Carmen Leal on The Perfect Storm: How are Rescue Shelters Faring After COVID?

When I decided to adopt, I thought dogs were free and that I was doing them a favor by taking the pooches off their hands. I learned that before they go to their new homes, all dogs are spayed or neutered, appropriately vaccinated, dewormed, heartworm tested, given flea and tick preventatives, and microchipped for identification. The adoption fee also helped to cover any additional medical treatments that may be needed and they did all of this through donations, with no government funding. 

I started volunteering in a marketing capacity and helped the rescue for four years. Sadly, on September 30, 2022, ten years and 12,000 dogs after they opened, they closed for good and the ripple effects of COVID were absolutely the biggest factors in their decision. 

COVID kicked off the perfect storm and we lost staff who needed better-paying jobs with benefits, our volunteer pool dried up, and giving plummeted. It’s a miracle we stayed open as long as we did.

Mandatory closure of our daycare, boarding, and grooming meant that the income from those profit segments were no longer there to pay the rent, utilities, and salaries. We reopened but never bounced back. Clients who were unemployed or working from home didn’t need daycare. Travel came to an abrupt halt so our boarding business all but disappeared for a couple of years.  

During our final year we had the largest number of owner-surrender dogs ever. These weren’t pandemic puppies that people decided they no longer wanted once they returned to the office or they discovered how expensive it is to be a responsible dog owner. Some were surrendered because of the expense or divorce or relocation, but there were many people who got caught in the COVID crunch and could no longer keep their beloved family members. 

The number one reason was housing-related. The saddest ones involved landlords selling their properties and in too many cases the new owners would not allow dogs. If they did, there was a weight limit or a breed restriction. 

There are many costs to rescuing and only a tiny fraction are paid for through adoption fees. Veterinarians, vaccinations, gas prices to transport dogs, utilities, rent, dog food, and even small items such as microchips skyrocketed. 

A lack of funding for animal welfare organizations is not new. There will always be financial challenges for independent recues and shelters who do incredibly important work within their communities.

The good news is the number of heroes who are dedicated to ensuring no healthy animal is euthanized and that the sick and wounded receive the treatment they deserve. Thank goodness for people who want to create a world where every dog can be surrounded by love. You don’t have to adopt to save a life. You can volunteer, foster, give money, or in-kind donations. Every little bit truly does matter. 

Carmen Leal is a storyteller and the author of multiple books, dozens of articles, devotionals, and human-interest stories. Carmen relocated from Hawaii to Oshkosh, yes, there is a story behind the move, and has become an awesome dog mom. Carmen and her husband have become reluctant gardeners and know a crazy amount about Wisconsin weeds. She is the mother of two sons, two incredible grandsons, and Coconut, the best imperfectly perfect rescue dog in the world.

The Gods Are Not To Blame or Why Greek Myths Are for Everyone

One of my fondest childhood memories is watching a play with my classmates – we were probably in SS1 then (the equivalent of 10th grade ) – in our boarding school’s assembly hall. A travelling university theatre group had made a stop at our school to stage Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not To Blame. It was a stunning performance in English and Rotimi’s Yoruba language. That play introduced me to Yoruba gods and sayings. After the perfomance, we were told that it was a retelling of a Greek play: Oedipus Rex. How could it be, we wondered, that this very Yoruba play about Odewale who was cursed with killing his father and marrying his mother, was a retelling of an ancient Greek play?

I don’t recall when I eventually did read Oedipus Rex, but I recall being fascinated by the idea that something written in a different time, for a different culture, resonated so well in a Nigerian context, over a thousand years later. It was mind boggling. Even now, when I think of it, I find it difficult to imagine the characters as anything but Yoruba-speaking Nigerians. 

Perhaps, had my classmates and I been more astute, or more mature, had we read more Greek myths, we would have understood that like our Nigerian folktales, myths are living things. They are not the past, they do not expire. And therefore, like our folktales lend themselves to adaptations. There are no “official” versions of Greek myths. In fact, different versions appear to contradict themselves.  For instance, the myth of Hades and Persephone – the myth I reimagined in The Middle Daughter – has versions where Persephone’s tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds that keep her bound to Hades, and versions where she eats the seeds willingly out of love for her abductor (Stockholm syndrome?).  

Additionally, all the stuff that Greek myths are made of: desire, revenge, oppression, lust for power, love are things that humans – since the beginning of time – have grappled with. The myths remind us that after all is said and done, we as humans have more that connects us than not. There’s nothing new under the sun. 

Furthermore, myths (like our folktales) always speak to the now whatever and wherever our ‘now’ happens to exist in. That is their superpower. That is why they transcend time and culture and race. They give us a lens through which we interpret our own experiences. The myth of Cassandra is one that Ngugi Wa Thiongo, the Kenyan writer used in a radio interview some years back, to describe the writer’s role in his country: doomed to prophesy but never to be believed. It was so apt, so natural, it seemed like the only way to express his frustration at the chaos he’d warned about playing out.

Arguably, it’s not just Greek classics and myths that do this. Any piece of fiction that is well written transcends time and place. Someone once said that it is in writing the particular that we approach the universal, or something to that effect. How true that is. I have read American and European texts set in the most provincial cities, with characters that would seem to have little in common with me, and yet the stories seem to have been written specifically for me, as if the writer had bored themselves into my mind and reproduced everything I was thinking.

Texts are not defined by the origins of the writers but by their content, and how well they articulate the human condition. That’s why we read. Not just to be entertained, but to assure ourselves that we are part of a community, that we are not stranded, islands on our own. That’s how I experience reading. 

Chika Unigwe was born and raised in Enugu, Nigeria. She graduated from the University of Nigeria, KU Leuven (Belgium) and has a PhD from Leiden University, Holland. Author of The Middle Daughter (Dzanc Books, April 2023), Unigwe’s previous work includes novels On Black Sisters Street and Night Dancer as well as the short story collection Better Never than Late. She was also a contributor to Of This Our Country: Acclaimed Nigerian Writers on the Home, Identity and Culture They Know; Lagos Noir; New Daughters of Africa; and Regiones Imaginaires. Find her online at ChikaUnigwe.com and follow her on Facebook, Instagram (@chikaunigweauthor), Twitter (@chikaunigwe), and LinkedIn. 

JL Lycette on How I Write When I Have A Demanding “Day Job”: It’s Okay Not To Write Every Day

Many people are proponents of writing consistently every day and setting goals. For example, 1000 words a day. 

But what if you can’t write every day. If you have a demanding day job or a busy family, or maybe, I don’t know, you just don’t like writing every day. Can you still be a writer?

I am here before you (virtually) to show you that, yes, you can. My first book was published last month (March 2023), and my second book will be published later this year, in November 2023, and I do not write every day.

I didn’t start writing fiction until I was 43 years old. By that time, I had a busy (non-writing) career and family. How the heck was I to fit this new writing habit into my already busy life?

It’s a good thing I didn’t research that question back at the beginning, or I might have given up. 

When I started writing my first book in 2016, I didn’t know if anything would ever come of it, let alone whether it would ever be published. But somehow, I had this story idea in my brain and characters that wouldn’t leave me alone until their story was told.

I mostly wrote on weekends in large chunks of words. I didn’t know at the time that it wasn’t common to write 4000-5000 words in a day. And one weekend, which I remember now like a fever dream, I wrote 10,000 words in a session. (A feat I haven’t been able to repeat).

It was only when the book was finished, and I googled “what to do when you finish writing a book,” that I came across all the writing advice.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned about advice: take what works for you, leave what doesn’t. If the idea of writing in long sessions for hours on the weekends horrifies you, don’t try that. Maybe writing in smaller sessions each day works for you. 

I mean, does it matter if you write 1000 words a day or 7000 words in a weekend? As long as the words eventually get written? One could paint a little bit each day or a lot for an entire weekend, and both approaches will result in a finished painting. 

I mostly write on my laptop, in Word (yes, I’m a dinosaur), but sometimes I grab a notebook and pen; or in the middle of the night, I have to write something in the Notes app on my phone. Sometimes on the commute to work, I get an idea and have to scribble it as fast as possible on a blank piece of paper in five minutes before starting my day job.

Some days, when I get home from work, I’m in the mood to write. Most weekdays, however, I don’t have the energy. So I don’t write those days. I wait until the weekend.

There are a lot of caveats to my advice. First of all, my kids are older. They’re tweens and teens, and they actually sleep now. Like, a lot, on the weekends. So I can write for hours on those mornings before they wake up. I’ve had other parents write to ask me to please tell them how to write with young children. And my answer to them was: I don’t know how parents with very young children write. Maybe some of them can comment here and tell us.

But here’s the thing, none of us are superhuman. Don’t try to hold yourself to some imaginary standard that probably doesn’t even exist. That’s something I’ve had to learn in both my day job and my writing journey.

The best way to write is the way that works for you.

I hope this post will help you to write the way you want, when you want, and not beat yourself up if you can’t—or simply choose not to—write every day.

JL / Jennifer Lycette is a novelist, award-winning essayist, rural physician, wife, and mother. She has a degree in biochemistry from the University of San Francisco and attained her medical degree at the University of Washington. Mid-career, she discovered narrative medicine in her path back from physician burnout and has been writing ever since. Her essays can be found in Intima, NEJM, JAMA and other journals; and online at Doximity and Medscape. She is an alumna of the 2019 Pitch Wars Mentoring program. Her other published speculative fiction can be found in the anthology And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative (Alternating Current Press). The Algorithm Will See You Now is her first novel and is a 2023 Screencraft Cinematic Book Competition Finalist. Her second novel (title and cover reveals coming soon!) will be out in November 2023.