Things that go Poof in the Night

Well...I just spent a goodly amount of time justifying Peyton Place as my choice for our next booksdiscussion.  I was pretty pleased with what I had written for once.  Then I hit a wrong key and POOF!  I deleted the entire post.  I'm too mad at myself to attempt to  re-create it so please be patient and wait until next week.   

 By then I should be finished reading it and will be able to give a more reliable account anyway.  but remember, Monday is Labor Day so the post probably won't go up until Tuesday.

Time to Hit the Books

A while back, while I was still writing a book column for the Herald Times, I featured books about teachers. Since this is the big back to school week for my teacher friends, I decided to share a modified version of that essay with you.  Here goes....

For years I measured my life partially based on the successes, failures, frustrations and happy moments of my teaching career.  My life is still marked by an internal educational calendar.  I cannot shake it.  Although I no longer have to shift gears every 47 minutes, I still experience the myriad of emotions associated with opening weeks of the new "season".  And so, as the beginning of the school year approaches, it feels right to celebrate those who continue to honor the profession with their service.

Writers have acknowledged all types of teachers - the good, the bad, the silly and the non-traditional.  Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird exuded integrity,  He is noble, honest and strong. The unpredictable consequences of his decisions haunt Atticus yet he is wise enough and brave enough to make them.

The impetuous Annie Sullivan struggles to teach blind and deaf Helen Keller in William Gibson's, play, The Miracle Workerhe . We all know the story. Yes, Annie does teach Helen, but Helen also teaches Annie.  Helen teaches Annie to see the world through new eyes and to listen to life's murmurings with patience and persistence.

Several books about teachers and teaching endure despite being set in eras when lecture was the primary teaching technique and young scholars toted tomes outlining the intricacies of Latinate grammar.  Up the Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman's account of a nervous but passionate teacher's first year, along with To sir with Love and The Blackboard Jungle depict what can be accomplished with commitment and idealism trump defiance and doubt. Good Morning Miss Dove and Goodby Mr.Chips tell the stories of charming and resolute individuals whose classroom expectations earned them a place among literature's most beloved characters.

Filling the top spots on my teacher/teaching book list are The Art of Happiness by the Dalia Lama and Dr. Seuss" Hooray for Diffendoofer Day.  This little known Seuss piece applauds creative teachers who irresistible exuberance entertains and inspires.

Every day educators inspire and motivate.  They celebrate success with their students, brush off the dust of failure and try again.  They remember students when they see graduation pictures, engagement announcements, or the unformed portraits of those who serve our country.  Classes move on but teachers keep them close, fitting them into hearts and minds grown full from years of chalk dust, red pens and planning.  Teachers teach forever - every hour of every day - and when the final bell rings on the last day of the year, why not stand, raise a glass of wine and toast someone who has taught you....a parent, a friend, a neighbor, a brother, sister, babysitter, theatre director, novelist...anyone you can call your teacher.

In June, my glass will be raised to Karyl Enstad Rommelfanger, my Germane teacher to whom I would say "Ich kann mein gummischuhen nicht finden". Not so sure about the spelling by I am quite confident that means "Yikes!  I can't find my boots." Although I have retained little of my not so fluent German, I thank Karyl for being demanding, fair and realistic and most likely the reason I became a teacher myself.

My second glass will be for Paul Ingvolstad, my high school theatre director who teasingly shouted at me during rehearsals - "Hey Bev, don't sing so loudly, someone might hear you."  He tied each aggressive and fascinating lesson with a huge bow.  A gift to each of us every day.  I suspect Paul is lurking in the creative halls of Seuss' Diffendoofer School

Lastly, there was the feared and revered lit diva, Sister Salome from my college days. While other professors said I misinterpreted assignments, Salome said I reinterpreted them.  When some declared beyond question that my undestanding of key literary passages was 100% wrong, Salome siad that I found the irony in the works.  She taught me that the word "obtuse" has meaning outside the scary pages of a math text.

Together, teachers and students comprise America's most significant work force.  No one spoke with greater eloquence of the tremendous opportunity, responsibility and honor it is to teach than Christa McAuliffe, and American citizen and educator who died in the1986 challenger disaster.  "I touch the future.  I teach."

Thanks for stopping by.  Now go and learn something new today!

Another Pulitzer for Stacy Schiff?

Blogger is playing games again...this time with some weird highlighting.  Sorry.  I will try to coax a change, but....there are simply days when Blogger and I do not get along.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials.

It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. 

The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic.

Every year as I prepared to again teach The Crucible to groups of high school students eager to read what they though would be a Halloween type story, I  did background research to deepen our classroom discussions. While Arthur Miller's play is actually a thinly veiled commentary on the McCarthy hearings, I tried to balance info on that event with the stuff that kept the kids coming back for more.  We covered a lot of history during that unit, but not nearly as much or with the intensity of Stacy Schiff's new book.  At first I figured I would spend at leasettwo blog posts on this book, but even that would not be sufficient.  You just have to read this one for yourself.

Schiff's exhaustive research and skilled retelling of the events in Salem over a period of sasingle year are alarming and puzzling at the very least.  She doesn't limit her work to the colonies, however, instead weaving in historical references to similar occurrences throughout Europe.  At times, the absurdity of it all gives the Puritans  the appearance of being, as Schiff implies, on low levels of some mind altering substances.  But, she puts the events into perspective by rigorously describing the conditions in which they lived and the belief system under which they functioned.

As I read I bend corners for you - only in proof copies! - pages that have something I want to share.  Far too many this time.  Let me give you one example.  I figured that if these people accepted certain medical practices as logical and beneficial then yes, I see that they could also explain the unexplainable via a belief  witchcraft.

A basic medical kit...consisted of beetle's blood, fox lung and dried dolphin heart.  ....snails figured in many remedies. ...The fat of a roasted hedgehog dripped into the ear constituted an excellent cure for deafness...for epilepsy of wolf skin girdle worked wonders as did ashes of black cow dung or frog liver powder administered five time daily.  A Salem physician treated hysteric with a brew of breast milk and the blood from an amputated tomcat's ear.

 Yes, a belief in witches in certainly plausible.  

I don't want to give the impression that this book is simply filled with stories, facts and suppositions about oddball beliefs, or midnight visitations by neighborhood women who took to flying into bedchambers upon magical stick.  Frighteningly, portions of this book make tons of sense given our current climate of religious provocation, paranoia, and transparency of our public and private lives.  

This book hits the stands on October 27 - not sure if I like the blatant connection to Halloween.  If you read an marveled at Schiff's Cleopatra - well - you will want to read this book as well.

************************
The piano rolled over safely thanks to the strong arm strength of some HAR peeps, as well as my home and store neighbors.  It sure is a nice sounding instrument.   Thanks to my store neighbor, Shelly, for the more than generous gift.

A Short Musical Note

No post today...

I have to

 get the store ready 

for the piano delivery!  

That's right,

...I said 

PIANO!

On the Road with Albert

Oh how I wish that everyone who loves books and reading could have me life!  Really, days are filled with interesting, chatty customers, happy people who tell me about all the books I "must" read.  I add those titles to my list and actually read some of them.  Sometimes it takes years, but I try.  Then there are the ARCs - the Advance Reader Copies that come in the mail - sometimes in a package of a singe book, but more often in a box with many inviting titles.  They pile up nicely.  Waiting.  I try to match them up with the perfect reader. Post it notes come in handy when ear-marking an ARC for a particular customer who I know might like the book.   I ask you, how can life be bad when you get a treasure like the one above?  

Here's the info from the back of the ARC since I haven't read the book yet and wouldn't be good at pretending I have.....

Elsie Lavender and Homer Hickman (father of the author) were classmates in the West Virginia cornfields,** (see note at bottom) graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen, (yes, that Buddy Ebsen).  But when Buddy headed to New York, Elsie's dreams of a life with him were crushed and eventually she found herself back in the cornfields, married to Homer.

Unfulfilled as a miner's wife, Elsie was reminded of her carefree days with Buddy every day because of his unusual wedding gift: an alligator named Albert she raised in only the bathroom of their house.  When Albert scared Homer by grabbing his pants, he gave Elsie an ultimatum: "Me or that alligator!" After giving it some thought, Elsie concluded there was only one thing to do" Carry Albert Home.

What fun. The newlyweds traveled 1000 miles to return the alligator.  What's curious to me is that the sell sheet says everyone knows this story.  It's new to me and probably new to many of you as well. The first page photos of the main characters include Homer, the younger and the elder, Elsie, and Albert.  There is also a rooster with this parenthetical disclaimer (Whose presence on the journey is not entirely understood).

So now I am faced with a dilemma.  Do I read this book which promises a "sweet and tragic tale" or do I stick to the plan and read Compulsion?  Years ago I read this true crime novel based on the infamous Leopld and Loeb murder case that changed the course of American justice, and I have seen the movie several times. As a Philosophy minor, I was attracted to the story of two socially awkward college boys obsessed with Nietzsche's concept of the super human. That Philosophy minor, by the way, did little other than provide me the auspicious privilege of wearing a toga and declaring "I think".  But dang it, the book was re-released a while back and finally worked its way to the top of the pile.  So which will it be...alligator tripping or a tragic attempt to commit the perfect crime? 

**Oh and YES, the editor who wrote the blurb for the back of the book actually said they went to school in a cornfield!