Hader Art Book Showing

Come to Multnomah County Library on Saturday, October 19th, from 2 PM to 3:30 PM for the first showing of the brand-new book on Hader art.

Berta and Elmer Hader, the Caldecott winning author/illustrators of THE BIG SNOW (1948), were originally San Francisco artists, trained in a variety of art techniques, long before they merged their talents into creating and illustrating nearly 100 children's books in the 1900s.

The non-profit foundation has just produced a fascinating book with many gorgeous reproductions of much of their work, including the illustrated personal letters sent to friends and editors, Berta’s ivory miniatures, Elmer’s “California Impressionist” paintings of New York country landscapes, the children’s pages that were part of McCall’s and the Saturday Evening Post magazines, etc/ etc. (All in one tidy book that fits easily on a library shelf).

The four compiler/authors will all be at the Library’s US Bank Room (just inside the front entrance) to talk, schmooze, sign books, and answer questions.

I’ll be there, since this is sort of a prelude to my Hader biography that will (hopefully) come out in late 2014.

Coming Events!

This is a quick notice that I will be holding down a booth at the NW Festival of Books this coming Saturday for my new book, Walking Portland! If you are downtown in PDX that day, I hope you can drop by and see me at the 5th Annual NW Book Festival!
        
         Saturday, July 27, 2013
         11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
         Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland, OR
         (corner of SW Morrison and SW Sixth Avenue)


A fun day with LOTS of Oregon Authors!

AND: this Wednesday evening July 24, from 7 to 9 pm you can also find me at The Oregon-California Trails Association's Convention Author's Night. This takes place at the Monarch Hotel in Clackamas, Oregon.

AND: on the following Monday (July 29) I will be with some students and staff from Roosevelt High School at Annie Bloom’s Books, 7834 SW  Capitol Highway, Multnomah Village, Portland. This 7 PM event will introduce their new literary anthology, Where Roses Smell the Best.
          

CLEANING UP THE CULCH AND REDDING UP YOUR ROOM

Every so often words from the past are triggered by strange words from the present. One that reappeared in my mind a few years ago was culch. The culch pile, when I was a child, was that pile of junk by the barn that we were never never to touch. It was full of nuts and wires and pieces of machinery no longer useful, but that might be needed in the future. Looking it up in a dictionary of regional words, I discovered it came from Maine, referred to ship ballast thrown overboard that later provided homes for oysters. Houses had culch tables and culch drawers, but culchy women were frowned upon. I love the word—so much more promising than the junk drawer or closet.

This month’s word find was in an article in the Oregonian, where it mentioned a home decorator often used knolling as a technique. Since I thought of knoll as a small hill, I had a mental vision of piling up the culch in an artistic heap. But no, it came from a tidy Mr. Knoll who laid out his tools just so. Knolling seems to refer to lining up your books and magazines and other home décor so all edges are square with the table they are lying on. People who knoll probably dislike anything crooked so they straighten pictures on the wall and shut open doors and drawers. We all have met--or lived with—these, but never knew them as knollers. Who knew?

Another old phrase I heard people use when I lived in the East is “redding up a room.” I suspect the root is getting a room ready for company, probably by knolling the pillows and books and dumping the culch where it won’t be seen.

If we have all these neat words for housekeeping, why don’t we have enough neat words for the company that we keep? When I was little everyone was either referred to as Mr. or Mrs., unless they were close friends of the parents in which case they were uncles or aunts or cousins. I still am not sure of my relationships with many of these people.

Families today have a very mixed assortment of relationships, few of which are named. We have the in-laws of course, but no word for the other grandmother of my grandchildren without saying she’s my son’s mother-in-law or my daughter-in-law's mother. Awkward. Recently I’ve noticed references to DILs and MILS and SILs and FILS, but SILs can mean both sons and sisters, and we still don’t know who is related to whom.

How about the people who live in the same abode without having a marriage license. Renters? Partners? POSSLQs? Ogden Nash once wrote a funny verse about “Will you be my POSSLQ?” The word was an acronym from a census form about Persons of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters. But today we need another S, and college roommates may be both S and O.

The step relationships are also quite difficult to explain, if and when explanations are needed. Sometimes there are intricacies of how people are interrelated that defy easy explanations. I’ve asked people from other countries if they have some words we can adapt, but haven’t found any beyond their own words for the immediate families: Oma and Opa, Vava and Vavo, etc.

Of course one little boy nearly broke my heart when he simplified the whole thing. He introduced a new child in school to me as “This is my brother-for-now.” There’s a lot of relationship behind that simple statement!

I’d better quit worrying about the words and be grateful for the people in my life. Most of them are not just FN (for now)  but are  FF—Friends Forever. That covers everyone, regardless of relationships.

COVER STORY

A couple of weeks ago my friend Karen noticed an advance notice of my new book, Walking Portland, Oregon, was posted on Amazon; I had no idea it was there. I was thrilled with the attractive green and gold photograph the editors picked for the cover. I had nothing to do with the choice of photo: my contribution was the two years I spent walking and writing to create the contents. So why was I so excited over someone else’s vision?

I could hear my grandmother reminding me over and over that “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” She usually was referring to my making snap judgments, often unkind, about other people I really didn’t know. Now I seemed to be judging my own book by the same shallow standard.

We certainly couldn’t judge books by the covers in my junior high school library. Most of the books on the library shelves had been rebound at the state prison in red, black, green, or buff buckram. There was no way any book could be judged by the cover. We couldn’t judge by the insides, either. Miss Johnson had a rule: if you took the book off the shelf you had to check it out. Most of us didn’t bother unless it was an assignment--we  used the public library instead. The covers were mostly the same prison bindings, but we could delve into the book to see if we wanted to read it. What Grandma said made perfect sense.

Later on, when I became a librarian myself, we had plastic covers we could put over the publisher’s book jackets. Now the children could choose books by the cover instead of the insides. And they did. We also had older books sitting on the shelves because their jackets had long disappeared. It seemed a shame that a really good story was passed over because of its unattractiveness. Occasional contests for students to draw new covers helped, but the hand-drawn covers were no matches for the modern ones. “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” I quoted, whenever I did quick book chats to get the golden oldie into a child’s hands.

Now the problem became the mismatch between covers and the insides. They promised one thing but delivered another. A paperback cover for Doyle’s Lost World about dinosaurs in the Amazon featured a young woman—non-existent in the book. Recently a Facebook friend posted the new cover for Anne of Green Gables. Anne is a young girl in the original story, but the new cover portrays Anne as a busty young woman with that ideal teen-age body no one has in real life. Publishers are following the marketers with their view of what the public will buy. I suppose the cover may entice children to pick up the set, but the story won’t be what they expect.

However, I guess we always judge by first sight. It was our ancestors’ way of deciding quickly about possible threats. We know that inwardly, whether artistic or in business: most of us choose our outside “covers” to create a certain impression. A recently published Portland author, Roger Hobbs, says he started wearing three-piece suits in college so he’d be taken seriously.

So I was and am excited about the cover. The leaf-strewn path leads you out of the park and into the city, promising adventure ahead. It matches what I tried to do in the book. The walk descriptions inside are my contribution, and I hope they are useful and fun, but the cover is the most important selling point. It will decide whether or not people will take the book off the shelf. And I know more people will pick up the book because of the outside, before they pay any attention to what’s inside.

Grandmother was right. We need to look behind the facades before judging anything.

I also remember Grandma saying, “the proof is in the pudding.” We’ll see.

LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE EVER!

My husband always said I was naïve about people, believing the best and then being devastated when they let me down on occasion. Actually, I’ve been lucky in most of the real people who have come my way. But many of the stars and politicians held up as good examples leave me feeling disappointed and a bit diminished.

I admired Tiger Woods for practicing long hours and working hard to be the best golfer ever, while giving his father and others credit for his achievements. Lance Armstrong was another hero, whose motto, Live Strong, seemed a good fit for a man who worked and trained hard to overcome a tragic disease. Both of them seemed to show that success came through hard work, dedication, and single focus. Perhaps that focus on themselves led to later assumptions about being entitled to all the goodies in life. They never saw the others around them as people. They broke promises, cheated others out of their own achievements, and cast doubt on the American ideal that you can get ahead through hard work. Apparently claiming an award, even if unearned, was enough. Now the sponsors and TV reporters have dropped them from the spotlight. I wonder if they feel the loneliness which someone called the “poverty of self.”

My nephew, Nate, died in an accident last summer, while having a picnic with friends and family at his favorite lake. He was an excellent neurosurgeon who touched many lives in his profession, and who could have gone off to one of the big famous hospitals for national recognition. Instead, he chose to return to his hometown to be a good son to his ailing father, a generally delightful husband and parent, and a contributing citizen to his whole community. His achievements were not solely due to his own hard work, but were also due to the support of his friends, community, and family. He gave back to all of those, and has laid a foundation for others to achieve and maybe even surpass him.

I think (my naïveté again?) he was typical of his generation. Like many of his peers, he exemplified the American values that pundits insist have been lost. They aren’t lost—they are just unsung. His siblings and cousins and children and friends are also living up to their potential as good citizens, not as icons with a single talent. These children of the baby boomers play hard, work hard, enjoy their gadgets, and are exceptionally involved parents—I see them all around me here checking on their own parents’ well being. They should be the heroes of the world.

Nate’s family just sent me a bumper sticker in his memory. The motto reads, Live Your Best Life Ever. It’s posted on my refrigerator for now, tho I will eventually stick it in my car window--a nice change from many self-centered bumper stickers I’ve seen in the last few years. “We’re living on our children’s inheritance.” “He who dies with the most toys wins.” “Honk if you love------”

It’s a wonderful slogan to remember him by. It’s a motto he believed in, but not in a selfish way. If the way he lived his own life is any guide, it was never focused on getting the most toys for himself. His “Best Life Ever” included enjoying all facets of living, including helping others live their own best lives.

Happy New Year!

Hi all—and a happy New Year from my Portland home.

Time has flown by and, much to my surprise, I am now on my third year of living here. It’s been an interesting couple of years. One good thing about living in a new area is watching everything develop. The views from my window change daily. Once upon a time the people who farmed down here on the riverfront land lived up above the flood plain on the hills. In the era of “urban renewal” several major roads destroyed the connections. Now a pedestrian bridge has reconnected the new South Waterfront with the hills of old South Portland. It already is a well used route over eleven lanes of traffic including I-5, and makes it possible for me to walk to my granddaughter’s condo. (At least it will if I can overcome my fear of heights—and that’s my New Year’s resolution.)

I've watched three barges being built and sent out to sea with tugboats, the police boat, and the fireboat in attendance. The latter sprays plumes of water to celebrate each new launch. OHSU's new dental school and research labs are rising rapidly, along with a bicycle-only apartment building for the students and professors. Progress is being made on a new light rail/bicycle bridge across the Willamette. The spindly trees are filling out, more and more children seem to be finding delight in the well-designed small park, and even the ospreys have gained a permanent nesting site, in full view of a neighboring building’s webcam. Another nearby nesting pole is planned for the spring.

Most of last year was devoted to finishing up the revision of Walking Portland. It is now at the publishers, going through their processes to make a finished book. The cover announcement is on Amazon, but the book itself is planned for March. For some reason, working on it seemed to take up most of my computer time and energy this last year. I thought it would be easier now that I live here. It wasn't.

The original book was written when I was living in Roseburg. Many of the original walks were inspired by the many librarians I knew who lived in Portland. Then I would drive up to stay at my son’s home, and spend a day or two walking in various areas. I took notes and used a tape recorder: it was much easier to say “turn here” than to write down those constant but important bits of information. Then I went home, wrote up both written and verbal notes, checked everything on a map, and sent a rough draft to my editor. She checked her map for questions, relayed them back, and I added those questions to my notes of things that didn't seem to work. Then I took another trip up to check on the previous walks and do some others. It was a lot of fun as well as work because I was going through areas that were new to me, and I was seeing things for the first time on foot.

Living in Portland now has made it more convenient, but the writing and rewalking still wasn't easy. Portland has changed drastically. The outdoor art, which brightens up the landscape, has been removed, or added to, or relocated since I was here before. New parks have been developed or remodeled. The new streetcar has made it even easier to get around town. There have been quite a few changes in the stores, and many older neighborhoods have been repainted, re-landscaped, and “gentrified.” However, all of these changes also added to the interest and fun of reacquainting myself with the old familiar places, as well as the many new places that weren't even around fifteen years ago.

No one can accuse this city of stagnation! And, I must admit, it has been good for me to change my ruts.

Sunny Side of Life #11

September

“It’s not the journey that matters; it’s who you travel with.” That quote from a greeting card is the perfect description for my August trip to Alaska. There were three of us, all former school librarians from the northern Chicago suburbs, who’ve kept in touch over the years, even though we moved to schools in different, far away states. Roz now lives in Alaska, and she hosted Fran from Hawaii and me from Oregon for ten wonderful days.

Alaska is, of course, a wonderful sightseeing state, all the more so when the mostly wet weather forecasts turned out to be wrong. As we went north on the Parks Highway towards Mount Denali we were teased with occasional glimpses, and we finally saw her in all her glory once we reached Talkeetna. It was such a brilliantly sunny day, we hopped on a small tour plane, and flew above it and around it, while the pilot pointed out all the major points of reference for those who actually climb the mountain. The ridges are so narrow, it’s hard to believe that anyone can walk on them without falling.

The weather was equally beautiful for other sight-seeing trips: taking a paddle wheeler down the Chena River in Fairbanks, going on a catamaran to see and visit 26 glaciers in the Harding Ice fields, and walking into Exit Glacier. But it really wasn’t the photo ops that made the trip—it was the fun of being with other people who share some of the same background and most of the same interests. The three of us stopped at nearly every library, bookstore, and gift shop along the way, sharing our finds and admiring each other's purchases. When a head-on crash down the road stalled all the traffic to Seward, we not only talked books but took turns reading one of our picture book finds aloud: a funny update called “The House That Moose Built.” After news that the road wouldn’t open for another six hours drifted back down the long line of parked cars, we turned around and went back to Anchorage for the night--but we probably could have giggled our way through the remaining time with other souvenir books. Another excellent reason for buying books as gifts and keeping them in the car.

The other great part of the journey for me was meeting and making new friends and acquaintances. The Anchorage couple that put us up on our several passes through the city are now my friends as well as Roz’s. So is the bookstore owner in Talkeetna who enjoys some of my favorite authors, and a small town librarian who shared information and a book about Michael Healy, a minor character in my biography on Berta and Elmer Hader. Many of the waiters and shop people will stick in my memory even if I don’t ever see them again. They enhanced our whole trip with their caring spirits, specialized knowledge, and recommendations about the area.

It definitely was the people I traveled with who made this journey truly outstanding. And isn’t that true of our personal journeys through life? There are a few people who sour our experience, but so many more enrich it. Sometimes it’s fun to just be with our mirror images and spend time doing only the things we all enjoy. Sometimes it’s fun to be with people who lead us down other paths we never knew existed. The three of us often talked about our former library coordinator who made us far better in our professions that we ever would have been by ourselves. Unknown to the greater world, her life started ripples that went far from her home in Illinois. It’s the connections.

Researchers into the aging process are unanimous in pointing out that social contacts are important to a healthy life. It really doesn’t matter how much we have in common, as long as we can appreciate each other’s talents and backgrounds. Many of these friends can receive and offer the timely support we need. We don’t have to go it alone. Even in perfect Eden, Adam needed a human companion.

In this time of my life, when I lose so many good friends, it’s important that others enter my circle. I have discovered I have to get out of my comfortable rut occasionally to find these others. After all, I would hate for my circle to shrink down to hula-hoop size! So thanks to all of you who enrich my travels one way or another. As another saying goes, “many people enter and exit your life, but a few leave footprints on your heart.”

Cheers to all of you who do.