Dreams and Plans

I got a postcard from a writer friend reminding me that this is poetry month. I wish I had her skilled way of turning words into poems. Compared to her and other real poets, I hesitate to even consider myself a part of that community, but I’m also claiming other advice I read last week. “Just because you aren’t making progress as fast as you think you should doesn’t mean you aren’t making any progress. Keep going.” With the second in mind, I’ll share my verse that reflects my writing expedition.   

Dreams and Plans 

If dreams and plans were paper and pen, I’d be a well-known writer. 

But first:

Our children must be raised.

        My school desk must be organized.

The day job papers must be graded.

Or could these be excuses to avoid rejection?

 Fast forward:

Our children care for grandchildren.

My work desk settles into natural disorder.

No more new ungraded papers chase the old.

Rejection and acceptance come from daring to write and send.

The paper and pen I find more tangible than dreams and plans.

 I think I’ll write . . . maybe tonight.

If you look at the postcard, you will see that I am doing part of it right. I’m living my poem.

Gods of Howl Mountain

Having grown up in the foothills of Appalachia, I find myself attracted to books like Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown that are set in the region. The author collects the colorful parts of the region in his book set in 1950s North Carolina from the snake-handling preacher to the competing bootleggers and the house of prostitution.Be aware that the language and scenes fit the storyline.

The central character, Rory Docherty, returns from the Korean War missing one leg to run whisky in an old Ford coupe and spend nights returning to the horrors of war in his dreams. He lives with his folk-healer grandmother since his mother is in a mental institution, not having spoken since a hidden tragedy some years before. To add to the mystery, he falls for the young daughter of the snake-handling preacher.

The writing fits the tradition of Appalachian writers with this sample describing getting ready to kill hogs. “She had the fire crackling and smoking as the dawn light broke jagged over the hills. Rory set the pot on the fire and began sloshing it full of water hand-pumped from the well. He carried two pails with each trip, the water quivering like silver discs as he rocked his way across the yard.” The killing itself is just as graphic, if not as lyrical.     

The book will probably not educate you or make you a better person, but it may bring some surprising sympathy for the bootlegger or the grandmother who ran the house of ill repute. If you are a writer, it will certainly give a model of how to turn a phrase.

Home Remedy

The more things change . . .

A few years ago, when I was seven or eight, a spider bit me behind my left knee right in the bending section. Swelling ensued bringing on severe pain and rendering the knee immobile. As the problem worsened from day to day, Mama soaked the area in Epsom Salts – her cure for anything that ailed us. If drunk in a solution with a quarter cup of water, Epsom Salts worked on digestive problems. Her cold medicine got the addition of an aspirin and a touch of baking soda – pretty much the contents of Alka-Seltzer if you look at the label.

Daddy and Mama's younger sister Ruth, who was at our house for the summer from college, nagged her to consider that my leg was not getting any better and take me to the doctor. (If you are wondering why Daddy didn't do this himself, his visual impairment prevented him from driving.) She didn’t give up until Daddy began to haul me around from place to place because I couldn’t walk. I knew things were serious when she gave in and took me to the good country doctor. He took a good look, agreed that it was a spider bite, and said, “If I were you, I would soak it in Epsom Salts water.” Mama told this story more often than either Daddy or Aunt Ruth and with considerably more enthusiasm.

Al recently had an infection arise from less than skilled surgery on an ingrown toenail, and went for expert help from Suyon Rhee, Doctor of Podiatric Medicine. (I will spare you the gross pictures of what it looked like.) She skillfully used her surgical abilities and prescribed antibiotics to rid him of infection and finished with orders to soak the injured appendage twice a day in Epsom Salts water.

 Like I said, “The more things change . . . ” 

Alternate Side

Anna Quindlen, one of my favorite authors, picks an unusual turning point in life as the setting for her novel Alternate Side. Nora and Charlie Nolan have lived out their marriage in a section of New York City on a dead-end block where neighbors shared secrets, troubles, and a handyman while jockeying for a spot in the small parking lot. Charlie finally gets his own parking space but restlessly continues to maneuver Nora to look for a place to live outside the city. Nora’s satisfying but not demanding job and their residence in New York City, on the other hand, seem to fulfill her lifelong dream. Being in walking distance of everything suits her. As their twins empty the nest, leaving them with their nanny who has stayed on more as a family member than maid and Homer the dog, Nora seems content.

Then a violent act occurs in the neighborhood that alters the lives of the residents. In the midst of these changes and others at work, the Nolans must look at their marriage that may have become nothing more than a habit. Nora realizes she is familiar with three kinds of marriages: happy, miserable, and acceptably unhappy.

An added perk for the book are the amusing “George-o-grams” at the end of each chapter from the self-appointed keeper of that all-important parking lot. 

If you are an Anna Quindlen fan like me, Alternate Side will not disappoint. If you have not read her yet, what are you waiting for?

Astonishing

The Smithsonian Magazine for May 2017 ran an article about Henry Hudson who collected Latin American birds for the Smithsonian Institution while living a sparse life in Argentina.  A bearded loner in threadbare clothes, he sought an income writing about the natural world for journals and the popular press – certainly an insecure way to make a living at best. He was part naturalist, part writer.

Surprisingly, his memoir Far Away and Long Ago has been used in Japan to teach English. According to the article, the measured pace, beautiful imagery, and universal themes of this book written 100 years ago have made the English language come alive for the Japanese students. Eventually, he lived out his life in England arguing with Charles Darwin about woodpeckers and becoming admired as a writer. Joseph Conrad, no slouch as a writer himself, was a friend, and novelist Morley Roberts called him “an eagle among canaries.” His London Times obituary deemed him “unsurpassed as an English writer on nature.”

For all of that, he suffered the rejection common to writers as he offered his work to magazines and journals. I loved one quote attributed to him, “It occasionally happened that an article sent to some magazine was not returned and always after so many rejections to have one accepted and paid for with a cheque worth several pounds was a cause of astonishment.” I share his pain, if not his English spellings. I can verify that following many rejections, from dismissive to gentle, having one accepted and paid for with a check worth several dollars remains a cause of astonishment.

For what it’s worth, if you are as intrigued with this naturalist writer as I was, his book is available for free from Amazon on Kindle. 

Eating My Words

I’m thinking, “Can’t live with them – can’t live without them,” never applied better than with computers. I remember the day I declared that I was glad I taught second grade and would never have to learn to use them. Ha! Five years later my principal “selected” me to go on an excursion to see how another school was using computers with second graders! Truthfully, I must say counting money and telling time became much easier to teach when the follow up to the lesson was free time for students on the computer with games that went “ka-ching” for right answers.

Trying to remember when the real breakdown obsession for a personal computer came, I think it must have been when I purchased my first one and discovered that a very poor typist like me could correct mistakes with the backspace and keyboard without filling a page with Wite-Out. Not only that, but the machine would save as many copies as I wanted so I could choose the writing I liked best. The learning curve was steep with coaching that had to be dragged out of a son and son-in-law who kept saying, “Just learn what you need to know today. You don’t have to know it all.”

I’ve thought about this history over the last month when the bane of my existence has been a two-year-old PC that refused to upload updates and a computer geek telling me what drastic things could happen to all my files if updates weren’t in place. The kind of panic I’ve felt over losing those files and my fruitless automatic trip to turn on the computer first thing every morning have made me aware that I’ve come from never having to learn to use a computer to being dependent on it. Skipping a long and sad saga with geeks who could discipline that machine no more than I, (neither time-out nor corporal punishment helped), I did the next thing I had long been advised to do and bought a MacPro.

Would you believe that stubborn two-year-old PC would not talk to the MacPro to transfer files? Using the Migration Assistant exactly by the instructions, the PC screen said it was looking for the MacPro while the MacPro screen said it was looking for the PC. I said, “I can help you with that. You are staring at each other from three feet away.” The Apple geek figured a way around their blindness, noting as she worked, “You have a lot of files.” Well, yeah, and now I have them back. (They are also saved in the cloud!)

Everybody said, “Get an Apple. You’re going to love it!” Well, perhaps, but not yet. I’m back to yet another learning curve, and I’m eating my “never-learning-to-use-a-computer” words for breakfast. 

Time for (Earth) School, Dewey Dew

Starting to school can be a scary experience, even when you don’t have a name like Click Clack Waddle Dot Dewey Dew and even when you don’t have to travel all the way to Earth from Planet Eight Hundred Seventy-Two Point Nine. Dewey Dew does not want to attend Mrs. Brightsun’s School for Little Learners on Earth.

His mother insists he has to go and learn, but things get worse with classmates who have five fingers instead of three and stuff growing on top of their heads. You know you look different from them. The schoolroom has strange things called cubbies, and you must wear clothes that don’t fit right. All of that and Mrs. Brightsun keeps dinging on this space-shaped thing on her desk.

Just when you think things could not get worse, the children all line up in pairs to go outside so you find a corner to hide – that is until J. J. offers to be a friend. Funny thing is that your smile matches his, only much brighter. In the end, it’s all going to be “ootay.”

Time for (Earth) School, Dewey Dew by Leslie Staub was such a fun read for the grandmother (me) to share with two grandsons (Benjamin and Owen) who quickly figured out Dewey Dew’s alien words. I highly recommend it for preschoolers through first grade. I think it will be a repeated request that the adult will not mind reading over and over.

Roosters I Have Known

In case you wonder where I get blog ideas, this one came as our associate pastor wrapped up her scripture reading for last Sunday’s sermon with, “and then, the cock crew.” Memories of experiences with roosters came to mind although I did, indeed, follow her sermon about the significance of that particular cock.

My first memory came when I was four and our family of five rented half a large house from the owner. She had a nasty mean rooster. Having been warned about his temperament, I was duly cautious. However, on this particular morning the bird was nowhere in sight as I ran out the back door to play. The sneaky varmint had hid himself behind a bush and flew out at me before I could get out the back steps, pecking at my bare legs, and scaring the bejabbers out of me.

I thought about the nights we slept at Papaw’s house, his big windows open for the night breeze in the hot summer. Morning was welcomed by his big rooster atop a fence post calling out his “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo.”

As Al and I discussed this over Sunday lunch, he recalled a rooster in his mother’s flock that chose to light on his head. He couldn’t remember whether there was any pecking involved. I had to mentally shrink him to a small boy and put hair back on his head to get that picture in my mind. 

So, cocks or roosters, seem to have their place in life, but since my preschool days, I have chosen to give them a wide berth and admire them from a distance. That is, unless they turn up majestically as a favorite jigsaw puzzle.  

My Name Is Venus Black

I love finding a debut novel such as My Name is Venus Black by Heather Lloyd that keeps me mesmerized and turning pages. Readers learn the reason behind Venus’s name in the prologue and learn whodunit in the first chapter. If they should decide there was little else of interest, they would be very wrong.

Soon after her arrest, Venus’s developmentally challenged brother is kidnapped for no apparent reason. Much of the story centers on Leo who has obsessive compulsive traits as well. Just when one is engrossed in Leo’s path, the author switches back to Venus and vice versa. The reader feels compelled to turn the next page.

The title hints that Venus will come back to her name after she takes an alias to hide her identity when she is released from prison. Other secondary characters include Inez, the addicted mother; Danny, who would like to be more than a friend; and Tony and Tessa who wind up taking Leo in when he is abandoned by the original kidnapper. These well-drawn characters flesh out a story of blame, love, loss, and a need for forgiveness.

The problems of Leo’s disability and Venus’s abuse add color and authenticity to the novel. Yet they do not call attention to the issues themselves so much as they add dimension to the tale and linger as things you think about when you are finished. I found the ending satisfying but hated for the book to be finished. Maybe Heather will write another one.

Sorghum Boycott?

If Papaw happened to be looking down from heaven, I think he would have chuckled, too, but for a different reason than the CBS anchors. The CBS Morning Show repeated an amusing clip from Jimmy Kimmel’s show the night before. He got his laugh from his audience and the anchors by reporting China’s trade war threat to reduce their purchase of sorghum and then his guess as to what sorghum was. Gayle King, John Dickerson, and Alex Wagner knew no more than he did and could not google fast enough to get an answer.

This farmer’s granddaughter was mostly amused by their lack of knowledge of this common variety of molasses, at least if you come from North Mississippi. To be fair, a quick check of my computer thesaurus yielded no synonyms. The Merriam Webster on my desk gives three: (1) any of an economically important genus (Sorghum) of Old World tropical grasses similar to Indian corn in habit but with the spikelets in pairs as a hairy rachis; esp: any of various cultivars (as grain sorghum or sorgo) derived from a wild form,  (2) syrup from the juice of a sorgo that resembles cane syrup, (3) something cloyingly sentimental.

My grandfather grew the cane to make the pungent syrup – definition 2. If we were lucky enough to visit at harvest time, he’d give us stalks of the plant so we could chew the sweet juices from it. After a trip to the sorghum mill with his load of cane and a cooking down of the thin syrup until it was thick and strong, he had an abundance and was set for the coming year with enough to share with friends and family.

A pitcher of sorghum molasses graced his table at every meal. Since he was a dairy farmer, he poured it over his hot buttered biscuits in the morning and finished his other meals with a treat of the syrup over his hot buttered cornbread.

I have no idea why China wants our sorghum in the first place, but I’m guessing they are going with definition 1. Nor can I fathom why this is such a dire threat. Did Papaw miss out on something profitable? You can do your own checking about a “hairy rachis” since this foray into the dictionary leads me to conclude that we may all be ignorant, just about different things.

All the same, I’m chucking with Papaw at knowledgeable people who don’t know what sorghum is.

Educated

Tara Westover begins her memoir with a prologue description of the land on which she grew up as the wind whips her hair across her face and she looks upward to the mountain at the dark form of the Indian Princess. The princess, buried in the snow as if covered against the cold during the winter, reemerges each spring.

The mesmerizing memoir shows a young girl, one of seven siblings, first finding a way to endure with a father who stockpiles supplies and plans for shelter against the end times and a mother who is an unlicensed midwife collecting and selling homeopathic remedies. Little contact is allowed with the outside world except for their church where the parents’ ideas take Mormonism into an extreme form. From a young age, Tara works in dangerous conditions in her father’s scrap iron business with little regard for safety before a brother bullies her unmercifully with tacit parental approval as she begins to come of age.

Tara starts to find her way out of this situation through education, entering Brigham Young University without having been to public school and with little in the way of homeschooling that she has not taught herself. Yet she continues to be drawn back to family and the mountain with its Indian Princess. Her family leaves the reader head-shaking as they waffle between denial, rationalization, accusation, and occasional glimpses of something that could be taken for love if you look hard enough.  

Some of the fascination of this memoir comes from watching which of the siblings get out of this restricting situation to become survivors and which ones buy into it and continue its hurtful pattern. I read an advance copy of the book that came out on February 20. I’m predicting you should read a copy if you want to join the book conversation that will have book lovers talking.

Olympic Reflections

I’ve loved the unexpectedness in the Olympics for many years, relishing “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” I have a love of ski jumping for its sheer beauty and of snowboarding for its risk that is spectacularly odd since I can mount a good bit of fear on a step stool putting books on the high shelf in the bookcase.

I have a big problem with commentators who insist on pushing the microphone and the questions at people like Nathan Chen and Marai Nagasu who have just failed in some way to deliver on their overpromised hype from the media. In their final long programs, Nathan’s skating was sheer beauty along with the six quads that he nailed. Marai, who could have yelled “foul” and gone home after being left off the last Olympic team, instead kept working and performed a near perfect program with a first triple axel. I love when athletes don’t take failure as the final answer but get back up and nail their challenges.

I may need to take back some words I said about curling being less entertaining that watching the dandelions push themselves up in my front yard. Evidently many people were glued to the TV for curling matches that seemed to be ever-present. I did watch the gold medal match and enjoyed seeing all the USA team members actually singing at the Gold Medal Ceremony. When they got the mikes to do a bit of karaoke afterwards, it made me glad I had only seen and not heard them. The ladies’ hockey team also sang the anthem with great joy, but no mikes so I won’t critique their musicality.

I think Red Gerard was my favorite character to come out of this Olympics with his “Aw, shucks!” kind of attitude. It was hard to believe that someone who made it to the Olympics would almost oversleep and have to borrow a too-big jacket. At seventeen, being the youngest male snowboarder ever to win gold didn’t seem to impress him. Answering questions about winning the gold medal and about what’s ahead for him, he majored on having fun on the snowboard and just wanting to get a good run every time. In fact, he advised other ambitious athletes to enjoy their sport rather than obsessing over coaches and such. I’m guessing he’s not going to want or need a sports psychologist.

So now I wait two years for the thrills and agonies of the summer Olympics with sports I enjoy even more than winter ones. I can only hope that somebody will teach the commentators some empathy and courtesy in the meantime.  

Proper Training

Phina (on the right at the head of the table) read, “The End,” and received a lengthy round of applause. Our MS/LA SCBWI critique group meets monthly in New Orleans and celebrates any progress. We had listened for years as she read chapters or bits of chapters, sometimes repeating a rewritten chapter, and feeling a little cheated at meetings when she brought nothing to read from her middle grade novel. After applause subsided, we asked when she started the book. Her answer of “1993” brings to mind that you can’t rush perfection.

Her ten-year-old protagonist is also named Phina and based rather closely on her own personality and life. She had suggested to a professional editor, who gave her a review, that she might avoid confusion if her own name was not the same as the protagonist. The editor responded that she could change her own name if she chose, but she needed to leave her character’s name alone. We agreed, and I will avoid that confusion by using Josephine for the writer and Phina for her protagonist.  

While still working fulltime as a librarian, Josephine had begun the book Proper Training and worked on it when she could find time. Her oral readings during this time were spasmodic, but they became regular when Josephine retired and began writing in earnest. We loved the spunky Phina from the minute she tried to help the lady waiting beside her and her mother in the dentist office. The lady shared a picture of Elizabeth Taylor with her mother and wondered how a woman could look like that. Phina helpfully suggested to the lady, who was spilling over into her chair, that she could try a girdle.

The story, set in New Orleans during the days of desegregation, has Phina with both a heart and a mouth that are sometimes are too big and get her into trouble as she tries to make sense of the world that puts her Italian immigrant grandparents outside the mainstream and her black friend Ernestine out even farther. Thank goodness her grandmother buys her Devil’s Food Cookie Squares at Kress on shopping trips, bringing a bit of relief from the messes in the world and the ones Phina makes herself.

More celebrations have followed. An employee of a book publisher that Josephine became friends with as a librarian asked to read the manuscript. Celebration !!! That friend asked if she could pass it along to another friend who is an agent. Celebration !!!!! And now we wait with Josephine, hoping for the big celebration !!!!!!! when Phina makes her way into the book stores.

I was honored to be a beta reader of the finished manuscript, and now I must apologize that I can’t tell you where to run out and buy the book. I hope that time will come in a year or two!

M & M Reading

My book club friend Janet answered another member in an apologetic tone, “No, I’ve been reading a Louise Penny book.” At our Mississippi book club, we have set ourselves a goal of reading from the state’s writers. They are abundant with a lot of variety. Mississippi may lag in many areas, but we have a disproportionate number of excellent writers. We’ve done the well-known classics and the rising young authors who’ve won recognition in the literary world – Eudora Welty, Margaret Walker, and Jesmyn Ward – and a few men who measured up.

The discussions have been lively since most of the authors have drawn heavily on their Mississippi roots for their stories and have given clear, but not always flattering, pictures of the state and its characters. The questioner was asking about a book written by one of these lights in our literary sky. Since Janet has read all our previous choices, I likened her Louise Penny book to eating healthy nearly all the time but occasionally having a need for some M & M’s.

Janet’s answer took me back to another conversation long ago with the chaplain’s wife for whom Al worked. Knowing we shared a love of books, she asked me what I was reading. I was enjoying a biography of a woman doctor pioneering in a place of great need. She responded by saying she didn’t read anything that counted and introduced me to Agatha Christie.

Just as I would hate to be confined to a steady diet of roast and potatoes, or even catfish, I enjoy a variety of books that by turns make me think, pull at my soul, or furnish a relaxing interlude. You may also enjoy an assortment, or you want to be like Mrs. Coleman and never read anything that counts. If so, go right ahead and read your M & M’s. Even if you only read Agatha and Louise, I don’t think you can become a book diabetic.

Freedom in Congo Square

In preparation for the Kaigler Children’s Book Festival, I sometimes find pleasant surprises in the books I like to read ahead that are written by the presenters. I seldom find as many as I did in Freedom in Congo Square, a historical picture book written by Carole Boston Weatherford who will be presenting at the general session on Friday, April 13^th.

I will acknowledge a preconceived anxiety about the book when I first saw it mentioned when it came out a couple of years ago. I knew that my good friend Freddi Williams Evans, author of A Bus of Our Own, had done extensive research and become an expert on Congo Square. I also admit wondering if someone had edged into her territory – hence my first surprise. The first double-page spread is a foreword by Freddi, giving a history of Congo Square that will help parents and teachers who read the book to children.

The second surprise came in the colorful illustrations by R. Gregory Christie that match the mood and the culture of the weekday work and the Sunday celebrations in Congo Square.

The third surprise came in a text that enforces learning of the days of the week and counting down to Sunday with poetic descriptions of each day’s work. For instance,

Tuesdays, there were cows to feed,

Fields to plow and rows to seed.

A moment without work was rare.

Five more days to Congo Square.

Not a surprise at all, since I am familiar with Carolyn’s work, is the personal touch of history that she gives to the heroes of her story. I checked this book out so it will need to be returned to the library, but the festival book store will be remiss if they don’t carry this 2017 Charlotte Zolotow Award winner (for outstanding writing of a children’s picture book in the US). I’m already virtually standing in line to get a copy signed for a couple of grandsons.

A-changin' Times

Time’s they are a-changin’. I got the notice via Facebook from a friend who put my name to an appeal from someone I didn’t know with the added comment, “Virginia McGee Butler, are you available?”

While the request came in a new manner, I related quickly. Oak Grove Lower Elementary needed judges for their science fair. Remembering days of having to think of likely suspects and make individual phone calls when I needed adult volunteers, I had to admire this new method of notifying one person who could quickly pass on the request to somebody outside their school data base.

Turns out I was available for one of the three days they needed judges, and I still love school things. The science fair itself held little that was different.

• ·         Like always, it was held in the gym.
• ·         Kids came waddling in with boards almost as big as they were. (Did I mention I got to judge my favorite second-graders?)
• ·         Some boards were polished down to the finest detail while others lacked periods at the ends of sentences or held uncorrected editing marks above words.
• ·         Some children could barely be heard as they forced themselves to answer questions about their work while others could hardly wait to get started explaining every detail and how they accomplished their experiment. Those eager faces lingered until my partner and I said, “Thanks. You can go back to your room now.”
• ·         Some took the guidelines they were given seriously and had each component labeled so the judges couldn’t miss it, while others seemed to think the instructions were a list of possible options.

Their consistent use of the scientific method was impressive and indicative of good teaching. Some of the hypotheses the kids addressed were quite interesting and reflected an awareness that things are a-changin’ for them. One tested which fruits would be most likely to conduct electricity.

My favorite answer to a question about why the student chose his project of testing electrolytes in various beverages was, “I wanted to see if my soccer coach was right when he was telling us what to drink.” His explanation included the difference between winter and summer, which causes one to lose more electrolytes, and which drinks are better with which season. You might not be surprised that this one needed notice that time to go back to class had come.

I still love school and schoolkids so I had a nice morning with no lessons to plan and no tests to grade. I left my card in case they need me again without having to go through the Facebook chain.

The Great Alone

Kristin Hannah takes you to hard places in her books which I experienced first in The Nightingale. Her new book, The Great Alone, is no exception. It begins in 1974, with thirteen-year-old Leni coping with a father who is a former POW home from Vietnam afflicted with PTSD in a time when little was said or done about it, and a mother who is drawn back to his volatile abusive behavior. The book pictures vividly the mindsets of the abuser and the victim who keeps returning for more. The setting moves from Seattle to the wilds of Alaska to add yet another difficulty to her life.

Early on, Leni seems to be the most adult member of this dysfunctional family as she questions “How was Mama’s unshakable belief in Dad any different than his fear of Armageddon? Did adults just look at the world and see what they wanted to see, think what they wanted to think? Did evidence and experience mean nothing?” The question looms often of how many ways are there are to die in Alaska. In a bit of balance, the unique Alaskans who have carved out a life in this unforgiving land add color and helpfulness to the newcomers.

Tempted to close the book as one difficulty piles on the next, I really couldn’t but needed to turn yet another page since I couldn’t leave Leni in that chapter’s trouble. Also, there was a love interest as she grew up. Surely, something good would come of that.

I’m glad I stayed for the resolution, though Kristin Hannah took her own good time in coming to it.  This thought-provoking book kept me turning pages, but I’ll need recovery. I think I’ll have time before she gets another one on the market.

Waiting for CBF 2018

Three months away and plans are underway for the fifty-first Children’s Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi on April 11 – 13. I got my invitation to volunteer this week with the promised pay of major fatigue at the end. I can’t wait. It’s the best tired I know.

On pretty good authority, the winner of this year’s Southern Miss Medallion for his body of work in children’s literature spent a good part of his school days in the hall outside the classroom. In fact, he is said to have created his Captain Underpants in his drawings out there. Sorry to say, that opportunity would have passed for Dave Pilkey if he had been my student. I would not have trusted a dyslexic hyperactive child in the hall even when he caused major disruptions in my class. He would have been in a desk in the back in the most unobtrusive place in the room – probably with my student who drew pictures back there and has become a professional graphic artist. I’m guessing Dave could have invented the popular captain even if the hall was not in my list of options.

Other special guests that are high in my anticipation include Carole Boston Weatherford who puts the past and forgotten stories into her writing. I’m really looking forward to the Ezra Jack Keats lecture and hearing the granddaughter of Madeleine L'Engle talk about her grandmother who wrote A Wrinkle in Time. I think that is especially appropriate since Madeleine won the Newbery Award for that book in the same year that Ezra won the Caldecott for The Snowy Day. The banquet picture for the occasion shows Keats with a smug look in his white jacket with L'Engle rising several inches above him in height.

There are also the awards for the new and rising stars in the children’s book world as the Ezra Jack Keats Awards for new writers and illustrators are presented and a big celebration held for them. So many of these from years past have gone on to be bright stars in the children’s book world, and it’s fun to meet them at the beginning of their careers.

Other guest writers, who might be your favorites, can be found on the website along with information about registering for the time of your life at www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival. You’re still in time for the early bird rate, but only if you hurry. That price ends today, February 9. It will still be a bargain at tomorrow’s rate.

Votes for Women

Acknowledging that many people know how the story ends with American women who have had the right to vote for nearly a hundred years and how it began in a women’s rights meeting in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, Winifred Conkling sets out to fill out the in-between. Her book, Votes for Women, came out on February 2.

In a book that is much more entertaining than either its title or its subject matter would suggest, Winifred paints complicated portraits of the women who led the way in seeking equal rights. Though she focuses on the right to vote, much more is at stake in the world where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony begin, where women can’t own property, where children automatically belong to the father in the event of a divorce, where any wages they earn belong to their husbands or fathers, where they can’t enter into contracts or sign legal documents. They couldn’t serve on juries or testify in court, and their husbands or fathers could legally beat them if they used a whip no thicker than a thumb.  

Besides these names that we recognize from history, there’s Victoria Clafin Woodhull whose life story had more twists and turns than a mountain road. She ran for President forty years before women could vote on a platform of an eight-hour workday, graduated income tax, and reformed divorce laws.

After this first wave of activists, came a second wave. The two-part history has smart women finding loopholes and clever interpretations of the law and adding other social justice issues, such as temperance and abolition, to their agenda. Not qualifying any of these women for angel wings, Winifred reveals their abundant warts and their dissention among themselves. Hardships and terrifying episodes precede the ratification that finally occurred in 1920.

The fact that the book is published by Algonquin Books for Young Readers shouldn’t influence your decision to read it. If your heart is young, or even if it isn’t, as long as you love a well-told true story, get to a bookstore or talk your local librarian into ordering one since they really need it on the checkout shelf. The book could be described as timely history.

Wunderkammer

Every now and then, a new challenge appeals to me. As I mentioned in Monday’s blog, I have read writing helps and prompts by Beth Ann Fennelley. In a recent article in The Writer magazine she talked about writing what amounted to miniature memoirs. She used the word “wunderkammer,” taking the idea of a cabinet of curiosities and applying it to unique personal stories. She challenged her readers to write a memory that told a story in less than two hundred words. Here is my response to her challenge – all 183 words of it.

I glance at Mama’s shopping list and see the first item “show polish.” Why this sense of foreboding with a simple grocery list, other than the fact that military members are the only people I know who still consider shoe-polishing an art?

Mama’s past flashes through my mind as I take a longer look at her misspelled word. This teacher taught first-graders to read, to write, to spell – the more challenging the child from lack of opportunity or discipline, the greater her joy in their success. This mother couldn’t handle her oldest child’s illiteracy when she turned five years old. In the days when Mississippi had no kindergarten, she plotted to get me into school under the wire. When her continued efforts failed, she did what she had to do and taught me to read at home. My innate sense of how to spell came before I started to school.

I avert my eyes from her error, knowing that “show” for “shoe” presages all that is to come. We’ve heard another word from her doctor. Because of her, I can spell it. “A-L-Z-H-E-I-M-E-R-S.”