Seventeenth Summer

Selections for the de Grummond Book Group are only limited by target age. Any book for babies through young adults may come up for reading and discussion. This month we went back in time and selected the book Seventeenth Summer, published in 1942. It was written for adults but became popular with teens and is considered by many experts to be the first young adult novel. Adding to the intrigue, Maureen Daly wrote the book when she was still in college herself.

As I mentioned in Friday’s blog on my own summer between high school and college, it covers that same three-month transition of June, July, and August. Customs of the time are apparent quickly as Angie Morrow has her first dating experience this late in life. Naïve in many ways by today’s standards with more control by her parents, there is an innocence to the love story itself, yet, chain-smoking and underage drinking are handled casually.

Angie’s family story is secondary but entwined with the romance. Her father spends most of  his time away working while her mother takes care of proper appearances and tries to keep Angie at home. The stability of older sister Margaret, engaged to Art, contrasts to second sister Lorraine who delivers the greatest amount of stress in the story as an older guy trifles with her affections. Ten-year-old tomboy Kitty provides a bit of humor.

It seems almost too simple for today’s teens so I checked out reviews. Early used editions were listed from $98 to $79.99, and it has been in print since its first publication. Descriptions of the book use the words “quintessential,” “enchanting,” and “perennially.” They all fit, and my guess is that today’s teens love the romance partly for its trip back to a different time.

If you’re in the neighborhood, you can join us to discuss the book at 11:30 AM on June 15 in the de Grummond display room in Cook Library at USM. Having read the book is not a requirement, but you might bring memories of your own transition summer between high school and college.

Sixteenth Summer

The current issue of The Writer magazine suggested the writing prompt of a fictional teen’s summer between high school and college or the alternative of a nonfiction telling of your own final summer. I normally don’t take writing prompt bait, but this one stirred some thoughts of the pivotal changes that came over the three months of my sixteenth summer affecting the rest of my life. In reflection, I don’t recall any other three months that made such a difference.

I initially titled this blog “The Summer Between” until I thought about our book selection for the de Grummond Book Group this month. Ironically, our new selection is a novel covering those three months called Seventeenth Summer. (I graduated a year early, hence my “Sixteenth Summer.”) I plan to review it in Monday’s blog.

In my own final summer, we moved into a new rural community right after my high school graduation for Daddy to serve as pastor of the local church. My plan in early June included going to Mississippi College, a four-year institution that offered the prerequisites for a nursing degree. How this would be paid for was unclear to anybody. Daddy was a country preacher, and I had a $100-dollar scholarship from the First State Bank of Holly Springs, Mississippi. The issue of money was largely an unaddressed concern.

That year was the beginning of an extensive junior college network (today’s community colleges) for Mississippi. It continues to be an area in which our state excels and in which we can and do take pride.  Officials stopped by our house to extol the advantages of the new system.  A free school bus ran daily right by my front yard, and tuition was negligible in comparison to the four-year institutions. Credits transferred easily after completion of two years into any of the Mississippi colleges. What was there to lose?

June, July, and August also included the operator of the country store just a piece down the road, who had taken over the store after his father’s death during his last year of high school, and his afternoon break. His break time coincided with the afternoon arrival of the Itawamba Junior College bus, and I would spot his red-and-white Buick parked in our front yard.

Ultimately, that three months of the summer between turned a nursing candidate into a teacher, found her a companion for life’s journey, and moved her to Plan B for which she was better suited than Plan A. And the scholarship? It paid all her tuition and bought all her books (mostly secondhand) for the first year with $11 left to start the second.

Grayling's Song

When I jumped at the chance to read Karen Cushman’s new middle grade novel, Grayling’s Song, in an advance reading copy, I expected another of her fine historical novels that took me to life in the past. Settling in for expected pleasure, the first lines seemed to confirm that anticipation. “The mist hung low in the valley between the forest and the town. It dangled from tree branches like stockings on a washing line . . . “

Grayling gathers herbs for her mother’s remedies while her mother threatens to turn her into a toad if she doesn’t hurry. “Ah,” I thought, “medieval story.” Then the fire comes that burns the house down, and something in the smoke turns her mother’s feet into roots that clutch the ground and begin a transformation of her mother into a tree, and I know I’m neither in the middle ages nor in historical fiction!

The grimoire, the book of chants, spells, and rituals that can reveal the way to undo the magical rooting, has disappeared in the smoke. Forced to leave her complaining and timidity behind, Grayling accumulates interesting companions on her quest that sometimes help and sometimes get in her way – a bewitching enchantress, an aging weather witch, a prophet who uses cheese for his divination, and the lovable Pook – a shape-shifting mouse.

She relies on her mother’s songs for gathering, for healing, for heartening, and for discovery along her treacherous journey seeking the grimoire and discovers there’s a song that only she and the grimoire can hear that directs her path. Eventually, she comes to a crisis that requires a song of her own.

Both those who look for Cushman’s trademark lyrical prose and those who love to find themselves in a magical world of fantasy will enjoy the book, even if they don’t fit its intended audience of middle graders.  

The End of a Beginning

This packrat, taking a sudden notion to pitch and toss, stumbled onto a bit of serendipity. In this season when Sam Butler graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in Maryland, I ran across a poem written by his father the year he graduated from Leesville High School in Louisiana. I found it just in time to share it with Sam and get Mark’s reluctant permission to use it for my blog.

The End of a Beginning

A time of reflection on a lifetime;
A time of anticipation of a new life.
Dreams of what could have been
Mixed with dreams of what could be.
A ceremony to symbolize
The fact that you have become your own man.
Twelve years of hard work, scholastic and social,
Only to start over.
The end of relationships that were going to last forever;
The beginning of those that will.
Leaving what you’ve always known;
To begin what you never knew.
A time of reflection on a lifetime;
A time to forget the worries ahead.
     Mark Butler
     March 2, 1988

Ironically, even as Sam attends orientation at Tulane University anticipating his own new life, Mark anticipates beginnings of his own as he changes his job to “work from home” status and moves with his family from Maryland to Hattiesburg. Perhaps graduation marks the first major life’s ending foreshadowing more beginnings to come. My hope is that they be will filled with few of the worries and many of the dreams come true.

If Bees Are Few

If Bees Are Few, edited by James P. Lenfestry, unapologetically lauds bees. If you have paid any attention to bee issues, you are probably aware of warnings that their numbers are seriously dropping, but approaching this book with a mindset of embarking on a sermon or didactic environmental treatise would be a mistake. The motivation would be correct, since putting their money where their mouth is, some proceeds from sales of the book will be aid the Bee Lab in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota in their search for ways to protect bees worldwide. Visit the website at www.beelab.umn.edu for more about the Bee Lab’s work and resources. The foreword by Bill McKibben points out that bees play the role of sentinel in an increasingly toxic world, acting as a warning system that our world is out of kilter.

The front matter, brief and well worth reading, prefaces the fun to come. Poets range from current award winners like Sherman Alexie to those like Burns and Kipling studied in long ago English classes. I started to pick a few lines I really liked and wound up shortening a blog that became much too long. I had to include the first sample since it brought back memories of my grandfather harvesting honey from his own bees.

24th May: Collecting the Bees (Sean Borodale) 
“He just wears a veil, this farmer, no gloves
and lifts open a dribbly wax-clogged
blackwood box.”

Boy with Honeybee Hair (Barry Blumenfeld)
. . . I came to say, He
said, it’s nothing to
Be afraid of, death. It’s a place you go to rest.

Summer at the Orphanage (Laure-Anne Bosselar)
I’d like to tell you that something happened then
– that there was an epiphany, that the bee
taught me something.
But it didn’t.

Of A’ the Airts the Wind Can Blaw (Robert Burns)
Blaw, blaw ye wastin winds, blaw soft
Among the leafy trees,
With gentle gale from hill and dale Bring hame
the laden bees.

The Language of Bees (Barbara Hamby)
This piece of amusing information rather than a poem begins by stating there are 76 distinct words of stinging, 39 words for queen, 22 for sunshine, and addressing the qualities of bee language before concluding “for it is eloquent and vulgar in the same mouth, and though its wound is sweet it can be distressing, as if words could not hurt or be meant to sting.”

Though the poems varied widely in style and substance, I failed to find a weak one. I will give a bit of advice on how to read the book. Choose one or two a day as you would select a couple of fine chocolates from a box and savor them. Truthfully, I could not do this any better than I do with chocolate. I kept reading “just one more.” At least, they didn’t make me gain weight.

Hattiesburger - Really?

Evidently after one hundred and thirty years of existence, community leaders of Hattiesburg decided that residents should have an official name and asked for suggestions from its populace. Behind closed doors, they examined those submissions. I was not privy to the discussion nor in the know on how their debate went. I only know that the decision was presented to the Annual Tourism Partners meeting at the Train Depot, and residents of the Hub City are now “Hattiesburgers.”  
       You see my first reaction in my title. (My computer had a similar reaction, drawing its red line underneath every time I typed it. I’ve added the word to its vocabulary so it won’t keep distracting me from this discussion.) 
        Returning to the wisdom of the name, I pictured the Hattiesburg I know. Any day one waits at the traffic light at Hardy Street and Hwy 49, the screen on the corner of the USM campus flashes student and faculty recitals, Science Café offerings, and experts in various fields for campus events. Its OLLI lifelong learning program offers courses alphabetically from art to technology designed for the over fifty crowd. Recently two days of C-Span were devoted to history and collections from the university and larger community. Three weeks of events from May 30 through June 18 feature arts of all kinds in FestivalSouth (www.festivalsouth.org). Somehow all this didn’t quite fit with the city’s people becoming “burgers.”
       I was not alone. Within days, the area weekly paper had its own take with the news item including the comment, “You can dress it however you like. Hold the mustard or add pickles, onions, and a bit of ketchup.” The cartoon in the same paper reflected the sibling rivalry with neighboring Lamar County that does not always appreciate annexation attempts on the part of Hattiesburg. This brought on my second reaction as I thought about a part of Hattiesburg not so readily noticeable – its ability to laugh, sometimes at itself. Hattiesburg seasons its classy event offerings with a sense of humor – not a bad combination at all.
       As for me, technically I’m not a “burger.” I live outside the city, but I can see it from my front yard so go ahead and pass the mustard.

The World Beneath

When I plan to review a book, I read little about it before I begin my own reading because I don’t want to bias my evaluation. In the case of The World Beneath by Janice Warman, this restriction was a disadvantage.

        In the author’s note at the end she writes, “I grew up as a privileged white child surrounded by poverty and deprivation in a world we did not see.” That world was South Africa in 1976 which becomes the setting for her book. She draws on her own experience to give us the story of Joshua who lives with his mother in the maid’s room in the back yard of her wealthy white employers. He understands little of what is happening around him but knows the need to be unobserved. Slowly the world around him begins to change and he must make some dangerous choices. Those versed in the history of South African apartheid will recognize situations and names before he does and know how perilous his decisions may be.

        The novel contains tension from the family situation and the world around it and keeps the reader engaged. The problem I found was the lack of character development even with Joshua. There was a reason for that! After I finished the book and did a bit of reading about it, I discovered the author was a veteran journalist. I wished I had known that as I was reading. I would have understood that the book read like a documentary that is hyped for days before it is shown on TV.

        I recommend the book as a read together book for parent and child or in a classroom, beginning with the note in the endpapers on Amnesty International and the information about resources to use fiction to teach about human rights. The connection from this story to other examples of injustice seems to be natural with this quote from the afterword, “We are all born with human rights, no matter who we are or where we live, but we are not always allowed access to them. Human rights are about justice, truth, and freedom. They are part of what makes us human.”

Back to Kindergarten

I can’t really use the idea behind the title of Robert Fulghum’s book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten since I never attended kindergarten as a student. However, there were six years when I was the kindergarten teacher. Let me tell you, each day brought a lesson with a five-year-old perspective that most adults have left behind.

Recently, I was invited to return to Kindergarten as a guest to talk about writing. I took my “Story of a Story” presentation and led them on a journey from the idea in my head all the way to publication of an article about Ezra Jack Keats in Highlights for Children. Well-prepared for my visit by their teacher, they could tell me the difference between fiction and nonfiction and vote intelligently for their preference. They nodded knowingly as we discussed research and rewriting. The Q and A at the end brought up the number of “No, thanks” replies that writers get from editors and the need to get over discouragement and send their manuscripts out again.

I hope they learned from the presentation as I did from them. The thank-you notes with more five-year-old lessons that came the next week showed individual personalities, not copies of an example the teacher put on the board. Since they all spelled “Virginia” correctly, I’m guessing she did write that for them. Some of their lessons:
• One said, “Go, books!!” and ended with, “And one more thing I love fiction!” She may have missed a comma, but she knows her exclamation marks.  
• Another did a bit of P.R., “No I Pad Do Books.”
• I think there was a lesson in open-heartedness as many expressed love on such short acquaintance, especially the one who had three-quarters of a page filled with x-kisses.

Maybe my favorite lesson came from the young student advisor who had listened intently to my stories of writers who had succeeded in spite of “No, thanks” answers from publishers. As we wound up the visit, he raised his hand and said, “I just want to say, don’t give up on your dream.” I think I’ll take his advice.

Burn, Baby, Burn

I’ve been following Meg Medina’s work since she won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award in 2012 for Tia Isa Wants a Car. Following my read of this delightful picture book drawn from her own childhood experience with an aunt, I enjoyed her narrative in The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind based in Latin American culture as she dips into a bit of magical realism with children looking to the future as parents try to hold onto old ways. In a harder novel, that I reviewed in this blog, in “Twice Sorry, Once Pleased,” she won the Pura Belpré Author award for Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass featuring a Latina teen who faces a bully at her new school.

Having learned Meg’s ability to connect with her intended audience from young children through teenagers, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read her latest Burn, Baby, Burn. The novel is set in New York city in the summer of 1977 in a community with nerves on edge as the Son of Sam killer seems to be striking at will. Family responsibility falls on seventeen-year-old Nora Lopez who copes with a brother now on drugs after being spoiled, excused, and indulged by her mother; a father who leaves her, her mother, and her brother waiting for a support check while he indulges his new family in an upscale lifestyle; and a landlord hounding them for rent money. That’s all before her mother loses her job.  Page-turning tension holds until the very last pages.

For those who remember the Son of Sam summer, the compelling narrative rings true to history. It also rings true for teenagers like Nora who lack a picture perfect life and must become the adults in their families before it is time. 

I’m caught up with wonder at Meg’s ability to write well in such a variety of genres – lighthearted picture books, intriguing magic realism, and heart-wrenching YA historical fiction. The consistent thread I’ve found in her work is the view she gives into her Latina culture. I’m anticipating my next view through that window.

Shrimp, Limericks, and Bad Luck

One bit of technology that I love is the ability to record TV shows and watch them later, fast-forwarding through commercials and things that have no interest. CBS Sunday Morning is a regular on my list. I may zip through celebrity profiles of no appeal, but I always slow down for two items that come at the end. I love their nature segment, and I always like to see what is significant for each day of the coming week, although I pick and choose which of those I find worth marking.

This past Sunday brought three that I thought worthy of my attention. It seems that Tuesday was Shrimp Day. I marked my calendar with a reason for treating myself to strawberry salad with shrimp for lunch. Thanks CBS for the alert!

Thursday was national limerick day in honor of the 204th anniversary of Edward Lear. It brought back memories of being in trouble with Mama for repeating one I’d read in Children’s Digest and embarrassing her in public. Since I hate people who allude to things without telling the whole story, here it is:

There once was a man from Black Heath,
Who sat on his set of false teeth.
He cried with a start,
“Oh, Lord, bless my heart.
I have bitten myself underneath.”

I think the disturbance it caused implanted it permanently in my memory.

I thought I’d add a limerick of my own in honor of the occasion. I'm hoping Mama would not object to this one.

There once was a scribbler I’m told
Submitting her writing so bold.
Enduring rejection,
She saved her affection
For replies that came back with “Sold!”

 

Which brings me to today - Friday, the thirteenth. I basically skip over the superstition. I recommend  discounting the omen of the thirteenth in favor of having some shrimp while you write a limerick.

Hour of the Bees

What could be worse for twelve-year-old Carol, needing to spend her summer in pool parties and sleepovers that will cement relationships for school in the fall, than to find out she must go with her family to the New Mexico desert for the summer? So begins Lindsay Eagar’s debut novel Hour of the Bees. Add Serge, a grandfather with dementia who can no longer live alone, and her dad’s mission to sell the ranch and move his father into a home where he will receive care. Also add a bossy older half-sister, not Serge’s biological granddaughter, who figures out ways not to pull her share of the load and a younger brother that often becomes Carol’s responsibility. The project of getting the property ready for sale will steal her summer. Carol reluctantly prepares herself for the ordeal by studying the brochure on what to expect from someone with dementia.

Strange magical twists come for Carol – not “Caro-leeen-a” as Serge insists she must be called in order to honor her Spanish roots.  Carol recognizes the “word salad” typical of his dementia from her brochure, but not the magical bees connected to the hundred-year drought, a seed, and most of all the story that Serge tells in segments, beginning each stage with “Once upon a time . . .”

Two story lines have different voices. The first covers the very realistic problem of cleaning out a lifetime of stuff and memories to get Serge ready to move and the property read to sell, told in a narrative fashion that keeps the reader interested. The second story-within-the-story of the bees, the magical tree, and the community that used them up is told in a lyrical voice – worth reading just for the beauty of the language.

I read the last page of the book several days ago, but saying I finished it would be misleading. My mind returns to keeping family ties through diminished mental capacities, to knowing the importance of family roots, and to empathizing with Carolina who did the wrong thing for right reasons. Most of all, I like her perspective, “There is no ending because stories never end. They just turn into new beginnings, forever and ever. Like the rings of a tree trunk.”

Not Your Regular Mother

In the sentimental look toward Mother’s Day, we sometimes get caught up in a stereotype of aromas from the kitchen, perfectly kept houses, acquiescent attitudes, and servile self-sacrifice to family whims. Trust me, that wasn’t Mama. My first memories go back to about the time this photograph was taken, We were a family of five with a dog – Daddy, Mama, three sisters, and Poochie, the fourth sister yet to come.

Not long after this, Mama took it upon herself to convince the school system, before the days of public kindergarten, that I needed to learn to read (at five), and they needed to let me enroll to help their student count. They refused, pointing out the Magic-Age-of-Six Law when all children should learn to read. Acquiescent, she was not. To mollify her, they loaned her a first grade reader, and she took charge of her illiterate five-year-old. I won’t go into how this messed up their system the next year when I entered school as an avid reader.

The servile self-sacrifice and perfectly kept house surrendered to a child-rearing principle important to Mama. Believing her mission to be that of making her four girls self-sufficient and responsible, the floors were as well-swept, the furniture as well-dusted, and the dishes as well-washed as girls, who were assigned the chores, did them. (Not that she didn’t occasionally decide a task wasn’t done well enough and send a lackadaisical girl back to do it over.)

As for the kitchen aromas, quite often they were of butter beans scorching on the bottom of the pan. She never convinced us that it was only the bottom beans that burned. Meals were well-balanced and healthy, but only on days when there were chicken and dumplings or some kind of fruit cobbler would we describe the aroma and taste as good.

Mama preferred digging in the vegetable and flower garden, chauffeuring Daddy who was too visually handicapped to drive, or chatting with church parishioners over spending time in the kitchen. Consequently, when I was nine, I requested permission to learn to cook. She agreed immediately, pointed me to the cookbook, and told me where she would be if I needed her. I don’t recall ever needing her. She had taught me to read!

The summer I was thirteen, she was back in school taking classes for teacher certification which left me cooking meals for six, reading to the youngest four-year-old sister, and keeping Daddy in starched and ironed white shirts – sometimes as many as three a day in pre air-conditioned Mississippi.

So I’ve just blown the sentimental Mother’s Day. Would I have traded? Let me put it this way, when I married at eighteen and a half, I knew how to cook, keep house, and tell stories to children. The class she took my thirteenth summer – Children’s Literature, which she shared with me when she came home, began what has become one of my great passions in life. Trade for a stereotype? I think not.

Retrospect

Some events give joy twice – once in the experience and again in retrospect as one relishes it and finds additional meaning. Such was this year’s Kaigler Children’s Book Festival. I will not say, though it is true, that this was the best one ever because I’ve been accused of saying that every year. (So far, and I’m up to sixteen, it’s been true every year, but I didn’t start this to justify my opinion.)

My “job” for the festival was to run my Honda taxi and get the people from the Keats Foundation to all the sessions. (It’s tough, but somebody has to do these things.) As we neared the end of the festival, one of the first-timer board members accurately appraised the event. He said, “The conference is a mix of heart and mind.”

I always look for good quotes and hints from festival speakers. No disappointment this year as you can see by a sampling:
• Joyce Sidman: “Read widely yourself. Choose books/poems you love. Read poems aloud to children.”
• Rita Williams Garcia: “Write a sentence from another author to see what it might have felt like to have written that sentence.”
• Melissa Sweet: “Success can be measured in what we’ve done or what we have, but success is really the ability to go to the studio and work each day.”

Celebrating the centennial of Ezra Jack Keats at the Keats Awards luncheon, I confess to a bit of pride as the opening video carried my byline. Deborah Pope, daughter of Keats’s lifelong friend Martin Pope and executive director of the Keats Foundation, gave a professional and personal Keats lecture. She opened with a poignant picture of Keats propping his arm on her head when he vacationed with her family in her childhood and with her claim to be his first biographer. She wrote his story for a school assignment right after he won the Caldecott Medal for The Snowy Day and told the teacher her sources were original.

I enjoyed these carefully planned and executed events as I mulled over something Deborah said as we set out to the first session. “My advice to board members coming for the first time is go with the flow. Some of the best things are unplanned.”

She was right. One may see old friends first met when they were student volunteers finishing library degrees who are now returning library science professors or nerdy friends like yourself coming for their annual children’s book fix. An unexpected author or illustrator dinner companion may be someone whose work you’ve admired. You might watch Keats Award winners form a bond among themselves, and the storyteller may turn you into a listening child once again.

Next year – best again? Well, Kate DiCamillo is receiving the USM Medallion for her body of work so it’s just possible. I have my calendar marked for April 5-7, 2017!

Whoosh!

Lonnie’s rocket invention drew a crowd of schoolmates to watch on the playground. His fuel creation caused his mother to send him outside when it caught fire in the kitchen! Whoops! At least, she didn’t make him quit experimenting. 

The team of Chris Barton and Don Tate missed the memo that nonfiction is dry and boring. Together again after The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch, they tell the story of Lonnie Johnson in their new book Whoosh, which I read in an advance reading copy furnished by Net Galley. They use words and illustrations woven seamlessly together to add child-appealing humor without compromising the struggles Lonnie faced to fulfill his dreams. A crucial highlight in the book is the way Lonnie Johnson proves wrong the prediction of the exam that he is unlikely to make a good engineer.

The Barton/Tate Team recounts Lonnie’s many recognized achievements in the technical world, including work with NASA scientists. Children who've paid attention to the cover will enjoy the book even before they get to what they’ve been waiting for – the fun comes when Whoops! becomes Whoosh! in the making of the extraordinary water gun that they recognize and may have played with. Then Engineer Lonnie must become Promoter Lonnie or the product will never get into the market and the hands of children.

A bonus for teachers is the author’s note with the opportunity to discuss with students the importance of primary sources as Chris tells about talking to Lonnie Johnson and others who had firsthand knowledge of the story.

This is a book for any child or child-at-heart who loves to see how discoveries are made, to have a good laugh, or to see success follow failure.

Lest you question my praise of this book to be released May 3, since both Chris Barton and Don Tate are friends, Kirkus also gave it a starred review. 

Transients

For most of my life, moving from place to place has been the norm. I grew up in the years when rural Baptist pastors moved every three years or so, and my father was no exception. Then I married, expecting to spend the rest of my life in the little community of Furrs about ten miles from Tupelo, MS, perhaps best known outside the region for being the birthplace of Elvis Presley. Four years later, my husband was drafted. In this case, the Army put a square peg in a square hole, and a whole career ensued with more moves than Baptist preachers.

Looking back, I wouldn’t trade either section of my life for one more stable, but I often found it hard to uproot and start over. I liked the place and the people I was leaving.

When I read the book Sarah, Plain and Tall, Sarah put words to my feelings. Anna, the narrator, worries that her prospective stepmother will decide to return to her family in Maine. She’s afraid Sarah misses her home and family too much out on the prairie with little company besides the two children and their father until she overhears a conversation between Sarah and her new friend Maggie. Sarah wisely says, “There is always something to miss, no matter where you are.”

I thought about that last week as I was reminded of something I missed (besides the people) in our last home in Leesville, LA near Ft. Polk where we spent nineteen years, the longest stay of our marriage. Al retired from the Army after our first five years there to work in the post office so I could finally keep a job I loved in a community that felt like home.

Our Leesville yard was a stopping ground for a band of indigo buntings that traveled through every year. One year I went so far as to write a haiku about them.

               Feasting in the yard

            An indigo bunting crowd

               Sprinkled with cardinals

For the almost fifteen years we have been here, I’ve missed them in the spring. The indigo buntings are also transients, on their way to somewhere else. Last week, a miracle happened, and a flock found my yard again. A few days later, they were on their way. I enjoyed the respite, complete with cardinals who stay year round and consider this their permanent home. I hope the travelers spread the word that gourmet food is served at the Butler Bunting Inn with an easy on and off exit for buntings on the move. As for me, I plan to be right here where my roots are growing deep, waiting for their return.

Only in Naples

Only in Naples: Lessons in Food and Famiglia from My Italian Mother-in-Law hints of upcoming recipes. Chapter titles (Pasta e Fagioli, Gelato alla Nocciola, and Insalata di Polipo) add confirmation of Italian repasts to come. Remembering a long ago Italian landlady named Jenny who thought she adopted us when we rented her upstairs apartment, I was ready to read.

Lines from Katherine Wilson’s introduction foretold that more than recipes would follow. Referring to Greek mythological sirens hanging out on the rocky cliffs near Naples, she says, “I did not arrive in Naples tied to a mast. I arrived on a packed Delta flight from Washington, D. C. in the fall of 1996 . . . I saw Naples and started to live.”

Having come to the city to intern at the US consulate, Katherine gets more than she expected as she meets a good-looking scholar named Salvatore. When he introduces her to his mother Raffaella and the entire Avallone family, the fun begins.

I sometimes wondered as I read whether she was falling in love with Salvatore, the food, the beauty of Naples, or Raffaella’s irrepressible personality. The answer was probably “all of the above” as she makes her way through a different life in Naples. Katherine’s lighthearted voice as she embraces new customs, foods, and traditions brings the reader on her journey that outlasts the internship as those things with which she falls in love bring attachment to her new Italian environment and family.

The recipes take a while to show up, but there they are near the end with directions embroidered by Raffaella’s voice and instructions. The complicated and time-consuming recipes may not send you to the kitchen, but they will entertain.

If you need angst and trauma in a memoir, this one is not for you. On the other hand, if you love good food, a fine romance, and laughter, you don’t want to miss it.

Prepare for Poem in Your Pocket Day!

Fittingly, the “Put a Poem in Your Pocket Day” comes right in the middle of poetry month. In case you hadn’t heard about either the day or the month, I’m posting today so you will have time to get your pocket poem ready for Thursday.

The day coincides with the third McGee girl birthday on April 21. That has nothing to do with pocket poems, but happy birthday to Gwyn, anyway.

I’m sharing the poem I have ready to put in my pocket to be pulled out and read during the day Thursday. It comes from Joyce Sidman’s Newbery Honor winning book Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night. I chose it because I have a beloved oak tree in my back yard. The tree has its flaws, and we’ve been warned since we came here that it needed to go. I’ll let you guess which tree was still standing after those around it fell to Hurricane Katrina’s winds and greened up nicely again this spring more than ten years later. In its honor and thanks to Joyce, here is my pocket poem that I will be carrying on the 21^st. She calls it “Oak After Dark.”

As nighttime rustles at my knee,

I stand in silent gravity

and quietly continue chores

of feeding leaves and sealing pores.

While beetles whisper in my bark,

while warblers roost in branches dark,

I stretch my roots into the hill

and slowly, slowly drink my fill.

A thousand crickets scream my name,

yet I remain the same, the same.

I do not rest, I do not sleep,

and all my promises I keep:

to stand while all the seasons fly,

to anchor earth,

       to touch the sky.

Joyce has multitudes of other poems in her other award-winning books in case you are short of sources for your own pocket poem.

Politician Report Card?

“Plays well with others” ranked high in importance for me as I marked report cards and for the parents who received them when I taught kindergarten. I’ve been looking for politicians during this mad election season who would have received a “U” (usually) or even an “S” (sometimes). Unfortunately, what I have seen most of the time would have had me marking an “N” (never).

“Legislative ‘odd couple’ forms bond,” a recent inside page headline in The Hattiesburg American, via The Clarion-Ledger, brought me up short. It seems that first-termers Joel Bomgar, described as conservative Republican, and Kabir Karriem, described as liberal Democrat have formed a bond over the need to reform the criminal justice system and end mass incarceration. The article goes on to talk about how they are seriously working together on this crucial issue. It recounts their efforts to get out into communities this summer to communicate what can be done and to draft legislation together in the fall.

Who knew that legislators could still work together to accomplish good for our state or nation? That is so rare that I would have moved the headline to the front page! As a self-labeled independent voter, I have been searching, without much success, for those who learned the lesson of “playing well with others” in kindergarten. At the moment, neither of these Mississippi legislators is in my district, so I can’t even vote for them if they run for reelection. However, who knows what the future holds? I’ve made myself a note that they are willing to talk across the aisle for the common good so I don’t forget in case either of them ever seeks a statewide office.

I’ve avoided the political fray for the most part in my blog. I have friends from one end of the political spectrum to the other, and I can’t buy into the current attitude that those who disagree with me are evil nor work myself into hatred, even for the politicians who behave more like spoiled brats than like statesmen. I continue my search, which has been about as successful as Diogenes search for an honest man, for those who can get beyond their labels and work together to solve the problems in our society. I am grateful for this small light in a very dark tunnel.

Happy 100th birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Let me join the parade of people wishing Beverly Cleary a happy 100th birthday on April 12. Not that she herself is taking it too seriously. She’s been quoted as saying about this century mark, “Go ahead and fuss. Everyone else is,” and “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Still, it would seem ungrateful of me not to notice when she turned so many of my own second graders into independent readers. After I read Beezus and Ramona, they clamored for the next book in the series. “Sorry,” I said, “I have more good authors to read. If you want another Ramona book, you’ll have to read it yourself.”

My students were keyed up for their next weekly scheduled class trip to the school library (the only way that librarian worked, but that is another story for another time). They attended to the librarian’s lesson at the beginning of the period as well as they could with something else on their minds. The minute she released them to find their books, they landed on the Cleary shelves like a horde of locusts and picked the shelves clean.

A few weeks ensued with my students checking those books in only to have them checked back out by another member of the class who had been hovering nearby until the librarian stamped it. The librarian made a new rule. With ten or so other second grades, not to mention third and fourth, she found herself not having any Cleary books for the rest of the school so she set a limit on how many could be in my classroom at any given time.

Not to be outwitted, my students checked out their limit, supplemented them with the ones I owned, and swapped among themselves until their next trip to the library.

They never guessed that their teacher might have had an ulterior motive. I’ve long believed that the most likely way to make a good reader is to turn a child onto books. Avid practice in reading is not unlike avid practice in riding a bicycle to make the skill effortless.

So on this 100th  recurrence of the date of Beverly Cleary’s birth, I add my happy birthday wishes to the multitude of others who have loved Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, Ellen Tebbits, and Ralph S. Mouse.  I also add special thanks for creating book hunger in my students that made me look like a really good reading teacher!

Desert Beauty

When I consider the desert, my first thoughts don’t run to beauty. Trips to Arizona to visit our oldest son’s family continue to surprise me.

It doesn’t matter if we land in Phoenix or Tucson (a decision based on the mundane question of cost), as we hear the “get ready for landing” announcement from the cockpit, I take a peek out the window. The stark charcoal mountains silhouetted against clear blue sky are nothing short of amazing.

 

Traveling on our way or walking through their neighborhood, flowers stubbornly insist on blooming in the arid climate. Here and there, they dot the landscape in dazzling white or brilliant color.

 

 

Side by side with the flowers, tough cacti sport their own blooms amidst their thorns.

 

Growing among the backyard palms, enhanced with a bit of irrigation, we find limes and a day’s abundant pepper harvest.

 
Oh, and let’s not forget those roses!

Beauty continues inside, though truth to tell, daughter-in-law Stephannie would make her famous buckeyes no matter where she lived.

In spite of my understanding that the desert has a beauty all its own, I’ve not been tempted to relocate. This time of year, I look out my back windows into a wall of every hue of green in my Mississippi woods – pine, sweet gum, hickory nut, oaks . . . 

 

Arizona – it really is nice place to visit.