April 7th, 2009

I’ve teamed up with Dakota & Sunny Livesay from Chronicle of the Old West to write a book about women journalists on the frontier. The book will focus on the women who made the front page news they wrote. One of the women I’m researching is Elizabeth Cochrane. She was better known as Nellie Bly. She went to great extremes to get a story – including faking a mental illness so she could be institutionalized. She was so convincing as an insane person that on September 25, 1887, four eminent physicians from Bellevue Hospital had her hauled away to famous Blackwell’s Island in New York. Nellie wanted to do an expose about how patients in a mental institution were treated. The article was historic and not only changed the way people with mental illnesses are treated, but changed the way the world saw women journalists. The book Front Page: Old West Headlines and the Women Who Made Them will be in bookstores by Christmas 2010. What I like about Nellie was the fact that she wanted to achieve great things not simply because she was a woman, but because she knew it would give her a certain amount of power. She used her power for good, but I know many people with power who don’t. I think power is one of the most sought-after, addictive, seductive, abused drug there is. Compared to power, crack is a Cinnabon. People crave power. Power over corporations, laws, other people, blindly sad circumstances?. Whether it’s heading a major publishing company or just spraying that cockroach in your kitchen with a steady stream of Raid and pretending you’re Tom Cruise’s character from Top Gun shooting down Val Kilmer’s character from Top Gun. It’s easy to think if you don’t forgive someone in your life who has done a horrible wrong that you have all the power, but nothing could be further from the truth. You’ve done nothing more than give what power you do have away. I wonder if Nellie wrote any articles about the power to forgive? I’ll look into it later. Right now all I can think about is a Cinnabon.