band director, who thinks that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the United States. My friend, Cathy, who is in-your-face competitive and -- surprise –- an attorney. Not to mention the priest who calls Polish people “PO-loks” during a homily, the “Christians” who hate Obama because he’s African-American, and my son who brushes his teeth obsessively because of some apparent competition among 11th-graders over who has the whitest teeth.

Hilarious. All of them. And this isn’t even including my legal clients. They keep me rolling in the aisles. The hip-hop clothes. The “we hate all federal benefits” toothlessness. The colloquial expressions. The inability to pronounce my last name. When someone’s first name is “Kwajelyn,” she should be able to pronounce “Valtorta.” Is this some kind of an onomastic face-off? I am not “Ms. Victoria,” not “Mrs. Ventura.” I’ve never been the Queen of England nor married to a wrestling politiican. It’s Val-TOR-ta. All phonetic. It means “twisted valley,” just like the landscape of my life.

I don’t know where to begin with the “comedy jokes.” I do know that when I begin writing about my wonderful, beloved Writers’ Group – the funniest ones of all -- I’ll have to figure out whether to read the stuff aloud and how to change the names.

DANGER: Memoir Ahead

By Laura P. Valtorta

For a while I resisted falling into the memoir trap. Among our “compagni” in Writers’ Group, Debbie seemed to be doing an excellent job with her story of growing up in the Philippines, but she was an exception. Most attempts at memoir-writing seemed to be boring, unfunny, and self-centered.

But a story needed to be told. A woman came into my office and as I stared at her, I was staring into my own problems. She told her son to keep quiet and I understood her psyche completely. I wanted to tell my own weird story to help others like her. How to survive life as a bitch.

But most of my life is pretty normal. I might like to THINK I’m weird, but that’s posturing. I’m married, I have a son and a daughter, and my husband is a professor from Italy. What about this stolid normality would people like to hear? Running my first sprint triathlon? Yawn. Living as a staunch atheist in the Tea Bag South? Maybe. Running my own law office?

Bingo. People like to hear about jobs. They don’t really care about family life. After sticky stories about romance, they most want to know how we earn a living.

As an attorney, I think in terms of lawsuits. And actually, there is a lawsuit I am itching to initiate. It’s a lawsuit related to writing, stealing ideas, and copyright violation. Maybe this will interest people.

Lawsuits are about stating a position, sometimes. Maybe I can stand up to the Big Suits and win. Maybe I can be a bitch who cares about justice and triumphs.