Of Summer Books and (West) Virginia

It's not every day that a friend has a book published. And it's certainly not every day that a friend has two children's books published in the same year. Even if that friend is author, Candice Ransom, who has had more than 100 children's books published in the past twenty-five years, it's still a very rare and wonderful thing.

When I was a kid, I could be happy for hours perched in an old elm tree in our backyard reading books. With six noisy brothers and one younger sister who needed babysitting when I had better things to do, the elm tree was a great escape on a hot summer day. I snarfed books like they were cool blueberry Slurpees. Candice Ransom's two newest books are delicious right to the last slurp. Um, I mean page...  Note: Slurpees didn't exist back when I was young, but Kool-Aid did and I took mine with extra sugar, not straight up like Iva Honeycutt does in Ransom's IVA HONEYSUCKLE DISCOVERS THE WORLD.

This book is a fun read for kids 6-9 years old. "Eight-year-old Iva Honeycutt is sure that she’s destined for greatness. And this summer Iva has big plans to make her first great discovery: finding General Braddock’s treasure, which was buried somewhere in her small town of Uncertain, Virginia during the French and Indian War. And to make sure she's up to the task, she invents a new name for her discoverer self, Iva Honeysuckle. Still, even a great discoverer can hit a few bumps on the road. Like Iva’s bossy double-first cousin, Heaven. And her great-great-grandfather Ludwell’s treasure map not exactly being crystal clear. And on top of it all, her supposedly trusty dog, Sweetlips, falling asleep on the job. Must Iva do everything on her own? Candice Ransom has created a sweet, self-assured and completely irrepressible heroine in Iva."

Candice's second book, coming out in early June, is REBEL MCKENZIE. This book will appeal to ages 8 and up. Rebel McKenzie wants to spend her summer attending the Ice Age Kids' Dig and Safari, a camp where kids discover prehistoric bones, right alongside real paleontologists. But digs cost money, and Rebel is broker than four o'clock. When she finds out her annoying neighbor Bambi Lovering won five hundred dollars by playing a ukulele behind her head in a beauty contest, Rebel decides to win the Frog Level Volunteer Fire Department's beauty pageant. Rebel may not be a typical pageant contestant, but how hard can it be? Rebel's dramatic reading about life is the Pleistocene era is sure to blow away the competition. It turns out that winning a beauty pageant is harder than it looks. By the end of the summer, Rebel has learned a thing or two about her true calling that will surprise everyone--most of all, herself."

It's said that good books take readers places they didn't expect to go. And Candice's writing does precisely that. Her stories take readers to the roads less traveled of her home state of Virginia. The places she writes about are ones that I imagine are similar to the place where my mother grew up, Parkersburg, West Virgina. (Now, I know for a fact that as Candice reads this she will curl her lip and hiss, "West Virginia is most certainly NOT Virginia!") But, I will risk potential offense and say that for me, born and raised in the Upper Midwest, it's close enough.

I do know that folks in Virginia and West Virginia saw things differently during the Civil War and that West Virginia has more mountains and coal mines than Virginia, but somehow the language, characters and settings of Ransom's books seem close to the world my mother described when she talked about her hometown. It's a place and a culture I have to work hard to know, especially now that my mother is gone.

The photo below is blurry, but it shows my mom, maybe eleven or twelve years of age, with her Uncle John Malley. As I've written about before, from the age of eighteen months my mother was raised by her paternal grandmother following the death of her own mother in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Mom's aunts and uncles became her big brothers and sisters. She never wanted for love, attention or fun.

There's always been a hole in my life, never knowing very well the people and places of my mother's world before she moved to Minnesota. A piece of who I am is still behind the veil of that Southern world, so different from the Midwest. Candice's writing takes me to a place I didn't expect. Closer to my mother. Closer to a place where the I can imagine the neighborhood characters my mother knew: a pet chicken named Debbie Hen, stern Sister Baptista who taught weekly Catechism lessons yet sent Mom birthday cards until she died, Uncle Justin who fell asleep (or passed out) on Saturday nights in the sample caskets of the family funeral home... They aren't so different from the menagerie of offbeat characters and pets in Candice's books.

Candice says that her Southern writing centers around food, family and funerals. I know little of the food my mother grew up with, her grandmother struggled to make ends meet. Her extended family was large and boisterous. And there were lots of funerals. My mother's father was an undertaker. He worked for his Uncle George Carney who owned one of the seven funeral homes in Parkersburg in the early 1900's. Just recently, I Googled the Carney Funeral Home and found this picture which brings to life the story my mom told about having to make an appearance at every wake held at the funeral home, even if it was a Saturday night and she had a date.

Carl Sagan said, "To read is to voyage through time." I'd add, "and to voyage through place." The places Candice has created in her most recent books are ones where I want to linger on the front porches, peek in the windows, hide behind the trees and eavesdrop in the shops. Both IVA HONEYSUCKLE and REBEL MCKENZIE are books with strong voices. Candice's true voice. A voice I can't get enough of.

Now, if only I could enter the front door of that funeral home and see what it looked like inside or if I could meet that sporty twelve-year-old version of my mom--a sweet but self-assured girl brimming with Southern charm. But tough enough when she was at Girl Scout camp to take a big stick and whack the black ratsnakes hanging from the trees that blocked the path to the outhouse... Hmmm, a story that might be best told in a book of my own. Good books, like Candice's, inspire us to tell our own stories.
Share Candice's books with a young someone in your life and see where they take you! I guarantee you'll enjoy the ride whether you're from Virginia, West Virginia, or parts further west.

May 29, 2012

A Rare Man

Craving a dose of civility? Want to feel good about being an American? I have a suggestion. Take the road less traveled and visit the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia on a sunny Sunday morning in early spring. I guarantee you will not regret it or ever forget it.

And one more very important thing: check the church's website to see if former President Jimmy Carter is teaching the Sunday School lesson. On a fairly regular schedule, Mr. Jimmy, as his fellow church members call him, gives an hour lesson on topics related to the weekly bible readings.

Greg and I have been to Plains twice to hear the 39th President preach. At first we just wanted the experience of being close to an American president, but both times we have come away from the experience inspired by Mr. Jimmy's eloquence, humility and dedication to living a value-filled life.

We spent Saturday night in Americus and got up early not wanting to miss a seat in the small church--about 300 guests can be accommodated. We drove the ten miles to Plains past Stripling's General Store, a smattering of blooming trees, fields of Georgia red soil newly turned, tidy orchards of pecan trees, a dead armadillo, a goat farm, and more Baptist Churches than I could count, including the Greater Gum Creek Baptist Church.

And then we rolled into sleepy Plains, turned down Bond St,. shortly arriving in front of the Maranatha Baptist church. You know you're at THE church by the men and women in black suits with black SUV's and even a black bomb-sniffing dog in the driveway. But, the dog didn't look too intimidating--like maybe this was retirement duty. He was a little shaggy, slightly overweight, missing part of his tail, but clearly eager on this bright morning to be doing his job sniffing vehicles.

After a brief wait in line with our fellow churchgoers and a quick wanding from a metal detector, we found ourselves inside the church--front and center in the third row. Then a woman I'll call The Handler, gave an hour's worth of instructions on what to do and more importantly, what not to do once the President and Mrs. Carter arrive. There was time for our questions to be answered and time to take pictures of the simple church with its large wooden cross made by the President.

Finally, we bowed our heads for an opening prayer and the President entered the church. I learned from the previous visit to peek, so that when the door opens you can get a good look. A group of Secret Service agents accompanied the former President and took up positions around the room. Mr. Jimmy took his place in front of the congregation. He was wearing black slacks, a knit shirt and a simple tan jacket with the Habitat for Humanity logo. And he was standing not even five feet away.

Apparently, the first question is always the same. "Are there any visitors?" Which is a joke, there are only 60 regular members of the church and less than 30 come every Sunday. Mr. Jimmy's 87-year-old eyes twinkled as he heard that among the 200 plus visitors this day were folks from almost every state in the union and many foreign countries. The Netherlands, Japan, Argentina, India, Canada, Ethiopia, England and China were represented. There were also two groups of college students and a dozen or so ministers, missionaries and various other clergy-types. Mr. Jimmy seemed especially energized by this diverse assortment of visitors

The lesson on Sunday was related to the biblical parables of the seed sower and the mustard seed. So appropriate for the spring planting season! First we learned about peanut seeds (Mr. Jimmy's favorite seed).

Then we learned about Mr. Jimmy's experiences as a missionary in New York City trying to convert people to Christianity. Having doors slammed in his face as well as having some successes made him into the person he is today. One who believes that we all are called to invest in God's kingdom by planting seeds of peace and hope through caring for others as best we possibly can. Everyone has talents that can be the seeds of change. "You just have to have a simple faith. Love God and love the person standing in front of you."

Time stood still as the President proclaimed his hopes for world peace, for eradicating diseases that ravage the poorest people on the planet, for protecting the environment. Everyone was super polite and listened intently. I only heard one cell phone...  Tho I suppose it doesn't hurt that the Secret Service would pounce on anyone who made a suspicious or threatening gesture. And I'm sure the old doggie had a few moves left in him as well...

After the President spoke he took a seat in the congregation--directly across the narrow aisle from Greg. Again I had to exercise my peripheral vision eye muscles to sneak some peaks and yet not look suspicious to the Secret Service guy who had his eyes on us. I did note that Mr. Jimmy didn't sing very loudly and that during the rest of the service he appeared to occasionally read notes from a small pad on his lap. I smiled. He reminded me of my dad and the way he used to surreptitiously do work during church services.

The world felt like a better place when we left the Maranatha Baptist Church last Sunday. What a privilege to live in a country where we are free to worship as we wish, where we are free to preach the values we hold dear. And, hopefully, where most of the time we respect the words and opinions of others. 

After the service, the Carters graciously allowed every person to have their picture taken with them. It was an extraordinarily generous offer given the risks involved, the time spent standing outside on what was a chilly, windy day (resulting in a less than good hair day for many of us).

It doesn't matter if you like the job Jimmy Carter did as President, his current politics, or his religion. You simply have to admire his work ethic, his humble nature (no applause is allowed and you are asked not to stand when he comes into the room) and his exemplary civility.

03-06-2012

Rare Equals Funny?

I'm working on a humorous middle grade novel. I've been thinking a lot about what is funny and what is not so funny. Humor comes in many flavors--everything from slapstick to sly nuance. And what's funny to one person isn't necessarily funny to another. Take the movie Napoleon Dynamite. I enjoyed every minute of it. Some friends didn't make it through the first ten minutes. My mother thought Charlie Chaplin movies were hysterical. I found them boring. But we could both laugh until we cried at Lucille Ball and her sidekick stuffing chocolate in their mouths while working at the candy factory.

My dad, on the other hand, used to guffaw when he watched Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. Perhaps because he grew up with chickens on a farm. It made me laugh just to hear him laugh. I'm not sure I'd have ever found that pompous old rooster funny without seeing him through my dad's eyes.

Walking the beach in Florida we see an abundance of shore birds. I never tire of the brown pelicans. They look prehistoric and odd--some would say funny. But they're so graceful and acrobatic when they fly, I don't laugh at them. I simply smile with enjoyment.

Royal terns used to be my favorite shore birds with their whimsical tufts of Spring head feathers. The photo of this guy makes me laugh. He looks like the baddest bird on the beach!

This year a new bird has caught my fancy and tickled my funny bone (the bird in the center of the photo below). It's a black skimmer. One day we saw a single skimmer in with a bunch of terns--it stood out with its bright orange beak and long, sleek body.We took a picture and later read about its long lower mandible. Unique in birdom--skimmer's lower jaws are longer than their upper jaws, which comes in handy for skimming food on the fly.

Several days later we came upon a whole flock of skimmers. We watched them for a long time as they arranged themselves in rows facing into the stiff wind. Every so often they would rearrange themselves. Birds in the front would move to the back. But they were so precise and orderly about it, I found myself laughing. Then Greg took a front-facing shot of several of them (first photo above). The head-on view made me giggle. But, then I felt bad. Why do I find the most different looking birds funny? Why does unusual equal funny? Why do I seek to write characters who say and do quirky things?

Of all the amazing creatures on this beautiful planet, I favor the unusual. I'm sure that's not unique. For me, a photo of one ordinary gull doesn't equal a photo of a whimsical skimmer. Unless maybe the gull is doing something unusual, like the other day when one was sitting all by himself on the beach with his feet out in front. I'd never seen a gull do that. Greg suggested maybe it was simply enjoying watching the waves rolls in--like us. Wish we'd had a camera along!

After some pondering and more beach walks, I've decided the pleasure of humor lies in the fact that sometimes we're not really laughing at someone--like Napolean, Foghorn, Lucy, or the skimmers, or my granddaughter wearing her hat backwards, we're simply appreciating them with glee. Laughter is our childlike response to delight. The sweetest kind of humor, that's what I hope to fill my stories with.... And, well, okay, a smidgeon of bathroom humor every now and then, but that's another topic!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and so is humor!

02-18-2012

Goodbye True Blue Friend

This is the image of our dog, Jo, I want to remember. I'd rather not remember the hobbled gait, difficulty navigating stairs or wretched hacking she endured the last months of her life. In fact, the day this photo was taken was one I hold in my heart for several reasons. Let me set the scene...

The glass on our storm door broke and we didn't get it repaired for a couple of months. One of Jo's daily joys was going out to fetch the morning newspaper and after the glass broke she discovered she could simply leap through the opening not having to wait for the door to open, retrieve the paper, and zip back into the house--sticking a perfect landing in the narrow front hallway worthy of an Olympic athelete.

As the weeks went by that summer, Greg challenged Jo with retrievals of toys, shoes, training dummies... Whatever he threw out the door she happily found and returned to him with boundless enthusiasm and not a small amount of pure pride as she practically flew through the opening of the storm door--always clearing it with inches to spare and landing like a...well, a cat.

One evening my parents and my Aunt Willa came over for dinner. After dinner, we had Jo do some tricks for them--like finding a training dummy wherever we hid it in the house. But the piece-de- resistance was her door trick. We pushed the folks' chairs to one side of the door so they had a good view. Then Greg threw a small pink ball out into the front yard and had Jo retrieve it. Jo performed flawlessly flying over the door with the ball in her mouth and stopping on a dime in the front hall. I can still see my Aunt clapping her hands with glee and hear her saying, "This is better than watching the circus." Even my dad was laughing at her antics. Much to their continued delight, Jo leaped in and out of the door many times that night and seemed to have a smile on her face each time. Wish that I could relive that night and see all their smiling faces again!

Just a stupid pet trick some might say. Now that Jo is gone and her appreciative peanut gallery, too, I like to think of that evening as the time the circus came to Cheyenne Lane. Jo might have been the runt of her litter, but there was nothing small about her heart or her star quality. She touched everyone who knew her.

January 05, 2012

Not So Rare Ocean Worlds ???

On the back page of the newspaper today--far away from articles about whether the Vikings will really leave Minnesota, fears that Asian carp are in the Mississippi River and the latest political squabbles, was a fascinating story about new research shedding light on the source of Earth's water. Ever wonder how water got here when Earth was once too hot to hold water? I have to admit I never gave it a thought until I read the article.

European scientists say they've discovered a region at the outer reaches of a disk surrounding a star 175 light years away. The star and the disk which holds very cold water vapor, are in the early stages of forming planets, in much the same way Earth was formed more than 4 billion years ago. The scientists have concluded that H2O came to Earth via comets and asteroids that originated in similar cold but water-filled regions, which are assumed to have been present when our solar system was forming.

The lead astronomer says observations indicate enough water exists in the disk they've studied to fill thousands of Earth oceans. The logical extension of this is that water has also been delivered to some of the billions of exoplanets now known to exist beyond our solar system--meaning there are likely to be many "ocean worlds" throughout the glaaxies.

Whew! Awesome stuff to ponder next time you're watching waves crash. Wonder if those flippin' carp exist on another planet in a galaxy far, far away?

October 21, 2011

A New Rare and Blue Critter (for me)

Zoos make me sad. Always have. I find it difficult to observe animals pacing from boredom, waiting at a gate for food, skimming the edges of tanks in an endless search for openings... Even if their man-made homes are thoughtfully constructed, they're still prisons of a kind. And even if the creatures will lead longer and better lives in captivity, or maybe have a life at all if they were an orphan or a trouble-maker doomed to be destroyed--it still comes at a heavy cost. If you ask me.

But that doesn't mean that I still don't like to look at the animals. Recently, we took the toddler grandkids to the Minnesota Zoo. They completely loved the new exhibit of African penguins. Kids can climb on a rock viewing area and come nose to nose with curious black-footed penguins pressed up against the glass. Squeals of discovery from both species were abundant. I couldn't help noticing two penguins at the back of the enclosure. They had their backs to the glass wall. Why did they prefer to stare at a rock wall?

The next display we visited had sea dragons in it. I'm not sure I'd ever seen either a leafy or a weedy sea dragon before. Maybe on the back of a comic book years ago, something exotic you could send away for. I was mesmerized by these fairy-tail like creatures slowly and gracefully swimming around a tank of sea grass. The weedy sea dragon was my favorite with its long speckled snout, bits of bright yellow on its body and most striking of all--its iridescent blue bands.

I found out that sea dragons live on the southern coasts of Australia. They're a fragile creature, susceptible to damage from violent storms tossing them against reefs or stranding them on beaches.
Sea dragons grow to about 18" and are related to sea horses. Sea dragons don't use their tails for gripping as a sea horse does, they use them for steering. Weedy sea dragons are endangered due to loss of habitat in polluted waters and illegal collecting. You can imagine that this delicate Seuss-like critter is a popular addition to aquariums.

Survival rate for sea dragons in captivity is about 60%. I don't know how many years they can live in an aquarium or even what their lifespan is in the wild. I wonder though, would they choose life in the tempest-tossed waters of the ocean or life confined in a tank with blurry human faces staring back at them?

09-21-11

The Briefcase in Blueberry Inlet

Look carefully at the photo. Can you spot a leather briefcase above the left side of the big rock? The case belonged to my dad. Last week I brought it "home" to Canada a few days shy of what would have been his hundreth birthday. I placed the well-used case in one of my dad's favorite places on Lake of the Woods.

My dad passed away five years ago, but I haven't been able to part with his briefcase. The briefcase was always close to him, often open. It was filled with plenty of freshly sharpened pencils, vitamins, paper clips, but mostly letters and papers scribbled with his ideas. The briefcase was given to dad in 1977. A metal plate inside the case is inscribed with his name and the date. Dad never liked to replace anything unless the old one totally wore out. He used this case for almost thirty years.

For the last few years of his life, the case sat on a chair in the apartment Dad shared with my mother at their senior residence. When Dad was well enough to leave the nursing care area and spend time in the apartment he liked to work on his papers. After he died, the case sat on the same chair until my mother passed away four years later. It was as if the case was simply waiting for him to return.

For the past five years the briefcase has rested at my house. Nobody in the family really wanted it with its broken side, worn and stained leather, rusted hardware. But I couldn't bear to just throw it in the trash. And then I found a photo of my dad sitting on an island in Canada at lunch time with his briefcase open on a rock. I knew then that an island on Lake of the Woods would be the last best place for this iconic remnant of my dad's life.

We've come upon other memorials out on the lake like inukshuks, placques nailed to trees, trinkets placed on rocks. I don't want to litter, but believe the old leather will disintegrate in time until only small pieces of metal remain. And those will soon be covered with a carpet of moss and pine needles.

So, on a perfect summer day with an eagle leading the way, we headed down the sun-sparkled waters of the Sunset Channel, took a right at Beacon Island and headed into Blueberry Inlet. It's a magical place off the beaten path of most fishing boats. Some years it's only accessible by canoe. Dad loved to come to this inlet in early June and cast against the shoreline for bass and walleye.

Ancient rock walls line the narrow entrance. The bays are calm and quiet. Time almost stands still in these pristene waters. That old Dan Fogelberg song, Longer Than, drifted thru my mind. Stronger than any mountain cathedral. Deeper than any forest primeval.  No church I've ever been in can compare with the Cathedral of Blueberry Inlet.

A pair of loons watched as Greg clambered up a boulder to gently tuck the briefcase between two trees. I felt a deep sense of peace. I don't enjoy catching fish the same way my dad did, but I can think of no better way to spend precious summer days than in the quiet beauty of Lake of the Woods. God feels close in Blueberry Inlet. The world feels right again there.

Sometimes saying goodbye is a very long journey.                                             

July 15, 2011