The Best Newberry Winner Ever

 

Ever.

Friends who know my reading habits know that one of my quirkier reading accomplishments (feats?) is that I have read every Newbery Medal book from the first in 1921 to the present, the 102nd. I did it out of curiosity and a love of reading; my initial read was in 2011, and I have read each year's winner since then.

In 2011, I wrote that the very best Newbery Medal book ever (ever!) was When You Reach Me, the 2010 winner by Patricia Stead. When You Reach Me is a beautiful nod to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (which won the Newbery in 1963) as well as a skillfully, wonderfully wrought story. 

Every year since 2011, when I read the newest Newbery Medal winner, I mentally compared it to When You Reach Me, my gold standard. There have been some superb Newbery Medal books since then. Last year's winner, When You Trap A Tiger by Tae Keller, came as close as any book to taking the title of "best." It was certainly right up on the heels of When You Reach Me, a very close runner-up.  

And then this year's Newbery Medal book, The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera, came home from the library last weekend with me.

The Last Cuentista is set in the future. Earth has been destroyed and only those few hundreds chosen by the Collective to carry on humanity were on the escape shuttles to create a new world in a far distant galaxy. Petra is on the shuttle, a young girl who wants to be a storyteller like her beloved abuelita (grandmother), and awakens from her suspended animation to find that the Collective was not pure minded and noble. I'll stop there; go read the book to see how it turns out.

The book is classified as Science Fiction. Yes, definitely. And just as When You Reach Me was a love letter to Madeleine L'Engle, The Last Cuentista is the same to many science fiction and fantasy writers, many of them referenced by name (Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler, Ursala Le Guin, to name a few). You can see Higuera reaching further back to Orwell and Huxley and their dark futuristic works. But don't dismiss it as "just " sci fi.  As with all great tales, it is a story of love, of family, of resilience, of making connections and bringing out the best in those connections. 

I am more literate in the science fiction/fantasy genres than I used to be, thanks to my sons Ben and Sam. Even so, I am sometimes still slow on the uptake. The morning after reading a significant chunk of the book, I was raving about it to Warren, then stopped mid-sentence and said, out of context, "Oh! Hyperion! OF COURSE!" 

I finished the book just before we headed off early afternoon to set up the stage for the evening's 4th of July concert. I read the very last page of the story and let out a small cry of love and sorrow. I sat there quietly, holding the book to my heart, with tears running down my face. 

It was that stunning.

As we drove over to the concert site, the book still fresh in my heart, my son Ben called to talk. I told him about the book. My voice broke in connecting it to me to him and back again and I was in tears all over again.

I ordered Ben a copy for him and Ramona and it is en route. (In fact, may already be there.) I ordered myself a copy as well. I don't buy books (or much of anything else, for that matter) ever, so that tells you a lot about what it meant to me. 

When You Reach Me will always be on my very short Newbery Medal book "read this one" list. So will When You Trap A Tiger. 

But The Last Cuentista? 

The best Newbery Medal book ever.

Ever. 

Dumpster Diving With The Best Of Them

"Did the butter get thrown out too?"

Dad looked pained. "Look in the freezer. It should be in there."

It wasn't.

This is not a tale of butter that mysteriously disappeared. This is instead a story of combining households and generations and lifestyles.

My brother Mark and his wife Jackie are selling their home and moving into my dad's house, the one we moved into in 1970 and in which he continues to live today, first with his shrinking family, then with my mother, and. finally, after she moved into memory care last November, by himself. Mark and Jackie recently hit a financial wall, not of their own doing, that, as they each characterized it, was the straw that broke the camel's back, the camel in this case being their ability to make their mortgage payment and pay their bills and pay for Jackie's medical insurance, as the just announced cut to her hours eliminated her employer-paid health insurance. It was the insurance that was the last straw; given Jackie's health issues, "going without insurance" is not an option. So they made the difficult but solid decision to sell their house while they are on the upside of their mortgage and move into the old home place. (Back in 2018, I interviewed Mark and Jackie about their grocery budget given the money issues and the health issues.) With Dad a month away from turning 86, still in good health but, as he puts it, old, I think we are all, starting with Dad, relieved that he will no longer be living alone.

The house is large; Mark and Jackie will take over the upstairs, all three will share the kitchen and the bathroom. As a major part of that move, both households are downsizing. Jackie, Mark, and a crew of loyal neighbors are deep-cleaning Dad's house for the first time in...ten years? Twenty? Since 1970?

Don't get me wrong. Dad and Mom did not keep a dirty house. But Mom's ability to do housework disappeared years ago due to physical limitations, and Dad's ability to keep up with everything diminished as he aged and as Mom took more and more of his time. You wouldn't walk into the house ever and notice anything much more than dusty shelves and accumulated clutter on the counters and surfaces, but as Mark and Jackie prepare the house for their move, their hard efforts are showing just how much dust and dirt and grime had accumulated over almost 50 years.

So back to the butter. One of the tasks Jackie undertook yesterday was cleaning Dad's refrigerator for the first time in...a long time. Again, nothing was filthy and there was no spoiled food, but..yeah, it was overdue. Jackie scrubbed shelves, she wiped down bottles and containers, and when she found items that were past their pull date, she pulled them.

Note: Jackie's mother, Judy, was an RN. Jackie can and does wash her hands with more attention than most of us ever even think of doing. Judy taught Jackie well about food safety, about keeping surfaces (counters, sinks, refrigerators) clean, about safe food preparation. Those early life lessons have served Jackie and her husband and children well over the years. Those lessons also include paying scrupulous attention to pull dates and "use by" dates.

Second Note: Dad was not raised by an RN. Neither was I. Dad, in fact, lived his early years without electricity, without running water, without refrigeration. You get the point. I, of course, grew up with electricity, running water, and refrigeration, but believe that food is more durable than what we give it credit for, especially non-perishable items and items kept frozen. I also believe strongly that "use by" dates are, for the most part, something foisted on us by food manufacturers (note my word choice: manufacturers—we eat manufactured food in this country! ) who want us to continually be buying their food items "fresh" (like a can has a "freshness" quality to it). So while Dad and I talked this morning about the butter, he talked about how his family prepared and kept food when he was growing up and how that butter in the freezer would keep 20 years.

So where was the butter? When I quizzed my brother when he and Jackie showed up later, he said "probably in one of those trash bags near the top of the trash container." (We were already outside, near the big trash tote.)

I didn't miss a beat. I popped open the lid, opened the bag closest to the top (the contents of which were still cool), and rummaged around. First up was a never-opened bag of pecan halves. Score! Next were the two pounds of butter, still cold. Score!

Jackie, who was out of the porch cleaning something, called over, laughing. "I can buy you butter, April! And I'm not eating at your house!" I called back, "You can't eat butter anyway, you're lactose intolerant!"

I took my finds inside to show Dad, who grinned. He was happy. Mark, knowing the vast gulf on food that separate me and Jackie, laughed.

When Jackie came back in the house, we both stood in front of the built-in cabinets in which Mom had kept baking items and spices. I looked at her: "You opened this yet?" Jackie shook her head.

We opened the doors. It was a hodgepodge of things: some boxed mixes (Mom was truly a bride of the early 1950s; convenience food was what everyone used and she never really gave up that habit), an empty plastic container, and a somewhat full canister. (I opened that one: powdered sugar.) There was an unopened box of corn starch, an old opened box of baking soda, and an opened container of petrified baking powder. There was a whole drawer of spices, some of which, as I looked closer, probably predated my parents moving into the house 49 years ago.

Oh my.

"Let me just take these all," I said, grabbing some grocery sacks. I dumped the items we knew were past redemption: the petrified baking powder, the old soda. But the rest?

"I'll sort them out when I get home."

We bagged it all. I put the butter and the pecan halves into the bags as well, hugged Dad, and left.

The snazzy Tupperware container is on the left, the Jiffy mix is on the right

When I got home to Warren, I was excited. "Guess what I found! The butter! Guess what else I found! Come look!"

Warren dutifully looked. I then spread my treasures on the table and went through what I had brought home. I kept the powdered sugar, both in the canister (a cool circa 1970 Tupperware model) and an unopened bag of the same. The regular sugar made the cut. I kept the mixes—brownies, lemon bars, pumpkin spice cookies—because I sometimes bake for other occasions where a box mix is not the end of the world. I even kept the Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix, which, until I was well into my teens, constituted the only "cornbread" I really ever ate, with the rare exception of Kentucky cornbread. (I was an adult before I realized the sweet stuff was considered "corncake" and the Kentucky stuff, unsweetened, was truly the cornbread. I still sweeten mine, but not as much as I did in younger days.)

t took me about 15 minutes to sort the spices, opening each one and smelling and tasting them. Nine of them I emptied and recycled the containers. 12 of them I kept.

The pecans? I'm about to start making pesto, and I use pecans in my pesto to thicken it. We just yesterday bought pecan halves at Aldi, where they run .529 cents an ounce, the cheapest in town. That six ounce bag I rescued? $3.17 worth of pecans at that price.

Sweet.

The butter went, of course, in the freezer. I texted Jackie a photo of it.

Fortunately, I am married to a man who gets me and shares my attitude towards food and towards food durability. He even smiled about the Jiffy mix: it's not anything we would ever buy, but what the heck, might as eat it up.

A little dumpster diving goes a long way.

The butter in its new home, our freezer

Inch Seventy-Eight: Farmers Market

We have an active and thriving Farmers Market in our downtown, Wednesday afternoon and Saturday mornings. You can buy jams, jellies, local produce, regional cheeses, plants, soaps, baked goods, and such at our market. In its first year, some 12 years ago, I sold baked goods and so kept my boys in shoes and pizza for the summer. I have good friends who are either selling or are volunteers to keep it running smoothly, so any trip to the Farmers Market is a chance to visit and reconnect and hug and share.

This morning, however, I was only walking by the market to get to our local library, so I could return a book. And I would have have made it, except for the young woman who, in addition to produce, was also selling art work.

I stopped and pointed to one. "Is that for sale?"

Yes. She told me her price. I held up the library book. "I have to return this first," I said, gesturing down the street towards the library, "and then I need to stop at my bank, but I want that."

And about fifteen minutes later, I handed her money and she handed me my painting.

I asked her if it was hard to part with paintings and she laughed. "Oh, yes," she exclaimed. "It is like selling my children." I cradled the painting I had just bought. "Well, if it is any consolation, this one is going to a good home."

I haven't hung it yet, but it is in my study as I type this. I can look over my shoulder and see it.

My blogging friend Darla at Bay Side To Mountain Side is a huge proponent of local art and the art economy. She would totally understand buying art instead of tomatoes and corn this morning. The tomatoes and corn can wait. The art could not.

What's the Christmas You Remember Best?

'The Drum Goes Dead" is a Depression-era Christmas story by Nebraskan author Bess Streeter Aldrich. Set in a small rural town in the late 1930s, the story follows bank cashier Richard Lanning throughout his (and his town's) Christmas Eve.

Aldrich sketches the era well. As Lanning walk to work, he notices the "houses and garages that needed painting," the neglected yard work. He is disturbed in his heart this Christmas Eve. The depression, "the one with a capital D," has hung on in the town. The community is in the midst of a three-year drought, and farmers and businesses alike are hurting. In the wider world, "nations were at other nations' throats." The "general rundown appearance of the little town" weighs on him, as does the plight of his friends and neighbors.

Aldrich paints a quiet portrait of Lanning and the "ruts into which a small-town man" slips, including playing Santa Claus at the annual Christmas pageant. He decides that it would be hypocritical to celebrate Christmas, with its promise of "good cheer and tranquility," when so much is wrong in the world. Lanning has lost his Christmas spirit, and "the death of the spirit is a grievous thing."

Aldrich carefully steers Richard Lanning through his day. She was a master at capturing the small moments, and she does not waste her mood or her story on a Big Revelation. Lanning does not suddenly "find" his Christmas spirit. Instead, it comes to him in small drops of daily life.

Following a curbside conversation with the town's remaining Civil War veteran about his Christmas memories, Lanning begins asking his bank customers "what's the best Christmas you ever had?" All day long, "these common, ordinary small-town folk" tell him stories of family, stories of grandchildren, stories of hard times softened by the holiday.

It is a retired professor who provides the title of the story, quoting from his study of medieval English celebrations: The maskers and the mummers make the merry spirit/ But if they lost their money, their drum goes dead. The professor reflects that in modern times, where friends and neighbors had lost their money and the world was uneasy, it "it takes a great deal of spirit and courage to beat away as though nothing had happened."

It is not until Lanning is walking home that evening that he starts to turn over the day's conversations in his head. He realizes that the common thread to all of the stories he heard that day was home. It is a small realization, a small drop, but one that nudges Lanning towards seeing the hope and the promise of the season.

Many of my friends speak of a muted Christmas spirit this year. Some have been dealing with prolonged financial problems, others struggle to find employment. Others, because of family difficulties or other issues, have said they are not feeling much Christmas spirit this year. I often struggle with it myself. Christmas for me often has a fine deft edge of melancholy which can widen into a band of sadness if I am not careful.

It takes a great deal of spirit and courage to beat away as though nothing had happened.

In rereading Aldrich's story before writing this post, I reflected on Richard Lanning, her "everyman" who started Christmas Eve feeling disconsolate and burdened, and ended it feeling "mentally strengthened, emotionally comforted." He found his way back by stepping outside of  himself and his emotional stew, asking others about their best Christmas memories.

What I would say if Richard Lanning asked me?

I have a handful of favorite memories, most of which involve my two boys, some of which involve Warren, and the rest of which reach back into my childhood. Maybe my "best" memory was the year Ben and Sam received a Playstation 2, hidden away upstairs as they unwrapped other presents downstairs. Sam unwrapped a PS2 game and immediately said, almost in tears, "this is the wrong game. We don't have a PS2." Ben then unwrapped a PS2 game, started to repeat Sam's comment, then stopped mid-sentence to stare first at his parents, then at his little brother. The boys both screamed at the same moment as they realized a PS2 was somewhere in the house. One of them, and I don't remember which, shook from his excitement. Seconds later, they were pelting up the stairs to find their gift. Their shrieks when they discovered it soon bounced back down the steps. It was a grand and glorious day for two little boys.

What Christmas do you remember best?

Small Town Moments, Hometown Life

This week was a doubleheader for small town moments and hometown life.

It was Fair Week here in Delaware. Delaware is the county seat and the fairgrounds are right here in town, about four blocks away from our front door.

When I was a kid, the fair was a Big Event. For me, it probably ranked right up there with Christmas. The big draw was Horses, especially the draft horses that filled the horse barn for part of the week. Never mind the quarter horses or the sleek Arabians. I was enamored of the Percherons. Back then, you could get right up next to the horses and pet them any time at all, and I always had my favorites that I would make a beeline for and talk to while stroking their improbably soft noses.

The County Fair is still a Big Event, not as robust as it was 40 or 50 years ago, but still a force to be reckoned with. One of the country high schools still shuts down on Monday and Tuesday so the kids can show their cattle and their goats and their horses; those kids still bunk out in the fair barns during that time. Midweek, major harness races take place, and the fair attendance swells to over 50,000. Thursday and Friday, the city schools shut down - the first day to keep the kids home when traffic is so bad (because of the races), the second day because, after all, it's the fair!

Warren and I are not big fairgoers. Not having small children in the house, there is not quite the same impetus to get up there and look at the pigs. We lack the desire to roam the exhibits picking up free pencils and whatnots that kids seem to collect. And there is no one small enough to wave at on the merry-go-round or put a steadying hand on after one too many throw-up rides (my favorite name for them).

All the same, late Tuesday evening, we walked up to the fair- grounds and strolled around for an hour, taking in the sounds and sights. It had been raining earlier and with school the next day for all schools, the preteens and teens that normally clog the Midway were absent. The lights were just as bright for the few riders as for the many. We bought some waffles, looked at vegetable displays and quilts, and then walked home.

I came home from the fair with full hands, one holding Warren's hand and the other holding a bag of fair food. It was a small town, hometown kind of moment.

Warren's daughter Elizabeth is in the marching band of the small country high school she attends. Last night her band performed in a Band Festival in a small community less than 20 miles from here. I urged Warren to attend for two reasons. First, we don't often have the chance to see Elizabeth perform anything anywhere, due to problems with her mother. This being Warren's weekend with his daughter, that was not an issue. Second, I love marching bands. I used to march in high school and thought marching band was the highlight of the band year. (Contrast that with Warren, who was lukewarm at best about marching and saw it as something to be endured before concert season started.) My son Ben marched for two years in high school; I happily sat through my share of marching shows and competitions, big and small, when he did.

Last night's festival didn't disappoint me. There were only five bands, the smallest with less than 20 kids in it; the largest barely over 50. The bands were from small rural schools; one even had 7th and 8th graders in it to help fill the thin ranks. There were lots of shako hats with shiny plumes. There were flag corps and even a baton twirler or two.

There were lots of parents, including us, sitting in the bleachers at the football field; there were lots of little kids and grandparents too. The little kids liked to barrel up and down the steps, which, being metal, clanged loudly at every step. The Athletic Boosters had the concession stand going, with the local specialty item being chicken and noodles. Veterans from the local American Legion were on hand to present the colors; one shouted "hey, stranger!" at me beforehand and turned out to be an old family friend when I looked around in surprise.

Those of us in the stands clapped continually. We clapped when the bands marched onto the track to take their field positions for the opening. We clapped after the combined bands played "The Star Spangled Banner" and the local scout troop raised the flag. We clapped for the silly intermission games. We clapped for soloists. We clapped for local sponsors - the pizza shop! The bank! The Mini Mart! We clapped for the twirler who threw her baton high and then did a cartwheel before catching it again. We clapped when our school's fight song was played. We clapped when every band received its trophy, and then we clapped them all off the field.

Afterwards, Warren and I beat the buses back to Buckeye Valley. Sitting there in the car, dozing a bit while we waited, I remembered all the times I waited for the buses to come in after Ben's performances so long ago. When the buses came in, we got out and went to the band room, all abuzz while the kids put away instruments and hung up uniforms. There were jokes and shouts and dramatic exclamations as only teenagers can muster and everything was a wonderful hubbub of noise and movement.

It was a wonderful small town, hometown kind of night.

Sinclair Lewis is remembered for his biting works about life in small, Midwest towns. In Main Street and Babbitt, he savaged the intellectual, artistic, and emotional restrictions that he felt small towns forced upon its residents. He won a Nobel Prize for literature - the first American so honored - on the strength of those earliest novels.

Ten years after Main Street, Lewis wrote a novel that softened the condemnation he had so liberally heaped upon small town America a decade earlier. Dodsworth today is rarely read except by Lewis scholars, yet is considered the equal or better of his earlier works. In it, the gentle Sam Dodsworth, a retired automobile manufacturer, leaves his comfortable life in small town Ohio and goes traipsing across Europe with his singularly selfish, shallow wife who is on the hunt for the "culture" and the "good life" that she feels entitled to and knows America cannot begin to offer her. Sam's musings about the America he loves and has left behind - including its small towns - are in truth a love letter Lewis wrote with a swift and sure hand.

I left my hometown when I graduated from high school and stayed away, more or less, until I was in my mid-30s. I had lots of reasons for doing so, including a shared belief with the author of Main Street that small towns were dead ends of hypocrisy and bigotry and shallowness. When I returned to this one, my hometown, it was willingly and gratefully. It was where I wanted to be, where I wanted to raise my sons. Like the author of Dodsworth, I had come full circle in my view of this small town, my hometown.

Tomorrow marks 19 years since I came back here. In those 19 years, I have watched my boys grow up, navigating the same streets and institutions I did decades earlier, and I have watched them leave as I knew they would one day. I have gone to fairs and footballs games, concerts and council meetings, funerals and weddings. I have watched parades and fireworks. I became more of who I was and less of who others thought I should be. I even got to marry the guy who decided a long time ago to stay right here in this small town hometown of ours.

My days are full of small town, hometown kinds of moments. Those moments shape my life. It's a wonderful one.