Bernadette Benda

So first off, I totally didn’t notice that last Saturday was my 200th post. I had seen it coming up and was planning to do something special (you know, throw confetti, break a bottle of champange, share 200 facts that you don’t have time to read), but alas, here we are.

I really have written more blogs than that, but that was all back before this blog turned into the professional thing it is *aha* and was a place where I shared the latest adventures in my pre-adult life.

So anyway, thanks for hanging with me this whole time.

I wrote “chill boning howl” the other day instead of, you know, “bone chilling”.

I read To Best the Boys, which I really enjoyed. My only small, iddy bitty complaint is describing things like, “Lute flicks his eyes over to so and so.” Flicks? HOW DO YOU FLICK YOUR EYES?? I think if I flicked my eyes I would flick them right out of my sockets. (I just have a real pet peeve when the actions of characters aren’t literal. Like they howled, yelped, hissed, or flicked their eyes.)

Final edits of Silver are on the way *screams*. I found out that my characters stick their tongues in their cheeks too often and swallow too much as well. Oops. (At one time I searched and there were like 45 instances of ‘swallow’.)

I also need a new title. So far my dumb ideas include:

A Girl of Birds and Wolves
In Westbrook There are Wolves
The Lagoon Files
Blackwall
Birds and Wolves
The Girl from Westbrook

OK they aren’t that dumb. I actually like some of them. (I mean they’re better than They Called Her Silver, which mom keeps saying in the accent of “high-ho Silver!”) Thoughts?

I’ve started editing Lily in Google Docs because…I just need a different setting? It gets REAL boring staring at Word day in and day out. Years in and years out.

As a mentioned earlier, I finished reading Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, and I wanted to share this one story that’s in the last chapter that just gave me chills (if you’re a Star Trek fan you’ll really appreciate it):

[talking about Star Trek that premiered in ’66] Lieutenant Uhura, portrayed by actress Nichelle Nichols, executed her duties with aplomb, managing the ship’s communications with other ships and planets. When the first season ended in 1967, Nichols tendered her resignation to the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, so that she could spend more time tending to her Broadway career. The producer, who wanted to keep Nichols in the cast, refused her resignation, asking her to take the weekend to mull it over.

That weekend Nichols attended a celebrity NAACP civil rights fundraiser in Los Angeles. One of the event’s coordinators let her know that “her greatest fan”, a fellow attendee, wanted to meet her. Expecting some eager, socially awkward adolescent, Nichols instead found herself face-to-face with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: King was a Trekkie! It was the only show that he and his wife, Coretta, allowed their children to watch, and he never missed an episode. Nichols thanked him for his effusive praise before mentioning almost casually that she had decided to leave the show. The words barely escaped her lips before the Reverend interrupted her cold.

“You can’t leave the show,” King said to Nichols. “We are there because you are there.” Black people have been imagined in the future, he continued, emphasizing to the actress how important and groundbreaking a fact that was. Furthermore, he told her, he had studied the Starfleet’s command structure and believed that it mirrored that of the US Air Force, making Uhura – a black woman! – fourth in command of the ship.

“This is not a black role, this is not a female role,” he said to her. “This is a unique role that brings to life what we are marching for: equality.” The rest of Nichol’s weekend was a fog of anger and sadness: what right did Dr. King have to upend her career plans? Eventually, she moved from resignation to conviction. Nichols returned to Gene Rodenberry’s office on Monday morning and asked him to tear up the resignation letter.

Margot Lee Shetterly

I think we’ll leave it at that.

OH ALSO. IT’S D-DAY. Go watch the Longest Day or something.