Welcome to the historic Episode 20 of Navigating the Fustercluck—a podcast full of snackable insights to help you navigate the topsy/turvy world of creativity.  My name is Wegs, like eggs with a W, joining you from Deaf Mule Studios in Dallas, we’re here to pick up on our last episode that focused on the benefits and some of the ground rules of mentorship. This time I’d like to honor some of the amazing mentors that I’ve had the good fortune to know over the years. Carl Young Back in junior high, I was a bright, but moody kid who wasn’t quite sure how to express himself. That’s when I met Carl Young. Mr. Young was my 9th grade English teacher. A true teacher. Someone whose journey fortunately overlapped with mine. Before teaching from a grammar book, Mr. Young had been teaching from the Good Book. He was a minister. Answering not only to his God, but to General George S. Patton. Yep, Mr. Young was a minister in WWII who would come to  to know as much profanity as parables and prophecies.  Sometime later, he gave up his collar and the army for kids and the blackboard jungle. Eventually, he became a principal. But he loved teaching so much that after retiring, he went back into the classroom. I’m guessing that at the time he was somewhere in his late ‘60’s or 70’s. And I was in one of his last classes. It had about 30 students and 300 books strewn about. Like me, he was a voracious reader. Sometimes, he’d give me a title or two he thought I’d enjoy. I told him that I give them back. He told me, I don’t have enough time to reread them all. You take them. The reason Mr. Young gave me books from his personal collection was he thought that I could write. I discovered this as other teachers started to compliment me on my weekly creative writing assignments as I was walking down the hallway. This confused me. Even pissed me off a little, because I was so private, read insecure, about my writing. Looking back, it should have been a compliment. Regardless, it gave me the idea that I could become a writer. And eventually I did. Starting out my advertising career as a copywriter.  Besides books, Mr. Young gave me confidence. Encouragement. A vision and direction for the future. Turned out, he was a pretty major figure in my life. Yet, it took me years to appreciate him enough to attempt to reach out. I called Lance Junior High to try to track him down. For security reasons they declined. But they connected me with a teacher who had been mentored by him when she first started out.  My fear was that she would tell me that my old mentor was dead. He was not! I was thrilled! Until she continued. Turned out that while Mr. Young was still alive, he was in the throes of dementia and wouldn’t remember me, since he couldn’t remember who he was.  I was devasted. But the young teacher was kind enough to give me the address of his wife and son. I understand that they appreciated the letter very much. Still, if only I had come to appreciate this dedicated educator who got through to me at critical point in my life. From time-to-time, it still gnaws at me. Hear ye! Hear ye! Let me tell thou about the next mentor I want to share with you, Linda McFeters. A Renaissance woman, literally. She co-owns 3 Renaissance fairs. I met “Fetes” as Linda is fondly called, back when I was in high school, and worked for her each summer during my high school and college years. I helped run 40 food & beverage booths. Back then, Renaissance Fairs were like the last bastion of a tribe often described as the last of the American Gypsies. A ragtag group of talented misfits, many living off the grid.  It was hard to attract good workers to man our kiosks when local mothers thought their kids might be kidnapped or brainwashed by these folks. That wasn’t really the case, but nonetheless, parents were protective.