Ten Days to the Book Launch

I'm into countdown mode now.

Ten, nine, eight...days until Lessons Learned launches out of its shipping boxes and onto the shelves.

Holding at ten for today, though.

What a cool word. Launch. Someday I'll research its derevation and see how it was used before space exploration became a part of our daily lingo. Did Wilbur and Oliver use it? How about a reporter watching the first hot air balloon rise into the sky? Did "launch" find a spot in his breaking news?

The children at Pilot Mountain did hear that word, read it in their Weekly Readers from what they remembered, saw it in action in real time on the small tv screen the principal brought to the school that morning, rabbit ears and all. Today's child would scoff at the sight, metal rods extending above some tiny box, the principal holding one end, twisting it around, barely breathing when the focus hit exactly the spot because if he moved, the image would distort or worse, disappear.

The parents of those children of the fifties might have used the word launch when they were standing outside at night, tracing the bright artificial satellite named Sputnik, teaching their own kinds of lessons about space and the future. What did they say? How did a parent back then explain what would be ahead when he had no idea himself?

Back snug in bed, in the coolness of a pillow, just before sleep overtook them, what lessons ran through these children's heads?

Lessons Learned!

Launching soon, September 25, 2012.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Book Launch in TWO WEEKS

Announcing to the world!!!

(Drum roll please!)

Two weeks from today at ten o'clock in the morning, yes, a Tuesday morning while the world is busy going about its normal business, there will be an unveiling, a reveal and a spectacular launch (no fireworks necessary) happening at the Pilot Mountain School auditorium.

Because that's when I will stand on the stage and present to the community the book I've worked on with them for the past three years. Isn't it a beauty??

Okay, so I've revealed the cover before, but what's inside is the true reason for the launch.

There won't be clowns (not officially, at least) or balloons. Glitter and glitz just doesn't seem appropriate for a book designed in black and white tones inside and out. In my head, however, the colors will be vivid, Fourth of July starburst vivid.

The ceremony will be short. And sweet. A prayer, a word of welcome, a dedication and many expressions of gratitude from me. And then...

And then I'll hold my breath as my book goes into the hands of those around me and it will be no longer mine.

Ten o'clock. Tuesday. September 25. Pilot Mountain School on highway 64 west in Burke County.

Hope to see you then.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen



More Stories

Well, it’s happened already and the book is not yet out…

The thing I sort of anticipated, yet dreaded…

The disadvantage of structuring my book as I did…

So…

On Saturday I was doing some advance publicity for the upcoming, soon to be released (September 25)

Lessons Learned: The Story of Pilot Mountain School.

The scene was the Historic Burke Festival and there I was, at the old courthouse, greeting people at my table, handing them a business card and writing the launch date (September 25) on the back.

The “where were you a year ago when I was doing my interviews?” phenomena started. Former students, those who flew far below my radar during my interview stage, stopped to chat. They had read the newspaper announcement about the book and were full of their own wonderful stories. Make that Wonderful with a capital W, stories I could have used, stories that would have found a spot in my soon to be available (September 25) three hundred and seven text pages. Alas! Not to be.

Those stories I shall share here, starting with one about the horse on campus.

In my book, I use a quote from a girl who states the obvious, that this was a farm community. She said the fact that the janitor rode his horse to work and tied it to a post behind the school was nothing more notable than teachers who drove their cars to work and parked in the makeshift parking lot.

True, but Saturday I heard more to that version. Yes, horses were no big deal, yet being from a rural background, these children had learned compassion for all things farm. They took care of that horse that was tied up all day long while its owner swept the floors and stoked the furnace.

Behind the school, not all that far from this horse, were apple trees, the same ones that found a prominent part in the story from the 1940’s. But children of the late 1960’s generation, in addition to climbing the trees to pick the apples to eat or to throw at each other, were now picking the apples to feed the horse. It was their mission, tending the horse.

It has been my mission for the past three years to present this school to the public, recording memories, researching to fill in the gaps. Phase one is complete. Phase two starts with the launch (September 25 in case you didn’t catch the date). Then phase three starts, collecting more stories and posting them here.

I can’t wait.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

More First Days of School

Last week I recognized the August 31, 1942 first, first day of school for Pilot Mountain School children.

Let me continue with the second and third first days of school, because there's more to the story. In 1943 the state of North Carolina increased the required days of school from eight months to nine for a new total of one hundred eighty days. To accommodate those extra days, school began earlier in August. Not too early, though. This was pre-airconditioning. This was a rural county where children were needed on the farm. Most days were added in the spring.

But there's even more to the first day of school stories because in 1944 school didn't open until mid September, almost a month later. Why?

Polio.

Quarantine.

Children were not allowed off their properties, were confined to their homes until the county polio epidemic was contained and believe me, this is one law these families followed to the letter. The assigned first day of school passed with no relief in sight. The August 31 first day of school date passed also. Finally, four weeks into the school year, the quarantine was lifted and the children flocked to school, happy to be free from the imposed stay at home restrictions.

As first days of school pass this year, keep those 1944 polio epidemic children in mind. Kiss your children, celebrate your grandchildren, post their pictures on facebook, but remember the past and the blessings of medical advancements that today's children enjoy.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

August 31, 1942

Seventy years ago to the date - August 31, 1942 - Pilot Mountain School opened its doors to the first, first day of school.

I describe it in the opening to chapter four:

School opened August 31, 1942 on the very first, first day of school. Four teachers were at the door to greet the children: Neva Crawley, kind hearted first grade teacher who taught the year before at Salem; Ruby Mast and Mary Ella Bingham, friends and graduates from Appalachian State Teacher’s College; and Edith Satterwhite, lead teacher and designated principal, who had taught in the North Carolina schools of Casar and Nebo.

That was it. No lunchroom ladies. No custodian, although tall lanky Bob Baker arrived in winter when the furnace needed stoking. But basically, four teachers, six grades and a war.

I can only imagine that first day, although some former students who were there did describe it to me. They remembered the feelings of pride and joy more than the shadow of war that hung over their heads. War lessons would come later. For August 31, the lessons were positive, hopeful and down to business. They learned that day that every first day of school is a promise, even in times of hardship. Looking back seventy years later these students recognize that promise.

May every child know that feeling.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Cover Girl

Ta - Da!!! Now, presenting - the COVER!!! And the TITLE!!!!

Yes, the Pilot Mountain Story is ever closer to being a reality, a narrative nonfiction hold in your hands book.

I'm pleased. Ecstatic would be a better word choice, but I'll stick with pleased, just to stay cool about it.

It's a combination of two pictures, the front entrance of the school, Andrew Pitts, photographer, and a 1956 picture of a student posing on the bumper of the school bus, Mary Waters, photographer. This cover girl represents all that is good and innocent and possible in a "picture is worth a thousand words" kind of way. Life was different back then, as different and yet as alike as this 1950's school bus is to the 2012 bus of today. Some things change, like fashion and style and bus design; some things never do, like possibilities in the face of a child. That's what this cover says.

Can't wait for you to read the book! Coming soon!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Computers and Pilot Mountain School

Today I picked up my laptop from the "emergency clinic" pc medics. It had been there for what turned out to be a minor repair that took five minutes to fix, after a two day search and recovery operation. I'm using those terms, comparing all this to a crisis intervention, because I need to use clear images to get my point across.

I suppose the inventors of computers and the internet had to be creative as well to establish a new technical language that the children who sat in the seats at Pilot Mountain School would eventually understand if they would survive this brave new world. Back then a mouse was something the teacher ran from, especially if the class clown slipped it into her desk drawer when she was out of the room. A web was behind the seldom used bookcase. A virus was what gave them polio or flu. A desktop was where they rested their elbows when they were daydreaming, and a laptop was where they found solace when they had had a bad day at school.

Computers were not unheard of, make no mistake. Even in the fifties and sixties, children knew there was such a thing because they read about them in the Weekly Reader, the serial publication they received each Monday. One lady I interviewed remembered the article that pictured a computer the size of a room and the brash claim that one day, all the words of an encyclopedia could be contained in a small disc. They scoffed. Unbelievable, they said, but now, decades later, they are the very ones who made the successful transition into the technical age. They were not born into it. They were forced into it, and they have adapted and thrived and now relish in the wonders of the internet. Okay, so they ask their grandchildren how to work those fancy buttons, but still they relish.

And they can do it at the school that once held them captive in wooden seats. Yes, wireless internet access is available. During all those daydreams, I'd bet those children would have never imagined this marvel would come to pass.



Facility Coordinator, Connie, takes advantage of wifi in the back corner of the current Pilot Mountain School Cafe.



Catch of the day,

Gretchen