[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!
Melanie Faith
Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.
Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.
The Society of Professional Journalists
In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.
I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.
Maxine Greene
Philosopher and Education Scholar
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When The Impossible Has a Price
8-Track Knowing
The Remembered Object
I remember my bright yellow 8-track tape player. It was a favorite things, right up there with my poetry folder and bike and tap shoes. I would “borrow” 8-track tapes — like Joni Mitchell, Blue and Carol King, Tapestry, and The Eagles, The Eagles — from my parent’s music collection and sit for hours listening to music. How it worked: Find batteries. Turn the player on. Place an 8-track tape in it’s side. Select a track. Push the top handle. Find the right song. Listen for hours.
The Transformation
As began to listen to the music on my 8-track a miraculous thing happened. I began to know. Knowing became my superpower. Song after song. Melody after melody. Lyric after lyric. Rhythm after rhythm. Knowing moved through my body like lightening and waves. Knowing filled me with profound joy. I could touch, taste, see, and feel everything deep in my bones.
The Rule of Strangeness
I quickly learned after listening in every part of our house, in the park around the corner, riding with it in the basket of my bike, knowing was only possible when I listened to the 8-track tape player while in our basement. After collecting more and more and more 8-track tapes, experimenting with my traditional turn table record player, I determined that my 8-track tape player channeled knowing, Knowing felt deeper than just loving a particular song. It was about answers in my soul. It was about deep breath free of pain. It was about beginner’s mind before I even knew what that was. The more I listened the more I knew.
The Leap
“Now, more than 40 years later, I think, if only …” I could find 8-track knowing. If I could trust way to emerge. If I could mark my steps toward listening and paying attention. If I could conjure miracles. Today, 8-track knowing means stillness. Today, 8-track knowing means awe. Today, 8-track knowing means the as if and not yet. 8-track knowing is miraculous. Miracles are important. We must have miracles — like we must have music — to see beyond what is to what can be. Miracles of knowing are beautifully simple. Earth-shakingly, mind-bendingly, soil-rootingly simple. 8-track knowing is not limited to our childhood basements. It happens everywhere we run toward our heart’s desire. It happens everywhere we stand strong like trees heading toward the sun. It happens everywhere our still small voice whispers gently, “You are loved.”
About Katie
From Louisville. Live in Atlanta. Curious by nature. Researcher by education. Writer by practice. Grateful heart by desire.
Buy the Book!
The Stage Is On Fire, a memoir about hope and change, reasons for voyaging, and dreams burning down can be purchased on Amazon.
