Random thoughts from my scattered mind

 

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I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t resist watching the trump doings in New York around lunchtime. To my eyes, trump had lost much of his bravado—the look on his face was almost shock. What was fascinating, and a bit appalling, was how the media focused on the arraignment for two hours when we saw maybe two seconds of trump live and one still photo. They are doing it again—giving trump all the free coverage he could wish, and it’s working—his fund-raising and support among Republicans is up. Even Mitt Romney is calling the arraignment politically inspired—that’s another subject for another night. From trump’s point of view, however, I’d say the day ended with a whimper and not a bang (with a hat tip to T.S.Eliot). The protests and crowds on his behalf were feeble.

But there was other political news that interested me. A judge in Llano County—yes, folks, right here in bright red Texas—has ordered twelve books returned to school libraries within twenty-four hours and decreed that no books may be removed during the pending court case. The books had been removed by lawmakers who judged their content inappropriate without public discussion, and a group of county residents sued, claiming their rights had been violated. Books included some on transgender teens and a history of the Ku Klux Klan. The judge cited the First Amendment in his decision. Book advocates say this is a significant victory that may resonate across the country, Fingers crossed. Any victory for books is cause for rejoicing.

There’s another story about schools coming out of Texas. A group of parents at Fort Worth’s Tanglewood Elementary (a neighborhood adjacent to mine) have hired off-duty police officers as guards during the school day. Our local representative to the state legislature has embraced the idea, and a representative group of parents has traveled to Austin to present their pilot program, called Texans Against School Violence.

My worries about this kind of action are several. I can’t believe the solution is more guns, and indeed at both Parkland and Uvalde, armed security was helpless. Additionally, this school is in an upscale neighborhood where parents can afford to contribute toward the expense. Go across town to what is still an essentially segregated neighborhood, and that won’t be true. At first glance, Texans Against Gun Violence seems an elitist reaction, but I probably need to learn more about it. Wonder how many of them are gun owners.

I read an article recently that calculated the number of elementary schools in the country and then figured the cost of an armed guard at each of those schools. The figure was so high as to be laughable. To my mind, gun control, not more guns, is the answer. It’s never occurred to me though perhaps it should to be worried because I live across the street from what we in my neighborhood think is the city’s best, most historic, most diversified public elementary school.

Enough of schools and books. I found a question asked on a small writer’s group listserv this week puzzling and thought provoking. The question was, “Do you have rituals that give meaning and substance to your life?” My first instinct about rituals had to do with either church or passages of life—communion (for me as a Protestant), the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, or a wedding, graduation ceremony, etc. . Big things,

But then I realized rituals can be pretty simple. What, I wondered, is the difference between routine and ritual? I like the routines of my life. When do those routines become ritual? After some back and forth with the friend who asked the question, we finally decided that routines become ritual when they bring joy and meaning to life. And they don’t have to be elaborate.

So what are the rituals in my life? Starting the day with a cup of hot tea at my desk, reading emails and the news of the day, anticipating getting to my writing work of the day whatever it is. And, similarly, ending the day at my desk, reading a mystery, with a glass of wine.  When I think about it, my life has been full of rituals. One I remember distinctly:

When our kids were in high school, my brother and I, both divorced, got our families together for Sunday dinners. Yes, I was the one who did the cooking. Sometimes for as many as fifteen people as neighbors, friends, and the kids school friends joined us. John would preside at the head of the table, as the patriarch, and he would go around the table, asking each of us what was good about our week. Those are times I treasure in my memory.  So perhaps rituals are the things that help us build memories.

How about you? Are there rituals in our life to which you cling?

And a parting note: The good guys are winning tonight. The progressive candidate has won the election for mayor of Chicago, and the liberal has won the swing seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a race that was called the most significant of this season—and a record-setter for expenditures.  I’ll go to sleep happy, maybe dreaming of rituals.

 

 

Bookish stuff

 

It’s good when big publishers stand up for bookstores. Simon & Schuster has launched a campaign to help independent bookstores fight back in this time of banned books. Participating indies will receive “Read banned books” merchandising kits, with material to be used in stores and online. There will be special discounts for banned S&S titles, such as Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer. The publisher reports that in recent months the number of its titles banned and/or challenged has increased by 46%. The list includes such classic titles as Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, along with a wide range of children’s and young adult titles, including are Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely's All American Boys, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and many more.

The campaign will be a summer one in advance of Banned Book Week which is September 18-24.

Banning books is a funny thing—well, no not funny, because it limits minds, especially children’s. The first banned book I remember is Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which no doubt seems tame today. Published in Europe in the late 1920s and not in England until 1960, it was the last book written by D. H. Lawrence (think Sons and Lovers). When an unexpurgated version was offered in 1960 in Britain by Penguin, the publisher was tried under the Obscenities Publication Act. That law stated that if a publisher could prove literary merit, the suit would be dropped. Famous authors testified, Penguin was exonerated and sold three million copies. I remember reading it in college, but I didn’t find it particularly titillating. At the time of his death, Lawrence’s reputation was that of a pornographer who wasted his considerable talents. A sad end.

But you don’t have to be famous like Lawrence to feel the bite of censorship. When my first young-adult novel, After Pa Was Shot, appeared, an East Texas friend told me if her superintendent knew it was on the school library shelf, he’d yank it off. The offense? Use of the word “kike.” An offensive term, yes, but appropriate to time and place.

A review of a book titled Koshersoul: The Faith and Food of an African American Jew, by Michael W. Twitty caught my eye this week. Twitty examines the crossroads of two of the world’s most distinctive diaspora cultures: African Atlantic cooking and worldwide Jewish cooking. Twitty claims the two cultures come together to create a rich food heritage and provides recipes to prove it. He explores how food has shaped the passages of numerous cooks, including his own journey to Judaism. Black Jews, he tells us, are not outliers. I was really curious to see a list of recipes, but none was available, and the book doesn’t come out until August.

And this week, I received a royalty payment from Amazon for A Ballad for Sallie, a book written so long ago that I can’t remember when I wrote it. Probably in the eighties. The report showed a whopping seventy-six cents, which probably means two books sold. Most months, the report shows thirty-seven, and I sometimes wonder if Amazon does that just to keep the book in print, but then I remind myself they are not in the business of charity. I am sad that it’s so overlooked because I like that little book.

Set in Fort Worth, in the time of Longhair Jim Courtright and Luke Short, the story is told by Lizzie Jones, a street kid in Hell’s Half Acre—and that part is true, for back then a lot of children lived on the streets. Lizzie’s fate is entangled with that of Sallie McNutt who comes to town looking for her cousin—and finds he’s been shot. Sallie takes over her cousin’s store, and Lizzie tries to educate her in the ways of the streets while Sallie tries to gentle Lizzie. Woven in are the stories of Courtright, Short, and the great shoot-out, along with the founding of Fort Worth’s first orphanage. It’s based on history, with a few liberties taken. The ballad in the title was because I was at the time enamored of the music of cowboy balladeer Don Edwards—still am. I talked to him once about doing a song for the book, but it never came about. Don was a busy man.

Lizzie spoke the patois of the streets, and I remember the New York publisher who first published it had an editor who “corrected” all her grammatical slips. I had gotten over being afraid to correct New York, and I complained long and loud. And I won. Sallie tried to improve Lizzie’s speech, but that was a different matter. And of course there's a bit of romance when Sallie meets a rancher.

The cover, show above, has absolutely nothing to do with the story. New York designers sometimes have the most stereotypical ideas about life in the Old West.

Anyway, I think it’s a fine little book, if I do say so myself, and I hope more Fort Worth people will discover it. It’s available on Amazon in paper and hardcover and free on Kindle.

Happy reading!

 

 

 

 

Some thoughts about schools--and parents

 

When I was in eighth grade, I had a math teacher who for whatever reason did not like me. Admittedly, math has never been one of my best subjects, but I was not disruptive or a troublemaker. I talked to my mom, and she agreed that for some reason Miss Evans did not like me. I can still see her in my mind’s eye—an “ample,” older spinster lady with “styled” white hair and sensible black shoes that laced. My mom supported me, and my dad tried harder to help me with math, which was painful for both of us. What they did not do was rush up to the school and demand that Miss Evans be fired, or that I be assigned another math teacher—there wasn’t another one anyway. They taught me, instead, that life wasn’t always going to go my way, and I would survive.

I am really weary of a handful of today’s crop of parents, who think they can dictate school policy and curriculum. The furor in Carrollton/Southlake over teaching “alternative” theories of the Holocaust is but one example. That school district now has an open seat on its board and will have a non-partisan election—only it’s gotten quite partisan. When I hear a candidate say that we must protect children from radical ideas, my hackles go way up.

Parents have always been charged with protecting their children, but the nature of the perceived enemy has changed. Anything that makes children uncomfortable is now deemed unsuitable, so students are being taught a white-washed version of American history, from witch hunts to slavery to LGBTQ issues. The Critical Race Theory threat looms large and is purely a problem created by Republicans (thank you, Governor Abbott) to distract from their other problems. Those of us who pay attention know that CRT is a complicated discipline that is taught at the graduate level, primarily in law schools, and never in elementary or high schools. I have read articles about it, including some about the former Harvard faculty member generally credited with its origin, and frankly, it’s tough stuff. I can’t quite wrap my brain around it, and I am fairly well educated. I love the anonymous grade school teacher who said if she can teach her kids to read, write, and do elementary math, she’s happy. CRT is the farthest thing from her mind.

This attitude that parents can dictate to schools is not new when it comes to books, but it seems to have escalated—or maybe we have new issues. Race has always been contentious (banning To Kill a Mockingbird is insane), but I don’t remember LGBTQ issues being a topic when my kids were in school—today’s openness is a positive improvement, except for small-minded bigots. Unknowingly, these folks have given a great sales boost to Jerry Craft’s New Kid. It reminds me of the spurt in sales of Forget the Alamo! after Dan Patrick banned the book from the Bullock Museum. I read recently of a parent who objected to several books which were summarily removed from a teacher’s classroom, which led the teacher to complain that one woman had taken those books from all 142 of her students.

The mask controversy is the worst. In Fort Worth, four parents objected to masking and so far, their order carries the day. Masking is not mandated in Fort Worth schools. (Don’t pay attention to the governor’s anti-mandate mandate—more schools are ignoring it than complying and he can’t enforce it; in Florida DeSantis’ efforts at enforcement have simply weakened school programs by costing schools money). The worst about the anti-masking idiots, other than that they get their science from Facebook, is that they threaten violence. While most incidents have involved yelling, “We know where you live” and other threats, there have been a few violent outbursts.

At the risk of being accused of elitism I would suggest that these parents who fear so much for their children have one thing in common: a lack of education or intellectual curiosity (okay, make that two things). And now they are passing that on not only to their children but to all of ours because they are dictating policy and curriculum.

Think of it: one mother removes books from 142 children; four parents put an end to masking in an entire big-city school district; a governor says teach the Alamo but not the story of Greenwood, OK. It is similar to what’s happening in our county—the minority has grabbed the reins of power and are dictating, against the wishes of the general public.

Do Not Pass Go; Go Directly to Jail

My first novel was for young adults, After Pa Was Shot, published in 1978 and set in a small East Texas town in the early years of the twentieth century. A teacher friend read it and said, "My superintendent would never allow this in our library if he read it." Me? Pollyanna? It seems it contained the word "kike." The years around the turn of the century were years of immigration, and European immigrants who didn't go to Ellis Island often ended up in Galveston, from where they made their way north to the towns of East Texas. Many were Jewish peddlers and their families. The word passed the classic historical test: appropriate to time and place.
Censorship in education is not new, but it's taken a strange twist these days--jail time. A substitute teacher in Ohio has been sentenced to 90 days in jail for showing an "inappropriate" movie to five classes. Granted it was inappropriate, and it was a bad call to show it without viewing it and then to continue showing it after she knew the content. But jail? Another state is about to pass a law where teachers can go to jail for assigning inappropriate books. The trouble with all this is who decides appropriate vs. inappropriate? Are we imposing someone's personal morality code on our students, narrowing their options for reading? That will cut out classics that they should read. I believe, for instance, that  To Kill a Mockingbird has been on the banned list several times, along with Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, The Color Purple, Beloved, The Lord of the Flies, and 1984. Would you send a teacher to jail for assigning those works? Some right-wingers, guardians of our morality, well might.
Education is in the midst of a controversy right now--should students be taught to the test or should they be encouraged to explore, investigate, question, develop critical thinking skills. Teaching to the test involves memorization, not creativity. Censorship also stifles creativity. The Nazis had a strict censorship program--they wanted people to obey and blindly believe, not to question and think critically. If we are to raise a generation of national and world leaders, we need to teach our students to think critically, to question what they read. If they read something inappropriate, the teacher should discuss it and listen to their questions.
I always remember the sound advice given to parents worried about the moment a child asks a question about s-e-x. Answer the question fully and completely, but don't go any farther. Don't load them down with more information than they asked for. Seems to me the same explanation holds for teaching materials.
But send a teacher to jail? That's going to discourage a lot of college students from entering that profession--a loss to the whole system.