Saturday, December 12, 2015

Celebration Time.



Hats off to co-hosts for this blog hop,  Lexa Cain @ Lexa Cain , L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge , and Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits Blog  You can go to any of these sites to get all the links and add your name to the links. 

What I'm celebrating: Two things:

1. I'm almost finished with my new Imogene story. Just one more scene to go.

2. Last Monday evening, we were privileged to hear Morris Dees and Richard Cohen speak at the Crest Theater in Sacramento. Morris Dees is the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the wonderful organization that fights racism and intolerance and pursues justice through the courts. The topic last night was Hate in the Mainstream. (Many of the recent "lone wolf" shootings are a result of hatred being fomented on websites and poisoning individuals who already feel alienated for one reason or another.)
This was a high point in my life: hearing Morris Dees and Richard Cohen and actually meeting Morris Dees and being able to shake his hand. Likewise for Rajan.
Many people were having their pictures taken with Morris Dees and he kindly let us do the same. As you can imagine, this is a picture moment I will treasure! 
Morris Dees is one of my heroes!

7 comments:

Rosi said...

Congratulations on both counts. Sounds like good accomplishments for you.

Elizabeth Varadan, Author said...

Hi, Rosi, to tell you the truth, the second celebration was bigger than the first, if you know what I mean. I have cared about his work for over thirty years. It was awesome to meet Morris Dees.

Unknown said...

Congrats on being almost done with your new mystery! Morris Dees sounds like a wonderful and hard-working man. He's absolutely right about the hatred and I'm glad he's fighting it. Very inspiring. Have a lovely week, Elizabeth! :)

cleemckenzie said...

Great news about your latest book. That's wonderful. For all the beautiful things our rapid communication system can do, it truly frightens me to think how it's being using to spread the ugliness and hatred just as quickly.

Elizabeth Varadan, Author said...

Hi,Lexa. Morris Dees is awesome. We've been contributing to Southern Poverty Law Center for around 35 years. It is humbling to think how he has plugged on, fighting for justice--and having his life threatened all those 35 years for doing so.

Elizabeth Varadan, Author said...

Thanks for the good wishes, Lee. I'm so happy to have that book published.

On another note, I so agree with you. So much that is beautiful is made possible on the Internet, and so much that is ugly as well. It's so important to spread love and faith in the sterling values of justice and equality to combat the hate.

Elizabeth Varadan, Author said...

Oops, I forgot it was the story you were talking about. I'm happy about that, too. :-)