About Me

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I have discovered that walking a very narrow path leads to broad places of peace, contentment, and provision. I work as a freelance consultant in the areas of cultural heritage, public history and museums, From 2009-2016, I was the executive director of the Bolduc House Museum in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, (now called New France - the OTHER Colonial America, an eighteenth century French colonial historic site and National Historic Landmark.) My PhD is from the University of Leicester's (United Kingdom) Department of Museum Studies. My research looked at the interpretation of diversity at the American Historic House Museum. I also developed and facilitate an inspirational program for Christian grandparents, Gathering Grandparents.

Monday, May 14, 2018

What makes me happy by Lesley Barker c. 2015

Feathers, flowers, flavors, textures
birds, butterflies, cows and other creatures
Even bugs armored and glistening in the grass
when the sun strikes and iridescence replies
These accompanied by thrumming and the drumming
beat of beak against tree supporting song bird melodies
pierced by staccato bark moo shriek
Wind wafted fragrances cedar and sea salts
wrapping wind releasing rainbow skies
This is what makes me happy.

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Writing After a Stroke

I tried to write a few notes but all that happened was scribbling. I tried to talk but my words were as scribbled. I could not move my fingers to the buttons on my cell phone to text without garbling that as well. It was very difficult to move the light switch in the bathroom. I cut myself instead of an orange. Not sure what was happening to me, my friend took me to the emergency room where I told the receptionist I was there to be evaluated for a possible stroke. That got action fast. I was put in a wheelchair, taken quickly around multiple corners, through various doors, to the first of four CT scans which confirmed I was having a brain bleed, a hemorrhagic stroke- the kind that only 35% of whose victims survive and recover. Three days later, I was discharged from the hospital with three blood pressure medicines, two follow-up doctor's appointments and referrals for OT and speech therapy. I pretty much slept for the next month between therapies. A fourth blood pressure medicine was added at a doctor's appointment where what I said was discounted and where no one touched me other than to take my blood pressure, which I already knew, having taken it at home, and where I was charged $420 for a fifteen minute encounter before they applied the discount thanks to my atypical insurance arrangements. Now, eleven weeks into recovery, I am pretty much back to normal.

Except for a few things. I still cannot write legibly for long enough to utilize journaling, my decades-honed and preferred meta-cognitive tool now discarded. I get food stuck between my cheeks and my teeth. My taste buds are unreliable - salty and sweet flavors disappoint. When I am tired, multi-syllable words blur. Sometimes when I walk more than a block or so, my right foot drags so I have befriended a cane. Unless I pay attention, I get confused about mental sequencing. Is this date past or future? If I want to find Psalm 23 and I am at Psalm 100, do I look left or right in the book? And, I get fatigued easily and dramatically, which for someone who has always been able to push past the walls, is unsettling but seemingly not negotiable. There is nearly always some bearable discomfort in my face and head. I may also have lost the momentum of the new year that started with the successful attainment of my PhD as of January 30.

The stroke disrupted everything. I had to find new ways of getting attention since neither speech nor writing worked at first. I had to pay closer attention to details. I had to rely on new supports. I had to navigate uncomfortable losses and learn to deal with new boundaries. I became visible in new, more invasive ways. I was faced with new challenges and the need to find new approaches to time. It is the same with writing, speaking, consulting, working after the stroke.

New ways of getting attention: I'm working on marketing what I have already written - Pastor's Ex-Wife, Faith Wise Faith Ways, Called to Write? Don't Know How?, Grandparents in Genesis, etc. see my books on Amazon - because I am convinced that these are worth reading. They were written carefully and, I think, are important contributions. Each of them reveals my heart and, hopefully calls new places in the readers' hearts to open. Each of them wrestles with some aspect of faith. Unless the audience connects with these works, I will be like so many creators who are undiscovered in their lifetimes. New supports and new discomforts: So, I am blogging with more intentionality, posting on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, raising the flags trying to say "Look at me. Look at me", which is uncomfortable because I have spent much of my life trying to learn humility and wisdom, which do not call attention to themselves.

New challenges: I'm also writing a chapter for a book, Slavery, Literature and Memory, that will be published by the University of Aarhus in Denmark, assuming what I submit passes the peer review process. It deals with three ways to change the narrative about the memory of slavery: performance, preservation and protest. It follows directly from my dissertation and, in many ways, I am unqualified to attempt it. New courage required: The book by the late James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, is pushing me into a new space that requires new courage about faith and that will probably inform what the chapter says.

New approaches to time & sequencing and new boundaries: Three other fiction projects have been on the shelf for the past four years while I did my doctorate. I find myself picking them up in my imagination. Each is at a different stage. Each deals with the problems of understanding authentic faith in dysfunctional, hurtful families. I wonder if it is time to rework them now and in what sequence I should attempt them. Curse of Kaskaskia is a young adult historical novel about 14 year old Auguste Chouteau. I wrote it before I served as the executive director of the Bolduc House Museum so the reworking of it implies scrutinizing it for details about material culture and more. Isabelle is another historical novel about Isabelle Edwards, the wife of Ben Edwards (a son in AG Edwards & Sons). It is based on the letters I have between Isabelle and Ben written before they were actually courting and is set in the last seven days of her life. It is fully researched and moves, in my mind, choreographed like a ballet. Stuck in the Mud is a murder mystery set in Ste. Genevieve at the museum I used to direct. It, too, is begun. The first few chapters are written. I know how it ends.

New momentum needed: Should I mention that I would very much love to land an academic teaching position in the area of public history, museum studies or cultural heritage leadership?