elspeth47

Daphne Elizabeth, 7pounds 2 ounces, 19.25 inches

My developmental life skills class has been very peaceful this year. Unlike last year, when I was dealing with aggressive, disruptive behaviors on a daily basis, the students and I have been able to engage in real learning and teaching. Each morning we begin our day with table talk at which time the boys identify their emotions on a 1-10 scale; almost every day, each of the boys has been 10 happy.

Yesterday was a little different. The weather is beginning to change here in Texas. The daily hours and minutes of sunlight (we have been graphing this) are ebbing, the temperatures are dropping. The school has been dealing with many cases of flu (so far we have been lucky in the classroom; no one has been sick). Change is happening. For individuals on the autism spectrum, change is hard.

One of the boys who greets me every morning with a big smile and a request for a hug was returned to the classroom from P.E. for a time-out because he had been hitting another student. While I was monitoring his cool-down, I received a call from the teacher assistants who were dealing with another student who was having an emotional meltdown and would not comply with directives. He was grabbing at the T.A.'s clothing, kicking, hitting and attempting to bite. After finding someone to supervise aggressor #1, I proceeded down the hallway to intervene with student #2 who, as soon as he saw me, said, "Uh oh!"  and continued to say, "Uh oh" as I escorted him down the hall.

After a brief visit to the cool down chair, he used the emotions chart to tell me he had a headache. Hmm, maybe we need the emotions icon on a flip ring.

Uh oh.

seems like the perfect day for the first pumpkin pie of Fall. My Thanksgiving pies are always homemade, filled with heavy cream and dark brown sugar, redolent with spices measured spoonful by spoonful from small, colorful tins, and topped with fresh whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon.  Today's pie will come hot from the oven, compliments of Mrs. Smith and topped with a squirt of ReadiWhip. Pumpkin pie from the freezer case is a bit like a side hug -- a hint of comfort, but just not filled with that sense of security and unconditional love of a real bear hug; but just like a side hug is better than no hug at all, frozen pie will do, especially since I'm making macaroni and cheese too!

My husband is away from home for several months -- working in one of the poorer countries of the world. Personal safety is an issue in this location and he and his co-workers are not permitted to leave the residential compound or work complex without armed bodyguards and chase cars. Friday he and several others were treated to a "tourist" day; this is one of the pictures he sent -- that's a hunting falcon sitting on his wrist.

He is a man who loves to explore his environment and the security restrictions have been difficult, not to mention the overwhelming cultural shock. Fortunately, modern technology allows us to be in daily contact; but, truly, for this trip he is thinking there is no place like home. Once he is safely home, I will share some other pictures. They are pretty incredible.

This week I received the first shipment of curriculum materials purchased by my school district with economic stimulus funds targeted for special education needs. Wow! I finally have math and science textbooks, aligned to state and national  standards, written for students in functional life skills classes. Text is simple and accompanied by picture icons (think rebus). Content addresses skills needed for independent living. Later this month I will be receiving a new reading curriculum and additional math and science materials.

While I applaud the concept of access to grade level instruction for special needs students, the previous administration allocated no funds to help districts acquire needed curriculum materials. Since special education classes are small, bulk purchases of textbooks and supplies are not practical; special education teachers across the nation have been  forced to purchase or make their own materials in order to comply with the law of the land.

Thanks to President Obama and a true commitment to quality education for all, my special needs students now do have equal access to grade level instruction in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.I can't wait to see the academic progress my students will make this year.

One year ago my blog entry for the second day of school read :
 
"Erica Jong once said, "Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark places where it leads."  It is only Day 2 of the new school year, and my classroom feels like one of those dark places. I have two very aggressive, abusive students who are setting the mood in my classroom, and I cannot let that happen. So, tomorrow I begin to rebuild. I know that I have the talent to teach these kids, I'm just not sure I have the courage. It is hard, so very hard."

The year ended worse than it began -- I visited the ER twice in the last two weeks of school for treatment of bite wounds and other soft tissue trauma. One of my paraprofessionals and one of my school's assistant principals also received medical treatment for wounds inflicted by one of my autistic students.

Fast forward a year -- today was the second day of the new school year. This year I have 4 students -- 2 are children with autism, one is a child with a seizure disorder  which affects learning retention, and one is severely profoundly disabled as a result of tragic accident when he was less than 2 years old (this child has not yet come to school due to a lingering respiratory infection).

Part of our morning routine is calendar time. I user a smart board for instruction, but I realized that the material presented on the smart board disappears when the computer goes to sleep. I wanted  a visual representation of the date written as 8/24/09 and visible throughout the day so the students would learn the procedure for adding a header to their worksheets. The walls of my classroom are concrete blocks painted with a high gloss white enamel paint. I grabbed a dry-erase pen and inked the date on the wall. One of my autistic students gasped but went on with his work. A short while later my district coordinator dropped by for a visit. This child, who talks very little, went over and touched her arm and pointed to the wall. When she told him he needed to use words, he took her by the arm, led her to the wall, and said, "Look!" So, I think I was ratted out. Today I taped laminated paper to the wall to use as a dry erase board.

On Sunday I called the parents of a new student to introduce myself and ask if they had questions or concerns they wanted to share with me. The mother expressed fear that the teacher who had come to her son's annual ARD meeting the previous spring seemed mean; she was afraid the teacher  was going to be too strict with her son (that teacher was me, by the way). I assured her that her son would be fine, the transition would be harder for her than for him, but I could tell on Monday that she and her husband still were quite anxious; their son cried and needed a great deal of persuasion to enter the classroom. Imagine their surprise today when their boy walked up to me, gave me a hug and when greeted, "Good morning, J. How are you today?" responded, "I'm fine."

My classroom is not a dark place any more; it's filled with happiness, laughter, and learning. I love my job!

Each year our school district spends thousands of dollars to begin the new school year with what is supposed to be an inspirational message from a renowned figure in the field of education. Ours is a district in transition; once the home to thousands of white upper middle class families, our neighborhoods are melting pots filled with many ethnicities, families who speak different languages and eat different foods, whose skin color is not white and whose god is not the Christian god. School district administrators are aware of this change in demographics and the possible implications for achievement and consequent reputation for quality that our district has historically maintained across Texas and even the United States. For the past several years, the keynote speakers have encouraged district employees to value diversity and recognize the inherit worth of all children. Some of these speakers have been truly inspirational; some have spoken from a point of deep personal anguish which subverts the message they are trying to convey; and others have come to peddle their books not their message. This year convocation's theme is Defying Gravity; Defying Limitations; the speaker is Stephen Peters, author of Why We Must Give Children Hope and Do You Know Enough About Me to Teach Me (stephenpetersgroup.com/). Mr. Peters is a former teacher and administrator; his message, "Failure is not an option;education is the only way to true freedom," has been heard on the Oprah Show and is the basis for Gentlemen's and Ladies' Clubs in schools across the country.

The district's goal is an admirable one. The avenue it takes to reach its destination, however, is pothole-riddled. It is a given that there are few auditoriums in our district large enough to hold the several thousand individuals who are required to attend the annual convocation, so the choice of venue is limited. Perhaps the sanctuary of  the  mega-Baptist church in which the annual gathering is held does not in itself send a message of exclusion to the non-Christian faculty and staff of my district; but the opening in Jesus' name does. Surely a non-denominational prayer asking for grace and guidance from an unnamed deity (We ask for guidance in Your Name. Amen) is not too much to ask for, nor to be given; and yet, since the first annual convocation, requests from my non-Christian friends and co-workers asking for a non-denominational prayer have fallen on deaf ears.

The district administration obviously is not defying the gravity of Christianity and most assuredly has not defied the limitations on being non-Christian.

Today is the first mandatory work day of the 2009/2010 school year. Many of us in my school district reported to our respective schools yesterday for a  voluntary paid work-in-your-classroom day.  For those of us teaching at my school, the voluntary day was quasi-mandatory. Over the summer our school underwent major renovations followed by a waterline break that flooded the school (much of the nearly completed renovations had to be redone), and the classrooms and hallways are in major disarray. The school library was hardest hit by the flooding and as of 3:30 yesterday is still gutted.

This school year will present some new challenges for me and my paraprofessionals. We are receiving a new student who was a drowning victim as a toddler; he has been in a vegetative state since resuscitation by paramedics. Yesterday I learned that we also will be acquiring a severely autistic child who moved into our attendance zone since the end of school last June. Barring any further move-ins before next Monday, we will begin school with 5 students, only 2 of whom were in my class last year. It will be fun getting to know our new friends.

Our district received a sizable package of stimulus funds to be used for enhancing special education services; we will be receiving much-needed instructional materials including new materials to be used to teach reading and language arts. We are required by law to teach the essence of grade-level state curriculum in all areas, but in the past  have been  largely dependent on self-acquired instructional materials; these will be welcome additions to our classroom supplies.

In the days before I became a teacher, I welcomed the first day of school by cleaning the garage. Greeting new and returning students is so much more fun!

  Imagine being 22 years old and, in the eyes of your community, a "confirmed old maid" when the catch of the town appears on your doorstep to propose a hasty marriage to be followed by a "honeymoon" wagon trek across the Great Plains to a homestead in Colorado. What would you have done?
In the epistolary novel, The Diary of Mattie Spenser, author Sandra Dallas tells the story of just such a fictional character, Mattie Faye McCauley. Through entries made into a diary given to her on her wedding day by her best friend with instructions to "use it to record my joys and sorrows, and to keep a thorough record of our wedding trip overland to Colorado Territory and the events in the life of an old married woman. Then I'm to send it back to her.", Mattie chronicles the tragedies and treacheries of the first 3 1/2 years of her marriage to Luke Spenser.
Mattie never sent the diary back to her friend Carrie; instead she hid it inside a trunk where it was discovered by her 94-years-old granddaughter, Hazel, as she sorts through her family's heirlooms prior to moving to a retirement home. Having no living heirs, Hazel gives many of these heirlooms, including the diary, to a neighbor who transcribes the cross-hatched writing and shares the secrets held inside with Hazel. It is through the ensuing conversations that we learn the remainder of Mattie's incredible life.
Each time I have read stories told by Sandra Dallas I have been entertained. This book has confirmed her place on my list of favorite authors. I hope you enjoy The Diary of Mattie Spenser as much as I did and go on to read other books written by Sandra Dallas; she is an incredible story teller.

The Rose Labyrinth , a strange melange of themes blended to tell a modern day love story, begins its tortuous path in a crowded tavern of 17th century England where an old man is telling of the demise of Senor Bruno, burned at the stake in the Campo de' Fiori for his beliefs in a heliocentric universe and the non-literal truth of the divinity of Jesus.
     Four hundred years later a woman dies, and having no daughter, she bequeaths a silver key enshrouded in mystery to her younger son, Will,  in hopes that he and his girlfriend will produce a daughter who will be the key bearer. Somehow this key is connected to Senor Bruno and his heretical beliefs. Will proceeds to investigate the mystery of the key and in the process attracts the attention of a powerful fundamentalist Christian group who believe the key is connected in some way to the Rapture.
     The woman's older son, Alex, a doctor, specializes in the field of organ rejection following transplantation. Alex and Lucy, a heart transplant patient, fall in love. Upon visiting the family home, she "senses" the presence of an object buried beneath a tree in the garden. It is a wooden box which can only be opened with the mysterious silver key which is now in the possession of Lucy.
     "How did Lucy acquire the silver key?", you ask. " What was inside the wooden box?" "How does all this relate to Senor Bruno?"
     You'll have to read The Rose Labyrinth for yourself. The book is accompanied by a set of pen and ink sketches which can be assembled as a puzzle to help you solve the mysteries of the story. While this  book may  not be one of my favorite reads of the year, it is still a good read, especially if you are a fan of books which fall in to the realm of The Da Vinci Code.
    
    

  Goodreads.com hosts many drawings for advanced reader copies of soon-to-be-published books, I was fortunate to be the winner of an ARC of Tracy Kidder's new book, Strength In What Remains, due in bookstores on August 25, 2009.

If someone asked you to locate Burundi on a map of the world, would you be able to do it? Before reading Strength In What Remains, I think I may have suspected that it was one of the myriad of countries scattered across the continent of Africa, but then again, perhaps it was one of the small island nations in the Pacific archipelago.  What I learned is that Burundi, located in the Great Lakes region of eastern Africa is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, bordered to the north by Rwanda, to the east and south by Tanzania and to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its capital is Bujumbura. Like several other African countries, its history has been scarred by conflict between ethnic tribal groups, in particular Hutus and Tutsis, resulting in the slaughter of thousands and thousands of Burundians of both tribal factions.

Such is the background for Tracy Kidder's recounting of the life of Deogratias, a young Burundian man who survived the massacres of the early 1990s and found sanctuary in New York City.  In October of 1993, Deo was working as an intern in a  hospital in Mutaho, located in  northern Burundi, when a  coup led by Tutsi forces in the army assassinated  President Ndadaye, a Hutu. Hutu forces retaliated, and in the months that followed, over 300,000 Burundians were massacred. Many, like Deogratias, escaped to Rwanda but  the ethnic unrest between Hutus and Tutsis recognized no borders and the killing continued.  Deo finally managed to return to Bujumbura only to be told  all of his family had died and it was not safe for him to remain. A friend, whose father was a coffee grower, helped Deo obtain a commercial visa to travel to the United States, under the subterfuge of selling Burundian coffee; and with only $200 and one faux leather suitcase filled with his few worldly possessions, Deo left Burundi for "Iburaya," abroad.

It is through random acts of kindness by strangers and the grace of God that Deo's story (Deogratias' mother must have been very prescient when she named her son) has a relatively happy ending. I recently read an article that told of an unfortunate killing at the medical clinic he helped established back in Kigutu, but Deo has himself found peace and forgiveness, and his parents who were not, after all, killed in the massacres of the early 1990s. God is good.

Terremoto, the Spanish word for earthquake, has a strange resonance  which, to me at least, signifies emotional turmoil.This past weekend I felt like I was caught in the upheavals of my own personal terremoto and couldn't quite figure out why. No new stressors have been added into my life; my summer has been fairly relaxing; and I am actually looking forward to the upcoming school year and the new challenges it will bring.

Yesterday morning was an epiphany. As I was looking through the postings to my Facebook and read the brief comment about my high school class reunion (the one I  skipped), my emotional seismograph was busily registering stress and anxiety, and I realized that it was the idea of the reunion that had triggered this angst.

High school was not the best time of my life. I had grown up in a small town in Ohio, but during the summer between 8th and 9th grades had moved to a small city in Georgia. I began high school with no (seriously, not even one) friends. While I grew to love the Georgia accent, on that first day of school, I felt like I had been air-dropped into the middle of a foreign country -- I could understand nothing that was said to me and the kids laughed at my Yankee accent. In 1962, the schools in Macon, Georgia were segregated, not just by race (there's a whole other story there), but by gender. In the morning before school started, the boys from the high school down the hill would come up and hang out with the girls, but no one noticed that small, timid Yankee sitting alone by the cafeteria. Things did get better, but I never felt like I fully belonged to that place in time. Over the years I lost contact with the small group of friends I had made, so I have no positive emotional investment in my high school years. It is a time in my life that I would rather not revisit; and, frankly, I am puzzled by  and yet, I realize after exploring my weekend of angst,  envious of those who get so excited about  class reunions. I too would like to have a network of old friends, and I just don't.

This weekend I relived the unpleasantness of my teenage years -- truly a terremoto of the soul.

Brian Selznick, author and illustrator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is the recipient of the 2008 Caldecott Medal, awarded to the artist of the most distinguished American Picture Book for Children published in the United States during the year preceding that year in which the award is given. Mr. Selznick is no stranger to the world of awards, having been noted as a Caldecott Honor artist for his illustration of The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins (written by Barbara Kerley) and a New York Times Best Illustrator for Walt Whitman: Words for America (also penned by Barbara Kerley).

Mr. Selznick claims as  inspiration for this innovative tale of Hugo Cabret the book Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life (author -- Gaby Wood) which tells of a collection of automata, mechanical wind-up figures, once owned by Georges Méliès, a pioneer filmmaker of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1902, Méliès made the first science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon. Many years later, Selznick viewed the film and left with the desire to one day "write a story about the man who made this film."

In writing and illustrating The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick has told the story of Georges Méliès through the experiences of Hugo Cabret. Hugo's father was a clock maker who worked part-time in a museum taking care of the clocks. One night he arrived home later than usual with a fantastic tale of a long-forgotten automaton, a wind-up figure, he had found in the attic of the museum. No one knew how this complex automaton came to be housed in the attic; but Hugo's father surmised that it had been built my a magician, probably a clockmaker himself, to be used in his magic show. After taking Hugo to the museum to show him the wind-up figure, he became obsessed with restoring it to working order. One night while tinkering in his workshop, the museum was engulfed in flames, and Hugo's father died. Now orphaned, Hugo was left in the guardianship of his alcoholic uncle who cared for the clocks in the Paris train station (perhaps Le Gare de l'Est), living in a small apartment deep within the walls of the building. Hugo's sole possession was the notebook in which his father had been drawing the internal workings of the automaton; one day, when walking past the ruins of the old museum where his father died, he espied the rusted and damaged wind-up figure and brought it back to his warren. Hugo's uncle frequently disappeared and eventually never returned, leaving Hugo alone and penniless, resigned to pilfering food and other necessities while hiding from the grasp of the Station Master who would surely have sent him to an orphanage, forced to leave the automaton behind. It was at the kiosk of the toymaker that Hugo lost his notebook, taken from him when the old man caught him stealing a small wind-up mouse. Looking at the notebook, the old man whispered, "Ghosts ... I knew they would find me here eventually."

What was it about the notebook that so upset the old man and how does this fictional event relate to the real life  of Georges Méliès? Read The Invention of Hugo Cabret  and solve the mystery for yourself. While you're reading, be sure to explore the detailed pencil drawings which hint at old back and white movies and graphic novels and tell a story all to themselves.

If you love the book as much as I think you will, be on the look out for the movie, produced by Graham King and Christi Dembrowski, directed by Chris Wedge, due to be released to theaters in 2010.

 

  If you've picked up Very Valentine expecting your run-of-the-mill summer beach  trash love story, you're going to be disappointed -- not that it isn't a love story and  doesn't have gratuitous sex.  It is and it does, but the true romance in this story is more than hot bodies and steamy sex. "It is a sumptuous treat, a journey of dreams fulfilled, a celebration of love and loss..."
     Teodora Angelini is the matriarch owner of the Angelini Shoe Company, "makers of exquisite wedding shoes since 1903." Her granddaughter, Valentine Roncalli, has apprenticed herself to her grandmother to learn the family tradition of custom shoemaking and, as it turns out, to find the way to "bring the family's old-world craftsmanship into the twenty-first century and to save the company from ruin."
     A rainy autumn day brings an unusual customer to the Angelini Shoe Company's Greenwich Village workshop. A movie is being filmed at the nearby Our Lady of Pompeii Church and there has been a wardrobe failure -- a heel has broken on a shoe which is critical to the particular scene being shot.  The shoe cannot be repaired, but as luck would have it, the Angelini Shoe Company has a design which the producer finds enchanting and a deal is made to loan the store sample in exchange for mention in the movie credits. The producer is a friend of Rhedd Lewis, the managing director of Bergdorf's. Several months later the Angelini Shoe Company receives a coveted  invitation from Ms. Lewis   to enter a Bergdorf's competition to design a pair of wedding shoes to accesorize a particular wedding gown. The winner of that competition would be given the privilege of providing shoes for all the wedding gowns to be featured in the holiday windows for Christmas 2008. Valentine sees winning the competition as a stepping stone to financial salvation and accepts the challenge.
     By now, you will have guessed that part of the romance in this story is Valentine's love for the Angelini Shoe Company. I bet you're wondering where the hot bodies and gratuitous sex come in. You might even be wondering if the Angelini Shoe Company wins the competition. You won't be finding that out from me; you're going to have to read Very Valentine for yourself. If you don't get to it before the summer is over, that's okay. It would be a great read when you're sitting by the fire on a cold winter's day too. You're going to love this book, which is the first in a trilogy. I can't wait for book two!

It was a small simple wedding in the chapel at the Officers' Candidate School at the Newport, Rhode Island Naval Base -- July 27, 1968 -- 41 years ago today. I have been married for two-thirds of my life -- the best two-thirds.  Happy Anniversary, Jim! I love you more than the sun in the sky.

Set in the small town of Annette, Texas in 1962, World of Pies is a series of vignettes  about the coming of age of Roxanne Milner, 12 years old as her story opens.  Roxanne's father, owner of Carl's Corsets and a member of the Annette Chamber of Commerce, conceived the plan for the town's Fourth of July Pie Fair; her mother was a member of the committee responsible for setting the rules for the pie-judging competition. One of these rules required that all pies must be made by the person who was submitting the pie to be judged, a rule which introduced Roxanne to the existence  of racial discrimination and its impact on  her life and that of her parents.Through ensuing chapters we follow Roxanne'e life as she passes through her turbulent teenage years -- her first kiss, her first part-time job, high school graduation, college, marriage and parenthood, with a few other surprises thrown in along the way.

Ms. Stolz  (karenstolz.com/content/description-of-world-of-pies/) has graciously ended her book with a collection of recipes enjoyed by the residents of Annette, even the recipe for the Sweet Potato Pie which created controversy for the Pie Fair. Aunt Ruthie's Lemon Pound Cake might appear  in this reviewer's kitchen in the near future!

World of Pies is a quick, entertaining read, perfect for a lazy summer afternoon of reading on the front porch with a tall glass of lemonade at your side. Enjoy it. I did.


  
    

Elmer Kelton (www.elmerkelton.net/), author of The Day the Cowboys Quit has been voted as the best western writer by the Western Writers of America; 7 of his books, including this one, have received the Spur Award for Best Western Novel of the Year from the same association. He has received the Barbara McCombs/Lon Tinkle Award for "continuing excellence in Texas letters" from the Texas Institute of Letters; the Lone Star Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, Texas; and a lifetime achievement award from the National Cowboy Symposium in Lubbock, Texas.

While not a factual recounting of the Tascosa Cowboy Strike of 1883, Elmer Kelton has used that strike as the foundation for the story he tells in The Day the Cowboys Quit. His  protagonist, Hugh Hitchcock (Hitch) is the wagon boss for the Canadian River Division on Charles Waide’s Ws ranch. Charlie Waide got his start in ranching in south Texas before the Civil War and returned to his ranch after the war was over. Ranching had become big business in the post-war years, and while Charlie knew cows and cattle, he was not a business man. He had floated a loan from a Kansas City bank and found himself entangled in the strings that came with big business. A neighboring rancher, Prosper Selkirk, sat on the board of directors of that same bank, and threatened to have  Waide’s loan called in if he did not agree to enforce the rules that other large ranchers  were posting  in their bunkhouses. One of these rules forbade cowboy employees from owning cattle and building small herds of their own. Hitch and several other Ws cowboys had small brands . Unfortunately one of these cowboys, Law McGinty,  was not a man of honor and after learning from Hitch that Law had been caught “sleepering” cattle from other ranches, Charlie decided that he had to enforce the rules drawn up by the big ranchers, including the cattleship-owner rule.  While Charlie offered to protect Hitch’s herd and allow him to keep his brand, Hitch felt honor-bound to stand up for the rights of other cowboys and joined the strike.

This, of course, is not the end of the story, only the beginning. To find out what happens to Hitch and the other people cowboying on the Canadian River of western Texas, read The Day the Cowboys Quit. You can preview it for yourself on Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=ECW1pvc5cXsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the day the cowboys quit&ei=ebdcSpPHMZSgzASJ5cXHCg0 .

www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/07/09/baldwin

When I was a young girl growing up in Sidney, Ohio, Antioch College students were known for their liberal leanings and anti-war (Vietnam era) protests; they were often filmed by local news crews holding front-line positions at anti-war demonstrations at the nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Yellow Springs, Ohio is just down the road a piece from Springfield, the home of Wittenberg University
(www.wittenberg.edu/ ) where my sister was a student. I was aware enough to know that the two schools were close together in proximity, but not enough to grasp that they were miles apart idealogically. I remember watching the war protests on the news one night and commenting, "Wouldn't it be neat to see Martha Jean on TV?" My father, a staunch supporter of anything in which the U.S. government was engaged, raged  about how those protesters were undoubtedly from that damned Antioch College and she had better not be there. Impressionable minds being what they are, from that point on Antioch College was a bad place, a viper's pit of traitors to their country.

Many years later, my son applied for admission to Wittenberg University. When we drove from Texas to Ohio to visit the colleges to which he sought admission, we took a small side trip to Yellow Springs, identified by Budget Travel as one of the country's 10 coolest small towns. In fact, the village, hometown to such notable people as Virginia Hamilton (author of M.C Higgins the Great), Noah Adams ( All Things Considered on NPR), and Dave Chappelle (noted comedian), has become a well-known arts center. It was at a small shop in Yellow Springs that I purchased my favorite piece of jewelry -- a miniature sterling silver kaleidoscope hanging from a sterling silver chain. We also drove through the woodlands knownas Glen Ellen, home to Antioch College. It was my only visit to Antioch College; my childhood mental image of Antioch as a viper pit was shattered.


I was sorry to read that the school will be closing at the end of the 2009/2010 school year.  I hope this is not the first of many private liberal arts schools closing.

  Dear Annie,

How saddened I was to read that your aunt,  Mary Ann Shaffer, died before seeing her novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, climb to the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller list. How proud and grateful she must be that you embraced her story, nurturing it and allowing it to grow into this grand narrative of the residents of a German-occupied island known for its --- cows. How fortuitous for all us fans that she was fog-bound on Guernsey back in 1972 and read about the German occupation while trying to stay warm in the airport. From that small seed grew a mighty oak,  a book club created as a foil for breaking the Occupation Forces curfew -- what a novel idea.

Do you know who were the models for her characters? Do you suppose she saw a bit of herself in Juliet Ashton? In Juliet's 31st March, 1946 letter to Sidney (and didn't you just love the way Mary Ann told this story through letters to and from the various characters in the book? I know I did.), she wrote, " I know you're going to love the letters too --- but would you be interested in more? To me, these people  and their war-time experiences are fascinating  and moving. Do you agree?  Do you think there could be a book here?"  Mary Ann recognized and believed in that story; so, thankfully, did Bloomsbury Publishing.

I imagine your aunt to have been a "noticer, " like Juliet and the absent heroine of her story,  Elizabeth McKenna. How else could she have created such memorable fictional characters who seemed as real as one's own family and who became this reader's best friends (well, perhaps not Adelaide Addison) long before Juliet's final letter had been signed, stamped, postmarked and delivered.

Letter writing is an endangered art form in this day and age; sadly, it is being replaced by cell phones, e-mail and texting. In the World War II era, however, people wrote letters. Like Julia, people listened for "the sound of the post dropping in the box." Mary Ann's choice to write an epistolary novel was perfect for the time about which she wrote.  The time a person spends in writing a letter to a friend is a gift from the heart. A letter can be saved and reread time and  time again; a phone call once completed can only be replayed in the memories of the listener.

Like a letter, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a gift from Mary Ann Shaffer's heart (and yours, too). Just as a special letter is read again and again, this book will be one that is read and saved to be read, again and again.

Annie, I offer you my heartfelt condolences on the loss of your aunt. She will live on in this special book which you helped create. May you wrap yourself in warm memories and find comfort.

Yours truly,
Elizabeth

  While there will be fireworks displays in and around Houston , we will not be shooting off fireworks in our front yard this year. Swee'Tea will be disappointed -- she loves the frisson of danger when lighting the tiny fuse of a firework; she is not much for cleaning up the street mess the next morning, however. The Amazing Miss M does not enjoy fireworks at all -- she and the cats prefer to remain firmly ensconced in the house, as far from the noise and flash as possible. I sometimes wonder at the traits shared by my autistic granddaughter and my cats. In any case, we in Texas are experiencing a drought and fireworks on a stick (bottle rockets are a favorite) and any with fins to provide aerodynamic lift have been outlawed for sale to the general public -- too great a fire risk.

In the past our small suburban neighborhood has had a parade around our community -- volunteer fire truck with siren blaring leading a throng of weaving, wobbling  bicycle riders to the community pool for watermelon and water balloons. This year the neighborhood is undergoing major street repairs so there will be no parade; I am assuming no water balloon fights or seed spitting contests either since I have heard nothing about such goings on.

So, to celebrate our country's independence we are breaking from our usual 4th of July family routine of barbecuing and instead are having a beach-style shrimp boil -- corn on the cob, new potatoes and wild-caught shrimp all cooked in a big pot of boiling water spiced with Old Bay Seasoning. I've made a big bowl of grape salad and we'll have fruit punch for the girls and fruity sangria for the grownups. 

It should be a peaceful day. I hope yours is too.