First in Freedom

There are not many days I wish I were back teaching in the fourth grade, but today is one of those days. I would make sure we had a big, BIG celebration. For today, you see, is MecDec Day! I should call my fourth graders from the past to join me around the flagpole and revel in the joy of having Founding Fathers who cared about freedom. We could toast the concept as only a classroom of history-loving children should. I'd make sure every one of them had a noise maker of sorts. If it weren't illegal, I'd set off big fireworks.

Today is so important to the state and to the nation that it is even on our flag, the one that hung in the front of the room opposite Old Glory herself. 

Isn't it beautiful! Oops, I wanted to show the reason today is MecDec Day, and the image caught the wave at the wrong time. Yesterday morning, I took a picture of the flag at our town's museum. It was still wrapped in plastic when I spread it out on a table, but here it is, in its own kind of glory, wrinkles and all...our own America250 reason to celebrate today, two hundred and fifty years later.

Back when Charlotte was a Hornet's nest of stinging questions about what the British monarchy meant to the citizens of the colony of North Carolina, there was a group of men who gathered to take action against the unfairness of it all. They wrote what has been labeled the Mecklenburg Resolves after Mecklenburg County, where this major step against the crown took place. This was a full year before the more famous and more revered Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. In fact, David Fleming's recent book Who's Your Founding Father? about his "quest to uncover the first, true Declaration of Independence," dives deep into the story behind the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the controversy surrounding it. If you think a book about history is a dry, boring read, think again. This book was a hoot, a page-turner hoot! Take a look at my copy in front of the state flags on my desktop screen. Didn't I stage it perfectly!

Our declaration was first (despite what naysayers have to say). Once upon a time, not so long ago, we even bragged about it on our car license tags. 

And you best believe that in all the years I taught fourth grade social studies, come every May 20th, we would study the flag and talk about how people can peacefully protest unfair rules. Best of all, you don't have to be a student in a classroom to celebrate. We have the freedom to do so. The Founding Fathers saw to that!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Poetry Workshop

Hip! Hip! Hooray for Foothills Writers! I love this group of motley authors! We are a strange mix that has come together with one goal in mind...become better writers. We were featured in the March issue of Our State magazine, that's how established we are. Now we are going to have a delightful event, a poetry reading under the gazebo...picnic shelter really, but gazebo sounds so much more poetic! 

We meet regularly on Wednesdays at the museum in Gamewell and share the good times of publishing and sympathize with the not-so-good times of rejections of someone's latest submission. After a meet-and-greet (and eat) time, we rattle our brains and warm up our typing fingers with a six-minute prompt. The topics we address come from out of the blue and have taken me into spaces I never would have imagined I would be. We share our compositions with each other, if we wish. Or not. Some are so personal that we don't want to hear our words spoken aloud.

After these preliminaries, the leader of the day presents a writing-related lesson. During the month of April, three of us per session taught about one form or another of poetry...in honor of Poetry Month. One person chose ballads. Another did open verse. One did a variation of haiku. Another did conversational poems and on a different day did Taurograms, where each word in the poem starts with the same letter, not an easy task if I say so myself. I signed up for three different dates to teach and looked through the list of varying poetry formats to find the styles that I wanted to share. I need structure as I write, so I looked for poetry that had a cadence and a rhyming scheme...like a cinquain. I had actually studied that in school somewhere along the way. Five lines. Varying rhymes - ABAAB; ABABB, any combination of words that rhyme. For my other class sessions, I wanted something eccentric, something so unusual it would make a fun time. Both of the ones I selected were from the Welsh tradition. Those poets really know how to complicate life in a most interesting way.

First I chose the Cyhydedd Fer poem structure. This is a poem made up of couplets, pairs of rhyming lines, which attracted me to them in the first place, but, and here's the kicker, each line must have eight syllables. Not so difficult, once I learned how to pronounce the name. We meet in a museum and are surrounded with mannequins displaying uniforms...military, sports, Scouts. I assigned everyone to imagine the person who once wore those uniforms and write a Cyhydedd Fer to tell a story. What we came up with!

On a different week, I taught another poem format I couldn't pronounce...will I ever learn!! This one was a clerihew, a more recent poem structure with a four-line AABB rhyme scheme, comical or whimiscal themed, and about a noted person. First we all wrote about the same person, Edgar Allen Poe. The fact that Edgar had so many variations was a testament to the wide range of brain philosophers in our Foothills Writer's group. Next I had everyone trace a six degree of separation from a famous person to themselves (think Kevin Bacon) and then write a clerihew about it. What fun!

Now we want to share the product of our labors with you. We invite you to celebrate with us this Wednesday afternoon, May 14, one o'clock at the Gamewell Walking Park. No telling what you will hear!

Catch of the Day,

Gretchen

PS There will be food!

The Eighteenth of April

If you want to know what generation someone is, just start reciting Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. If they continue reciting it after you finish the second line, they are a Boomer. We are the ones who believed every myth and exaggeration our teachers told us. Did George really chop down a cherry tree? Did Abe really help his brother make footprints on the ceiling? Did ole Dan'l really kill a bear with his bare hands? Did Paul Revere really shout, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" as he spread the alarm?

I don't know about the first few questions, but since America250 is upon us and so is the eighteenth of April, I decided to investigate Paul and the claims made about him. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized this act of patriotism in his classic poem (the bane of schoolchildren of my era), Paul Revere's Ride. Check it out on this site, the real story. The facts weren't like I remembered. It was more like history vs literature. Longfellow took liberties with history in order to make a good story. "One if by land and two if by sea, and I on the opposite shore shall be." Not accurate. Close. Two lanterns only before Paul stopped off at his house and picked up his boots before he took the rowboat to ride to the other shore. In 1931, artist Grant Wood painted The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. He said the poem inspired him. I wonder if he also had to memorize it. 

All this is leading up to the celebration of America's fight to be free two hundred fifty years ago. I've been surprised at the number of people who had to memorize it from top to bottom. I didn't go all out. I learned enough to count for credit and then stopped. Reading through it now, however, I wish I had continued. It graphically describes each stop along the way, the passion of the people, and the desperation in the countryside. A must read!! I'm posting the full poem at the bottom of this; no copyright since it was published well over a hundred years ago. Give it a read...and a memory test. How much do you remember?

Catch of the day,

Gretchen 

Paul Revere's Ride

The Landlord's Tale

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in 'Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

 

He said to his friend, "If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light, --

One, if by land, and two, if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm."

 

Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

The somerset, British man-of-war;

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

Across the moon like a prison bar,

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

By its own reflection in the tide.

 

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,

Wanders and watches with eager ears,

Till in the silence around him he hears

The muster of men at the barrack door,

The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,

And the measured tread of the grenadiers,

Marching down to their boats on the shore.

 

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

To the belfry-chamber overhead,

And startled the pigeons from their perch

On the somber rafters, that round him made

Masses and moving shapes of shade, --

By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,

To the highest window in the wall,

Where he paused to listen and look down

A moment on the roofs of the town,

And the moonlight flowing over all.

 

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,

In their night-encampment on the hill,

Wrapped in silence so deep and still

That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,

The watchful night-wind, as it went

Creeping along from tent to tent,

And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"

A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;

For suddenly all his thoughts are bent

On a shadowy something far away,

Where the river widens to meet the bay, --

A line of black that bends and floats

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,

Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,

On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.

Now he patted his horse's side,

Now gazed at the landscape far and near,

Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,

And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;

But mostly he watched with eager search

The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,

As it rose above the graves on the hill,

Lonely and spectral and somber and still.

And lo! As he looks, on the belfry's height

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

A second lamp in the belfry burns!

 

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

 

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;

And under the alders, that skirt its edge,

Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

 

It was twelve by the village clock

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,

And the barking of the farmer's dog,

And felt the damp of the river fog,

That rises after the sun goes down.

 

It was one by the village clock

When he galloped into Lexington.

He saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as he passed,

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

Gaze at him with a spectral glare,

As if they already stood aghast

At the bloody work they would look upon.

 

It was two by the village clock

When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

He heard the bleating of the flock,

And the twitter of birds among the trees,

And felt the breath of the morning breeze

Blowing over the meadows brown.

And one was safe and asleep in his bed

Who at the bridge would be first to fall,

Who that day would be lying dead,

Pierced by a British musket-ball.

 

You know the rest. In the books you have read,

How the British Regulars fired and fled, --

How the farmers gave them ball for ball,

From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,

Chasing the redcoats down the lane,

Then crossing the fields to emerge again

Under the trees at the turn of the road,

And only pausing to fire and load.

 

So through the night rode Paul Revere;

And so through the night went his cry of alarm

To every Middlesex village and farm, --

A cry of defiance and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

And a word that shall echo forevermore!

For borne on the night-wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

An Interview with Author Carol Baldwin

There's a new book in town. Half-Truths. Although it was designed for teens, this novel by Carol Baldwin should be read by every adult in America. It is a powerful narrative of a history that we often push under our carpet of shame. It takes the reader into the Jim Crow fifties of Charlotte and Tabor City, North Carolina. It's the story of my youth, even though I lived through it in another city. After I finished reading it, I told her it could have been named Hard-Truths, because it told facts that were hard to hear.

I asked Carol a few questions, mostly from a fellow author's point of view. Here's our discussion:

Setting is so important to the unfolding of action in Half-Truths. Why did you write about actual towns rather than create fictional ones?

When my children were young, they always asked me if something was "real" in a book they were reading. I think it adds a deeper dimension to a book when the reader realizes that a place or person is "real." Since I wanted to explore what life was like in Charlotte before civil rights, I never thought of placing the story elsewhere. That option was suggested to me but I felt as if it would take away from the reality of what life was like in Charlotte. After that decision, it only made sense that I would find a "real" place where Kate grew up.

And how about the editors of the newspapers? Did I read somewhere that they were real as well?

Horace Carter, the editor of The Tabor City Tribune, was a very real force in Tabor City, NC in the early fifties. A UNC graduate, he started a paper in this North Carolina tobacco town that's across the border from South Carolina. In his thirties he won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the KKK.

Speaking of newspapers, the way you start each chapter with a "ripped from the headlines" clip is fascinating. What do you think those add to your story?

Thank you, I'm glad you like them. I actually borrowed that technique from Kathleen Burkinshaw; that is what she did in her middle-grade book, The Last Cherry Blossom. I think it adds another layer of authenticity to the story, mirroring Kate's desire to be a journalist, as well as giving readers a taste of what was reported on and advertised during that period.  

Not all were from glaring headlines. What did you change in those cases?

I wanted as many real headlines as possible but sometimes I couldn't find what I was looking for. That's one reason I would create a headline. The other reason is that I wanted to show how the local newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, reported on social events, like Kate's luncheon or the May Day parade.

You had to have done mountains and mountains of research. Where did you go for your information beyond back issues of newspapers? 

I consulted a lot of books; this is a picture of just some of them.

Since I'm White and was writing about a Black girl who was light-skinned, I read several books about being biracial. I also read several MG and YA books with Black protagonists. You can find a list of my blog posts which include books I read here. I also conducted several books and online articles about Charlotte, the South, goats, tobacco, the KKK and just about everything in the book! I interviewed close to a hundred people who either lived in Charlotte during this time or had family that did. Many of their stories are threaded through Half-Truths.

Much of what you researched must have been hard to read. Did you ever turn away because you couldn't go into that darkness?

No. Some of the books about what Blacks experienced were difficult and painful to read. But I suppose there's a journalist in me, too. I wanted to report the way life really was. 

Did you develop Kate's desire to be a reporter from all your research?

Interesting question. Early on I saw her as wanting to be a photographer for the school paper, but then I realized that I knew a lot more about writing and could write that with more authenticity.  

The goat. I must ask about what part it played in developing your characters. Could the story have been the same with only the dog? 

Ha Ha! In early drafts, I had only a dog who disrupted her luncheon. Eileen Heyes, an author friend of mine, said that everyone had dogs in their stories and I needed something different! I hit on a goat and it fit. Initially, I even named her Eileen, but then I realized that name was too close to Lillian. 

Kate's fellow students in both towns were so real to me. Did you dislike any of them but included them anyway? If so, then why?

Yes, I'm not too keen on Hank and Lola Mae in Tabor City, but I needed to show the atmosphere of the town and how racism had been passed on to young people, too. I'm also not a fan of Kenneth. Many girls have met boys like him. They need to see how Kate's mother says, they can be "loose cannons."  

Authors often slide in a homage to people or events or places from their personal lives. Tell us about something you might have included.

My mother was a painter. I didn't even realize that I had modeled Nora Jean after her until I described the painting she gives Kate. My mother also loved to paint gladiolas! Vermelle, Lillian's mother, is named after Vermelle Ely, one of my Black experts, who although she is blind, was the first to "read" Half-Truths. She had her phone read it to her!

I read that writing this took eighteen years for you to go from day one blank page to publication. How did it change over that time?

Another great question. There were many outlines and drafts. Since the period is the Jim Crow South, I knew there were racial issues that would be addressed. Over time I realized that most of that racial struggle was not my story to tell. As a result, Half-Truths became more about Kate's journey to find her voice as a budding journalist rather than a book about race relations. 

What stories did you uncover that you would like to have written into the book but chose not to?

There are too many to count!

Could those be for future books? Will we see more of Kate or Lillian?

I don't have another book in mind for Kate and Lillian, but you never know. My next book takes place fifty years earlier and it's about Kate's grandfather as a thirteen-year-old glassblowing apprentice in South Jersey.

Oh, my goodness, Carol, that sounds fascinating! I can't wait to read it! I can only imagine the research you have ahead of you. Thank you for taking the time to share a part of your writing process with us. I'm so glad I had a chance to ask questions. I can't wait for everyone to read her book. Half-Truths comes out in April, so please be on the lookout for it. 

If you want to add your name to my drawing for a free book, post a comment below. I will draw the winner on April 12 so please make sure I have a contact email address in case you are the lucky winner of this book.  

Also, anyone who preorders now on Barnes and Noble, can send their receipt to Carol for a courtesy swag! Contact her through her website. 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Important to Read

Sometimes books are hard on me as a reader. They bring tears. They cause deep thinking. My stomach churns. Time stops while I digest what just went into my brain and deep into my soul. Two recent books I read set me back a step or two: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and Half-Truths by Carol Baldwin. As with real estate's location, location, location, literature has setting, setting, setting. Both of these books are historical fiction set in a time period that could not have happened in any other era, (please God), France during World War II and North Carolina during segregation. 

This morning I came to the final Nightingale page, in tears I might add. This book is a tale of man's inhumanity to man...and woman. Yes, I had heard of the Holocaust, studied it in a superficial way, read other historical fictions, but not until I read The Nightingale did I really feel the horror on a character level. It was all about women and their resistance to Nazi takeover of their lives. It didn't end well for most of the characters, yet all was well in the end, at least as well as it could be. 

I seek out books about strong women, and the women in this book were indeed strong even though they lived through a starvation that weakened them, or maybe because of it. They stood up to impossible odds and when one particular character was liberated from the evils of a concentration camp at the end of the war, she said something to another that stuck in my mind: "We made it." I've said those words before at the top of a mountain or at the end of a long road trip, but this...this was different. They survived not only brutal, unimaginable tortures brought on them by a merciless invasion, they helped others survive and escape. They hid children. They guided downed British and American pilots to freedom. All while risking their own lives. Indeed, they made it!

I'm an author. I read like an author now, and I wanted to know the back story of this book, how Kristin Hannah came to write such a gripping saga. She told us at the end of the copy I had, explaining her discovery of the part women played in the European War, how it touched her into giving them a voice. She researched. She interviewed. She visited the sites she described and the Holocaust Museum. She turned her findings into a superb book, important to read...lest we forget and repeat.

This could not happen in America, I thought to myself. We wouldn't let people minimize others so much they thought of them as nothings. And then I remembered Carol Baldwin's book about the south during the Jim Crow days, days that I lived through myself. Days that happened on another continent before, during and a decade after the Germans were defeated. Days filled with Ku Klux Klan rallies and lynchings and cross burnings. 

This book had a strong woman, too, except that she was only in junior high school. She was just learning the inequities of Jim Crow and saw what it was doing to the black society that lived parallel to, but apart from her. I had read this book like a writer also. I was drawn to it by the main character, a white girl, who wanted to be a newspaper reporter and tell about what she saw. 

I know this author, Carol Baldwin, so I sent her a list of questions to find the back story of how she came about writing it, how she structured the telling of a very difficult subject. How she herself felt after spending long hours interviewing, researching and uncovering unthinkable actions against fellow humans. Again, important to read...lest we forget and repeat.

Next blog post, I'll share her answers.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Hard Truths

I usually fill my blog posts with pictures I've taken to showcase our wonderful foothills of western North Carolina. Not this time. This time I want to share a part of the state not mentioned in tourist magazines. 

There was an underbelly of society that preferred to stay hidden when I was a white child growing up in a segregated community, and I've recently been reminded of this fact through a book I read. I'll talk about the book in a future post. I want to preface it with my own experiences.

I'm talking about the KKK. The Klu Klux Klan.

I had no idea of its existence when I was in grade school. Life was just peachy. We had our school. The black community had theirs. It's the way it was. Our bus passed the black kids waiting in line for their bus. There was no interaction except the normal back of the bus meanines who screamed less than nice jeers out the window while the rest of us (including me) snickered. I drank from the correct water fountains. I entered the theater through the front door while black children entered through the side. I was too caught up in my own world to question things.

I don't remember many individual sermons preachers preached to me, the ADHD kid before it was ever a diagnosis. I was labeled squirmy. But the Sunday before school started when I was in sixth grade, Rev. Crawley spoke to us from his heart and I listened. It was the day before school integration at a time when people were pulling their children out of public schools and heading to church-sponsored schools. He was announcing that his son would be sitting in the classroom with black children the very next day. His Christian faith led him to stand up and speak out. About fairness. About Jesus loving all the children. My conscience began chipping at me.

My senior year in high school, a boy at my lunch table bragged that he was going to a klan rally the next Saturday night. We laughed about his plans to grab a sheet out of the linen close on his way sneaking out the door. I joined in the giggles, a little uncomfortable, but not enough to stand up and speak out.. It was the thrill of it all. The shrouding. The slinking. Monday he didn't offer much commentary other than he was not going back.

Years ago the husband of a friend of mine told me he wanted to attend a KKK rally that was planned in his neighborhood. I had some suggestions.

"Don't let them know you are from up north."

"Why not?"

"They might think you are a carpetbagger. And don't let them know your last name is Polish."

"I like my last name. Why wouldn't they?"

"They don't think you are American." I watched him shake his head in disbelief.  "And don't let them know you are Catholic."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Just who do you think these people are? They look for someone to hate and if you are not one of them, then you will be convenient to turn on."

So he went to the rally. No one wore a sheet, which disappointed him. He said they just sat around and complained about the Mexicans taking their jobs. He didn't offer much additional commentary other than he was not going back.

For both of these guys, the thrill turned into slime. They felt dirty. 

This post isn't rosy. I needed to write it to begin the conversation about kindness and goodness replacing hatred, and I see hatred growing in this world. Strong hatred that, if not checked, will cause us to turn against ourselves and eat at us. 

Stop the madness!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

A New Door Opens

Things don't always work the way they started out. Take for example, my experience with KindleVella. The concept seemed foolproof, offer online books a bit at a time. Serial writing. Charles Dickens did it using newspapers as his format. Vella offered the same to authors like me. Upload episodes so the reader can taste a bit at a time. Sounded like a plan to me. 

But this is not London in 1849. It's America in 2025. We are instant gratification people. We don't like waiting. 

KDP of Amazon, Vella's publishing company, learned this the hard way. I received a notification from them that they were ceasing this publishing format. I was given options for my Vellas. One Vella I will not republish, but the other, my passion piece, I moved over to their ebook system. It's too dear to my heart to let it die. It's my memoir.

Or sort of. 

You'll find more about others in my life than you will about me. I was unfortunate enough to be born in the midst of a tragedy. I'd heard the story my entire life and always wanted to learn more about it. I began researching a couple decades ago, put it to the side, and when Vella became an option, I sprang back into action and finished the project. I had no intention of offering it in any other platforms, but here we are. When one door closes, another opens. And here it is. 

When I was designing the cover, I thought about using a picture of smog since that was the gist of the tragedy. Yet I didn't want something depressing because people are steadfast and resilient when they face challenges. That's what I wanted to get across in this book. I settled on fog, not only for the cover picture, but the title. It's actually the Donora Smog story. Industrial smokestacks did that, and I'm not giving that more credit than it deserves, hence fog, not smog.

Here's the picture I selected. It's my daughter following my husband into the fog at a beautiful spot on earth known as Max Patch. I took this photo several years ago and when the time came to find a cover picture, I knew it was the one. It's an homage to the family I have now and to those the stories are about. There are some good stories from my extraordinary family tree. For a mere $2.99 you can see what I'm talking about. Download from Amazon and give it a read. Click over to this: The Great Donora Fog and Other Family Stories. 

In the end, changing from one ebook format to another might make it simpler for those people like me who want the whole book at once rather than bits and pieces one week at a time. At least it didn't die in the clouds!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen