The Tilted World

Some of the mysteries are in the crime novel itself, The Tilted World, by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. Set in the great Mississippi Delta flood of 1927, there are the questions of what happened to two revenuers and what to do with the abandoned baby at the crime scene. Federal agents Ted Ingersoll and Ham Johnson place the baby with Dixie Clay Holliver, unaware that she is the savviest bootlegger in the area. Other questions are whether Dixie Clay will be caught with the Tolliver still and what her husband Jesse is doing now that his interest in the whiskey has waned in favor of something going on in New Orleans.

The novel switches smoothly between backstory and the time of constant rain, between the federal agents and the Hollivers, and the rains keep coming. Any student of Mississippi Delta history knows the disaster’s imminent while the novel holds the impending flood at bay until the climax. These mysteries keep the reader tense with wonder at who will survive, but there was an extra mystery to me.

The novel is written by a husband and wife team. I had read and enjoyed both before – Tom in a good crime novel and Beth Ann in more literary pieces and writer advice. Both are part of the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. I enjoyed the book and thought I saw Tom’s crime novel construction pattern and then Beth Ann’s way with words in passages like: “He passed the hardware store where a sign warned, WE HAVE NO MORE UMBRELLAS, RAIN PONCHOS, OR GALOSHES. And underneath that, in a different hand: OR CARBIDE LAMPS, OR LANTERN FUEL.  And underneath that, in yet a different hand, OR HOPE.”

I can’t get my head around how to write with somebody else, especially a spouse. I could see major marriage problems arising. I spoke to Al about it, and he assured me it would never happen here. He makes a good first reader and is quite content with that role.

Read Aloud Day

Don’t settle just for the obvious when you read the title of this post. February 1 is Read Aloud Day, and I’m giving you a bit of advance warning so you can be ready. The obvious solution of finding a preschooler is fine and is a lot of fun. That would be a good way to celebrate, but if you don’t have one of those close by, don’t let that stop you.

In an “if I knew then what I know now” instance in my life, I would not have stopped reading aloud to my oldest son when he learned to read. I did better with the younger two, reading aloud until they completely lost interest – the last one in junior high. In fact, in that last book we read together, Mark taught me something I used later with my students when I moved to that same school to teach. We read A Tale of Two Cities, and he decided to keep a list in his notebook of the multitude of Dickens’ characters. When old Jerry who seems in chapter fourteen, Book the Second, to be nothing more than a colorful character who robs graves to sell to the medical profession turns up again in chapter eight, Book the Third, Mark’s notes verified that Jerry had good reason to know that the spy Roger Cly had escaped his own burial. I learned from him to keep a running list of characters with my students when I read aloud for writers like Dickens who put enough people in their books to populate a small country.

Moving on up in age, I think about the annual parish spring teachers’ meetings with required attendance where those in charge spent a chunk of money to bring in an inspirational or entertaining speaker. Most fell far short of their cost and I, now that I assume the statute of limitations has run out, admit that the occasions often gave me a refreshing nap to begin my spring holiday. That did not happen the year the speaker came prepared to read aloud to us. One never gets too old to enjoy a well-read story.

And what if you are alone and can’t find an agreeable listener? Be my guest and read a poem, a story, an essay aloud to yourself. You deserve some pleasure in your life.

Need to Know

If you like mysteries (and I do) and you see recommendations from some of your favorite mystery writers (Louise Penny, Lee Child, and John Grisham) for a debut novel called Need to Know by Karen Cleveland on Net Galley’s advance reading copy offerings (and I did), you have a tendency to take their word for it and add it to your Kindle reading queue, and maybe start reading as a lead-in to a good night's rest.

In a very slight spoiler, the first chapter ends with CIA analyst Vivian Miller finding her husband’s face on the file she opens of a Russian sleeper cell. You might guess that I did not turn over and go to sleep. The trouble was that each chapter after that kept me in suspense as CIA investigations, family anxiety, and questions of who Vivian can trust leaves something hanging at the end. Then there is the question that recurs about her own ethics beginning with her deletion of that file and her loyalties to country, family, and colleagues. The ending, which I will not give away, had me returning to read it again and asking, “Really?”

The author’s authenticity comes from her own background in eight years as a CIA analyst focusing on counterterrorism which brings to mind the old and sometimes reliable saying that one should write what she knows. 

The release date for the Need to Know is Tuesday, January 23, but I was not at all surprised to see that movie rights are already in the works. In the meantime, if you are looking for a nice quiet book to lull you to sleep at night, this is not it.

Inventory - 2017

The new year starts for me without any resolutions. Dealing with things that fragile and likely to break makes me nervous, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have new year habits for January. Some of you have been with me long enough to have seen one of them – my annual reading inventory for the preceding year.

I read 82 books in 2017, not counting those requested by the two nearby grandsons who need a book read before nap, after nap, while they are eating lunch, or just because. Forty were for adults, thirty-two were for middle grade or young adult, and ten were for young children. The books were 71% fiction and 29% nonfiction. A protagonist that fit somewhere in the category of diversity made up 34% of the books.

I thought I might give some shout-outs to the top and bottom of my list for the year. The best pairing of books that were for different ages was the adult book The Radium Girls, a nonfiction account by Kate Moore, and Glow, a young adult fictional account by Megan E. Bryant, of one of those girls as her life might have been lived. I read Glow first, but knowing what I know now, I would have reversed the order. Either way is fine, but I do recommend both.

The best sequel set in my list for this year belongs to Linda Williams Jackson with Midnight Without a Moon and A Sky Full of Stars. The pair fit as nicely together as their titles with hints of the night sky. They are also the books that most left me wanting more, which makes me happy that a trilogy is possible.

The very worst book was The White Rose of Memphis by Wm. C. (Clarke) Falkner. Out of curiosity aroused by its mention in Myself and My World, an excellent biography by Robert Hamblin of his famous grandson William Faulkner, I thought I’d see how the grandfather wrote. That was one wasted bit of curiosity.

Along with my inventory, I have also tried to look back to see what worked for me and what did not in 2017 and look forward to how to make it better in the coming year. A big part of that search is to find a way to work more books into my schedule. My “read soon” stack is getting out of hand.

Dixie

Curtis Wilkie’s book Dixie, chosen by a member of our Mississippi writer’s book group in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (lovingly called OLLI), became a trip down memory lane for me. Covering the second half of the twentieth century, the book is part memoir, part Mississippi political history, and entirely interesting.

I made personal connections early as the book began with his ancestry in Toccopola, where my father once served as pastor of the Baptist church, and the author’s own childhood upbringing in Summit – not that far from where I live today in Hattiesburg. Threaded throughout are Mississippi governors’ races where his family voted with mine for candidates classified as “moderates,” his attendance at Ole Miss one year behind me, and even a mention of his friendship with a high school classmate of my sister’s.

After his graduation, he returned to the Delta as a journalist and became involved with many leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Eventually, he became disenchanted with the progress of Mississippi toward equality and moved away to continue his journalism in what seemed to be a more inviting environment, intending never to return. The draw of Mississippi with all its flaws, was strong for Curtis Wilkie, as it has been for many of her children who thought themselves ready to leave for good. The story of how he wandered and how he returned home is filled with a myriad of emotions in a readable account of the history of the period.

I recommend the book for its accurate view from a personal standpoint at this time in the recent past even if you have no connections to Mississippi – and especially if you do.

One Wish at Eighteen

Sometimes a book takes me into my own “What if?” like As You Wish in my last blog. The premise of having one wish on an eighteenth birthday that would be permanent intrigued me and kept me going back to what I would have wished for on my eighteenth birthday.

Looking back, I am quite sure what that wish would have been. Having skipped second grade, I entered college the month of my seventeenth birthday in the community college on a school bus route that ran on the highway right in front of my house. The choice was economic. I planned to get two years before transferring to a nursing program at a four-year institution.

If I had known I had one wish on the following birthday, it would have been for a full scholarship to a university with a prestigious nursing program, but nobody handed out magical wishes in the Furrs community in Pontotoc County, Mississippi.

If the wish had been offered and taken, I would have missed a few things:

• The boy with the red-and-white Buick hardtop convertible who took his afternoon work break from his family’s country store shortly after my bus arrived from school.
• Logically with my schooling paid for, the marriage that took place in my eighteenth summer would have been delayed at least and, with distance not always making the heart grow fonder, might never have happened at all. Truthfully, I don’t even want to consider what that would have entailed with a strange and totally different family. I truly like the one I’ve got.
• Nor would I really want to consider what I would have lost in the life of a military family when that boy, now my husband, was drafted into the Army with ensuing homes in New Jersey, New York, France, Belgium, Kentucky, Texas, Germany, Louisiana, and now back to Mississippi.
• As for the nursing program, by the time the two years of community college was complete, I’d made a decision to marry that boy and change majors to education. I continued my new degree goal by commuting to Ole Miss to major in English with plans to become a high school teacher. Over time, I got a Master’s in Early Childhood Education and became certified to teach K-12. I loved the six years I taught kindergarten, the fourteen years I taught second grade, and felt like I’d hit the jackpot when I spent my last seven years teaching a two-hour block of language arts to gifted junior high students.

I have a great deal of appreciation for nurses and may have adapted happily to that life, but there has always been a teacher in me craving to get out. At this point, I’m grateful that economics and that boy with the red Buick determined my future instead of a wish which might have been nice, but would certainly have been second best. There’s an old warning about being careful what you wish for, perhaps because life has something better in store.

As You Wish

In Madison, a small town lost in the Mojave Desert, Eldon counts down the last twenty-five days to his eighteenth birthday in As You Wish by Chelsea Sedoti, published on January 1. Lest they learn the secret perk of living in Madison, outsiders who stop for gas are sent on through as quickly as possible when they travel to Rachel where the UFO hunters congregate. Citizens get to make a wish on their eighteenth birthday that will come true with few restrictions (nothing that will affect the world outside Madison, for instance). Eldon faces the secret blessing – or curse – of being able to make his wish. After Chapter One sets up the situation and the idea that the seventeenth year is besieged with brooding about the contemplation that becomes more intense as the day nears, the book moves to “Chapter Two Countdown: 25 Days” and builds tension as each chapter continues the next daily count.

Not only his own happiness but relationships around him depend on Eldon’s choice and, having already seen enough results of other people’s wishes to know that not everybody has chosen one that brought happiness, he follows a suggestion to research past experiences. A telling comment comes from Othello, the artist who seems to be the only one to forego his wish. “Accomplishment comes from toil,” he says and ends with, “But it’s also the journey. A finished piece is nothing without the labor and emotion of the artist behind it.”

The feel of the book reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” with an air of unreality even while keeping the reader engaged and wondering how any decision Eldon makes  will not bring disaster somewhere. I would have been happy if they had followed the advice of Penelope, one of the characters, and stayed with cleaner language but the book raises questions worth considering.

Early in 2017, I reviewed Chelsea Sedoti’s book The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett. The only connection I make between the two books is Chelsea’s grasp of the workings of young minds and emotions. Both books in different ways lend themselves to thought-provoking discussion of issues that don’t always have clear-cut answers.

Since I could not keep from considering what I would have wished for when I was turning eighteen, I will follow up with a blog about those thoughts on Friday.

Letter to My Tenant

Dear Unknown Mama Bird,

Wherever you are now, if you are characterizing me as a cruel landlord for razing your fine home, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on. (I know, you have two. It’s a figure of speech.) We had no contract. Indeed, I did not know you had built your home in the front door wreath until I got ready to replace it. You may have noticed that door is frequented only by solicitors and dim-witted delivery people. The wreath, having seen better days, really has to go.

I admit it was clever of you to hide your nest behind the once bright red bow, blending into the natural burlap of the body of the wreath. I have to wonder how many babies you raised and why I never noticed your comings and goings.

Now, back to that nonexistent contract, residents like you have sometimes been labelled “squatters,” a term with derogatory overtones. Considering your contribution to my life, since I am a person with a generous nature, I’m giving you some credit. I’ve loved your birdsong, especially when its wakeup call supplanted the raucous alarm clock.  I’m also assuming you have rid my yard of numerous mosquitos, so I’m willing to call it an even deal for the present.

In the future, we can continue without a contract and work from a friendly mutual understanding. Help yourself to the materials you seem to love and which I have in abundance – pine straw, oak leaves, and dryer lint. I would suggest that you find a safer place to rebuild in one of the many trees surrounding the house or under the eaves of one of the buildings out back. Your wakeup song will do nicely for rent, and I hope you enjoy your feast on those mosquitos.

Best regards,

Virginia McGee Butler

Landlord, Corner of Greenwood Drive and Oak Grove Road

A Sky Full of Stars

I ended my review of Midnight Without a Moon, “With any luck, I may get the sequel ahead of time. If I do, I’ll be sure to share another review.” Well, there’s luck and there’s just plain old begging. Linda Williams Jackson responded to my review of Midnight, and I responded to her by saying the book made me want to sit and talk to the author. First thing you know we are Facebook friends and then real face-to-face friends, connecting when she came to Hattiesburg for a book event. I happened to mention that I was having a hard time waiting for the sequel. Maybe I mentioned it at length. I knew trouble had to come from Rose Lee Carter’s decision to stay in Mississippi after the Civil Rights Movement began to pick up steam. Linda brought me an advance copy of the new book (which will come out tomorrow on January 2) when she came to pick up her daughter at the University of Southern Mississippi for the holidays. We did talk and have coffee.

I saved the book for a car trip the next week, knowing I would not want to be interrupted after Chapter One; Monday, November 1. Rose Lee begins “My grandpa, Papa, used to say that gratitude was the key to happiness. If that was true, I would never be happy.” When Thanksgiving dinner comes, and Rose Lee goes blank and can’t recall a thankful scripture even though the younger children at the table are able to rattle one off, her grandpa’s prediction appears to be correct.

Listening to the news of violence, overheard coffee klatch conversations touting separate but equal schools, and arguments among friends who can’t agree whether violence or nonviolence is the answer to their problems leave Rosa, the name her mother gave her that she now prefers, in a quandary. A reason for gratitude will come eventually from an unusual corner. The titles, Midnight Without a Moon followed by A Sky Full of Stars, bring satisfaction but with a hankering to know where Rose will go from here. Now, I’m waiting for book number three!

In my review of Midnight, I compared Linda’s work with Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a longtime favorite. As I read A Sky Full of Stars, I realized a difference in perspective that gives even greater authenticity to these two books. Mildred Taylor used her father’s detailed account of growing up in Mississippi to bring reality to her books while Linda’s experience is first hand.

My recommendation, even though each book stands alone, is to read both of them in order, and don’t let it bother you that they are labelled for middle grade. Those kids shouldn’t have all the fun

If You Don't Have a Dream . . .

A surprise worth sharing came in a piece of Christmas mail, but first I need to give a bit of background. Back in the day when I married the youngest of the four Butler boys (Allen), my sister-in-law who had married the oldest (James) commuted from Pontotoc, MS about thirty miles north to take a class or two at Blue Mountain College. Married her senior year in high school to the young high school assistant coach, Bettye’s college aspirations would continue by fits and starts, interrupted by three children and eventually by her hostess duties when James moved on to become the Alumni Secretary and then Alumni Director at Ole Miss. She continued to take classes now and then at Ole Miss.

Years of Butler dinners, common family stories, and shared joys and sorrows including one long night standing watch with her, keeping an eye on her infant daughter in the hospital, and just the kaleidoscope of life have brought the “Sister” of this relationship into prominence and forgetfulness to its “-in-law” ending.

Often, Bettye has paid more attention to encouraging others to finish degrees than to working on her own. As I commuted to Ole Miss to finish my last two years, we had a standing arrangement for a once-a-week lunch. I picked up their oldest daughter at elementary school, and we hurried to the good meal we knew Bettye had prepared – often including my favorite asparagus casserole. She also provided a haven when I got stranded one night by my carpool.

One morning this fall, after a 38-year hiatus from classes, Bettye decided to pick up the phone and see just how much she lacked having her own degree, thinking she was about six hours short. “I’m not a quitter,” she told the development officer. Within a few days, she received word that analysis of her records with current requirements for graduation made her eligible for graduation with no further classes, even with a few hours to spare – hence my Christmas surprise, a clipping from The Oxford Eagle with the headline, “Oxonian Bettye Butler Receives UM Diploma at 87” with pictures of her receiving the degree she earned supported by her three proud children, also Ole Miss graduates.

My first thought was the line from the old song, “If you don’t have a dream, how’re you gonna have a dream come true?” To say that I am proud of her is grossly understating the case.

The Flawed Manger Scene

Joseph has lost his staff. The moss on the manger roof is splotchy. The donkey has no ears and the cow only one of her horns. Since the nativity scene came from Sears and was inexpensive in the first place, why don’t we just replace it?

The answer is, “Too many memories.” Our children were small when we got it. They stood and gazed at the Baby Jesus, often rearranging the animals or the Magi. As they grew older, they found a prominent place to display it each Christmas. They loved setting it up and remembering in Texas, Germany, Louisiana – wherever the Army designated as home.

One memorable Christmas we lived in Germany atop a hill overlooking a snow-covered village centered by the church steeple. Right after Thanksgiving, we decorated our Christmas tree. The children chose the wide ledge in front of the picture window for the nativity. Since our German neighbors waited to trim their trees until Christmas Eve, we invited the community kindergarten children to come up to see our tree and have cookies and punch.

Their faces lit as they “Oohed” and “Aahed,” in wonder at the Christmas tree. They examined each ornament, but soon they moved to the window and our Sears manger scene – a poor match in my mind for the beautifully hand-carved nativity scenes found in their Christkindlmarkts. They drew us into their awe as they sat quietly on the floor around the crèche watching as though they waited for the baby to cry.

We have new nativities, nicer and in better shape including one from Bethlehem. Still, this defective one always takes the place of honor. Maybe it is appropriate after all. For didn’t the Christ Child come into humble surroundings for that which was imperfect – to heal the brokenhearted, to bind the wounds of the injured, to bring sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are captive?    

A Christmas Carol Fascination

My obsession with A Christmas Carol began when I was six years old in Hardy Station, Mississippi as I watched the play rehearsals with my father Bah-Humbugging in the role of Scrooge.

In the years when our children were growing up, the book became an annual read-aloud. Often that was on the long trip from Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to North Mississippi to visit grandparents. I can say, with little expectation of disagreement, that I enjoyed this more than they did.

About the time the children grew up and could no longer serve as my victims listeners, I began to teach junior high where it became my December read-aloud. I loved watching my students’ recognition as the Ghost of Christmas Present threw Scrooge’s words in his face when he inquired whether Tiny Tim would live, responding that he “might as well die and decrease the surplus population.” 

No longer do I have a captive audience of children or students, but my librarian daughter continues to feed my passion by sending me yet another and another copy of the book to go with the cheap Scholastic version I read to my students. There have been a couple of beautifully illustrated copies. I thought she had finished the possibilities last year when she sent one with Dickens’s editing drafts on the opposing pages with handwriting that had to be indecipherable even to its owner. (It was comforting to know that even Charles Dickens scribbled upgrades on his rough copies!) However, after the Marshall Library book sale this year, she sent a well-worn volume with all his Christmas books and American Notes. I’ll enjoy my annual read from it this Christmas.

I also watch the movies, three this year, none altogether satisfactory. Those that follow the book the most accurately tend to have wooden characters playing the parts. One even had the audacity to forget that Scrooge’s young love was named Belle. Inevitably, they will leave out a favorite line or two since you can’t put everything in a movie that was in the book or add a superfluous scene as though they were better than old Charles. Nevertheless, they feed my passion begun in childhood and fulfill the wish that Dickens himself put at the beginning of the volume for his readers, “May it haunt their homes pleasantly.”

Should you ask how much of A Christmas Carol is too much, I would only reply, “There is no such thing, and may God bless us every one.”

Johnny Lightning

My niece, Sallie Pennebaker Wilkerson, figured out the reason for her obsession for checking packages for “Batteries not included” in a story I wrote to her and her sister Jennifer about their father after his death.

Back in the day when my three sisters and I were coping with early adulthood, I lived near our parents for a year with our four-year-old Murray, anticipating the baby to be born while Allen served a tour in South Korea. As Christmas neared, sister Gwyn Pennebaker, who had no children yet, asked for a present suggestion for Murray. I had already spent my wad when Murray began seeing advertisements for a Johnny Lightning track on TV and decided it was the “must-have” gift for him. I told Gwyn I didn’t even know how much it cost and not to worry about it if it was over their budget. (She was drawing a Mississippi school teacher salary, and John David was setting up a law practice with college debts taking a share of their income.) John David, with sympathy to this preschooler whose dad was in Korea, decided they needed to bite the bullet and get the race track.

We had our family celebration the Saturday night before Christmas. The picture tells it all as far as Murray was concerned. Whatever I got him paled in significance to this treasure. John David, as eager as Murray to get started, helped him open the package and began pulling out parts. NO BATTERIES!

It was Saturday night in the country before the days of 24/7 shopping places. There was nowhere to go – nowhere that would have batteries before Monday morning. Murray was consoled and reasonably willing to wait until Monday. John David - not so much - his Christmas surprise had been spoiled.

In the years to come, Murray’s younger cousins Jennifer and Sallie Pennebaker would never experience a gift-giving occasion with a need for batteries.

Sallie replied to my story, “So this is the origin of the reason I'm obsessed with checking every package for ‘batteries not included’ and the size of batteries needed for all Christmas toys.  For instance, this year I specifically bought (2) 9 volt batteries for walkie talkies so that they would work when they were opened on Christmas day. Growing up in the Pennebaker household, we might not have a lot of things, but there was never any doubt there were plenty of batteries of all different voltages. Now I know, it is thanks to Johnny Lighting and Murray.”

A Literary History of Mississippi

On December 10, 1817, Mississippi became the twentieth state, and it seems fitting to acknowledge one of its greatest contributions to the union, indeed to the world at large on this significant birthday. We Mississippians come last on many lists, but most scholars note the disproportional number of literary giants the state has produced and wonder why. A book that will help you if you want to get some proof and look at some reasoning for this achievement is A Literary History of Mississippi, published by University Press of Mississippi and edited by Lorie Watkins. 

Chapters are both interesting and scholarly, written by experts about that particular period of Mississippi literature or the authors who are the chapter’s focus.  The first few chapters cover the field chronologically beginning with indigenous writers and oral storytellers, moving through the designation at that time in history of Old Southwest frontier literature with rural and backwoods settings, on to the Civil War writings, and slave narratives. The next section focuses a chapter each on Mississippi literary giants – William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Margaret Walker. The final section moves back to a general take on the modern-day writers, who seem to rise like kudzu in the field of popular literature, poetry, song-writing, biography, and the briefer forms of essays and short stories. One of these new writers, Jesmyn Ward, won the National Book Award for Sing, Unburied, Sing after this volume was published.

The volume is a good overview of Mississippi literature with condensed life stories and listings of the works of several major authors. It is a helpful guide to anyone interested in reading Mississippi tales (the essence of being Southern in one view), in finding or reviewing the times that motivated the writer, or in seeing how place influenced the narrative. An answer is given at the end about how such a disproportional number of writers came to be from this place. After pondering whether it is in the air we breathe or the water we drink, their answer was expressed in a more erudite way, but it amounted to “Beats me!”

Snow Day Criteria

How many inches of promised snow constitutes a reason for a “Snow Day” in South Mississippi? The final weather report before bedtime on December 7 forecast somewhere between half an inch and an inch and a half with a bit of incredulity about any snow at all. Across the bottom of the TV screen scrolled the endless listing of school closings. It would have been easier to name any that were staying open.

Now before my faraway friends (who live in places where they walk uphill both ways in twelve inches of the white stuff to get an education) begin to laugh, let me say there are reasons for half-inch closings. Just think of some questions Mississippians might ask:

• Snow plow? What’s a snow plow?
• I have milk and bread. Was I supposed to do something else?
• What do you mean the highway people didn’t salt the road because the rain we got earlier would have washed it away?
• You’re telling me I shouldn’t hit the brake when the car starts to skid? What would you have me to do?

I think you get my drift, but we do actually know how to behave when it snows in south Mississippi:

• Call off school and any nonessential jobs.
• Light the fire.
• Read THE SNOWY DAY.
• Build a snowman and make a few snow angels.
• Turn the pool toys into sleds and go downhill.
• Have a snowball fight.
• Stir up some cocoa and throw a few marshmallows on top.
• Take a bunch of pictures and videos and post every single one of them on Facebook!

The time for the snow to end changed with each weather forecast the next day – 9 AM, 10 AM, noon, mid-afternoon – and down it came until late afternoon. As it happened, the accumulation was reported between four and six inches with Al measuring 6 ½ inches in our front yard. The newspaper said “more than 5 ½ inches” and a new record over the 5-inch one from 1895. Another peculiarity of snow in Mississippi, the exact length of time for snowfall and depth of pileup is difficult, maybe impossible, to predict. The first picture is early morning, the last picture is after a day of snowfall leaves Scrooge with cold feet in more ways than one.  

So if our friends from farther north are laughing at our expense for closing school in anticipation of half an inch of snow, we Mississippians are always glad to bring a smile. We’re wearing one ourselves while we drink our cocoa in front of the fire and watch the flakes sifting softly from the sky.

No Time to Spare

Hearing the name Ursula Le Guin may conjure other worlds of fantasy or, if you are like me, her wonderful writing book Steering the Craft. Her new book, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters doesn’t fit either category. In her introduction, she mentions her aversion to the word “blog,” then turns around and writes pieces that fit the form perfectly.

In true Le Guin form, she covers a multitude of topics, inviting the reader to agree, disagree, or simply to consider the point she is making, frequently in a humorous fashion. I knew I was in for some fun in the first one when she pokes fun of those trying to think themselves younger than they are, “If I’m ninety and believe I’m forty-five, I’m headed for a very bad time getting out of the bathtub.”

In one fascinating comparison, the idea of belief gets mingled with artichokes and in an entirely different kind of piece, she paints a touching portrait of her longtime friend and aide named Dolores. If you need to know how to eat a soft-boiled egg properly, you can find out here. There are more cats than I need, but I have several cat-loving friends who could really get into several blogs starring her pets. I won’t even spoil the story of the rattlesnake, thinking you need to experience it all on your own.

Note the date of each entry as you read since the time sometimes is important to the essay (or “blog” if you want to call it that behind her back). I would recommend keeping the book handy in a place where you stir the soup or anticipate some waiting time, reading and considering one topic at a time just for the pleasure of it. She is by turns argumentative, funny, thoughtful, and compassionate but never dull.  

Main Street Books

A whole lot of celebration is happening at Hattiesburg’s Main Street Book Store. First came the fifteenth anniversary, accompanied by a sale, of course. In that fifteen years, Jerry and Diane Shepherd have added a special spot in Hattiesburg, MS as part of the successful effort to make downtown a happening place.

I’ve had my own observations and experiences in this fifteen years.

• Though I’m not a big-name author, Diane included me in a group signing and held a luncheon to promote my contributions to Cup of Comfort anthologies.
• When I began my search for the Ezra Jack Keats books that I did not own, I took the list to Jerry and told him I didn’t want to pay collector’s prices but wanted good copies of each, some out of print. He called when he had located all of them – at reasonable prices. We both got a surprise when I opened them to inspect and found one of them autographed!
• They know my name when I show up and allow me to meander through their books, pottery, and Mississippiana to my heart’s content, and commiserate with me on the months when the biggest charge on my credit card is to Main Street Books.
• They know what is on their shelves and how quickly they can get anything that is not.
• They once even gave me an ARC (advance reading copy) of a book I asked to order so I didn’t have to make a purchase.

Try any of the above in a big box store and see how far you get.

This year Main Street Books celebrates Mississippi’s bicentennial by special emphasis on the state’s authors, giving a Mississippi bicentennial Coke with each purchase of a book by a Mississippi writer.

On this very day December 4, they have their 14^th annual celebration of an author extravaganza with more than twenty authors present to sign books from 4 to 7 PM. Like the good Hattiesburg neighbors they are, they recommend in their event advertising that you step across the street afterwards to enjoy dinner at Grateful Soul from 4 until 8 PM.

Lest you think Main Street is alone, other local book stores in towns far away from me have gotten autographs on books from my author friends and shipped them out to me with pleasure. I “borrowed” the sign in this last photo from an independent book store Facebook friend that gives additional reasons for shopping locally. I hope recent statistics that say these independents are making a comeback are correct. I also hope that Main Street Books will stay in business until I make that big-name author status – which means for a very long time!

Always the McGee Girls

The McGee Girls was the first group of which I became a member, complete with official status as the oldest. Our group as daughters of a country preacher always gave me an affinity to the Bronte sisters as the vicar’s daughters. The first photo in this blog shows us in the only professional photograph made while we were growing up for which Ruth gave her bangs a haircut.

In order, we were:

·         Virginia Ann who didn’t lose her middle name until late in high school – a nerd with her nose perpetually in a book

·         Beth, the daredevil tomboy, out climbing trees or talking herself into the boys’ ball games

·         Gwyn the Elegant, whose name was spelled “Gwen” until she decided to do the upgrade, designing fine houses and sophisticated clothes for her paper dolls

·         Ruth, nine years younger than I was, my apt pupil and listener who knew the “right” way to wash dishes and line up a crocheted bedspread with precision at an early age and was always eager for me to tell her another story

Likenesses and differences have followed us into adulthood with all of us winding up in some branch of the teaching profession. I taught kindergarten, second grade, and junior high language arts. Beth became a librarian and Gwyn a high school math teacher. Ruth worked first with children who had speech problems and went on to become an advocate for students with learning challenges, looking for the most efficient and effective ways for the students, parents, and teachers to enhance learning. All four of us added another last name, moving the one we share to the middle. Our differences reflect our personalities as our likenesses reflect our core.

Occasions to get together in adulthood come all too seldom with two of us on either end of Mississippi, one in Virginia, and one in Georgia. This Thanksgiving gave us much to be thankful for as we gathered in Gwyn’s well-designed home with beautiful table settings that she dreamed of as a girl. Seventeen additions were present with the original four – husbands, children, and grandchildren – quite a bit of thanksgiving even without the twelve children and grandchildren who couldn’t come. The second photograph shows us today still having a bit of fun for the camera though nobody cut their own hair for the picture.

Rising to the top in my gratitude list this year was the continued status of being one of the McGee Girls and even my permanent standing as the oldest. While we are different in many ways like the “come on in and sit a spell” feel at my house rather than the elegance of Gwyn’s, we share values that make life good – faith, family, fun, and food. 

Murder in the Manuscript Room

What could be better to wile away the hours of a trip spanning almost the length of Mississippi than a good murder mystery? I’d saved Murder in the Manuscript Room by Con Lehane for just such an occasion.

In good crime novel tradition, amateur sleuth Raymond Ambler, who is NYC’s 42^nd Street Library’s curator of crime fiction, sets out to solve the murder of a young woman who may or may not have been the person she claimed to be. Multiple suspects turn up, all with questionable motives for the crime. Could it be the young Islamic scholar doing research in the library, an ex-husband, or a member of a corrupt police department? Is the crime related to another in the upstate prison or maybe to a long-ago murder of a union reformer? Winding through this plot is Ambler’s growing relationship with Adele Morgan, a custody battle for his grandson, and redemption help for the grandson’s babysitter caught with drugs. Adele’s friendship with the murder victim makes her an avid partner in the search for her killer. Her fondness for the grandson makes her a willing ally in the custody fight and enhances her relationship to Raymond.

This book is second in a series and although I had not read the first, enough pertinent items from it were included that I did not feel lost, but I think not so many that readers of the first would feel bored. It also brought closure while hinting at another mystery to come. 

The book accomplished its purpose as I lost myself in the streets of New York City while the highway miles flew by to North Mississippi. It brought no new insights on life nor did it teach any grand lessons, but it took away my question of “Are we there yet?”

Behind the Cliche

Clichés in their origins were clever or universal truths, sometimes both. “The apple does not fall far from the tree.” “It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings.” Often, they reflect the region of the country where they originate. “Don’t buy a pig in a poke.” You may add your own favorites.

Some clichés are pertinent to the profession they represent. One of the most common ones for writers is “Write what you know.” Disputes arise with this, especially in the areas of fantasy and science fiction since even the context of these are often made up. Proponents argue that one can come to know by research or by careful preplanning as J. K. Rowling did with the Harry Potter series as she meticulously laid out her fictional community before she got involved in the story.

Within the last couple of months, I’ve published what I know and what I wish I knew. Thema Literary Magazine published, in their “Missing Letters” volume, an essay describing my search to know the rest of the story. Mama saved nearly all the letters I wrote home over the years but stopped in 1982 when Daddy died. Where are the others? Why did she stop? I wish I knew.

On the other hand, in its December edition, The Writer Magazine published my article on a subject with which I am well-acquainted. “Ranking Rejection” as the magazine suggests on the cover blurb tells why, even in rejection, some “no’s” are better than others. I know each category well and can illustrate each of them from my rejection folder, beginning with zero for no answer at all to ten for an acceptance!   

While I like seeing the article in print with my byline, I do wish I didn’t know this topic quite so well!