Another winner!
I left out a favorite one
My worst fear, with 175 essays in my lap, was that I would miss any of them in reviewing them all for the top twenty. Ta dah: Introducing what I’m going to give a 6th award to, that might even have gotten the grand prize. That casts no aspersions on Marie-Lune’s terrific grand prize winner, but it’s just that Glen Merzer never had a chance. Somehow, when I reviewed everything for picking the twenty, he had dropped out. After I selected them, I remembered his and wondered why it hadn’t ended up in the top twenty, but I presumed that in second time around I just wasn’t as impressed as I had been and I didn’t go further, as I should have, to check myself out. My big mistake that will cost me! I’m awarding another $2,000 to Glen Merzer’s wonderful essay, The Power of Transparency.
This essay is so good from several points of view and contradicts my email about the winners that said none of them dealt with the world becoming vegan that a lot of non-winners dealt with. (I’m not vegan myself and wouldn’t relish it for my personal taste, but I’d readily go along with it as a dictate for the world that would combat global warming.)
But that’s not the only valuable aspect of this incredibly imaginative and well-written essay that deals with what a billionaire could do, how to parent, and acceptance and transparency as the human way to fly. Can you imagine our political quagmire running on transparent tell-the-truth principles? And speaking of our political quagmire, anybody know how we could get a story about how a stutterer saved the world to our President???
Hopefully my omission does service to this piece, where this gets more people reading it than would have if it had come with four others.
PS: Here’s the correspondence I had about The Power of Transparency.
First, I sent it to my assistant, to catalogue it, with this comment: “Best one so far!!!”
And I emailed this to Glen:
That’s a great story. The writing is so good. Several themes interweaving all throughout. Very clever. I laughed out loud. I hope you’re a TV writer, where the writing makes all the difference. Where did you come from? Are there any more at home like you? Such a pleasure!
Some of his answer, to introduce him to you:
Thank you for your comments. I used to write for network television, in the late '80s and the '90s, both comedies and dramas. I was always more devoted to playwriting and screenwriting. Now I write books advocating the vegan diet, and occasionally a play or screenplay.
Coming Attractions:
I’m going to contact you finalists who voted on the winners to write about why you liked one of the essays you voted for, to put into the comments. That will be in private emails to you. That can spark strings, that everyone can contribute to, commenting on each one. The comments will get attached to each essay for what ultimate publication they’ll have.
Zooms for the finalists are to come. We’ll start with introductions, which is what I did when I hosted live gatherings so we’d be personal with one another rather than just audiences for presenters. I’d like you each to talk about your essays, telling us where they came from in the bigger picture of what your lives are all about. Then, in that session, we’ll be creative together about how to proceed in developing how the ideas in the essays could come into play in the world. In the meantime, if you are interested, my website page has some intro material for me, and my About page tells why I’m doing this Substack. I’ll be in touch to create a time to Zoom.
If I have something to say to you finalists, I’ll blind copy everyone in what I’ll send to friends@mightycompanions.org, so please do what it takes so spam filters won’t block me.
Dear subscribers -- A lot of you make replies to me to posts. Instead, if you comment here we can have conversations. And if you enjoyed this post, hitting the heart helps others find it. First-timers will have to complete your Substack profile to be able to comment on the Substack platform.
I'm privately asking our 20 finalists to say what they liked about one particular essay they voted for. Each time a new review is posted it will be on the current Substack, since that's what most subscribers will see. I've just issued the first couple of invitations to write, and, wherever they show up, please read them and add your opinions. Let's see if this is a workable way, for starters, to play with ideas for how to get this world on a better course.
I chose Round-Up (https://suespeaks.org/round-up/) as one of my 5 favorites because it was well-written, creative, and followed the rules of the contest. Most importantly, it had what I thought was a simple, yet workable idea — turning spare change into world change. At one point in his essay, Stuart says, “…it brought out the best in people, and tapped into their innate desire to be altruistic”, which I think is a good assessment of human nature—if not for everyone, at least for a large enough percentage of the world population to make a significant difference. Thank you, Stuart Johstone, for your contribution.