On the UPAA Facebook page, a colleague posted about getting a digital thank you card from someone on his campus, and how nice it was to receive. He asked the group “What are some of your favorite thank yous?”
I love that he asked this question of the group and opened up this opportunity for members to share how they’ve been appreciated while on the job.
I immediately knew which thank you stuck out in my mind and since I’m an organized archivist, I was able to find the experience in my scrap books in five minutes. I didn’t recall it but I wrote about the experience right after it happened.
I was 22 years old and an intern at The Cleveland Plain Dealer the summer after graduating from Ohio University.
I wrote;
Wednesday, July 22 (1998)
I had a very neat experience today. I was sent to the community Re entry Headquarters on W 25th St. in Cleveland to photograph a meeting that was to take place there. It was a meeting for the Women’s Re-Entry Writers Group. It was a group of formerly incarcerated women who write poetry and prose.
There were five women there. They all seemed like very interesting people. I felt cautious – I wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible – some of these women wrote of very personal experiences and I felt like an intruder.
It was just a meeting, and although what was said was interesting, they just sat around a table. I used a flash and self- cautiously stood on chairs to try and make it (visually) interesting. I went to leave and apologized for being distracting and far interrupting to get names.
Many Strope had read a poem at the start of the meeting- she read like Maya Angelous. Before l left, she asked to read something she’d written since the start of the meeting. She read with the same strength she’d read before.
I wonder if she knows how much what she read meant to me… she let me photocopy the page from her journal. -CS
Plain Dealer and the Poetry Club
Poetry Club
Showin’ up
Wasn’t Excited
Knowing my spirit
Needed to rise
Time’s passin’
Just sitting
Reading poems
Talkin’ poems and poetry
The press is present
Cameras flashing
Risen by standing
on a chair
I’m like ahhh
my spirit has risen
laughter, joy, smile
now fill my space
Somehow the press
standing on a chair
Made my spirit smile
Improper to be grateful
Thanking everyone
So I will just thank God
All is done
Mary Slade
My job is such an incredible gift. I am so glad I had the guts to ask her for a copy of her poem. I do remember her being very happy to oblige, and I’m so grateful for that!
While I do not know for sure, the age I recall her being and the timing, I think this is Mary’s obituary.
BEAN'S BABBLETORIUM 