Thirteen Ways of Looking

Colum McCann, in Thirteen Ways of Looking, writes four stories that seem to have little to do with each other at first glance.

In “Thirteen Ways of Looking,” the title novella, an old man deals with the degradation of aging. Once a highly respected judge, his memories meander back through his life – the romance and good times with family, the rebellious teenage daughter, and the disappointment his financially successful son has turned out to be – and that’s all before his murder has to be resolved.

“What Time Is It Now, Where Are You” follows a writer concocting a short story for a New Year’s edition of a newspaper magazine. The writer’s characters take life with their own agendas and distract him from his all-important deadline.

“Sh’Khol” kicks in seven years after Rebecca and her husband adopt a son in Vladivostok. The child has bodily scars from who knows what, is deaf, and was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. He’s a child who would be a challenge even if his parents had not divorced. Now, he has disappeared? In the lake? Kidnapped? As the community searches, Rebecca keeps repeating to those who call his name, “He can’t hear you.”

“Treaty” finds Beverly, a seventy-six year old nun, on retreat for a month or two needing rest and repose from her exhaustion working at a girls’ clinic in Houston. One night she catches a glimpse of a diplomat at a peace conference and knows him to be the man who raped and brutalized her thirty-seven years ago.

Nearing the end of the four stories that took me into the psyches of the protagonists, I found a connection of my own. Each aroused deep sympathy for troubling circumstances while harboring the hope that nothing like this ever happens to anyone I care about. They also returned me to an almost forgotten joy of reading short stories.

Cute or Cruel?

When it comes to kids, I can mount my high horse pretty quickly. I watched a reporter who shall not be named, filling her quota of “cute kid” pieces about the beginning of school with a five-year-old entering kindergartener. She knew how to pick them. The little boy with a ready grin and chubby cheeks fit the definition of cute even without being my grandchild.

The first part of the interview was fine. Yes, this was a special day. Yes, he was going to have fun at kindergarten. At this point, I was loving the interview as I pictured his parents spending the previous days helping him anticipate the wonderful new world he would find in school and his teacher preparing an exciting place to learn.

Evidently, a happy child did not create enough drama. The reporter lowered her voice into a pseudo-sympathetic tone and asked, “Will you miss your mommy?” On her cue, he cried. Satisfied with her ploy, she wrapped up the piece. I’m sorry to say that the anchors of the show also laughed and thought it was cute that she had made him cry.

With many years of receiving the happy, the scared, the unsure, the excited, the mixture of emotions with entering kindergarteners, I’m sure that his teacher spent a good bit of the morning undoing the reporter’s damage along with calming other children who began with separation anxiety and other who joined his chorus. I’m guessing the reporter didn’t know how contagious five-year-old tears can be so I’ll refrain from adding “aiding and abetting” to her crime.  

It would have served her right to have been sentenced to spend the rest of the morning calming the children, engaging them in happy learning activities, and setting the stage for them to anticipate their return the next day. However, it would not have been fair to the kindergarteners to be have been stuck with her.

If I were in charge of the world, the reporter along with the anchors whose laughter encouraged her would have sat in time-out, one minute per year of age, or gone back to the old-fashioned punishment of having to write 100 times publicly on a chalkboard, “It is never cute to make a happy child cry.”

Boxers and Saints

A graphic novel is not a comic book. If you are not sure about this statement, you can start with the works of Gene Luen Yang. I can tell now the story of two of the books purchased last spring when Gene appeared at the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival. The grandson for whom I purchased them has received them for his birthday so the secret can be told. I’m hoping he will enjoy them but they have much more to offer than just pleasure.

Boxers and Saints are two volumes set in China in 1898. A bit of online research on the basics of the Boxer Rebellion before reading would be helpful. Boxers, the first, tells the story of young Bao who joins a group of Chinese kung fu practitioners to free China from the “foreign devils” – Christian missionaries – and the “secondary devils” – Chinese who have converted to Christianity.

Saints, the second volume, follows Four-Girl, of such little significance in her own family that she has no real name. She finds identity and purpose in the most unlikely place as she joins the Christian community and receives the name Vibiana at her baptism. Her vision of Joan of Arc inspires her to become a maiden warrior. She makes difficult choices as she must choose between her newfound friends and faith and her loyalties to family and country.

Good guys and bad guys are not clear cut in the books with Boxers not always bullies and the Saints not always saintly. Since they are graphic novels, they don’t lend themselves to reading aloud to young people. Instead, they would make for great discussions in book clubs, between parents and children, or in classes with teacher and students as all participants read the book.

While I have no more against comic books than I do against taking a bit of time out from real work to play a game of solitaire, Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novels go beyond that genre, carrying a lot of history and triggering reasoning about true justice. Fun, history, and reasoning – served up in one neat package – happy birthday, Jack.

Fourth Anniversary

Choices for fourth anniversary gifts include (traditional) fruit and flowers, (modern) linen, silk, or nylon, or (alternate) appliances. On this occasion of the fourth anniversary of “Readin’, Ritin’, But Not Much ‘Rithmetic,” you can probably guess my choice if you have been reading long. Working backwards, appliances are necessary and help my life run more smoothly – at least when they are running smoothly – but they lack oomph for a blog topic. Fabrics interest me a little more since I love to sew, but in my currently chosen lifestyle, most of my life is spent in summer t-shirts or winter sweats.

So I’ll go with tradition and eat a little fruit while I concentrate on flowers. You’ve seen them fairly often if you are a regular reader. I claim Eudora Welty as my role model for alternating gardening and writing. If it was good enough for her, it’s good enough for me. A few flowers will illustrate the celebration.

The passion flower symbolizes, oddly enough, passion. My passion for writing brought me to begin blogging four years ago and continues to keep me going. Unlike much of my writing, there’s no rejection letter possibility. It’s my blog, and I can write whatever I want. If my readers roll their eyes, I’m not there to see. Some days it’s a book review I want to share, some days an issue I care about, and some days just a story that has come to mind.

Several flowers have turned up in the blog from time to time. Queen Anne’s lace stands for delicate femininity, definitely not a match for me since I’ve never known anyone to describe me as delicate. We’ll skip that one. Day lilies are for enthusiasm which fits and magnolias for dignity – not so much. The best fits are the yellow chrysanthemums for friendship and the asters for contentment. The friendly responses and the new friends who’ve added their names to my readers have brought me a great deal of contentment.

Thanks for reading whether you are a regular or a now-and-again. Year five, here I come!

Too Much Pepper?

More often not, my father and my youngest sister reached for the black pepper shaker at the family table right after grace was said. Breakfast found the rest of us a bit astounded, looking at their yellow mass of eggs covered with tiny black dots. My mother, concerned about what the quantity of pepper was doing to Daddy’s health, mentioned it to their doctor. He said, “Virginia, the salt you add to your food is doing infinitely more harm than Berton’s pepper.” So Mama got out of his business and let him and Ruth pepper their food to their hearts’ content.

You may have noticed that I sometimes make weird connections. Banned Book Week often makes me think of their black pepper. Stay with me, and I think you will see it.

My favorite read aloud book with eighth graders was Lois Lowry’s often banned The Giver. Its principal crime, as far as I can tell, is enticing readers to think. Great discussions ensued as we read the book. I read it to every eighth grade class with no adverse feedback from parents. They either trusted me, were unaware of the “danger” in the book, or wanted their students to learn to reason. I’m fairly sure it was the last. I was gratified this year to learn that one of those students, now a teacher, was planning to use The Giver with her students.

I have trouble with forbidding books. My very conservative mother, as far as I can remember, never told me not to read any book. She did suggest, as Eudora Welty’s mother did, that Elsie Dinsmore was not a very good choice. She thought Elsie was far too sanctimonious to be real. Eudora’s mother thought she was too impressionable to read it and might follow Elsie’s example by falling off the piano stool.

I have no problem with making recommendations to the children or students in your charge, depending on their maturity and ability to handle violence, strong language, or explicit scenes. An eighth grade student introduced me to Angela’s Ashes after she read it on her mother’s recommendation.  In a conversation that included my grown librarian daughter, I once said I couldn’t have imagined recommending that book to her in eighth grade because I didn’t think she would have been ready for it. Tongue in cheek, she responded, “Mom, I read it as an adult, and I wasn’t ready for it.” (I did think the student was ready and appreciated her mother for seeing it.)

Which brings me back to the pepper. When I serve a meal to guests, I may alert them if the food is a bit spicy so they can make a reasoned choice. I think it is equally considerate for reviewers to warn readers if a book may be disturbing to them. After that, I’m for following Mama’s example and backing off as they choose whether or not they want to drown their eggs in black pepper.  

In the Time of Butterflies

Strangeness pops up in this blog, first because it is in honor of National Hispanic Month which runs oddly from September 15 to October 15. To be honest, the book was read and the review written a couple of weeks before I knew the month was coming and was in my stash for when I needed a blog but time was short. My other confession is that I don’t need a special month since I have a number of writers from that heritage that I read regularly – Meg Medina, Margarita Engle, Pam Munoz Ryan, and Pat Mora – just to name a few.

It’s also a bit strange to start a book review at the end, but a note in the postscript to Julia Alvarez’s novel In the Time of Butterflies captures the story. “A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.” In yet another strangeness, I recommend starting with the postscript and the author’s note in the back matter before you begin reading the book. Its story starts at the end, much like To Kill a Mockingbird begins with Jem’s arm in a sling.

The absorbing story traces the lives of Las Mariposas – the butterflies – as they make their way through love, hairbrushes, gun running, and rebellion against the dictator Trujillo. Perhaps I became more engrossed because the four sisters who take turns telling the story were spaced much like my own with the three older ones close together in age and a skip before the “little sister.” Perhaps that was also part of the appeal of telling their story to the author who also came from a family of four sisters.

Julia Alvarez takes the real Mirabel sisters and their murder on a lonely mountain road and spins a novel taking turns in each of their voices. The suspense holds the reader who continues to brace against the inevitable ending.

Early on, I retraced my reading to be sure I was not reading about Cuba. The history is similar. At the end, I pondered how life (sickness, laughter, love) goes on in the middle of a revolution. I also felt a need to go back and learn more about the Dominican Republic.

The story’s travel through the human heart begins with a quote from Patria when she sees a young boy shot, “Then I tried looking up at our Father, but I couldn’t see His Face for the dark smoke hiding the tops of the mountains.” It lasts after three of the sisters are gone and only Dede is left to complete their story, “We had lost hope, and we needed a story to understand what had happened to us.”

Don’t we all?

One Morning in Maine

If this title reminds you of a children’s book by Robert McCloskey, give yourself a pat on the back for your perception. Summer vacation with a couple of preschoolers sent me scurrying for books to add to their memory of the trip. Having been around the track a few times, I knew a local independent book store would be the place to shop.

For their memory of this trip I needed three books for sure. Naturally, I could not skip One Morning in Maine since sunrise, my favorite time of day, was spectacular from the house we’d rented where the Penobscot River heads toward the ocean. The boys would have to have Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney since we saw the lupines of the story every time we took a walk.  And they couldn’t miss their father’s childhood favorite, Blueberries for Sal, also by Robert McCloskey.

So I got out my computer and Googled the location of the nearest small town independent book store.  As often happens with independents, I got more than I bargained for since there was a review of Kent Haruf’s last book written shortly before his death on the site. I had enjoyed his Plainsong and Eventide and knew I wanted to read Our Souls at Night.

The bookstore, right on Bucksport’s main street, was appropriately named “Bookstacks.” (Names of independent bookstores are intriguing in themselves, but that would be a digression.) After enjoying a browsing session in both the adult and children’s sections, I stood off temptation and kept to my plan of buying the three books for two grandsons and one for the grandma. As I checked out at the counter, the owner looked up from his nearby computer to give me a warning, “Have a box of Kleenex ready.”

I thought, “Only in an independent bookstore!” A report on yesterday’s Today Show said sales in independent book stores were up by 20%. There are reasons for that, like the owner who had actually read the book he was selling. Recent coverage on Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi suggests that you get a staff recommendation for your next read because they know books. Each job applicant for their bookstore has to take a literature test! If you have a local independent book store, become friends with the staff, and they are likely to watch for books that fit your tastes. Hand-selling is a big part of their trade.

And before you go on vacation, Google and find one of those bookstores. You will enjoy the browsing, find some books with local color to take home to remember your trip, and perhaps get a warning from the staff if the book you select is going to make you cry.

What Goes Around . . .

A recent post by a friend who’s a former classroom teacher and now hand-sells books at a fine independent book store recalled a memory and started me thinking about what constitutes help.

Because of his teaching expertise, he frequently gets questions and complaints about teachers and education. On this occasion, it was from a parent who didn’t understand why her student got 100% on all her homework and failed her tests. A little digging revealed that the parents were doing the homework each night to ensure a good grade. My wise friend tactfully pointed out that they were sabotaging the purpose for the student to practice and for the teacher to know where she was struggling in order to give further instruction in problem areas.

His story returned me to a memory from the days when I figuratively endorsed my paycheck to Baylor University for my youngest son to pursue a major in information systems. Thinking he would be appreciative of this support, I asked for his help with my computer when he was home for a holiday. He stood behind me facing the computer and said, “Now, Mom, what do you think you would do next?”

“I don’t know,” was my slightly testy answer. “That’s why I called you. Just tell me what to do, and we can be finished.”

He countered with a question in a tone that was vaguely familiar. “Do you remember how you used to ‘help’ with my homework? You kept asking me this same kind of question until I had solved the problem. You said if I figured it out, the next time I would be able to figure it out again. If you figure out this computer problem, you will be able to figure it out when I’m not here.”

My first thought was, “What goes around, comes around.” I wasn’t particularly happy with his method of helping at the moment and knew he had not always been happy with mine. I also knew I had been right, and he was right. The best help comes, whether its homework or something entirely different, not when we remove obstacles but when we coach the struggler to surmount the problem. Success for the coach (teacher, parent, etc.) is in becoming unnecessary – but, hopefully, still loved and appreciated.

The Thing About Jellyfish

A question persisted in the back of my head the whole time I read Ali Benjamin’s debut solo novel The Thing About Jellyfish. (She has co-written several other books.) It almost mirrored the absorption in her protagonist’s head. My question was, “Am I really going to blog about this book?” Twelve-year-old Suzy Swanson intently pursues the idea that the drowning death of her best friend came at the hands of jellyfish.

There was never any question about the quality of the writing. She describes the jellyfish expert, “His face is kind of meaty, and his lower jaw is tucked under the rest of his face like a drawer that’s been pushed in a teeny bit too far.”  Nor was there ever any idea that I might close it without finishing. In fact, I had trouble closing it temporarily even when I read past my bedtime.

The problem came from Suzy’s struggle without letup as she becomes incommunicado in her struggle to move on after her friend drowns. Not willing to accept her mother’s platitude, “Sometimes things just happen,” she fixates on jellyfish as the cause. Lack of social skills, rejection of those who try to help her, marking time with her father in their weekly visits rather than opening up to him, and an impossible scheme to get to the jellyfish expert in Australia had me wanting to yell, “Stop!”

Without preaching, the book deals with guilt grief, the ineffectual use of platitudes, and the indefinite time periods and methods of coming through grief to a new normal.

My own question came because it’s hard for a cup-half-full person like me to read a book that begins with the cup half empty – and then springs a leak. By now you have figured out how I answered my question. I will add that I recommend the book for any middle schooler or young adult dealing with grief or an adult who walks beside them.

Who's Been Eating My . . .

I’ve developed a great deal of empathy for Papa Bear and his question, “Who’s been eating my soup?” Except it wasn’t soup, it was my passiflora incarnate – aka maypop – aka passion flower. I concur with Baby Bear that “She ate it all up!”

Two years ago, I bought and trained three small maypop plants on the lattice to bring summer shade on the carport, to relish the beautiful flowers, and to bring memories of stomping the ripened fruit we found growing wild when I was a kid (hence “maypop”). Last summer, it accomplished its assigned task nicely, and a thirteen-month-old grandson helped with the popping in December. This summer, it’s outdone itself with lush green vines and multitudes of blossoms.

Imagine my chagrin when we returned from our morning walk (much like those bears) a week or so ago and discovered stems stripped bare of their leaves! The culprit was not nearly as hard to find as Goldilocks. He (She? It?) stretched out on the twig in all its orange glory, its black spines daring me to touch. I could swear I heard him-her-it burp!

Not only has it joined its many relatives to devour my maypop leaves, they have stolen my time. I keep watching their progress from yellow eggs the size of a period made by a ball point pen to  tiny black spiky strings to fat orange worms looking for a spot to literally hang out. Sticking its tail to a vine or a slat of the trellis, it forms a J before pupating. Then I wait. I watch butterflies emerge, hang on long enough to dry their wings, and sometimes engage in a little hanky-panky.  

All is forgiven as I watch a crowd of agraulis vanilla – aka gulf fritillaries – aka passion butterflies scamper around the yard feeding on lantana and Mexican petunias. Like Baby Bear when he discovered Goldilocks, I cry, “There they are!”

My new question is, “Who’s been eating my butterfly?” Caught in the act with my surveillance camera before he fled into the vines, the anole has been hard to locate and bring to justice with coloring that matches the maypop leaves. I’m guessing he will live his life on the lam and without apology.

Enchanted Air

Pigtails first bonded me to writer Margarita Engle when she posted her childhood picture on Facebook, though there was a small difference. She hated hers that tamed her unruly curly hair, while I loved mine that stopped Mama from trying to perm my board-straight hair. Reading her memoir, Enchanted Air, brought new connections – skipping a grade in school, attachment to a great-grandmother, experimenting with family cow-milking, and being too young, too shy, and too bookwormish for junior high.

She speaks for both of us:
    Now there is only one place where I can,
    truly belong, this endless stack
    of blank pages in my mind,
    an empty world
    where I scribble. (I might add “or full pages I might read.”)

While I found a mirror in the book, I also found a window into the world of her first fourteen years, quite different from the North Mississippi hills where I grew up. The first page “love at first sight” story of her American father and Cuban mother, communicating without words, is worth the price of the book. She follows with life in Los Angeles, punctuated with visits to relatives in her mother’s native Cuba. Her free verse follows emotions of joy and gladness to heartbreak as that border closes, removing the contact with half her family as she makes the last childhood visit in 1960.
    How long will it be
    until the two countries I love
    forgive each other and move on . . .
In light of current news, the book is timely and puts a human face on national quarrels where politics run amok far too often.

Knowing from past readings of Margarita’s books that there would be special quotes I would want to share with my blog readers, I kept my notepad handy to jot down page numbers. You can see there are far too many for one blog!  

I think it’s not a spoiler to end with one from her last poem called “Hope.”
    An almost war
    Can’t last
    Forever.

    Someday, surely I’ll be free
    To return to the island of my childhood
    Dreams.

I hope to hear soon that Margarita has done just that.

It's Here!

September, my favorite month, has arrived! The first reason for this preference no longer fits, but I hold to it anyway. In my childhood, September signaled the beginning of school. I loved the smell of yellow pencils although I did not associate them, as Eudora Welty did, with the whiff of yellow daffodils – yet another proof that her imagination stretched farther than mine. I treasured the brand new Blue Horse tablet for the promise of math story problems to be solved and properly labelled and even more for the words to be written on its pages.

Even as we crept farther and farther back into August with school beginnings after I became the teacher, I held onto my September excitement. We’d taken care of rules, regulations, and my expectations for behavior and work ethic in the August segment and the fun of teaching and learning could begin in earnest by early September.

A former student, now a college professor, wrote on Facebook this week about his excitement at the beginning of a new school year. As yellow buses roll past my house, I think of him and other teachers who continue to bring September excitement into their classrooms and vicariously share their joy.

Other reasons for being partial to September have no basis except pleasure.
•    The cooler morning air means I can begin my first readings for the day in the porch swing and gives me hope that I can work outside at the patio table all day by the end of the month.
•    The butterflies and hummingbirds and the lantana from which they drink have reached their peak and put on a show outside my office window.
•    There’s my birthday this month that has lost the thrill of adding another year, but still brings a load of firewood, my birthday present from Al, in anticipation of the coming winter blaze in the fireplace.
•    And certainly not least, this week marks the beginning of all day Saturday college football! Neither set of my bears (Baylor and Ole Miss) has lost a game. The month will be even better if I’m still able to say that when it is over.

So let the games begin and join me in “The Sweet Song of September.”

Jade Dragon Mountain

Debut novelist Elsa Hart begins Jade Dragon Mountain with Li Du, an exiled librarian; Hamza, a traveling storyteller; and Brother Pieter, Jesuit astronomy scholar. She puts them in the Yunnan province of China, considered to be dangerous and uncivilized, in the eighteenth century. Her descriptions of the setting vividly portray the time and place. In a move reminiscent of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, she adds the coming event of the Emperor’s arrival when he will prove his divinity by bringing on an eclipse of the sun.

The murder mystery begins when Brother Pieter is found dead after a formal dinner. Li Du’s cousin Tulishen, the magistrate, wants to pass it off as an accident so it will not interfere with the coming celebration. Li Du, foregoes his option of continuing his travels out of China and does what he must to stay and solve the mystery. His cousin requires that it must be finished before the celebration. Suspects abound from Tibetan bandits, the Dominicans who would like to discredit the Jesuits who have provided the Emperor with information he’s using to “bring” the eclipse, members of the magistrate’s household, and even the magistrate himself. With a feel of Arthur Conan Doyle mixed with Agatha Christie, Li Du uses his library skills, overheard conversations, and observations of people to find the solution.  

Intertwined in the mystery is the puzzle of the splendid tellurion. Family secrets and tensions add other posers to the solution and yet another mystery that must be solved even after the murderer is caught.

If you need car chases and bedroom scenes, this is not the murder you are looking for. If you’d like to get away to ancient China for a mystery wrapped inside a historical novel, it’s just the ticket.

Remembering Katrina

Ten years ago today, we fielded phone calls and emails from children and their spouses in three states urging us to go to our daughter’s home in Texas out of the path of the oncoming hurricane. In desperation, they finally put the oldest grandson on the phone to urge his grandfather to head out of the path of the storm. Al was not to be moved. (Did he think he could hold the roof on while better than 100 mph winds blew across?)
    We spent the 29th hunkered down without electricity. The youngest son pleaded a sprained ankle or some such to stay home and make periodic phone calls. Our phone was the only thing that never went out. He reported to his siblings via email all day and back to us with instructions from the daughter to remain in the inside hall because “curiosity killed the cat.”
    We were fortunate that Al had no need to do the roof bit. We were the only people on our street that didn’t sport a blue tarp somewhere on top of their house the next week. Compared to others, our damage was small. But my grief was real, both for my own loss and for the greater devastation I saw around me. I coped, as usual, by writing. This piece was published in the “Getting Back to Normal” issue of Thema literary magazine (Autumn 2008).

KATRINA’S AFTERMATH

Four years ago –
Mississippi woods out back
clinched the sale
of a home to grow old in.

The woods turned me
into a child again –
ambling down Papaw’s lane;
watching squirrels play tag through the treetops;
seeing cardinals and Eastern bluebirds
swoop from tree to tree;
listening to woodpeckers rat-a-tatting;
surrounded by majestic oaks, swaying pines, “hicker-nut” trees,
beautyberry bushes.

The morning after Katrina’s
opaque white rain and roaring wind,
in my woods,
pines stand popped off like
little boys’ pencil fights,
roots and trunks of stately oaks
fallen crosswise
like too many grandchildren
sleeping in the same bed.


Pieces of my heart shatter into

grief with searchers
for family and friends;

mourning for lost
jobs and homes;

anger at those who
loot, shoot, and gouge;

relief that Katrina is gone and
we are safe;

gratitude for
our intact home;

and one sizeable shard of
lament for woods
that will not renew in my lifetime.

We had our pictures in the paper that fall, not for our loss, but for having a woodcutter salvage the neighborhood hardwood trees for our fireplace – two winters’ worth.
     Ten years later, the back woods has returned with scrub brush and fast-growing trees. It doesn’t look bad at all, but it will be a while before the oaks and sweet gums rise to their height.
     And if another major hurricane bears down upon us, and Al refuses to budge – I’ll pray for his safety as I head to Texas. 

Beforeglow to Afterglow - Mississippi Book Festival

Beforeglow, not a word because my computer quickly drew its bright red line, should be one. Some things begin before they start like our trip to the inaugural Mississippi Book Festival.

The beforeglow began with the arrival of three bookworm cronies from the New Orleans area for Friday lunch. Words were cast around the table between bites until our plates were empty. We left table cleanup to the resident Butler (Al) and headed to Jackson with words spilling back and forth all the way and arrived just in time to meet our longtime friend and festival presenter, Kimberly Willis Holt, for coffee and more word flow. Words continued through dinner and past normal bedtimes.

Saturday morning, we stood in place ready for the event as the band played a rousing welcome. Crowd favorites included patriotic renditions of “America” and “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Attendees were stunned with the announcement that this talented group had been together at Jackson State University band camp for only two weeks!

The welcome ceremony led by John Grisham preceded the only festival glitch. We arrived at our first session to find the room already filled to fire marshal capacity – and we had not lollygagged to get there. Thinking it was “Harper Lee Considered” popularity, we tried a second group only to find it full as well. Not to be daunted, we stood in line for our second hour choice to be sure we had a place! Rumors floating around during the day said these were not the only sessions leaving people frustrated by fire marshal regulations! Who would have anticipated that the very first Mississippi Book Festival would have been attended by more than 3,000 people? Truly an embarrassment of riches!

We filled the rest of the day – in crowded rooms – hearing sessions on “Children’s Books,” “Young Readers,” “What Reading Means for Our Culture,” greeting our other bookworm friends old and new, and buying a few books to get signatures.  

The John Grisham session illustrated the event’s camaraderie. As he tried to get his tale straight of driving up highway 55 during his first writing venture, he stalled, saying, “Winona Stuckey’s, maybe.” Several voices in the crowd yelled, “Vaiden Stuckey’s.” Having righted his location, he continued his story. An audience favorite was his “hard teacher” story, interrupted with the revelation that she was sitting a couple of rows back. She stood to acknowledge the great crowd applause.

Afterglow began as words of remembrance flew in the car as we headed home and were shared around the table with the resident Butler who had grilled hamburgers for our first real sustenance of the day – no time during the event to eat more than the cookies we had squirreled away. It continues as I mark my calendar for next year on August 20, 2016. I’m confident the planners will anticipate spectacular attendance and figure out a way to keep both the attendees and the fire marshal happy.

Balancing the Budget

I recently read in another writer’s blog about the mindful need to support writers without having to sell the car or take out a second mortgage. If one is an avid reader (AKA bookworm), this could happen. I confess there’ve been months when the largest item on my credit card bill was the local book store. I’ve come up with some solutions, most of them readily available to any reader.

As a blogger, I qualify as a member of Net Galley which offers a multitude of advance reading copies before the books hit the market. The publisher’s goal, naturally, is advance publicity for their books. This “reading for free” should not scare my blog followers. I only give blog reviews, with very few exceptions, for those that I would give at least four of five stars. I give feedback to the publisher on the others, but Net Galley does not require that I blog about the books they send. Since they have a huge selection, I try to choose those I assume would get a high ranking from me. I still only have twenty-four hours in my day and don’t need to waste a single one reading something that does not bring either enlightenment or pleasure.

The second choice awaits any dedicated reader. An obsession with putting words on paper is not necessary. This one involves becoming friendly with a librarian or two (a pleasure in itself). I’ve become friendly with our local public librarians and our church librarian. I recommend books to each with a request for a hold so I can read first. Selfish of me? Sure, but they gain an appraiser who reads reviews and looks for the best and the ones most appropriate for their library patrons in that long list of books that comes out each month. Their readers get the books quickly since I put those books on the top of my pile and read fast. Win – win – win.

My third way involves ten grandchildren and various friends and relatives who need gifts from time to time. What could be better than a good book that fits the personality and interest of the recipient? The books are not harmed at all if I pre-read them before I wrap them up.

Of course one can always borrow and loan books with friends which may ultimately be one of the best ways to help a writer. More often than not it’s the word of mouth sharing of “You’ve got to read this book,” that makes a book a hit, especially for authors whose names have not yet become a brand.

Then when push comes to shove, there are books I want on my shelf because I want to read them again or just because it makes me happy to see them there. USPS just brought a package of those. I’m doing my part to support my fellow writers. So far, I haven’t had to sell the car.

What's for Supper?

Sometimes choosing a book resembles a trip to the grocery store without a clear idea of what’s for supper. Passing along the meat counter, suddenly you become hungry for pork chops. With a few minutes to kill before my meeting in USM’s Cook Library, I cruised the curriculum materials stacks where they keep children’s books without a planned selection. Passing down the shelves, I had a sudden craving for a Pam Munoz Ryan story.

Remembered flavor of Esperanza Rising made my mouth water, and I pulled out Becoming Naomi Leon, another book arising from her combined Mexican and Oklahoma heritages. Chapter headings of “a lamentation of swans,” “an unkindness of ravens,” and “a schizophrenia of hawks” promised good reading. Checking my favorite place for flavor, I read the first line. “I always thought the biggest problem in my life was my name, Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw, but little did I know that it was the least of my troubles, or that someday I would live up to it.” The book enticed and satisfied as Naomi’s world in Avocado Acres Trailer Rancho in Lemon Tree, CA with Gram and her little brother is upset by the appearance of her mother after a seven year absence. I won’t spoil the book by telling you how she lived up to her name.

Other times choosing a book takes you back to the grocery store idea facing a trip and a need of a big bag of chips to last to your destination. Heading to Texas, I needed a long book. (Yes, I can read in the car. I give deepest sympathy for those who would lose six hours of reading time for motion sickness.) How fortunate that Pam Munoz Ryan has a new almost six hundred page book out called Echo with another good beginning. “Fifty years before the war to end all wars, a boy played hide-and-seek with his friends in a pear orchard bordered by a dark forest.”

The first segment took me back to being a child enthralled in a fairy tale that dropped off before the finish with a special mouth harp – a harmonica in the hands of the messenger. Three stories follow with a unique harmonica. Could it be the same?
•    October 1933 – Trossingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany – Friedrich finds a harmonica in a drawer with a tiny red letter M that will be with him as his family deals with the Nazis.
•    June 1935 – Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, USA – Mike, trying to stay together with his brother Frankie as the leave the homeless boys’ shelter, chooses a box that looks different when their benefactor offers to buy them harmonicas – and opens it to find one with a small hand-painted red M.
•    December 1942 – Southern California, USA – Ivy, in La Colonia’s music class with Miss Delgado, chooses her harmonica from a box and traces the tiny red M painted on one edge.

These stories weave together beautifully in April 1951 – New York City, New York, U.S.A. – but that’s not all. A second ending is for the fairy tale.

A book with three good stories inside a fairy tale – if this one doesn’t get discussed by the Newbery Committee, somebody isn’t paying attention!

My appetitie, appeased for the moment, tells me to head back to that grocery to be ready when hunger returns.

About Those Editors

Seeing Harper Lee’s need for an editor, as I noted in my last blog, started me thinking of how many editors I’ve worked with. I turned up quite a few with a fair range of hands-off and hands-on styles. Some made minor changes without bothering me, which is okay. I follow Chicago Manual of Style for “Sunday school,” but if you want to do “Sunday School” for your publication, fine by me.

I’ll go ahead and get out of the way that I was once frustrated to see one small piece published with my byline that didn’t look either like what I sent, or like anything I would have written. I wasn’t consulted about the changes. I’d worked happily with that editor several times on two different publications. I have no idea what got into him. If you leave out the inevitable rejection letters, it’s the only bad editor experience I remember.

My first regular dip into professional writing came in different church curriculum and devotional assignments that ranged from children through adults. Once an editor emailed me about something that wasn’t working and asked if I’d like to fix it or have her make changes. As you might guess, I fixed it. During those days of writing to word counts, another editor taught me to save precious words by turning prepositional phrases into one extraordinary adjective or a precise noun.

My submission to Highlights of an Ezra Jack Keats story came back with eight or nine questions or recommendations. It ended with an apology for the long list but an invitation to resubmit if I cared to take the trouble. Of course, I did! The biggest change I made was reflected as my original title “Stamp Our Sameness” became “Celebrate Variety.” The negative tone toward uniformity in the article flipped to the positive one of diversity. I saw the remarkable improvement myself before I resubmitted the piece and enjoyed working with Kim Griswell over the next few months as we polished for publication.

Sometimes the editing has been for style of that particular magazine as Lonnie Plecha replaced my KFC with Tastee Chicken in a story I wrote for Cricket magazine. (They don’t use real brands.) I answered his authenticity questions about whether metal detectors go “beep” and “click” at our Gander Mountain store and whether crinum lilies (aka milk-and-wine lilies to gardeners or Papaw’s lilies to our family) go on for generations with Mississippi garden expert Felder Rushing. They do and they do.

My experience with editors overwhelmingly has been satisfaction as they have pulled out my best and given the kind of encouragement that keeps a faded note from an early editor on my bulletin board for discouraging days. The editor, moving on to new horizons, ended her note, “You are an editor’s dream, and I hope many have the joy of discovering you!”

And so do I  . . . and so do I!

Go Set a Watchman

In case you need yet one more opinion about Go Set a Watchman, I’ll give you mine. I’ll skip the hoopla and mere speculation about whether Harper Lee made an informed consent for its publication.

In the opening, I could hear Harper Lee’s voice. “Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical. Over the breakfast coffee, she watched the last of Georgia’s hills recede and the red earth appear, and with it tin-roofed houses set in the middle of swept yards, and in the yards the inevitable verbena grew, surrounded by whitewashed tires.” From time to time, it came again, “On the thirtieth of September she sat through classes and learned nothing.”

Most of the book read like a draft. I’ve created enough drafts to recognize one when I see it. Listen to almost any author speak on the subject, and you’ll get the idea that reading their early drafts has the appeal of a neglected weed-infested back yard. John Green and Richard Peck, who’ve won all kinds of book awards, claim to do six entire drafts before allowing their manuscripts out.

Reading the book gave me great appreciation for Harper Lee’s editor, Tay Hohoff. Kerry Madden, in Up Close:Harper Lee, quotes Tay’s reaction to the original, “There were dangling threads of a plot, there was a lack of unity . . .” and her wisdom about beginning writers, “. . .many writers try for publication before they are ready . . .” I recognized this evaluation as I read. It took three years of working together for editor and writer to produce the masterpiece that is To Kill a Mockingbird.

I’m not sorry I read Go Set a Watchman. Comparison of the two books gave a vivid picture of the process and what can happen when a good writer meets a good editor.  

In the best of all possible worlds, I’d wish Tay Hohoff had come back with Harper Lee to address some things I found bothersome and written a true sequel.
•    Several unexpected and unexplained shifts from third to first person distract the reader.
•    Justification is needed of how Atticus and Calpurnia of To Kill a Mockingbird became Atticus and Calpurnia of Go Set a Watchman. There needs to be some triggering event or gradual circumstance to make that drastic change believable.
•    The painting of the black and white communities in Go Set a Watchman with two single brushes disturbed me, as it often does in books portraying this era. Those extremes certainly existed, but with plenty of attitude shades between. A whole community of men in the Citizens Council seemed highly unlikely. I knew many white Mississippians that saw the council as a fringe group. Alabama, surely, was no different.

Go Set a Watchman should be read for the historical document it is – of a writer beginning her way and an editor who did her job and helped her polish the jewel that became To Kill a Mockingbird.

On Friday, I will blog about some of my own experiences with editors.

Distractions

In what seemed like a good idea at the time, I put my working desk in front of my office window. It has mostly come off as planned – a happy writing place with a feel for being outside while enjoying the comfort of air-conditioning in this Mississippi-in-August oven. But there are distractions.

The butterflies and bumblebees have discovered the flowers I planted, my favorites right outside this window – as it turns out, their favorites, too. From tiny nondescript brown butterflies through several varieties and colors up to the magnificent Emperors, these Lepidoptera (my second major was science) flit from place to place bringing to mind the name given to them in Birds and Blooms Magazine of “flying flowers.”

And the bumblebees! I’d never thought they were fascinating until they discovered the flower in this picture. I forget its name, but I got three one spring a few years ago and now have a yard full thanks to reseeding. The bees evidently love the nectar on this willowy plant.  I become entranced as they latch onto the flower causing it to go up and down like a vertical pendulum. Absorbed in its meal, the bee seems not to notice his joyride.

Neither of these, however, causes as great an interruption as the hummingbird who drinks at the feeder and entertains in payment. Some days, she stops dead in front of my window in a holding flight pattern to stare at me. I think she’s saying, “Thanks for breakfast. It was delicious.” Other times, she brings a friend to play out an elaborate dance.

However, I think the hummingbird’s onto me. In this last view with her cocked head, I see a look I used to give students when they’d lollygagged long enough, a look that says better than words, “Play time is over. Now get back to work.”

I answer just like they did. “Yes, ma’am, I was just fixing* to.”

*(For those not from the South, there is no proper verb that means exactly the same thing as "fixing.")