William Winter and the New Mississippi

I’ll begin my book review of William Winter and the New Mississippi by Charles C. Bolton with full disclosure. My parents voted for William Winter every time he ran for office, and I would have joined them had I not lived out of the state during the years 1962 – 2001. I have several things in common with him. We had the same first grade teacher – his mother – though he was years ahead of me. Both of us graduated from Ole Miss with the privilege of sitting in Dr. James Silver’s classes. The family in which I grew up shared what William Winter called a “moderate” view of race relations in Mississippi and paralleled his own growth to the ultimate understanding that both blacks and whites were diminished by slavery and segregation. We share a love of our native state. My goal is to be as unbiased in this review as Charles Bolton is in his treatment of a difficult period in Mississippi history.  

When I requested an advance reading copy of the book, I wondered how someone could accurately portray both the travesty and the beauty of Mississippi and the challenges of being a forward-looking politician in the days of integration and the Civil Rights Movement. An extensive bibliography of primary source material including first person accounts, interviews with people who were on the scene, newspapers from the period, oral histories, and personal letters as well as interviews with William Winter himself satisfy the technical requirements for an accurate biography. The author’s feel for the honest dilemmas faced by those wanting change add a personal touch and heart to the book.

I read the book as one who knew the story already and wanted to be sure the author got it right. He did. He included the hopes and dreams of a man ahead of his time, the political necessities of compromise in order to win elections, and the occasions when William Winter’s supporters were disappointed with his compromises as he was himself. The author quotes Benjamin Muse with the Southern Regional council who was surprised as he visited the state, “A majority of educated Mississippians are silently or privately moderate on the race issue.” Mr. Muse then noted the difficulty of advocating anything less than absolute resistance to racial change. The book ends with the many honors bestowed on the former governor for his leadership, especially in the area of education. I’m thinking William Winter’s heart for this issue stemmed, at least in part, from our common first grade teacher.

As I read the book, a statement from my pastor father in one of my adult conversations with him about the need for change in Mississippi kept echoing in my head. He addressed the quandary of community leaders, as well as politicians, in their real desire to move forward. “If you are the leader, you have to be careful not to get too far ahead of the people. If they can’t see where you are going, they won’t follow and will revert instead to someone who will take them backward.” This book is well worth reading in its picture of one who has spent his life trying to balance that quandary.

Perspectives

Looking out the airplane window yesterday, I looked down on puffy white clouds reflecting sunlight and casting hand shadow puppets on the ground. I thought about the difference in perspective, depending on whether I was above or below the clouds. From the plane, there was only beauty, but I remembered days of being below the clouds. Some hot days as I weeded my flowerbeds, I welcomed the cool relief as a cloud passed across the blazing sun. Other days, the cloud was ominous, bringing fear or unrelieved sadness as Hurricane Katrina or weeks of rainy days passed over.

I thought, “There’s got to be a blog in here somewhere.” I took out my camera and got a grainy picture. I did not know the occasion to use it would come so soon.

This morning’s email brought news that a friend and her family are with her mother as she makes the passage from this life to the next. This will be the second friend who has lost her mother in recent days. In my own family, I have lost a brother-in-law and sister-in-law this summer. All of these, on this side of the cloud, fought health issues valiantly and clung tenaciously to life far past their allotted threescore years and ten. In their lives, they experienced both sunshine and dark clouds. Paradoxically, even while fighting for life, they have looked in faith to the beauty on the other side.

When my father died, my principal in both sympathy and wisdom said, “Death is a part of life.” Its cloud comes to us all.

For all those who mourn the passage of these and other loved ones, my hope would be that in their own lives they will find consolation in remembered words of love and wisdom that cast a welcomed shadow in their own cloudy days of despair, a shade in the heat of their battles, and that they will  find comfort in the knowledge that those who have gone before have a new perspective from the other side that sees only the beauty. 

Music - Cradle to Grave

“The Power of Music” headlined an article for the March 2013 edition of AARP Magazine. Having experienced some of that power in many instances in my life, including a dark-haired young man who could make a piano talk that I met when I was sixteen, I put the article into my blog possibilities folder. (Just in case you were wondering, the dark-haired young man is no longer young and the little hair that’s left is gray, but he can still make a piano talk!) The article lists many uses for the relatively new field of music therapy, including Parkinson’s disease, depression, strokes, and many others. I began to contemplate music, not just for health crises, but as a lifelong necessity.  

Yearning for music is there from life’s beginnings. I’ve always known the Butler babies – children and grandchildren – had a serious problem when singing failed to soothe their crying. When our first was about eighteen months old, one long night of croup had him leaning against my shoulder and listening between coughing spells as I walked and sang. Finally, his quiet indicated he had dropped off to sleep. I stopped singing. He didn’t open his eyes, but dragged his finger across my lips down to my chin. I got his message, and “Rock-a-bye, Baby” began again.

In time, lullabies are outgrown and teenagers pick up music that leaves older generations mumbling about “that awful noise.”  With our children, it also included piano lessons x 3, a trumpet, a flute, a cello, and after school small group sessions practicing for choir competitions. In the grandchildren generation, a favorite picture has a Maryland and an Arizona cousin bonding with shared music, one ear bud apiece. 

I won’t get into adulthood wars over church music that bring out some unsaintly attitudes. I certainly won’t point at people who choose a church based on its variety of music because four fingers would be pointing back at me!

It was the listing of Alzheimer’s Disease in the AARP Magazine article that struck a responsive chord with me. [Yes, I meant the pun. I’m Daddy’s daughter.] Long after the disease had robbed Mama of her ability to read or spell or call our names, she remembered the words to the old hymns. In the laugh-so-you-don’t-cry department, my sisters and I smiled at her insistence on holding the hymnbook for the blind lady who sat next to her when groups came to sing at the home where she lived. She didn’t need the book. She knew the words by heart.

A more recent article in USA Today about Glen Campbell’s battle with Alzheimer’s quotes his wife “. . . music is so deeply ingrained in your brain. One music therapist said it works every part of your brain at once. That’s the reason it’s the last thing you lose.”

Bruce Springsteen has been quoted as saying, “The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.” As I think of more than one friend who has sung a loved one from this life into the next, I would add, “from the cradle to the grave.”

Anniversary Cotton

A second anniversary traditionally calls for cotton, the modern list for china. Being a traditionalist, I wondered how to incorporate cotton into my two year celebration of this “Readin’, Ritin’, and Not Much ‘Rithmatic” blog. Sleeping on cotton sheets is normal, not a celebration. Making a cotton ball craft was singularly unappealing. Picking cotton is a lost art and one I never mastered, but it brought me a good idea. I would reread Cotton in My Sack, my favorite Lois Lenski book, though not the one that won the Newbery Award. That was Strawberry Girl.

The next trick was to find it. I knew I once had a copy, but it was not to be found. An “oldie but goodie,” the book has been worn out and not replaced in most libraries. I could have read it in the reading room of the de Grummond Collection but not checked it out. I had a visit planned to visit my Marshall Texas library director daughter. She found it by interlibrary loan to read while we were there. I loved it once again. Wouldn’t you know, when I got home, I found my old worn copy! Don’t tell Anna.

Children in Arkansas who’d read Strawberry Girl invited Lois Lenski to come see them and write a cotton story. She visited in the spring of 1947 with a longer visit in the fall. She experienced the life and language of sharecroppers, tenants, and owners. I grew up with my father as pastor in North Mississippi mirror-image cotton communities across the river. Her story took me home to a life long gone, told through the eyes of Joanda, the sharecropper’s daughter.

I knew reliance on unreliable weather, echoed in Mrs. Burgess’s complaint about rain that wouldn’t come when needed in the summer and then came in a flood when they needed to pick the cotton. I remembered my grandfather’s promising cotton crop ruined as an afternoon’s hailstorm stripped its leaves, too late to replant.

I knew their split session of school starting in early July, getting out when the cotton was ready to pick in September, and resuming when the crop was in. I knew those children who needed to help harvest the family crop with bragging rights about their 100 – 200 pound a day picking rate.

I knew the people: those who went to town every Saturday and spent what little money they had without worrying about February when the old “furnish” money played out and the new had not started; the men, overwhelmed with lack of hope they’d ever get out of debt, drinking up their bit of money to forget for a while; proud people who resisted what they saw as a handout even when their children lacked adequate food and clothes.

I found Joanda’s discovery of their landowner’s wife in tears, also worried about crop failures and debt, to be the most poignant scene in the book. Later, as she listens to women in conversation, she realizes “Cotton was their whole life. Cotton brought them joy and sorrow, hope and despair.”

Lois Lenski has fourteen regional books. She went to the places, lived among the people, learned their hope and fears as well as their language. The books are worth looking for. Your local librarian can help you find one from a place where you live or a place you would like to learn about – even if she (he) is not related to you. Or if you want to own it, an independent bookstore owner like mine can track down a used copy at less than collector prices. Which reminds me - I need to call him today for a different out-of-print “oldie” for a new grandchild.

Serafina's Promise

Serafina makes several promises besides the one that becomes the underlying premise of this story.  Serafina’s Promise by Ann E. Burg, which I read in an advance reading copy, goes on sale September 24. Serafina, growing up in Haiti finds her hopes dashed repeatedly by poverty, illness, a flood, and an earthquake. Simple promises, to do all her chores and never to forget a friend from whom she is separated, mingle with more serious promises to God. These always include never complaining again if she can find a way to go to school or if her brother is healed. Her promises reflect strong family ties as she vows to honor Grandpe’ and his belief that education is the road to freedom and to always be truthful if her papa is rescued after being trapped in the earthquake. The driving force in the title’s primary promise to go to school and become a doctor seems the most unlikely promise of all to keep considering Serafina’s circumstances, yet somehow the most expected to come true.

Ann’s lyrical style begs for some form of reading aloud. I’ll give my preferences in order with the best first.

1. With a class of school children, put up a map of Haiti. Talk BRIEFLY about its history and environmental challenges. Read the book aloud over several days with time for children to speculate on the probabilities of Serafina’s dreams. (If you don’t have a class, schools sometimes let reliable volunteers come in for good activities like this.)

2. With one or a few children (relatives or friends), at your home or theirs, follow the same procedure. This is less favorable only because fewer children get to share the experience.

3. If neither of these are possible, do what I did. Find a place alone (so nobody will think you need to be committed) and read it aloud to yourself. The sounds of the words add much to the beauty of the story.

A few samples prove my point:
      “Which is better, to tell the truth and die, or to give the bad people what they want and live?”
      “When you read, you discover . . . when you write, you remember.”
      “A child who doesn’t sleep at night is a crocodile in the morning.” (I can vouch for this one.)
      After seeing her father’s boss’s garage, “I’ll never build a house for my car. People need houses more than cars do.”

I think I can be safe in making my own promise. You will not be disappointed no matter which way you decide to read this book.

Seeing Red

What’s a boy to do when he’s faced with his father’s death, a depressed mother, a little brother reverting to a whiny babyhood, and a “For Sale” sign in the front yard? In Kathryn Erskine’s newest novel (Seeing Red – on sale September 23rd), Red travels several routes to solve the quandary of how to avoid leaving the home he has always known. It’s his central issue until he gains a growing consciousness that he's not the only person dealing with life’s injustice.

Red has a hard time reconciling his antagonism to Darrell, the neighbor boy who seems headed straight toward delinquency, with his sympathy at the beatings the boy gets from his father. That’s even before he finds out about the long ago shady land deal that puts property lines of both of their families into question.

As he and Beau work together, he remembers his father’s words that Beau is “not retarded, just on a different track from the rest of us and sometimes way ahead.” Other people treat Beau differently, but Red sees the wisdom of his father’s statement as he slowly tunes in to Beau’s view of the world. When Red sees prejudice against Thomas and Miss Georgia and protests about rocks thrown through her window because she is black, Beau corrects him. Beau says people don’t come in black. They come in “dark brown, medium brown, light brown, lighter brown, darkish tan . . . ”

Unreliable advice threatens to undo what Red himself stands for as he toys with a Ouija board and edges into Darrell’s crowd. A few potholes in his journey help him figure out which voices he needs to trust:
•    His own to his brother, scolding him for stealing cokes: You make a crime even worse when you try to cover it up.
•    Miss Georgia’s: You’re not the one to run away from things.
•    Miss Miller’s: The truth will set you free.
•    Thomas’s: How much choice have we got?
•    His dead father’s, still ringing in his mind: I hear you, Son.
•    And perhaps the most important, also from his dad: I can count on you, Son.

I hope readers continue all the way to the end of the Author’s Note after finishing the book for a powerful message. Just in case and without spoiling a wonderful story, I’ll tell you what she says, “Finally, Red Porter is our future. He is modeled after you.”

Kathy Erskine, winner of the National Book Award for Mockingbird, has written another gripping novel in Seeing Red. 

Taunted by Technology

Taking the stress level caused by updated technology into account, I try to limit how many new things I tackle at once. Having figured out the essentials to my Kindle, I edged into the modern world by taking my friend’s advice and trading my dumb phone for an iPhone. [Advice is a polite term for her form of insistence, but I could see she was probably right.] Then my plan went haywire. Before I could figure out the phone, my TV went on the blink, and my computer began to decide which days it wanted to work and which days it didn’t. I found myself on overload and almost ready to return to the days of reading a good book by candlelight.

Progress report:

•    The Kindle and I are getting along fine. Nicely loaded with books, some of them ARCS (advance reading copies from publishers), a long trip’s reading stash will fit into my purse. I still prefer books printed on paper with page numbers at the bottom, but the Kindle is like a good friend to hang with when my best friend is unavailable.

•    The iPhone and I are still getting acquainted. My sources say this could go on for a long time. I went to the training session offered for new iPhone users and found everybody there had gray hair or none at all. I’m liking the map system that tells me step-by-step how to get to my destination, and I love being able to get my email and Facebook messages from anywhere. I think in time, the iPhone and I will be really good friends.

•    It took two trips for Comcast to get my TV straightened out. I think there were some dire threats pronounced on it by the last technician, but it is currently doing fine. The college football games and NCIS come in clearly. I loved the rout of Texas by the Ole Miss Rebels – beautiful picture, wonderful sound!

•    As for the computer, we are still contentious. I had it worked on by a local computer repair place. It no longer freezes every time I click on a link, but it’s still slow and temperamental. My son-in-law, AKA He-Who-Knows-All-Things-About-Computers, says it has aged and probably needs to be replaced. Old? I have grandchildren, friends, kitchen appliances, and shoes older than the computer, and they are still working fine. He also said to wait a while before replacing it until they make ease of use adjustments to the new Windows 8. He didn’t say “for people like you who are computer dummies,” but I got the picture.

I find myself unable to return to good books by candlelight. I’d miss immediate communication with my friends and family, the place to store and rework every version of my writings, posting my blog, the start of the new NCIS season, watching for the Ole Miss Rebels to take this 3 – 0 start, the first since 1989, to the next level . . .

I know way more than I want to know about technology and way less than I need to, but I think it’s here to stay. I’ll just count to ten – or more – when I need to deal with the taunting.

Get Carded!

I’m thinking this might be considered a matched set with Monday’s blog about National Literacy Day. The American Library Association has designated September as Library Card Sign-up Month. They remind parents and children that a library card is the most important school supply of all. They didn’t mention it in the publicity, but it stays important when school days are far behind.

Getting a library card was a sign of achievement to our three when they were kids. We regularly visited our well-stocked post library at Fort Sam Houston, TX. They checked out whatever they wanted on my card until they reached that important milestone of learning to read. When they could read a book by themselves, we made an event for them to get their own personal card. Repeating all the words they had memorized on the page did not count, although that is an important step in learning to read. We wanted to mark reading as an accomplishment and a personal library card as an achievement.  

This did get Anna in a bit of trouble one day as she stood in line with her card. She had not learned to read silently, and the checkout line was longer than her patience. She opened her book and began to read. A hefty man in front of her turned around and asked me indignantly, “How old is she, anyway?” as though someone that small had no right to be reading. I told him she was four. He said, “Hmmm,” and went back to waiting his turn. Little did I know that her future held a job as director of the Marshall Public Library, a bit north of Fort Sam Houston. I’m thinking she’s handing out some library cards of her own this September.

I treasure both of my library cards – the community one at Oak Grove Public Library and the one at Cook Library at the University of Southern Mississippi – one on my keychain, the other in my billfold pocket with my credit card and driver’s license. Where I go, they go. If I can’t get a book at one, I try the other. If neither has the book I want, librarians are cheerful about finding it on an Interlibrary Loan.

Sometimes my librarians honor a request for the library collection. There was the time I read a review of a first book by an unknown author that sounded intriguing. I asked our community librarian to order it for our library and let me read it first. She did. I enjoyed the book, and it caught on in our library as well as others. You may have heard of it. It is called The Help. 

So if you don’t have a library card, make haste and get one. Oh, go ahead. Get two!

Loving Literacy

Perhaps my overanxious Mother jumped the gun worrying about her illiterate five-year-old when she taught me to read before I went to school. September 9 is National Literacy Day. Most of the time, I take literacy for granted. I forget to be grateful for Mama and the teachers who built on her foundation, teaching me to appreciate the beauty of words well placed, to seek deeper meanings below the surface language, and to analyze the validity of the opinions expressed in writing.

On my recent trip to England, inability to read and write was one of the continuing themes as we visited cathedrals. An intricate clock at Salisbury Cathedral held no meaning to us since there was not a face with numbers. The mechanical operation activated a bell to mark the time.  The guide explained that the chimes told time since the vast majority of the people could not have read the numbers. As time-obsessive as I am, I couldn’t imagine not knowing how many more minutes were left before the hour.

The front of the Wells Cathedral is about twice as wide as it is high. The entire story of the Bible is told in the statuary carved into the facade. In the days when it was built, the parishioners could not read or write. This gave them a way to know the Bible stories.

On this National Literacy Day, I am celebrating by paying attention to some of the things I read for which I am indebted to Mama and good teachers.

•    Morning quiet time readings to start my day
•    The newspaper – news, comics, football scores
•    Recipe for a new dish for supper
•    Directions and warnings on the medicine bottle
•    My “To-Do” list
•    Facebook entries
•    Instructions on the new iPhone [not fun, but I am glad I can read them]
•    Map directions
•    Clever thank-you notes from a sixteen-year-old granddaughter and a fifteen-year-old grandson
•    A book or magazine to close the day and bring on drowsiness – much better than a sleeping pill

I invite you to celebrate with me by making a list of your own. You may start with this blog if you like. ~:o)

The Professor and the Madman

A friend ignored the height of my stack of books awaiting reading time and the length of my “Books to Read” list. His rave review brought me to The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester. I would have to squeeze it between books that had finishing deadlines. The book was originally published in England in 1998 as The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness, and the Love of Words. While both titles are accurate, I think the American title is more fitting.

Two parallel stories chase each other through the book. The first lies with the madman, Dr. W. C. Minor, beginning with his committing of a murder and continuing with his consequent lifelong commitment to a mental institution for an “innocent by reason of insanity” conviction. Making the crime even more grievous, the murdered man left behind seven children and a pregnant wife, The second story is the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) headed by the professor, Dr. James Murray. As brilliant as he was crazy, Dr. Minor became a major contributor to the dictionary quotations illustrating the words in the its volumes.  

Weirdness abounded in the special treatment Dr. Minor received in his institutional confinement, in the long period of years in which he and Dr. Murray corresponded on a regular basis without any suspicion on the professor’s part of the insanity, and in the amazing way that Dr. Minor’s delusions and intellect traveled a parallel upward path.  

Each chapter begins with a definition from the OED of a word that presages the part of the story to come. I quickly began to project what the word would foreshadow. Sometimes I was right!I promised “Not much ‘Rithmetic” in this blog, but this entry calls for some OED numbers.

•    70 years almost to the day from beginning to end to make “the big dictionary”

•    12 volumes

•    227,779,589 letters and numbers, not counting spaces and punctuation

•    178 miles – total length of hand-set type

•    414,825 words defined

•    1,827,306 illustrative quotations

•    Scores of thousands of quotations provided by madman William Minor.

Along with weirdness came fascination. I would be hard pressed to tell if the story of the dictionary or the story of the people who formed it was the most interesting. I can tell you, even if your stack of books and to-read list matches mine, it will be worth it to squeeze in The Professor and the Madman.  

September Song

I’ll admit to taking the words out of context and forming a meaning of my own. I’ve always loved one small section of the lyrics and all of the music of “September Song.” I think it’s because this is my favorite month of the year, the beginning of my favorite season. Mama and I disagreed about this. She liked the promise of spring and thought autumn contained foreboding of winter months ahead.

I’ve tried to figure this out from time to time. I share her sense of foreboding. I love minor music, poignant stories, and the melancholy of the season in spite of my permanently half-full glass. Go figure. Maybe it doesn’t have to be explained. The words I like in the song have a wistful feel.
      “But it's a long, long while from May to December
       And the days grow short when you reach September.”

My welcome to September includes:

•    Wonderful cool weather, or in South Mississippi at least it’s promise in cooler mornings
I’ve always been warmer than anyone in the room. I love cool. You can ask my friend Jane Allison who is cold-natured and never comfortable in the same place that I am.

•    A few weeknights and all day Saturday SEC football with exciting endings
I anticipate games like Friday night’s double change of the lead in the last two minutes of the Ole Miss – Vanderbilt game. Showing my bias, I am talking here about real SEC teams. If you look at a map, you can see that Texas is not in the Southeast. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

•    Anticipation of fall flowers
As I eat supper, I watch goldenrod swaying in the breeze on the back of our lot, laden with flower buds just ready to pop open. The front bed holds Mama’s old fashioned mums mingled with my sister Gwyn’s asters crowding each other for room, weighed down with coming blossoms that will lean across the flowerbed border into the yard.  They will all be in full bloom before the month is over.

•    Bountiful butterflies
Tiny nondescript ones I cannot name, common yellow sulphurs, orange viceroys, and elegant emperors have found my yard by this time of year and fill it with flights of fancy.

•    An order of firewood

There will be a wait to use it, but traditionally my husband orders firewood for my birthday present – another clue that I’m not exactly “normal” since I prefer this to flowers, perfume, or even chocolates. [Adding another number with the birthday is not the plus it used to be, except that I am grateful for another good year.] The present is a precursor to winter days when I read a good book, sip a cup of hot chocolate, and get up occasionally to stir the fire – a joy in life I inherited from my grandfather.

Summer, with its heat, is not my favorite season. It has indeed been a long while from May to September. 

                                                            

Esperanza Rising

Seldom is a book this much fun before the story even starts. Pam Munoz Ryan dedicates Esperanza Rising to the memory of her abuelita (grandmother) who is the inspiration for this novel. Her acknowledgements, like her chapter headings, reflect the life of seasonal workers in California: baskets of grapes to her editor for patiently waiting for fruit to fall; roses to four friends for sharing their stories; and smooth stones and yarn dolls to four experts for their expertise and assistance.

That’s not all. She gives two Mexican proverbs that will form a theme for her book. She gives them in both Spanish and English. “He who falls today may rise tomorrow,” and “The rich person is richer when he becomes poor, than the poor person when he becomes rich.” I found the first quite easy to absorb. I understood the second more clearly after reading her book.

Esperanza, early in the story, loses her position as wealthy landowner’s daughter in Mexico when her father dies and his property is taken over by his stepbrothers. With her life and her mother’s in danger, their servants help them escape to California to join the servants’ extended family in the life of crop workers. The metaphor for their new life is the crocheted afghan with its hills and valleys begun with her abuelita before she leaves Mexico.      

The time parallels The Grapes of Wrath and includes the conflict between those who want to go on strike for better wages and conditions and those who are loyal to the company, grateful just to have jobs. Both groups fear the Okies who are willing to work for even less money making it hard for the other workers to make demands for better pay. Repeatedly, Esperanza is called on to have empathy for all these, even those with whom she does not agree, because in their own way they are looking for a way to feed their families.

I think I’ll not spoil the ending when I reveal her last words to her younger friend Isabel who is learning to crochet as she unravels her uneven stitches, “Do not ever be afraid to start over,” or to say that the engaging tale leads to understanding of the second proverb at the book’s beginning.

The story also remains intriguing after it ends. The “Author’s Note” tells about the real Esperanza and how her descendants have left the valleys and reached for the hills. She closes her note with, “It is no wonder that in Spanish, the word esperanza means “hope.” This is a great read for the young people for whom it was written, but why let them have all the fun?

                                                                            ~~~

This was the August selection for the de Grummond Book Group that meets on the third Thursday of each month at 11:30 AM in the de Grummond exhibit room at Cook Library on the University of Southern Mississippi campus. If you are in Hattiesburg, join us for a September discussion of Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer. If not, try starting a YA/Children’s book discussion of your own. It’s great fun!

FootBall and FatherBonding

My friend, new dad Adam Rigney, posted this picture on August 9 anticipating the start of football season. He titled it "Game Day Partner." Notice the “I watch ESPN with my Daddy” on his daughter Ellee’s outfit. She has some good times ahead. I know.

With slight variations, I relate to Ellee. I was about twelve years old (instead of weeks) when I began tuning in on Saturday afternoons on radio (instead of TV) with my father to hear the Ole Miss Rebels' games. This was long before I had any idea that I would graduate there or that I would have a brother-in-law who would be the university’s Alumni Director for many years. We lived ten miles north of Oxford and the Ole Miss campus, and the fever was contagious.

Daddy taught me to follow the game, and I cheered the Rebels on through thick and thin. He was a bit more wishy-washy and would switch to cheering for Mississippi State bulldogs if they had a better chance at a championship or bowl game. He did want the name “Mississippi” in the winner’s circle.

Under Daddy’s tutelage, I became one of those people who divide life’s cycles into "Football Season" and "The Rest of the Year." A husband, two sons, and a daughter share my mania, though not always to the same degree. When the kids were younger and we lived at Fort Sam Houston, TX, the kids were enjoying a sunny fall afternoon in the back yard with their dad. Our neighbor, who could hear the football game through the open window, called over and asked, “Who’s watching the ball game?” They chorused, “Mom,” without a thought that it might be strange to have a mother obsessed with the game.

After investing most of my paycheck for eight years in Baylor University as two sons got back-to-back degrees, I added an allegiance to green and gold. This has come in handy through lean years for Ole Miss since I still watch – come honor or humiliation. At one really low point, I muted the TV to watch the Rebels get soundly trounced in their game while holding my laptop with the sound turned up to simultaneously watch Baylor triumph in theirs. Talk about mixed feelings!

The time is upon us. I can see Football Season from here. Thursday night will bring memories, as the beginning of the season always does, of good times with Daddy through losses, near misses, and especially the good wins. I will also be thinking about Ellee and wishing for her many years of watching football with her dad, forming the kind of bond that will bring good memories when these days are far behind her.

Hotty Toddy!

Sic ’em, Bears!

Oops!

Looking ahead to a tour of English cathedrals with Canterbury on the list, I assumed the thing to do was to read The Canterbury Tales again. I was only partly right. First of all, the tales were far more “R” rated than I remembered. My sister Beth agreed with me and confessed that she gave up before she finished. We think we’d been given sanitized versions when we were younger, but we were glad we’d reviewed the stories when we went through the three-dimensional interpretation of the tales. Beth’s guidebook said these were a light-hearted introduction for the young or uninitiated. We classified ourselves as the former.

What I should have done was to also read a good account of Thomas Becket since his story turned up in some form at every cathedral, including various memorials and faintly disguised jabs at Henry VIII for destroying the shrines to him. His story was a turning point for the religious and political history of England. I was fairly sure my memory had a touch of color to go with his saintliness as portrayed by the cathedral guides. I wound up wishing I’d read a good biography. However, I can remedy this failure. After my return, a friend recommended a few books that will fill me in on the real Thomas Becket – T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral; Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, and Rebel by Thomas Guy; and Thomas Becket by Frank Barlow.

That wasn’t all I added to my book list. We had the wonderful opportunity of visiting the archives while we were in the Canterbury Cathedral. They let us know this was a rare privilege for a tour group. One of the volunteers who caught on that I loved these old pieces of history, said, “Let me give you the name of some books you can read that are set in this period.”

When she realized my American spelling was not going to get me the author, she said, “Let me write that down for you.” She wrote down Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel and Dissolution by C. J. Sansom.

[I’m sure Beth would want me to tell that as she was dragging me out, I said I was going to get me a t-shirt that says “I love archives.” She retorted, “You are an archive.”]

As if I didn’t already have stacks of unread books, a list of “books to read,” and a Kindle stocked and ready! There is no end. “No end” brings me to the words of the wise teacher of Ecclesiastes – and not just because our pastor is currently preaching from the book. “And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” Ecclesiastes 12:12 – (from the King James Version in honor of this English journey)

I have two conclusions. (1) Common wisdom says one must be a reader to be a writer so I can claim that I am working as I read all these books. (2) Weariness of the flesh brought on by much study leads to a good night’s rest. Bring on the books!

You Haven't Read Temple Grandin?

Our de Grummond Book Club (for adults reading children’s and young adult books) was in the midst of a spirited discussion of Kathryn Erskine’s Mockingbird when someone mentioned Temple Grandin.  I asked, “Who is Temple Grandin?” and got a shocked chorus of “You haven’t read Temple Grandin?” [Book lovers can be that way sometimes.]

I remedied my problem with a Sunday afternoon read of The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin and Richard Panek. Writing from the perspective of a high-functioning person with autism, she clearly identifies herself primarily as an expert on livestock, a professor, a scientist, a consultant and secondarily as a person with autism.

My first encounter with the autism spectrum was a very thick file folder given to me by the junior high counselor filled with articles on Asperger’s Syndrome in preparation for a student I will call Joey. He would be in my class of eighth grade gifted students. Temple confirms in her book that children in the autism spectrum commonly qualify as gifted. Joey fascinated me with the things he did well and his lack of social skills. I have remained interested in the mental and social workings of those who fit this description.

Temple sets the tone for her book early. “If all genetic brain disorders were eliminated, people might be happier, but there would be a terrible price.” As a reader, I asked myself, “What price?”

Temple’s conversational manner makes her scholarly exploration readable and folksy to non-experts. She describes her sense of balance as “lousy,” Rather than go into a long string of statistical data, she says, “You can look it up if you’re interested.” She compares current knowledge of autism to cleaning out a closet when the mess looks greater than at the beginning but with a sense that progress is being made.

Gradually, Temple unfolds the answer to the price question, balancing throughout the book the idea of honoring the strengths of the person with autism while addressing the weaknesses. She calls for making necessary adjustments for those who are autistic but holding them accountable for reaching their own possibilities. Opening her last layer, she discusses three major areas of exceptionality among autistic people, citing those who are picture thinkers, pattern thinkers, and word-fact thinkers, and their contributions to society. What a great loss – or price – if we turned them into “normal” people!    

My mind returned to Joey as I came to her conclusion. Joey and I had some challenging moments, but I wish I had a video to show you the eighth grade end-of-year awards ceremony. The principal asked me to present the award from an area-wide writing competition where I had submitted student work. I would be hard put to tell whether Joey’s or his classmates’ faces showed the greatest surprise as I called his name for winning second place. I saw him in Temple’s portrayal of word-fact thinkers. He was an excellent writer.

If you have an interest in the autism spectrum as a parent, teacher, friend, or fellow human being, I recommend this book and other Temple Grandin writings.

Skip to My Loo?

On our adult group tour of English cathedrals, the question was not, “Are we there yet?” but “How long to the next loo?” [This was probably our most efficient exchange of American to English vocabulary since the three letters of “loo” come in at 37.5% of the eight in “rest room.”]

An experienced tour guide, Sarah frequently forestalled the question by giving the answer before the question could be asked. Equally opposed to American chains like McDonalds and Starbucks and the English Harrods, she planned visits to public facilities in quaint villages recognized by some of the tour members from tourist brochures and to British rest stops with multiple businesses. [We were a bit amused that about half the shops in the rest stops were imported American fast food chains.]

At one point, a very bad joke came from the back of the bus in response to her forewarning of an  upcoming stop. “Is this where we get the song ‘Skip to My Loo’?” I’ll refrain from calling the jokester’s name.

I must say that the English have made no more progress than their American cousins on one issue. Neither seems to know there should be twice as many facilities for women as for men. I think the first architect to figure that out in designing a building is going to make a mint of money.

We saw seven cathedrals, and I would be hard put to choose my favorite, but I do know my favorite loo. On the last day in Oxford, we came to the one in my picture. Not only was the loo clean and up-to-date, it fed two of my passions. I couldn’t help but wonder who had the ingenious idea of putting fresh flowers and a book exchange in a public bathroom. It’s an idea I hope will catch on.

First Day of School

 It’s become difficult to tell when to post this blog. My Arizona grandson’s year-round schedule started back in July. Buses rolled in Hattiesburg last week. My Texas and Maryland grands start closer to traditional post-Labor Day, waiting until the last week of August. I found the first day of school exciting both as a student and as a teacher. I compromise on the date and offer this tribute to its importance, slightly skewed to early elementary where I spent most of my teaching career.

The teacher waited for the sound of the bell, prepared and ready for the first day of school with nametags on desks, bulletin boards completed in an attractive educational manner, and storage cubbies for each child. The principal had insisted that no child could be admitted until that first bell rang.
    One gong and the mayhem that followed made a fire alarm in a crowded movie theater look tame. Parents who had walked in with their children on this first day tried to engage the teacher in conversation to explain specific needs for their little darlings. One small boy wept silently, and a little girl wailed. Another child pulled on the teacher’s shirttail from behind, persistently saying, “I have a note from my mother.”
    An outsider watching would have been awed to watch the teacher. She graciously promised to set up appointments with the overanxious parents before sending them quickly on their way, comforted that she would take care of their Roberts and Rebeccas. She turned to calm the crying children by showing them their special place in school with their own names on their desks. She explained to the shirt-puller that many children had notes from their parents, and she would read them carefully at a special time for collecting notes from home.
    As she challenged the children to find their desks with their names and put their supplies away, theJackson is ready! teacher collected notes and lunch money. Quiet and organization soon replaced chaos as children became busy with the activity the teacher had previously laid out on their desks. The teacher read the parent notes, took the lunch count, and completed other administrative tasks quickly. She called the roll asking children to tell her if they were used to being called by a name other than the official one she had been given and promising adjustments to the ones on their desks if they were needed.
    Business behind, she stood and said, “Welcome to a wonderful year in school.”
    
Chalk one up for a competent teacher. [The teacher could also be a “he” – a possibility I would like to see happen more often.]

My wishes for teachers this year include students eager to learn, parents who reinforce their high standards, and administrators who support their good teaching practices.

My wishes for students are teachers who see them as individuals, who creatively figure out how to meet curriculum demands of the system but focus on making the classroom an exciting place to learn, and who bring a contagious love of real books with them – and I’m not just talking about reading and literature teachers.

I will leave unsaid what I wish for politicians who know little about education and still insist on making the rules.

A Pair for a Pair

One thing leads to another – even in birthday gifts. This trail started when I bought A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty by Carolyn J. Brown at an author signing at an SCBWI conference for my two granddaughters who are turning sixteen this summer. Naturally, I wanted them to know Mississippi’s premier woman author. Carolyn’s title is taken from Eudora’s own quote in One Writer's Beginnings, “I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”

In a short version of Eudora’s life at 144 pages, Carolyn gives a snapshot gleaned from Eudora’s own writings, other biographers, conversations with people who knew her, and other research. I enjoyed the nice overview of Eudora’s life and work as I pursued my habit of pre-reading the books I give my grandchildren for presents. About halfway through, it occurred to me that one can read biography and wonder what the subject would have to say if he/she was telling the story. In this case, that is possible. It came to me that the girls needed One Writer’s Beginnings as a companion book, also a short read at 114 pages.

The two books make a nice pair even for people who are not turning sixteen this summer. Each book provides something not found in the other. Eudora’s book, an inside view, gives her candid personal take on living and writing along with the feelings she had as life brought joys and sorrows. The reader gets a sense of sitting in her presence in an amiable chat session. Copyrighted in 1983, it leaves almost two decades of the end of her life uncovered.

Carolyn’s book, an outside view, uses some quotes from this book as well as Eudora’s other writings, adds views of people who knew her well, and covers the rest of her life. The two books make a nice duo. The only thing lacking is getting the two granddaughters here for a tour of the Welty home, restored as though Eudora had just stepped out for an afternoon walk. [www.mdah.state.ms.us/welty]

Afterword:
One of the granddaughters in her thank you note for the books thanked both her grandfather and me for the present, but added in parenthesis “I have a feeling that one of you had a bigger hand in getting it than the other.” I do love this girl and her sense of humor!

I'm Back!

When I was a kid and came in with my title’s announcement, somebody inevitably said, “Thanks for the warning.” Usually, it was Beth. Five planes, two trains, and seven English cathedrals since my last blog called “What She Said” that anticipated traveling with her, I can report that nobody had to separate us to keep us from fighting. Some interesting things did occur on the trip about our sisterhood – at least to us.

One of my friends had responded to that previous blog by saying people would think we were twins. Since that had never happened, I just gave it a smile. The first day of our trip our breakfast server asked, “Are you twins?” It would happen twice again during the trip. What I liked even better was learning at the end of the trip that our traveling companions had been guessing among themselves which of us was older.

This trip had a nice balance of group activities and free time, which could have led to one of those old-time disagreements, but we agreed on what we wanted to do with those spare hours. I’ve always been a nerd and am now proud of it. Beth has left behind her tomboy years and classifies herself as a “semi-nerd” so she gladly joined me to find our way on the tube to things like the Charles Dickens House. Our only disagreement involved whether the chatty young woman who entertained us as we went through customs in London was traveling with her brother or boyfriend. (I still contend it was her brother.)

Customs officials had evidently been alerted about the Menacing McGee Sisters as we traveled through Heathrow on our way home. I went through one lane with Beth in the next. She smiled as the security guard gave me an English pat down that puts the American ones to shame. By the time I was finished, her carryon had come through. They pulled it aside to check. She had to wait until they scanned a gazillion bottles in the bag of the guy in front of her. He who laughs last . . .

In the end, all the classy cathedrals could not compare to the sight of the humble home on Greenwood Drive as we drove in last night. Great trip, good memories, and glad to be home!

I am back and will return to my usual Monday and Friday posts with tidbits for new blogs. Consider yourself warned.    

What She Said

Beth, ThenDoesn’t it just gall you when the words you hated to hear from your mother turn out to be true? Although neither of us had serious problems with the other two sisters, to say that Beth and I did not get along well when we were growing up would be an understatement.

When we made it to the point that our arguments had us standing on Mama’s last nerve with the four feet we had between us, she responded with cruel and inhuman punishment. She made us sit on the floor in opposite corners of the room facing each other. [Doesn’t that grin on Beth’s face look like she’s gloating?] As a crowning insult, Mama would say, “One of these days you girls are going to wish you could see each other.”

Forced to look at Beth, I read her mind from across the room because I was thinking the same thing  – “Not in this lifetime.”

To say that Mama was right was also an understatement. As adults, we’ve lived too far apart and seen each other too seldom. When either Joy or Sorrow knocks, I wish for Beth to help me answer the door.

This spring when we four McGee Girls had a rare gathering, Beth said her church choir was taking a cathedral tour of England. Her husband was not going, and she could take a companion. Would anybody like to go? I was the first to raise my hand.

I will be enjoying the cathedrals and time with Beth for the next ten days. I think she must also have “gotten over her mad” since she suggested that I come on the train a day ahead of time to avoid nerves over schedule delays and then added, “but you can come as early as you like.”

If you have taken notice of my blogging schedule, you will see this post is a day early. I’m leaving this morning on Beth, NowAmtrak to join Beth in Birmingham. I’ll be taking a break from blogging until my return. Advice when I began this blogging journey said to be consistent. Two months short of blogging for two years, I’ve blogged twice a week on Mondays and Fridays, usually early in the morning. Consistency has been my middle name. I’ve pictured an audience of friends out there as I wrote and feel connected even though, for the most part, I don’t know who is reading. I’m hoping at least a few of you will miss it. I know I will. But like MacArthur, I shall return – maybe with some new material. Look for my blog again early in August.