Recently, I came across this children’s book first published in 1929. I recognized the illustrator’s work from books I had as a child and started looking through it.
The author’s note inside tells the purpose.
There are pieces on children from almost every culture and the author talks about the physical differences in the way the children look as well as what they eat and wear, and shows the cultural customs of each country. It’s pretty straight forward and well done.
This reminded me of another book that I have and used when I used as a supplement to lead discussions from the programs in the “Different and the Same” curriculum for 2nd and 3rd graders developed by Fred Roger’s company. I was doing this when I worked for the American Red Cross, which must serve all people regardless of any differences. This book was developed by UNICEF in the 1990s:
The forward is by Harry Belafonte, the late, great entertainer and Goodwill Ambassador.
This book looks at over 30 countries and shows the children’s homes, food they eat, clothes they wear, along with photos of their families. I remember when I first saw the book thinking that we all just want to take care of our families no matter how we achieve it in our individual societies.
When I was a child, I loved the song “Jesus loves the Little Children” and it became a central part of who I am. Nothing I ever learned in all the decades sense has wiped that fact from my mind. Jesus loves the little children.
Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world
So, how did so many people who are afraid of anyone who looks different from them, or was raised in a different way, come to populate much of our society, spreading hatred and fear everywhere? When you watch little children play, they don’t see the differences such as color of skin unless someone points it out to them. The Rodgers and Hammerstein song, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” from the musical “South Pacific” sums it up easily:
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear.
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year.
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
After thinking about this, I realized that all of these things I have mentioned were geared for white people. That’s not to say that people of all colors don’t have prejudices, but, except for the UNICEF book, these were mostly for white people, like me. I was thinking about how my own prejudices developed because I don’t remember my parents or grandparents saying anything about other races. One of my first dolls was a little baby doll that was a black baby and I didn’t think anything about it, even back in 1948-50.
There were no people of any color but white in my school or neighborhood. The only black people I knew worked for us and we loved them. I don’t think we felt superior to them other than we knew they worked for us and didn’t have as much as we had. But neither did my grandmother, so that didn’t mean much either.
I didn’t really meet any people of other races or nationalities until I went to college and, even then, there weren’t too many. We had a big TIME/LIFE book of all the religions at home and I had studied it through the years so I wasn’t against other religions. My first Jewish friends were in junior high and many of them are still good friends 65 years later. I didn’t have gay friends until I was an adult because they couldn’t admit to the world who they were. Where did I get my prejudices – because I have to admit I absorbed some of the stereotypes through the years.
At 77, I have met people from all over the world and have friends from many cultures and races and sexual orientations. I’m not being sanctimonious because I still look at strangers warily. As a woman, I’ve been taught to be aware of my surroundings and regard any person with suspicion. Our 24/7 media alerts and ever present internet outlets, along with groups who promote hate and fear of anyone different, are bound to make people more afraid. I will say that for the past couple of decades I have been more afraid of white supremacists than any other group, but I live in Oklahoma and saw the first hand results of hate and evil in the Oklahoma City bombing.
So how do we get to the place where we all love the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white? How do we work towards this ideal as people? Here are a few suggestions…
Go out of your way to meet people who aren’t like you. One of the best ways is to travel, but that isn’t possible for many people. If you see someone different, smile. Start a conversation. Find things you have in common. Anything.
Learn about other people’s countries, religions and customs. We live in an age where you can find so many resources in the library, on the internet, documentaries on television, movies. Be curious and unafraid to learn about how we are different – and how we are the same. And learn to mind your own business about other things in other people’s lives that have no bearing on you.
I don’t have all the answers, but we really must look at each other in different ways. We need to open our hearts. We need to be kinder to each other. Those precious children are our future and our hope. Those precious children are us.
I’m not sure how old I was when I started to read, maybe 5 or 6 in first grade. All I know is that for the past 72 or so years, I have read everything that I could find. I’ve written about the books, but there were also magazines and newspapers all around me. We didn’t have television until later and we certainly didn’t have computers, smart phones, the internet, and all the other ways to get information these days. I guess my parents didn’t know what I was reading – at the least, they sure weren’t worrying about it.
Magazines started with Highlights for Children and clipping Betsy McCall paper dolls from the monthly McCall’s magazine my mother received. My parents subscribed to Life, Look, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek for general reading. My mother subscribed to McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal and my father subscribed to Field and Stream and Argosy among others. As I grew older, I subscribed to Seventeen and my brother had Boy’s Life. We had both the morning and evening local papers delivered to our door, which I also did when I went to college and later had my own home.
I started early by looking at the stunning photographs and then reading the articles. I was reading articles about being a homemaker, a hunter and seeing what was going on in the news of the world. I was reading stories by famous authors and combing through the papers, after I read the comics, to see what was going on in my community. Nobody ever said a word.
By the time I reached junior high, I had read most of the books in my house, my grandparents’ homes, and my own bookshelves. My mother subscribed to Reader’s Digest Condensed Books for several years, so I was reading popular novels in that format. Nothing was out of bounds. An article I remember from one of Daddy’s magazines was about Errol Flynn and his raucous lifestyle aboard his boat. It was shocking but definitely interesting. Nobody cared if I read this. It didn’t mean I was going to become one of the wild women on his boat.
When I had my allowance, I bought movie magazines and paperback books. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was pretty risqué for my age of 14, but it was certainly a peek into something I sure didn’t know anything about. Nobody said a word.
I still read all the time, although I have to admit I read a lot online along with my books and a few magazines. None of the literature I read, from children’s books that featured characters from other cultures to biographies to histories to crazy fiction has ever made me anything more than an educated person who sees the bigger picture in the world around her, empathizes with problems other people encounter in life, relates to things that happen to people that have also happened to me, and is constantly curious to find the truth and the goodness in the world.
Sure, I have lot of prejudices that I absorbed from various sources, but I read enough to help me grow beyond them to be a better person. Reading and watching movies and television shows and news shows help.
Years ago, I taught a class for the American Red Cross called Facing Fear. It was a curriculum developed after 9/11 for students from kindergarten through high school to help them comprehend what had happened. A teacher friend asked me to come to her 6th grade class at the school I had attended and where my children and, later, grandchildren, had been students. We did a unit on the news and I was shocked to hear what came from the 12 year old mouths. They were totally parroting their parents with lots of prejudices, who mainly watched about 10 minutes of the local news a day. Cable wasn’t a big deal and the internet was in its infancy. I encouraged them to go to the library and read from a variety of sources in order to make up their minds about subjects. The words from the great song from “South Pacific” echoed in my head. “You have to be carefully taught…” These little minds were absorbing only one view.
Children and students today have amazing choices in ways to get their information. Librarians and teachers have processes to determine which items are allowed in the libraries and do a great job of being objective. We should be the best educated population in history, but we’re not.
My friends are horrified to see the things happening in our schools and communities today. One person can object to a book and have it banned for all children to read. Why have we given anyone this much power? When I was serving as PTA President many years ago, I told the Principal that I understood advocacy because I saw so many parents who always thought their child was right and didn’t care what was good for all children. It wasn’t quite as frightening because there were parents who stood up for the big picture of what was best for the community. There are ways to protect your child without stomping on the rights of others.
In my case, I have no doubt that, if my parents had chosen to censor what I was reading at any age, I would have found a way to find it for myself. With the internet, bookstores, libraries, there are always sources. I have to shake my head at the books that are being banned that are available in movie form. I would be exhausted trying to shut my children out of everything available to them. And, I would be doing them a disservice.
There are people who don’t even have children in schools who are working to ban books and make the job more difficult for teachers and librarians. Maybe these people should take the time to read some of the books and meet some people who are different from them and widen their own perspective.
The Bible is often quoted in battles, but not banned or censored despite the cruelty, sexiness, and crazy laws in those pages. Everyone should be reading Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” which is the story of a society which outlawed and burned books. Rebellious citizens memorized whole books to preserve them, walking around reciting them to remember. It is a powerful image of how people will find a way to preserve and protect words that stimulate and enrich our lives.
In today’s world, we all need to be involved, write and call our legislators on all levels from local to national and make them take a step back to see what is happening in our schools and libraries. There is nothing good that can come of censorship and banning books. Nothing.
As a child, I often visited my grandparents’ homes and stayed for awhile since they lived in Oklahoma City and Ardmore and we were in Tulsa. There wasn’t a lot to do in the days before there was much television, and I was sometimes the only grandchild, away from my brother and sister and cousins, so I either followed them around or poked around in garages, drawers and closets or read books or played records. I wish I had asked questions as I prowled through their things, but I probably thought I wasn’t supposed to be where I was. Anyway, when I was an adult and they had passed away, I grabbed things like photos and the books I had read as a child, gravitating towards the sentimental things of my childhood.
My paternal grandparents had a built-in bookshelf in their den. In the drawers below were some Classic Comic Books that I read over and over. On the shelves, there was a set of very small books that were the works of Edgar Allen Poe, which now seems like a strange thing for them to have. There were others books, too. Recently, I looked through some of the old books I have and spotted one that I always loved. For one thing, it was a little book (I love miniature and little things) and then there were the illustrations. I re-read it and was amazed at the story and all the lessons in it.
The book is “The Hickory Limb” by Parker H. Fillmore and was originally published in a “Everybody’s Magazine” in 1907. It was published in book form in 1910.
The copy I have is inscribed to my father (born in 1912) from his grandmother. Everything about that tickles me because it is a very cute story, especially for the times and for a little boy. My father was born in his grandparents’ home in Uniontown, KY, a small Ohio River town, and lived there for several years, so he knew first hand about life in small towns.
The story is about a little girl named Margery, the younger sister of a brother and twin sisters. As we meet this little one, her sisters are about to leave with an older girl, Gladys, who is going to take them “calling” on the neighbors and teach them the manners of young ladies of the time. They have their hand-made cards in their purses and are dressed up as young ladies did. Margery is supposed to go with them, but the rather snobby or oh so proper guide decides she is too young and convinces her sisters to leave her behind. As they close the gate, Margery chases after them and throws a fit when she isn’t allowed to go.
The only thing that stops her is her mother’s voice from inside, telling her to behave. I am an older child, but I have truly witnessed what happens when the youngest child is left out from my own little sister and from my younger daughters and this scene is spot on. But, now the story gets really interesting, especially for 1907.
Margery is furious and decides she is going to get revenge on her sisters and the horrible Gladys by ruining the family’s reputation. She learns that some of the little boys in town are at the pond swimming and decides to join them. She gets permission to leave from her mother, who is buried in a book the whole story, totally removed from anything her children are doing. I’m not sure what that tells us about this particular mother, other than that she does what is expected of her and nothing else – as least as far as we are ever told.
When Margery has traipsed over the fields in her pretty dress with the ribbon in her hair, she finds the five boys swimming, naked, of course. They duck in the water up to their chins and tell her to leave, but she persists. Then, as little boys will do, they dare her to come in. And she does, with descriptions of her shedding all the layers of her clothing to the horror of the boys.
When she too is naked, she joins them in the water, hoping that swimming is all she has hoped it will be. After a time of awkwardness as they all sit in the water, the boys begin to ignore her and splash each other. She watches until she get the idea of what this is about and begins to splash them too, driving one of the boys out of the water.
This all continues until they are caught by her older brother who was fishing nearby. He hauls her out of the water and orders her to get dressed, although she is covered in mud and wet and has a hard time getting her stockings and dress on. After he gets her to a presentable stage, he tells the boys to never mention this and drags her back to town. Of course, they arrive home at the same time as her sisters and Gladys, and she can’t wait to tell them that she went swimming with boys, hoping to shock and humiliate them. She also begins to realize that she has not shamed the family as much as she has shamed herself. And, when her mother finds out, she calls the maid to give her a bath and goes back to reading her book. I’m still amazed at this twist with the mother.
Margery is listening to everyone talking about her and hears the boys coming by the house, chanting:
It dawns on the little girl that what she has done is only wrong because she is a girl and she thinks about the double standard for the boys and girls.
Gladys, horrible snob that she is, bemoans the fact that Margery’s father will have to listen to other fathers talk about how she went swimming with boys. She had never wanted to hurt her father and starts to feel badly. He arrives home, listens to the mother (who probably then goes back to her book) and comes up to see Margery. He listens to her tearful story and tells her he knows it will never happen again (I have condensed a few pages here) and the book ends with her in his lap telling him how the mud squished between her toes.
When I first re-read this story, I looked it up and found that it is included in the Library of Congress as an important work. I also found another little book written by Mr. Fillmore titled “A Little Question in Ladies Rights,” which is more of the adventures of Margery and other characters from this book.
Mr. Fillmore collected, translated and edited fairy tales from around the world, making sure to maintain the cultural heritage of the stories. As I read his stories of little Margery, I have to admire his story telling ability to give us precious examples of life after the turn of the century in America while teaching us lessons about women’s place. I haven’t found much more about him, but little Margery reminds me of several strong willed little girls I have known and loved who saw the inequity of the manners of the time and rebelled in ways that make us smile.
I also wonder what this book meant to my father and if he read it as many times as I have in my life. Or, what was his grandmother trying to teach him at a young age. So many questions, as always…
There’s a difference in hoarding and collecting. Hoarding, in my mind, is keeping things because you might use them some day. I do way too much of this and try to thin out the stuff every year. It’s a remnant of having parents and grandparents who lived through the Depression. Or not wanting to waste things. Or keeping them for someone else. I’ll move on to Spring Cleaning soon. I promise.
Collecting is almost a blood sport. It’s in my blood because I had a father who collected stamps and cigar rings as a child and coins as an adult. His sweet mother would lean down to pick up the cigar rings from gutters for him. We rolled our eyes at his coin collecting as he bought bags of coins from people in remote towns to bring home and clean, looking for the rare penny or nickel or silver dollar. He hid them in our air conditioning vents and my mother threatened to spend them all. She wouldn’t have, but it was funny to watch him dig through them and she enjoyed the drives to meet people he heard about who would sell him coins in the days before the internet.
My mother didn’t collect until later when she started going to auctions and antique sales. I spent a lot of time going with her and learned to bid watching her go head to head with dealers to get a piece she wanted. She loved being the winner of a bid and loved even more meeting all the people who were selling items and learning about the story of the pieces. She told me that a collection is at least three pieces and she would sometimes get three of something and say that was her collection and wait to find something else. Her competitiveness was another story.
When I was a young married lady, I read that you should group your collection and did that with some things and found I had several collections or larger ones than I thought. Santas were the biggest one. I had Santas from my childhood and had always loved them. Once I grouped them for the holidays, it all exploded. Since my birthday and anniversary were also in December and I worked on several Christmas projects with craftsmen and artists, I started getting more. As I told someone, if you get ten a year and you’re in your 70s, you have a whole lot of them. I picked them up when I traveled, when I was in antique shops or at sales, and received them as gifts from family and friends. That’s what happens once people know you collect something.
Here are a very few of the ones I have. My collection includes silly ones, antique ones, artist originals, cheap and expensive ones. Whatever catches my eye. I’ve found them (or figures that look like Santa) in a flea market in Vienna and a shop in Hong Kong. The tall skinny one in my kitchen window is the one I’ve had the longest since he was there when I was a child. The Lego ones are from Denmark before they had them here and the wooden ornaments are from Hawaii. Some are from dime stores, some from fancy places. I have them all over the place, big & little. There’s no room in this story to show them all.
The thing about anything I have is that it comes with either a story or a memory. I think that is what I like most about collecting and collectors. I’m not much of a minimalist, not in any way. I like to see what people are about, what they like.
My mother loved talking to people and I’m sure most of her collections came from meeting an antique shop owner or someone who told her the story of a piece and she had to have it. We both loved buying art from artists we met on the street when we traveled or from supporting artists we became friends with. She and my father purchased several bronze statues of cowboys from a man they met and corresponded with for years. They liked knowing him and his story and supporting his work.
She also collecting things like miniature antique leather books, preferring ones with topics or stories that interested her, although she had some lovely ones in foreign languages. We both loved anything miniature and she had a fun doll house that she loved to furnish with things she made or found. She started collecting magnifying glasses, many with handles from antique umbrellas. I have part of her collection, which I have added to. I’ve found that I actually use them these days, so they’re kind of scattered around the house.
I recently found a couple of small ones to go with this one of hers with the tassel. You can also see some antique inkwells. Three of them were her collection and others are mine, one found in London and another found at an estate sale.
One of the first times I traveled to Europe, way back in the early 70s, I saw people collecting pins which they wore on Alpine hats. I didn’t want the hat, but I started collecting the pins and included some antique ones I found there. I still collect them, but have they are harder to find and so I have a magnets. It may be silly, but I get a nice feeling when I remember interesting places I have been. I must not have much of a memory because I depend on photos and things I pick up to trigger mine.
Sometimes we start collecting because we are just interested in something. This map of Oklahoma hung in my father’s office from the time I was little. I think he got it when we moved to Tulsa in 1948. He used it to map places for his salesmen to go and to find spots for his quail hunting trips. It’s yellowed from the smoke that was in the rooms back in the days of smokers. I claimed it years ago and it led to a collection of books and things about Oklahoma. I had to move some of them for space recently.
Once I was at an antique auction with a friend and there were a bunch of small English wooden boxes. We learned the word “treen” and became interested so we bid on some. I’ve only added a couple, but do love wooden or treen boxes. Note that one was chewed on by a puppy sometime through the years.
For a few years in the 80s, I worked on and chaired an antique show for a non-profit and we brought antique dealers from across the country. I listened to their lectures and stories and loved so many things that I couldn’t afford. I got interested in the little wax seals that people used to use to seal their letters and thought that was something I could look for that was affordable and a way to support the dealers. I don’t look for them as often these days, but I do see an interesting one every now and then. I love to picture people writing with their pens dipped in ink and then sealing the letters with a dab of wax and their monogram. The reddish Asian one is from Hong Kong. Supposedly, it was a Chinese version of my name, but I doubt that Karen translated very well. There’s a small one with a stag being attacked by a dog on top that was supposed to be a prop in a movie, although I always thought that was a stretch and probably just a good story from an antique dealer to sell it. It’s still interesting and antique.
Hearts are one of those things I just suddenly had a bunch of. I had picked them up in art galleries and antique stores and sales and gift shops and been given them. There is one from Tiffany that was a gift and some wooden ones made from driftwood on the beaches in Oregon. There are glass ones from the volcanic ash in Washington and artist ones from museum gift shops and I see a clay one from an artist in Sedona and another glass one from a young artist in Oregon. I had grouped my heart frames and then the hearts started piling up. Good grief. They are kind of fun though and make me smile. I have more hanging artist ones and others just kind of around. Whatever. I have a friend who collects hearts because her last name is Love and another who collects them because her birthday is on Valentine’s Day. We all have our reasons.
There are some strawberry things around my house because the name Fraser comes from the French word for strawberry, fraise, and there are strawberries in the Fraser clan badge. Not too many, just a few I’ve found.
The thing about collections is that you start to see the things you like everywhere. It gives you something to look for when you are traveling or shopping. I’ve also found that many collections lead to doing research on the item and learning more about its history, along with meeting some of the most interesting people.
I called collecting a sport and it can be. Going to auctions or estate sales or combing through flea markets and antique shops can be competitive. Sometimes you are just looking at everything, but mostly your eye stops on either something that you like or have been looking for. You see something and want to know more about it. Many collectors become experts on their collections. I have a friend who started collecting vintage hats and clothing and recently donated her collection to the Tulsa Historical Society where she has her own exhibit.
I love standing in line to get into an estate sale and seeing what everyone else is looking for. I feel like I need to race to the things I want, but most people are collecting things I would never have thought about. They have become interested in things and are building their collection. I’ve met people looking for vintage toys, pyrex ware, old cameras, certain kinds of glass. Tom Hanks collects vintage typewriters. There is a competitiveness in being the one who finds the rare item you are missing, just as my father looked for certain stamps or coins. I don’t know if there is such a thing as having a complete collection of anything, but people keep trying. People like having a piece of history, many considering themselves keepers of something that may have been thrown away but needs to been kept for future generations. I do lament the things that we tossed and would like to see again from my lifetime, even knowing that we can’t keep everything. Some of collecting is nostalgia, a way to keep memories of our own lives. Rarely do I think people are collecting because they plan to sell the items and make money, unless they are dealers.
There are people who collect sneakers these days just as there are people who collect cookbooks and first edition rare books, vintage albums, sports equipment. There are people who collect art, including photographs, paintings, sculptures. I have a friend who collects etchings and has a museum quality collection, which is lovely. She is an expert on her pieces now and knows what to search for. Another friend collects tea strainers. I have a daughter who collects Toby jugs and another who is interested in mid-century modern furniture. A son-in-law collects bourbons. There is a surge of young people (younger than I am, which includes most people), interested in antiques. One of my Native American friends collects items from her culture and an African American friend collects the kitchy kind of figures, such as Mammy dolls, sold in earlier days. They are preserving their own histories.
There is no one reason or thing to collect. I can attest to the fact that it makes you learn, leads you to meet new and interesting people, takes you to fun places and can make you smile. What happens to our collections when we are gone is that they either are interesting enough to be in a museum or display or they are passed along or they go to sales for the next generation of collectors to add to their collections and enjoy.
My son was a collector from a young age. He started with his Star Wars toys and teddy bears but moved to beer cans. I would take him to the flea market and watch that nine year old bargain with dealers over a can he spotted. He was always an expert on pop culture. He moved on to lunch boxes and had quite a collection in his lifetime. His wife still keeps them and I have one of them to remind me of that little kid who inherited the family obsession.
As I said, the things I collect usually come with a memory. Sometimes they are just things I enjoy looking at or learning about, but they almost always have a memory attached of how I got them or who gave them to me or where I was or who I was with or what they mean.
I find myself paralyzed these days as I watch the horror of the current elections with both amazement and genuine terror. When you get to my age, you hope you’ve seen everything stupid that can happen and then this…
Trying to figure it all out, I think back to the elections of my younger days when we didn’t have 24/7 news coverage, the internet or social media. We got a little news from television, more from newspapers and magazines. I’m not advocating we go back, because we can’t, but it has definitely made an impact on how we live through the news ad nauseum as it unfolds minute by minute.
To be fair, and because I tend to want to see all sides of an issue, I try to watch and read as much as I can from every viewpoint. I had a conversation with a university student who was turning 21 and voting for the first time in a national election. His genuine confusion was interesting as he tried to make sense of anything, even with so much information all around him. The problem is that we’re pounded with it, over and over.
When I’ve worked on projects where I need to get a message to an audience, I’ve learned that you need to send it in as many ways as possible since most of us get so much information every day that we may miss it or put it aside. Some of my friends rarely read an email and have no idea how to tweet or text. Snail mail may work best with them. Maybe. Most of us need it all to make something stand out. Repetitive jabbing at the consciousness. Obviously, politicians embrace this technique to the extreme. No publicity is bad publicity, as they say.
So, the end result of all of this constant repetition of the confusing messages is a sense of alarm, a gnawing fear that this year’s elections are leading us to a place most of us don’t want to go. Every day is some new trigger from our state legislatures, the election rallies and debates, local craziness. Always something.
It doesn’t help that I’ve just finished two books that revolve around Germany in the 1930s, “In the Garden of Beasts,” by Erik Larson and “The Boys in the Boat,” by Daniel James Brown. Read them both. You’ll learn from the first one and feel better about being human from the second. My brain is full of images of Hitler’s speeches inciting the crowds to follow him blindly into the evil chaos that was to come. Do we never learn from history?
I understand being fed up with the powers that be. When did we become a country that only worked for our political parties and not for the people? What is this stalemate that has been created in state and national legislatures where you can’t vote for your conscience or for what you know, only for what your party leaders tell you to vote for – if you want to be reelected. And who doesn’t want to be reelected, especially to a national office where you get perks for life even if you’re an idiot and only serve one term. Wow!
In the past months, I’ve had nightmares, real nightmares, about Donald Trump. That’s the result of the constant pummeling at my brain that is coming out in my sleep. I need my sleep.
I have no solution for the madness that is going on around us other than to be careful with your votes. I’m not even sure I want you all to vote if you’re going to continue voting the way you have been. “The people speak” isn’t as reassuring as it used to be.
Last year, one of my favorite movies was Disney’s “Cinderella” with its message: Have Courage and Be Kind. My new mantra.
Right now, I’m going to look away from all the nuttiness and say goodbye to Winter with it’s slanted light and lovely images through the bare skeletons of trees…
…and say hello to Spring with its burst of Hope we need today and every day. Maybe the Spring rains will wash away some of the nastiness that is creeping into our souls.
Last month, I traveled to Kansas City with one of my main purposes to see my high school Latin teacher, who turned 95 that week. Bea Notley was not only one of the best teachers I had in a lifetime of exceptional teachers, she is also a friend and one of the neatest people I’ve ever known. She had come to our high school class’s 50th reunion a few years ago and I had promised myself I would go see her.
One would add that this little Scots woman is also a role model for any of us at her age. She fell a couple of years ago and moved to a retirement home so her children wouldn’t have to worry about her. She told me that was the least she could do for them. When I arrived, she greeted me at the door to the home with a walker, much smaller than I remember, and then sped off so fast I had to catch her. She only needs it for balance evidently. Good grief. She had lost none of her spunk or her enthusiasm for life, which was a delight.
After a tour of her apartment, a one-room studio with bed, living area, bath and kitchenette, we went to lunch with some of the men she likes to eat with. She told me they had lost a couple along the way. I have to say that these guys were absolutely fascinated with her and I thought to myself that they are probably closer to my age than hers. Before I came, she told me on the phone that she pays for three meals, but prefers to cook her own breakfast because there are only so many meals she can eat in a room full of old people who are younger than she is.
Outside her door is a bookshelf full of the Latin textbooks I remembered so well, along with other texts. I told her I still had some of them with my handwritten notes inside, including all the Latin phrases we memorized each year. Her daughter was afraid the books would be stolen, but she said nobody would steal them after reading the titles. There was also a framed cartoon that she had quoted when she spoke at our reunion.
A note on that – at one point while speaking at our reunion, she called all of her former students up to the front and told us all to sing “Gaudeamus Igitur” with her. To say we all started singing, even though most of us hadn’t exactly been humming that every day for fifty years, is an understatement. Something snapped and we all sang out like we practiced every day. It was a showstopper.
One of the places we stopped was a memorial plaque to the veterans who lived in the home. Bea said her nameplate would be ready soon. She served as a WAC in World War II. When the memorial opened in Washington D.C, she attended the ceremony. She said she hadn’t thought too much about it, but standing there with all those women made her so proud to be a part of it.
Bea spends her days in the retirement home reading from the books she has left, especially her Will Durant collection. In the early evening, she turns on PBS and watches television for a bit. That’s all she can stand. She must keep busy around the center since she seemed to know everyone we passed. She told me she should just figure how to lie down and die at her age but she couldn’t do it. That made me laugh. Bea is more alive than many much younger people I know. And sharper. And more fun.
My visit was much too short for both of us so I will have to return soon. I told her the next time we’d get out of there and go someplace fun. I had invited her to do that this time, but she had things to show me. She wants to take me to a cider mill next fall and who knows what in between.
The reason I wrote this was not to tell about my visit but it is so fun to remember that I couldn’t help myself. This woman has taught me so much from the four years of Latin I took with her through our encounters over the past years. She is a treasure of the best kind.
As we were touring her space, I pointed to a photo of President and Mrs. Obama hanging on the wall. She nodded and said there will always be a photo of the President in the Notley home. She said she got some criticism for it around the home, but she said we should always respect the office of the President. I was so taken with the directness with with she told me this, the matter of fact tone she has always had. There is no excuse with her for not having respect.
There are so many things I took away from our visit, mostly her strength and the way she continues to inspire me. But, that photo of the President will stick with me. We have strayed so far in this country from the kind of respect she shows. I haven’t liked every president, but I try to respect the fact that they are in that office because they were elected and are doing a job that is more difficult than we can imagine. She brought it all back home to me. And I remember who helped instill those kind of values in me.
As I said, a teacher never stops teaching. Thank you, Bea!
At an age when I met my first Jewish friends and was beginning to learn a little about their religion, I first read Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl. I was Anne’s age, going through the same kind of emotions, and she educated me about a horrific world so far from my own experience but not so far back in time. Anne died in 1945, the year I was born, only about fourteen years ago in history as I was reading.
Then the movie, starring Millie Perkins as Anne, was released in 1959, bringing the story to life with its black and white seriousness. For girls my age, besides the historical aspects, it was the story of the changes in our relationships with parents and the world and romance as we dreamed it could be. It was the story of a girl our age who was dealing with an adult world with worries and fears we believed, with the innocence of youth, that we would never have to face.
I don’t know if I read the book again through the years, but I suspect I did. This was one of the books that touched something inside me and stuck with me through the years. By the time Melissa Gilbert appeared as Anne in the 1980 TV movie, my oldest daughter was about the age to understand the story. Another generation of girls to share the story, although I was now relating to the mother, all the parents in the story, as well as Anne. Her criticisms of her mother made me wince as I remembered that period in my life when I thought my own mother was hypercritical of everything I did.
In 1982, we were fortunate enough to travel to Amsterdam. I don’t know if my husband related to it as much, but we walked down the street to the building where the story took place and it all felt very familiar to me. Today, I see pictures of lines of people in front of the house and a glass fronted museum in the building next door. When I went, I only remember going into the building, seeing a few plaques and information pieces, although I guess there were some artifacts as I look back through materials I saved. What I do remember is seeing the stairs behind the bookcase and starting up, suddenly gripped by the enormity of the experience. Inside the famous Annex, my main memory is of the wall of Anne’s room with her photos of movie stars and royalty pasted on the walls, exactly as she left them. Today, they are behind plexiglass, but in 1982 we were confronted with the reality. I don’t remember furniture or anything else but those photos, such a link to that young girl. I treasure the visit, the walking up those stairs into the rooms that seemed so familiar. The solemnity of being there, the enormity of my feelings is with me today, thirty-three years later.
Recently, I recorded a documentary on the National Geographic Channel, Anne Frank’s Holocaust. Amazing how her name draws me in, makes me want to learn more. Taking Anne’s life, the filmmakers superimposed photos of Anne and her family and friends onto photos taken today and took the viewer through the events of the war in Holland. Using the Frank family as the center focus, they were able to show what happened, tracking the residents of the Annex to the end of their lives. I was especially taken with the two women who had been childhood friends of Anne’s describing her personality before the war reached them and telling the incredible story of how they were reunited in the camps shortly before Anne died. My heart broke as they told of the emaciated Anne, stripped of her vibrancy, looking for bread to take to her sister. What fortune to be able to see that these two women survived and were able to finish Anne’s story, no matter how sad the ending. The documentary brought new insight to the plight of the Jews and the horror of the camps, where the extermination of the prisoners continued at an accelerated rate even though the Germans knew the end of the war was in sight.
The impact of this documentary was to make me re-read the diary, to see if it had the same impact on me today. I remembered that a newer version had been released, so I downloaded a copy of this one with 30% more content. The editors of the first edition had asked Otto Frank to edit out some of the more personal details involving Anne’s sexual feelings. I think I read that he had also taken out more of the entries which criticized her mother. Interesting that I was now reading Anne’s diary as a woman quickly approaching 70 with a granddaughter the age of Anne. The third generation of my family to reach Anne’s age – I need to make sure she reads the book.
I also looked for the movie and found a new version originally shown on PBS’ Masterpiece and now on Netflix. I think it was based on the newer version of the diary. I thought it was very good. The story never fails to move me.
Once again, I’m impacted by the importance of this young girl’s writing, her story. One of the things I take with me is the extensive education she received and the quality of her writing. Her understanding of languages, the use of words, and the events of history were beyond her age. Those things are impressive. I related to her love of mythology as it recalled my own obsessions with the stories of the ancient gods and goddesses. The depth of her story lies in her studies of herself and the people she lived with in such close quarters. Always an observer and critic, as shown in the entries before they went into hiding, she grew in maturity over the two years of the diary as she wrote of the changes in her own body and emotions. Her criticisms of her parents, especially of her mother, are familiar themes to teen age girls. I can relate through my own youthful years of eye rolling, followed by the impatience of my own daughters with me, and the current status of my granddaughter and her mother, eye rolling evidently being passed down. I can read the diary entries from Anne’s viewpoint and imagine the mother’s side of the same event without taking sides.
Even though the diaries have been authenticated through the years, there are those who wish to censor Anne’s thoughts, deeming them too sexually explicit. I am horrified to learn that this important book has been removed from libraries today under pressure from parents who must have forgotten what it was like to be young or remember and think they can stop the thoughts and emotions of their own developing children. I am grateful I was able to dwell in Anne’s world in my youth. But, Anne was lucky too, as her parents encouraged her to read even when their annex-mates criticized the mature works she chose. I guess there will always be those who wish to impose their own views on us but it doesn’t make it right.
Anne Frank was all of us, all the young teens wishing for acceptance and love, yearning to be independent, yet clinging to our parents in times of stress. She was all of us, struggling through the stages of adolescence with its emotional ups and downs, its frustrations and joys. She was all of us, adoring celebrities and comparing our daily lives with the glamor of theirs, emulating the styles of the day, trying to come to terms with the body, personality and life we have been given.
Anne Frank will always be important for putting a human face on the atrocious war experiences that we would like to forget. The details of life in hiding and life in Holland in general are dramatic in the people’s acceptance of what day to day reality was and bring the difficulty of their lives into experiences we can visualize. Because she is so human and so relatable, she makes it impossible for us to turn our heads and think that such things never happened or will never happen again. Anne Frank is my constant reminder that people are capable of doing terrible things to one another. Anne Frank also is a reminder that even in the worst of times, there is hope.
Less than a month before their capture, Anne wrote,”in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” She inspires us to examine ourselves and be as good as she believed we are.
As a little girl, I devoured books of all kinds, but I had a love affair with fairy tales and magic, advancing into the OZ books as I grew older. I can remember checking out anthologies of fairy tales over and over from the library. I don’t know if Cinderella was my favorite, but I loved the story. The Disney animated version came out when I was about 4, so I may have seen it later in a re-release.
We had a set of books called My Book House at home. I still have the well worn set, which I read and re-read through my childhood. One volume had the story of Cinderella, so I may have read this one before I saw the movie. Or at least around the same time. This is adapted from the French version, which is the one we all know so well. No matter how many versions I read or saw, I believed them all. I was a little girl who got caught up in the magic and didn’t really care if it was plausible or not. I loved these stories.
The Disney version of the story is definitely a classic because who doesn’t love seeing Gus Gus and Jacques outsmart the wicked cat, Lucifer? Who doesn’t want a plump Godmother to appear and wave her magic wand and sing “Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Boo?” And a handsome prince to fall in love with. Of course. The vivid colors and wonderful songs and humorous characters are favorites around the world. I met a young African American girl yesterday who said it was her favorite movie as a child. We all seem to identify with Cinderella, even in her blonde-haired, blue-eyed version.
Several years ago, I was working with a curriculum called “Different and the Same,” developed by Mr. Rogers’ company for students in grades 1-3. The programs are wonderful and I was privileged to be able to take this into some of our public schools to talk to the students about diversity. One of the units was called “Cinderella and Me,” and my research while preparing for classes found that there are over 1,200 versions of the Cinderella story, which appears in every, yes every, culture. There are even versions with boys in the lead role. I know of a cowboy and an Irish male version, among others. Because many of the students I met were Hispanic and Native American, I took versions from those cultures with me to read to them. You can’t imagine the joy on their faces seeing versions with heroes and heroines who looked like them. I borrowed the Hispanic version, but I still have my copy of “The Rough Faced Girl,” an Algonquin Cinderella. Look at this illustration of the cruel sisters off to try and marry the “Invisible Being.”
I also have a copy of the Thai version of the Disney classic, which a friend gave me to show the students. It was an easy lesson to show them that children around the world enjoy the same things.My grandchildren have grown up mostly with the Disney version. I hadn’t though much about it in the last years until I heard that Walt Disney Co. was bringing out a live version of Cinderella. I was a little doubtful, thinking that it might be a bit silly, being a live movie from a cartoon. Still, it looked interesting and I took my 5-year old granddaughter along with my friend and her 6-year old granddaughter. They were both familiar with the animated version, being of a princess generation. Like all little girls, these two have their own personalities, with my granddaughter liking dresses and frills and her friend liking monsters and sporty clothes. Mine hadn’t been to a movie except animated ones, so this was a definite adventure.
Well, I have to tell you that the reason that we love Disney movies is still there. This is a wonderful version, one that I keep thinking about. The story is ages old, but there was magic and love and humor and some lessons to be learned, no matter how old you are. I sat down in the theater next to a couple I know well, who laughed that they didn’t have their grandkids here as an excuse, so they came by themselves.
In this modern age with amazing computer generated images to take your breath away, the movie is lush and the characters are well developed. In this one, we learn more about Cinderella’s parents and their life before the mother dies. At one point, my friend’s granddaughter was frightened that everyone would die, since we had seen Cinderella lose both of her parents. The evil step-mother is still evil, but we have more of her story and there is a chance you might even sympathize with her situation in life, although not her treatment of her stepdaughter. I found that very brave of the movie makers to not make her just a black and while villainess. At my age, you can have a second of pity for her. A second. There’s still no excuse for being mean, no matter what has happened to you.
Cinderella promised her mother to always “Have courage and be kind.” How simple does that sound? Those words get Cinderella through all the cruelty that her stepmother and comical stepsisters heap on her and win the heart of the Prince, who has his own issues with his father and his lot in life. This is no wimpy Cinderella and mindless Prince. They actually discuss what his marrying a non-princess will mean. They make choices. Very cool.
I was mesmerized with the scenes where the Fairy Godmother worked her magic, without uttering one single Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo that I detected, although the loudness of the sound track scared my granddaughter. She was also frightened by the final scene with the Stepmother, although I reminded her that she should know that Cinderella will be ok and marry the prince. Such is the way our minds suspend what we know in the throes of a story. Who knows what goes on in the minds of our little ones? I was more obsessed with the tiny waist Cinderella had, hoping they used computers for that and didn’t cinch up the lovely actress. That’s where I am in life.
In the end, this will be another Disney classic, another version of the timeless story. The final conclusion was that we all loved it. My friend and I were actually blown away, in our grandmother ways. I plan to return with my three daughters, daughter-in-law and 13-year old granddaugher, if she’ll go with us. Me? I recommend you read all the versions of Cinderella you can find, watch all the versions you can see. We’re following a tradition that has found its way around the world again and again through centuries of telling the story. This new one is definitely a keeper!
I had some time to kill at Oklahoma State University yesterday and there was a subject I wanted to research, one that OSU has in their archives. I’d walked past the library earlier in the day, always a beautiful sight, admiring the Christmas wreath and garlands. I’d been actually dreading going into this beautiful building because I have such warm memories of spending hours with the card catalogue, digging through shelves of periodicals for an article I needed for a research paper, copying notes onto index cards. There were no copy machines or computers in those days. You either checked out the book or did the research on site. There was comfort in the shelves of books and periodicals, the dark wood tables and chairs. I grew to love the search and the activity it took to find the information I needed to support my thoughts.
I knew it would be different – I’ve been in local libraries after all. I understand the computers and having everything online and that the experience has changed. I’m not against it, but I wasn’t quite ready to really see it in person in this building.
Approaching the building, the incredible chimes were playing the OSU alma mater, which was comforting. I walked in the front doors… …loving the brass doors. I went through the security scanners and up the stairs with the beautiful brass handrails. Reaching the next floor was like coming into a new century, to say the least. There were tables and chairs and couches and lots of students with laptops. I didn’t see any books at all. There were some offices and a wonderful room decorated old style where students lounged and studied for finals.
I wandered around, wondering how you find anything and went back down the stairs to the lower level where there was an information desk and lots of tables with computers. There was a space in the back of one corner where there were shelves of periodicals. Yay! Something familiar. I realized I was supposed to find a computer, but wasn’t really sure about how this worked, so I approached the desk.
Me: “Hi. I haven’t been here since 1969.”
Student: “Well, welcome back!”
She was great, turning her computer to show me the website. I told her I had a log-in and could take it from there, so I found an empty computer and logged in. I maneuvered around and found the information I was looking for, which I also accessed from home. I was looking for more, but there it was.
I finished up and left. What can you say? I hadn’t wandered down a row of shelves or handled a book. That was weird, at least for me. It’s the library and I’m happy that students are in there, soaking up the information. As I walked away, the chimes were playing “Frosty the Snowman,” which rang across campus and I passed three girls smiling with their arms around each other, singing to the music. Their finals were over and they were probably heading home for the holidays.
It’s all good. We’re moving ahead in our technical world. But my memories of those long ago days in the quiet rooms of dark wood and shelves of books is still sweet. Sigh.
There are people I run across while reading or traveling or meet in person who fascinate me to the point that I start learning all about them to see if they are truly as wonderful as I’ve been led to believe. Blame it on my degree in English and all those research papers, but I really get obsessed with digging through books and the internet to see what I can find.
My latest obsession is close to home. I graduated from Oklahoma State University and, of course, knew the mascot, Pistol Pete. I’m not sure I was aware that he is the ONLY college mascot based on a real person, although I knew there was an actual Pistol Pete. Back in the days before the abundance of branding, we didn’t see Pistol Pete, the mascot, except at sporting events. How I wish I’d been there just a few years earlier.
The real Pistol Pete was Frank Eaton and he lived about ten miles from OSU. He became the mascot in 1923 when he was still alive and liked to roam the campus, wearing his guns on his belt. He walked the sidelines at football games and spoke to classes, demonstrating his quick draw until he shot a bullet into a wall in the Student Union basement during a class. The hole is still there, evidently.
Frank Eaton wrote an autobiography, “Pistol Pete: Veteran of the Old West,” that is astounding for many reasons and almost too rich in details of life in Indian Territory in the late 1800s to believe. I’ve tried to find someone to debunk it, but all I’ve found are facts to make it more believable, even though he may have fudged or not known his actual birthdate, which allowed him to be a lawman in his teens. He wrote the book, or dictated it to his co-writer, when he was in his 90s, which could make it doubtful. When she was in her 80s, I asked my mother a question about her childhood and she replied with incredible detail, drawing a picture of her grandmother’s house with all the plants outside, the furniture inside, etc. Memories are an amazing thing and I’m sure Frank Eaton had told his stories too many times to forget.
I won’t go through the details because I’d love for you to discover his life yourself, even if you just go to Wikipedia. This guy was the real deal. His father was shot to death by six men in the doorway of their home with eight year old Frank watching. A family friend told him he was no kind of a man if he didn’t avenge his father and get the killers, so he learned to shoot at eight, perfecting his accuracy and quick draw until he was the best in the territory. He was appointed to be a marshall in his teens, killed five of the cattle rustling thieves who killed his father, worked chasing bad guys for the Cattlemen’s Association and the marshals, was a bronc buster, rode in cattle drives, worked on cattle ranches, worked in Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show, was in the land rush, farmed, was a blacksmith and a water-witcher who not only could find water, but climbed down in the holes to place the dynamite. He was absolutely fearless, didn’t drink, played cards, smoked, cussed like a sailor except in front of women, and even learned to play the fiddle. No matter what you think, you can’t dispute his prowess as a quick draw master. There are films on YouTube of him demonstrating when he was in his 90s. Amazingly fun to see. Here’s one of my favorite pictures of him. He never lost this persona.
What I love most about Frank from the various accounts I’ve read is the kind of man he was. After all his adventures, he married a woman he loved. They were homesteaders and struggled and had two daughters. His wife died, leaving him with the two girls and he kept them near him. He remarried another woman and had eight more children. He worked as a blacksmith in Perkins, OK and never tired of showing off his shooting skills or telling his stories. One man who lived there said he loved to show off by hitting two matchsticks from twenty yards, never missing. Gunshots could be heard in Perkins, followed by his loud laugh, “Ho Ho Ho!” He even wrote a column for the Perkins paper when he was in his 90s. Even though he never spoke of attending school, his daughter said he wrote one of his books by hand in his Spencerian style. He had a wonderful sense of humor, which shows in the stories he told, some of them tall tales that match those of Mark Twain and Bret Harte. He may not have made them up, but he knew how to tell them.
He was a legend in his own time, which delighted him no end. He rode in the parades, which is where OSU students saw him and asked him to be their mascot. He spoke to school children. Listening to tapes of him speaking, you get a feel for his story telling ability, which must have been a delight for those who stopped by to visit him in his Perkins home.
I visited his home recently in the park where the citizens of Perkins have moved it and dedicated a huge statue to him. You can find photos of him sitting on the porch of this house, entertaining guests. Everything looks the same.
This larger than life man was actually small, standing at 5’5″ in his later years. He had a lazy eye, which makes his incredible shooting skills even more intriguing. He wore his hair in long braids, always had a gun on his belt, would give the shirt off his back to anyone in need, loved his kids and grandkids, and never asked for anything that I can tell. He was definitely a character, decidedly a hero, and, at the very least, someone you wish you had met.
When I see his image on everything imaginable at OSU, I smile, knowing that he would have absolutely loved it. My big regret is that I reached campus a mere five years after he died. Isn’t that unbelievable? There are people alive today who walked to class beside a real life cowboy from frontier days, wearing his guns and telling his stories. How much fun would that have been? I’ll have to settle for reading his stories, seeing his home and other memorials to him in small museums around the state, and knowing that such a person really did proudly live in the state I call home. And seeing his image around campus, including the current mascot. I hope we all do him proud.
Confetti Thoughts 