Author: Stuart Horwitz

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Amnesty Day: How I got my teenager to tell me the truth

This excerpt from my memoir, Amnesty Day, was originally posted on the TODAY Show website. 

 

When my daughter, Fifer, was young, we were very close. I was among the first wave of fathers to do at least 50 percent of the childcare as my wife was pursuing her graduate degree in psychology … and those doctorates take time! When Fifer was little, we collected bouncing balls and Spongebob-themed stickers. When she got a little older, we invented our own card game (based loosely on Gin Rummy) and kept adding new rules that only we understood.

 

 

When Fifer became a sophomore in high school, however, I began to feel her pulling away. It wasn’t just about boys—I got that. It was about the things she thought she shouldn’t tell me. The things she thought she couldn’t tell me.

And so I introduced a calculated gamble. On the last day of every month, which we called Amnesty Day, she got to tell me anything she’d done that wasn’t what she was supposed to do—and not get in any trouble for it.

We talked through what happened and what choices she could have made differently, and that was it. On that day only, she didn’t get guilted, or yelled at, or grounded for not following the rules.

On Amnesty Day, I heard about the night she wandered around Providence on the drug ecstasy wearing only her socks for footwear. I learned who bought her fake I.D. I also got to go through the whole moral anxiety attack with her when she took something that didn’t belong to her.

Her school held well-meaning sessions on how to get your kids to open up to you, but the strategies seemed better suited to an earlier age. Another parent who had heard about my approach asked me, “Does Amnesty Day actually work?”

I told her the story of walking up to my daughter on the beach at a family reunion.

I asked Fifer, “Have you been partaking in any drugs or alcohol today?”

She was sitting with her friend on the lifeguard chair.

“I don’t care what the answer is,” I continued. “I just need the truth.”

She said, “I had one drink that was 4.5 percent alcohol two hours ago.”

I said, “Great. Don’t have anything more, because you’re driving your mom home. She’s had a long day.”

I gave Fifer advice, of course. Like not to let anyone give her a drink that she didn’t see being poured and never to leave her drink unattended. And how to not get separated from the group she went out with and to always keep a buddy by her side. What else are you going to do with a kid who will be leaving home shortly?

I could see college coming out of the corner of my eye. They say that a teenager’s brain hasn’t yet closed. Teens haven’t evolved all of their prefrontal cortex, which controls decision making and influences foresight. Yet we send them off to school to live only with other kids their own age. It is an experiment that sometimes backfires.

I didn’t want my input to be cut off. I wanted my kid to be the one who kept her head on her shoulders. College was a time of freedom for me which I did not use particularly wisely. I got in trouble with the law. I had a drug overdose. My confidantes weren’t much better adjusted than me. Some of us didn’t make it out of our twenties. There had to be a better way.

When the last week in the month rolled around, Fifer would sometimes tease a forthcoming revelation: “I got a good Amnesty Day for you this month.” That made my blood run cold as a parent. Of course, there was no such thing. All Amnesty Days were bad, after a sorts. But I had to be true to my word: no repercussions.

I couldn’t ask her, “What were you thinking?!?” At least, not in the tone in which that is usually said. I had to ask her, What were you thinking? In the sense of, What motivated you? And then, a funny thing happened. I started to ask myself the same question.

Why did I do the things I did? Why did I engage in dangerous stunts or make life unnecessarily hard on myself?

The result was transformational for me. I started writing my memoir. Between the thinking and feeling that invited and the old friends I reached out to after so many years to say hello and/or check details, the story of how I came to be me started shaping up. My relationship with my daughter was the amnesty I had been searching for, a chance to start over again, to let the light back into my life.

Amnesty Day is about second chances, about holding expectations for people lightly until they have them of themselves. I am happy to report that I like who Fifer has become. I like her boyfriend, her college roommates, her work ethic, the warmth she exudes (but she can still stand up for herself).

I have full faith in the choices that she makes. And she and I are as close as ever. I recently guest hosted on her college radio program and she surprised me with a pop quiz about the music we had loved when she was growing up, driving around on our bonding adventures. (I got a solid B.) I credit Amnesty Day with bringing that magic back into our lives and ensuring we could keep it.

 

Winner of the 1st Annual Book Architecture GIT-R-DONE Travel Grant

Last year, we travelled 19 states to tell the story of Doris Buffett’s unique philanthropy. Crafted with co-writer, Anita Mumm, and accompanied by Stephanie Craig‘s dynamic images, LETTERS TO DORIS: One Woman’s Quest to Help Those with Nowhere Else to Turn presents a slice of the heartwarming and selfless community that Doris created through her Letters Foundation. One thing that working with the Letters Foundation has taught us is that our charitable giving has been all…over..the…place. Executive Director, Amy Kingman, challenged us to really think about where we wanted to focus our efforts. What do we think is most helpful for the writers that we work with?

The answer was resoundingly clear: A travel stipend for the author of a work-in-progress to get away and finish the damn thing.

Book Architecture thrives as a finish line business.

Our proudest testimonials go something like: “We’ve been thinking as an organization of doing a book for ten years and with your help we were holding it in 9 months.”

Hence the BOOK ARCHITECTURE GIT-R-DONE GRANT was born.

 

 

Without further ado, then, the Particulars:

Grant Money Awarded: $2,500. Book Architecture will also provide 1 hr. of coaching prior to departure to help you get clear on your production goals and 1 hr. of coaching while you are away to help you stay on track.

Deadline: Jan. 15th, 2020, to BAGrant@bookarchitecture.com

Submission Criteria: 10 pages of writing (max 2,500 words) from a work-in-progress of any genre, along with a 1-page cover letter (max 400 words). This cover letter should answer the following three questions:

  1. Why will getting away from the unending stream of responsibilities (children, aging parents, day jobs, chores, etc.) help you push this project over the top… i.e, git-r-done? We want to know things like: How long have you been working on it? What number draft is this? How clearly can you see the finish line, etc.?
  2. What good is this project doing you? Who were you before this project started and who do you hope to be when it ends?
  3. What good is this project doing the world? Like, really. We’re interested.

Stipulations:

  • Grant money will not be delivered to recipients. Instead, travel expenses up to $2,500 will be paid directly by Book Architecture. Approved expenses include transportation, lodging, and meals. Requests for equipment upgrades will be considered as part of a getaway package. Wine-in-a-box you will have to get on your own.
  • Grantees will share a description of their travel/writing experience in a blog on the Book Architecture website.
  • Grantees will be required to sign a legal waiver stating that if anything happens to them while they are away it’s not our fault (duh).

Judging: Book Architecture has partnered with InkHouse to be the sole judges for this award. InkHouse is an integrated PR agency for innovative thinkers, creators and leaders who believe in the power of stories to effect positive change. We are satisfied with their judging criteria, and their decisions will be final. Book Architecture will be able to confirm that your submission was received and passed along…but that’s about it.

 

 

June 1, 2020 UPDATE:

I’m going to have to ask you to believe that the fact that the winner of the First Annual Book Architecture Git-R-Done grant is writing about a pivotal moment in the history of what became the Black Lives Matter movement AND is a nurse who has been treating people with COVID-19 six days a week for three months is a coincidence. Or fate, which is what I would go with.

(But seriously, judging was complete in later February. We just didn’t announce the winner because she’s been so busy saving lives and we wanted her to have her moment in the sun.)

Amy Wilson is writing a novel set during the MOVE bombing in 1978, when the city of Philadelphia battled what they termed a terrorist cult whose civil disobedience was aimed at exposing systemic brutality against black people. Her novel, Roof Girl, will explore the issues of family, belonging, and the power dynamics around truth. Amy plans to use the $2,500 grant stipend to travel to West Philadelphia (where the events occurred) for interviews, visit the archives at Temple University and immerse herself in the scenic detail of Philadelphia landmarks like the Franklin Institute and the Mutter Museum.

I swear it is another coincidence that she and I are both from Philly and lived there when these events transpired. We didn’t know each other, and besides, the judging was all done in a double-blind process by InkHouse PR. Speaking of InkHouse, they praised a number of contest entrants and reported the penultimate tier held many worthy candidates. I hope we will see some of you again next year.

Once, you know, people leave their house, Amy will embark on her travels and keep us updated. Go, Amy!

Perhaps Partisan Rancor Isn’t The End…

It is certainly tempting to retreat into the fear that our democratic institutions are failing us. But as wintry as these political times are, there are always signs of a spring of cooperation. And, as with most such things, they usually occur on the local level first.

In Hope for Democracy: How Citizens Can Bring Reason Back into Politics (Oxford University Press, 2020), by our clients John Gastil and Katie Knobloch, the authors introduce new tools for tamping down hyperpartisanship and placing citizens at the heart of the democratic process.

They showcase the Citizens’ Initiative Review, which convenes a demographically balanced, random sample of citizens to study statewide ballot measures. These regular ol’ citizens are the ones to ask questions of advocates, opponents, and experts and then write an analysis that distills their findings for voters.

John and Katie reveal how this process has helped voters better understand the policy issues on their ballots. In the larger context of deliberative democratic reforms, Hope for Democracy shows how citizens and public officials can work together to bring more rationality and empathy into modern politics. Are we ready for that? Will we be soon?

Remembering an afternoon spent in John’s office on the Penn State campus, where he holds a joint appointment as professor of communication arts & sciences and professor of political science, I can report that when you are around him and Katie, you can imagine a better, saner world to come.

About Book Architecture, the authors say, “A whole host of individuals have provided editorial feedback . . . most notably, Stuart Horwitz, who helped us think through the narrative arc of this book and shepherded us through the task of writing for a nonacademic audience.”

The Myth of Whiteness

One of the things we all have to face is how divided our country is. A common observation, perhaps. But when we dig into just how divided it is, and along what fault lines, the situation gets more and more disturbing. You can read about my personal experience with this topic here (Instagram) or here (Facebook).

To help clear away our collective stupor, along comes one of our clients, Christina Proenza-Coles, with a dose of reality to administer. In her book, American Founders, a 2019 Foreword INDIES finalist, Christina reminds us that whiteness is a myth that was invented to rationalize New World slavery and that obscures the seminal contributions of four centuries of men and women of African descent. Synthesizing massive amounts of scholarship, she details these people who were key protagonists in the story of American democracy: defending New World settlements, undermining slavery, and championing freedom throughout the hemisphere.

 

 

Our conventional founding narratives fail to recognize that Africans and their descendants preceded the English in the Americas by a century and arrived in numbers that far exceeded those of European migrants. African-descended people contributed to every facet of American history as explorers, conquistadors, settlers, soldiers, sailors, servants, slaves, rebels, leaders, lawyers, litigants, laborers, artisans, artists, activists, translators, teachers, doctors, nurses, inventors, investors, merchants, mathematicians, scientists, scholars, engineers, entrepreneurs, generals, cowboys, pirates, professors, politicians, priests, poets, and presidents.

In other words, multiculturalism is not politically correct; it’s historically accurate. American history and African American history are fundamentally intertwined.

About Book Architecture, Christina says, “American Founders was a labor of love, decades of research, and a lifetime of questions, but the first draft read like an encyclopedia with a somewhat ranting introduction and a rambling conclusion. Book Architecture was therapy for my book. Stuart refused to let me settle for an academic compendium of facts and continually challenged me to explain why these facts are meaningful. Because I trusted Stuart, I could answer his thoughtful prompts with honesty and finally—yes, I’m going to use the cliché—find my voice. If you don’t believe me, check out this clip of Wynton Marsalis reading from American Founders, which he selected as one of his top ten ‘compelling works on the subject of freedom.’”