Activism: Calmly Going Where No Author Dares to Go

Today I received copies of my book, to discover that the errors I'd paid to have fixed were not fixed. Additionally, 12 copies have thus far been shipped out to sellers through Xlibris. So there is a possibility that if you purchased the book between January 8-25, the manufacturer may have sent out an error copy instead of the copy that you were supposed to receive. My deepest apologies. I emailed Xlibris tonight to see what might be done. You will easily know if you received the wrong copy, because the cover title will have a ghost image of larger letters behind the title. If you aren't sure, another easy check is to look at page 63, second line from the bottom. If the last word in that sentence says "would" instead of "wouldn't" then you received the error copy.

I believe it is not the fault of the Xlibris Indiana people, despite their very best Pomba Gira party efforts. It may in fact, be the Canadian manufacturers who actually process the work. The second review copy I received and approved for sale was fine, so I think that it was an order mix up. It's entirely possible your copy is fine, and they only sent me the wrong books. One can but hope.

After I got past hyperventilating about this, I just took it in stride and thought, you know, things are far worse that are going on in this world than 12 people getting the wrong copy. The Xlibris folks, despite all my blog teasing, have actually been wonderful thus far, and I fully expect peaceful resolution based on past experience of working with them. They've been really lovely folks.

It occurred to me that one solution to the problem is activism. I blog about it, I write in order to generate some, and by and large I believe in activism. But activism's gotten a bad reputation these days. I think it's because a lot of people mistake waving an angry fist for being activism. Maybe it's because the opposite of activism in some people's minds might be being passive.

As silly as it sounds to have to say this, the root word of activism is "active." It's not "aggressive" or "blaming" or "passing the buck." If it were, we'd call it aggressivism, blamism or passing-the-buckism, now wouldn't we? Those all sound terribly idiotic, yet that's what some forms of what we refer to as activism have actually become.

According to Merriam-Webster, the term activism means "a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue" and was first used in 1915.

I find it interesting that as a society we've tipped the scales in our emphasis of the "or opposition to" part of the definition. We're all "power to the people" which in theory, I love, but in what I've seen involves angry jeers, yelling, fist waving, flag burning and trash can tipping. Activism is fast going the way of feminism, moving so far in one direction as to make most of the people who could benefit from it want nothing to do with it.

For me, I'm heading toward the other side on this to see what happens. Just about anything can happen, and it's entirely up to me to see where it goes. I view activism as taking some action and being active in a process. I have no problem with direct, vigorous action, in support of something, namely, peaceful resolution of a publishing glitch.

Well, no, perhaps I'm not up with the "vigorous" part. That usually involves some level of force. I'm not at all against using my power, but I believe that all power must be balanced with some wisdom. Instead, Merriam-Webster provides synonyms for "vigorous" and my, they have quite a range...Go look it up if you're trying to avoid housework. I'm selecting "lusty" because it's got a nifty definition I find somewhat to my liking:

Lusty - implies exuberant energy and capacity for enjoyment. That would summarize my outlook on my better days, so I've determined that I'm going to operate as if this was one of my better days.

I shall take my exuberant energy and capacity for enjoyment and use it in direct support of my cause to see this peacefully resolved. Let's see where this goes!