Maxine Waters

I don't have them down here asking me what my urban agenda is. I don't find them really doing in-depth stories on community-based organizations that have been struggling for a long time and who are out trying to get funds. They aren't interested in those stories.

I'd worked at a small town newspaper, and I was thinking of all the strange stories that I had seen float through the newsroom in my time there that were dismissed as kind of amusing curiosities. Somehow from that I got to this idea of an eccentric alcoholic who built a lighthouse in the woods.

At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years.