Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Conversations with Calliope

JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. How are you today.
JOE: A little frustrated. I have been working on network connections and thought the new format at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle would be a good place to become involved. I have struggled with their registration process which seems to ignore me. Finally it told me my account was locked out without any explanation.
CALLIOPE: So what did you do about it?
JOE: Sent them an email to see what is going on and what to do about it.
CALLIOPE: That makes sense. Why are you so anxious to be part of their community?
JOE: With the Governor Spitzer sex scandal, I would like to be part of the discussion, especially in light of my novel The Pastor's Inferno exploring sexual deviance. I would like to have my say but so far can only listen.
CALLIOPE: Where else can you have your say?
JOE: In my column which is due Saturday. I think I will make deviant sexuality motivation the topic since so little is written about it. The only column I could find in today's paper about motivation was by a psychologist who ended up by concluding that he had no idea. This is an area of great ignorance and I would like to see people at least think about it.
CALLIOPE: I can see you are passionate about this. Do you think anyone wants to listen?
JOE: I am not so sure. It is certainly an uncomfortable topic I think people would rather ignore. I guess my challenge is to find a way to get people to take an interest.
CALLIOPE: How do you plan to do that?
JOE: I'm still working on it. I suppose the only way is to demonstrate the relevance to my readers' own lives rather than it just being an unsavory topic safe to ignore.
CALLIOPE: Good luck with that.
JOE: I know it's an uphill battle, but if I stuck to what is safe to write, I wouldn't feel like I was saying anything worthwhile.

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