Projection Is More Than an Old-Fashioned Machine

By Elaine L. Orr

I sometimes teach in a middle or high school, and I laugh to myself at how differently kids speak to a teacher in a classroom than they speak to each other.   Answering a question in class, some of them talk almost in a whisper.  You ask them to speak up and they do raise their voices, but nowhere near as loud as they could. You have only to stand in the cafeteria to realize they know how to get people to listen to them.

It may sound obvious, but part of making your voice heard is to project well. I am often in groups, at meetings or fun activities or church.  I admit to a hearing deficit, but if that were the only issue then it would be difficult to hear everyone. In fact some people come through loud and clear.

People who cannot be easily heard at all or who don't come through clearly are doing one of several things. They:

1. Speak in a conversational tone, as you would at the dinner table.

2.  Start a sentence or thought in a strong voice, but as they get to the end of their point, they drop their voice or speak quickly.

3.   Don't finish some of their sentences. It's natural for your brain to move from topic to topic. But if you're speaking to someone, you need to finish a thought.

4. Don't open their mouth as fully as they could. If you're muttering to yourself or talking to someone sitting next to you, you don't necessarily enunciate well. Part of that is rushing through sentences without fully forming the words.

5. Talk too fast. When you listen to a bunch of  kids giving presentations at school, they talk twice as fast as adults or even faster than they usually would talk to other kids. They want to be done. Adults do this too.

Some things to keep in mind would be jotting notes before you start to talk in a meeting or when talking to any group. That's when you are nervous and most likely to talk quickly or drop your voice at the end of sentences.

Put a small pebble or dried bean under your tongue and try to speak clearly. It isn't easy, and of course you have to make sure not to swallow the pebble. The speed at which you talk when something is under your tongue is probably close to the speed you should speak in many settings.

If you are told that you don't speak clearly, record yourself and play it back. Many people are surprised that they sound higher in the recording. Don't pay too much attention to that. Listen to the pacing and how each word sounds. If you don't like what you hear, watch a couple of newscasts and listen to how the announcers enunciate every word even when they are speaking in a conversational tone. That's your goal for just about anything other than a casual conversation with friends.

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Remembering their Sacrifices on Memorial Day

 By Elaine L. Orr

I often think about how an entire generation rose and sacrificed to defend freedom and save the world from fascism. My father (Miles D. Orr) and his brothers William Tom and Harold James were among the brave, but ALL of their siblings (total of nine) played important roles, as did their spouses. 

Miles was a friendly guy, but he did not have even one close friend. He loved to go to Missouri each spring and play golf with his brother and brother-in-law (Curtis Jackson) and rarely missed high school reunion weekend in Mount Vernon, MO -- held on Memorial Day weekend, if I remember correctly. He NEVER talked about his war experiences except to say things like the Red Cross had good donuts.

Not long before he died, he wanted to talk about "the War" so he spoke to one of my brothers. My brother had to swear he would not repeat what he was told because the experiences were so awful Miles did not want the rest of his family to know what he endured. My brother repeated one thing -- Miles had sworn never to have a friend again, because he watched so many friends die awful deaths. Essentially, he wouldn't bear the pain of loss if he don't get close to anyone outside of his family. 

Not long before he died in 1994 I pulled together some of his poems so he could see them in a booklet. I later published them and his letters to his sister (Marguerite Orr Harlowe) in Portrait through Poetry. Probably 20 times a year I'm thankful she saved them, and that my cousin Barbara found them and shared them after her mom died. 

Military men and women could not talk about what they did or where they were, and correspondence was censored -- appropriately. Among their topics, besides family, were books. She would send Miles books and he would share them with fellow Army Air Corps members. They'd share opinions. Books.  

I try to remember to make Portrait Through Poetry free for Memorial Day, but forgot. So, it'll be free from May 27 to 31. It's amazing that Miles could write happy poems. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004T5   

Never Forget.

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Looking for Balance or Writing Without a Muse

By Elaine L. Orr

I've been less interested in writing the last few months -- something that has never happened. I had successful cancer surgery in 2024 and serious neck surgery in early 2025, so I explained (to myself) the recuperations affected my writing drive.

To be honest with myself, medical issues are not the problem. I am in a major funk over not simply the election of Donald Trump but the people around him who want to shred democracy. Without one iota of introspection or analysis of government programs, they have slashed the ability of governments at all levels to meet the needs of citizens. I think the result will be vastly reduced services and many functions pushed to state budgets. And reduced food programs, cuts in cancer research, slashed health care, etc.

The president is not sure everyone needs due process (guaranteed by the 5th and 14th amendments), which is meant to ensure fairness and protect people from arbitrary government actions. A senior aide is talking about why it would be okay to get rid of the right of habeus corpus, which is the right of a person in custody to be brought before a judge to determine if their confinement is lawful. 

Immigration as the Focus for Denying Rights

Trump and his ilk have created an enemy (immigrants) around which they hope to gather enough anger to support their actions. It's a common action of authoritarian leaders. Who would question the need to expel violent criminals who entered the U.S. unlawfully? Almost no one.

So what's the problem? Nearly all immigrants (legal or otherwise) are looking for freedom and the chance for a better life for their families. They do the jobs Americans are unwilling to do. Have you ever seen a list of the prisons or mental health institutions that "released their criminal residents" to come to the U.S.? There's no evidence of that. Facts matter.

Multiple Congresses have tackled immigration problems (and there are many), and the 2024 legislation would have been a major step in controlling it. (President Trump didn't want it passed, as he wanted to run on the issue. Shameful. Republicans dropped support after having taken the lead on the legislation.)

Ronald Reagan tried. The Immigration Reform and Control Act he signed in 1986 authorized amnesty for 3 million people, with the proviso that U.S. companies would be penalized in the future for hiring undocumented people. President Reagan, and others, believed that if it was difficult for immigrants to work they would not come. 

The U.S. didn't limit immigration (except for health reasons) until after World War I. Immigration quotas based on nationality were made permanent in 1924 and abolished in 1965. While they don't exist now, most of the one million green cards go to relatives of U.S. citizens.

If you don't know the story of your family beyond grandparents. check out the U.S. census for their occupations and income levels. If you don't want to pay a genealogy site, go to your library; they'll have a subscription to Ancestry.com or another site. Same with the free Family Search Centers, sponsored by the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons). Some are affiliated with public libraries.

My own ancestors are all White. Most came from Ireland, none from what Mr. Trump calls the "s**thole countries. Or the African nation of Lesotho, which he maintains no one has heard of.

While one grandmother was born after her parents immigrated to the U.S., most came in the 18th and early 19th centuries. I keep wondering what ending birthright citizenship means for succeeding generations.

I Have Digressed...

I need to figure out how to balance the importance of resisting authoritarianism and cruelty with maintaining the ability to write.

In 2018 (when children were being taken from their parents) I wrote In the Shadow of Light, the fictional story of Corazon and Pico who were separated from their mother at the U.S. border.

This time, I'll revise The Art of Deliberate Distraction, nonfiction written as a panacea to constant worry. It needs to offer constructive suggestions for dealing with the overwhelming frustration and grief of the dismantling of democracy. How can people constructively distract themselves and possibly contribute to hope?

But I do need to continue to write traditional (cozy) mysteries. Besides being my bread and butter, they are their own distraction for people. They also have characters who work to make their world a better place. Good reading for the current time.

When I talk to unpublished authors, I always say they can't wait for a muse. They need to put their tailbones in chairs and work on some semblance of a schedule. Even if it's an hour a week. I need to stop waiting to feel better about the world and just write.

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