Jury Duty

The letter arrived weeks ago. Rather than a friendly correspondence from a long lost acquaintance, it was an order from the court. I was to appear at District Court, Room 6 at the Caldwell County Courthouse on October 6, because my name had been selected at random for that great American process called jury duty. My third time, by the way.

I appeared as instructed, after going through a security check at the entrance. No, my cell phone was not with me, per their instructions. No I have no firearms or other weapons, nor do I ever.

With the other fifty or sixty potential jurors, I waited on the hard courtroom benches (at church we call them pews) for proceedings to begin. We watched a training video about the court system that I found fascinating. This was jury service, not jury duty, and by the end, when we were all sworn in, I was even more proud to be an American. After a roll call with far too many citizens being AWOL, we sat and waited for the bailiff to escort us to the main courtroom.

We filed into a larger room where the benches were now rows of ancient (maybe from the fifties) wooden individual seats. Picture Perry Mason courtroom. No, picture To Kill a Mockingbird courtroom.

The judge's first order of business was to select a replacement juror to sit on the Grand Jury and fill out a term for a juror who could no longer serve due to health reasons. A name was chosen at random from our pool of names. The person next to me was the lottery winner.

"Step forward." Ominous words in a courtroom.

She placed her left hand on a Bible and raised her right hand and again swore to uphold the constitution of the United States and of the great state of North Carolina. The judge then instructed her on her duties. Service. And we all listened. And learned. And realized how involved and intricate our system really is.

The rest of us were dismissed and told to call back for further instructions later in the day. In the end we were not needed, as the cases up for trial had all been settled. Thus ended my service.

But it didn't end my interest in the Grand Jury proceedings. Instead it reminded me of one part of my Lessons Learned book, the part where the Grand Jury inspected the county schools. One of the responsibilities, the judge pointed out in his lecture this week to us all, was to inspect public properties and report on their conditions. Yes, the Grand Jury does more than make indictments for prosecution (or not). Twice I discussed it in my book:

• One of the duties defined in the handbook of the Grand Jury of the North Carolina Superior Court is to inspect state and county owned buildings and agencies to “determine the manner in which individuals in charge have carried out their duties to the state.” A Grand Jury that convened in the fall of 1954 inspected each school facility throughout the county and found only two substandard situations. One was at the black school in the Glen Alpine city system, the other at Pilot Mountain. (page 109)

We, the Grand Jury, have visited all schools in the county systems and found in most instances the buildings and grounds to be well kept, alleviating minor repairs except for the following schools: Pilot Mountain School—lighting facilities very inadequate and find that there is no heat in the auditorium. Also window shades are needed throughout the building...

—Judge J. A. Rousseau, 16th Judicial District of the Superior Court. “Report of the Grand Jury, December 15, 1954”  (page 109-110)

• A Burke County Grand Jury convened in March 1968 to survey the county public facilities, including the courthouse, jail, and schools. It recommended replacing old dangerous school buildings immediately. To accomplish this, the county commissioners proposed an educational bond issue for the November election. (page 198)

When I wrote those words in the book, I didn't think about the reality that one day I would be a bit closer to the process. A bit, but enough to remind me that the system still goes on.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Rain and Rain and More Rain

Rain, rain, go away.

Come again some other day.

This youtube video is of Wilson Creek, the same creek that is pictured above in my heading. Big difference a few million drops of rain make. I've been wondering one thing. Who over-prayed for the end of this summer's drought? Enough already.

Floods and drought; Feast and famine. Taking the bad with the good. That's how life in the western North Carolina foothills goes. The dog days of summer didn't give us late afternoon humid subtropic rains this year. The grass withered and crunched beneath our footsteps. The creeks dried into trickles. The rivers shriveled so much that even the smallest power boats could no longer pass.

When the rains finally came, we were blessed beyond our needs to the tune of a foot in the last few days. The water from the Blue Ridge Mountains flows through our foothills on the way to the Atlantic, funneling into narrow streams that can't support it. So we get the brunt of it.

It's been this way forever.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been able to make some headway into stemming the disasters. I've had a little experience with them when the church I attend restored a chapel in our park and I was on the restoration committee. In order to acquire the correct permits, the engineers had to certify that the building site was in a safe location. I learned about hundred year flood classification, and five hundred year flood classification. They pointed out issues that I never considered, namely what we did on our property had a direct impact on every land downstream from us. What floated away in a five hundred year flood had to end up somewhere. Complain all we want, this flood plain designation meant salvation for someone in the future, maybe not this week, maybe not this century.

Courtney Chapel

In this picture of the chapel, notice it's located on a slight incline. That would be Army Corps of Engineers imprint. Because of their diligence, the two century old logs are not floating downstream today.

This would be a case of when government intervention works!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Class Reunions

I'm headed to a class reunion this weekend. Not just any run of the mill class reunion. This is a fiftieth year reunion.

But it's not mine. Whew.

It's my husband's.

Thing is, I know no one at the reunion since we went to schools on opposite ends of the county, west and east. If you think that is a negative, think again. No one knows me either. They won't judge me on how much weight I gained or how gray my hair is or how different I am from that graduation day fifty years ago. That's definitely a plus!

There was a song about my husband's graduation year.

A song to remember

Actually it was the theme song for a late seventies era television show, "What Really Happened to the Class of '65?" that was based on a 1976 nonfiction book by Michael Medved and David Wallechinsky. They were looking into the lives of graduates from a high school in California and what did they find after the first ten years?

Life.

Everyday humdrum life. Exciting adventurous life. College parties. Marriage. Babies. Divorce.

Viet Nam.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Good question.

It's time for them to write the sequel. What REALLY Happened to the Class of '65? Ten years was nothing. Twenty years. Thirty. Forty. The decades kept piling up right along with the variations of what REALLY happened.

How many were cheated by death from having the joy of seeing classmates again at this fiftieth reunion? How many will have to remain at home and tend to sick loved ones? How many are too poor at this stage of their lives to afford the banquet fee?

Those who are healthy enough (forget the aches and pains for one night), wealthy enough (even if it is a tight squeeze of a sacrifice), and wise enough (revisiting the past does have benefits), should attend. Those who lived to tell what really happened are waiting.

And I get to watch.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Civic Clubs

An article in this past Thursday's News-Topic - the local newspaper for Lenoir, North Carolina - set me to thinking about civic clubs and the impact they have made on our culture, and unfortunately on their demise. Yes. Demise.

The article written by journalist Kara Fohner under the headline Optimist Park may be given to city opens with the phrase, "Because of dwindling membership..."

Wow. Just Wow.

My first thought, "Another one bites the dust."

How sad.

Civic clubs such as the Optimists and Ruritans and Lions and Jaycees and Rotary, and even the PTA among others, have defined small town southern culture for the past few generations. Established originally to spearhead efforts to better their communities, the members of these groups worked endlessly and tirelessly to accomplish the impossible. They built ball parks and hiking trails and swimming pools. They organized volunteer fire departments. They sponsored scouts and sports teams and international visits. They encouraged community participation, each club working within the precepts of their individual organizations.

Yet society is changing, even in small southern towns. Volunteerism is more focused on specifics. Another quote from the article says it best, the current Optimist Club president speaking, "We've had people come and work for a while with us. As soon as their children got out of the age of whatever sport they were in at our club, they just disappeared..."

So instead of the few members struggling to maintain a large facility, the only alternative they see is to turn it over to the government. I can appreciate the logic in that decision.

Just last week the scout master from our community troop spoke about his final two Boy Scouts working toward their Eagle rank. Key word, final. There are no other boys interested in sticking to the goals and rigors of scouting. They have found other interests and are active in those. The discussion among the few remaining adults has been along the lines of what to do with the charter in case there is a renaissance of interest.

The local ball teams withdrew from the Little League organization several years ago and have developed their own association. The more accomplished players have joined "traveling teams" and left the others behind. Not all that bad a decision for the individuals involved, I might insert, but still. They left the others behind, those who need to learn from mentors, from those better players.

Even the school PTA members voted decades ago to leave the national Parent Teacher Association (because a part of the money raised locally would go to the coffers of the organization) and become an unaffiliated PTO, Parent Teacher Organization, keeping all money here in the community. Again, I can see the reasoning behind that decision. Why sell candy door to door only to hand over part of that profit.

But wait. Maybe corporate thinking has merit. One for all. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. The word civic means citizen, so these are in reality, citizen clubs working for the communities.

The spirit behind civic clubs and organizations is a uniting force that cannot be extinguished. Civic clubs are too important to our way of life. The concept is not irrelevant to our times, it just needs a little updating. The demise must not be inevitable.

My opinion.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Writing a Book Review

Back in the "good old days" there was a weekly spelling assignment I dreaded. From our list of twenty or so assigned spelling words, we had to craft a story using at least half of them. Every week. And one year, the teacher required every word on the list to be in the story. Every word!

Spelling text books back then grouped words by phonetics not by word definitions or themes, so connecting the words required a great deal of creativity. Pity the poor teachers who read our stilted stories week after week, and we're talking upwards of thirty-five students per class.

When I became a teacher I vowed I would never give that assignment.

But I did, not often, but still, I did.

And I learned a lot about the students and their abilities to adapt and stretch their imaginations and work within structures.

Yesterday I caught myself going through this same process. Oh. My. Goodness. This is how I write now...well, sometimes, especially when I want to set a tone. I write a list of words ahead of time, words that I want to include. I've done it that way for years, back in my high school essays and later in my college research papers. I would write the list in the margins next to the crossword puzzle or on a sticky note to post on the wall in front of me or on a napkin from McDonald's that I had on reserve in the console of my car. Words often came to me at the most inopportune time!

All this lead-up to say that yesterday I went through this process as I wrote a review of a book I just finished reading. It's an excellent (that word was on the list, but not used) newly released book by one of the gals in my SOUP critique group, Sandra Warren.

Fantastic (another great word to set a tone) nonfiction 

I had read bits and pieces of it that she submitted to our SOUP group as she went along, so I thought I had some idea of what it would be like. But WOW (another great tone setting word that I didn't use). Holding it in my hands, seeing the photographs that enhanced the story, reading it word for word, what a joy! And what a story. I couldn't put the book down. It's that good.

Reviews on Amazon mean as much to an author who checks in daily as to a reader who is depending on the review for honesty, so I knew I had my work cut out for me. I wanted to express my feelings and support for the book, emphasizing the extensive research that went into this project, all in a short paragraph.

I made a list of words, ended up using perhaps a third of them. If you read through what I've posted below, you can sort of figure out which words were on my list. Click on the title and go to Amazon and read the other reviews. While you are there, you can always purchase it...available on Kindle, too.

• This extraordinary narrative, We Bought a WWII Bomber, isn’t just about a school accomplishing unbelievable heights in the government sponsored “Buy a Bomber” campaign. True, by the time I completed the book, I felt a little jealous that I didn’t attend this remarkable school. While author Sandra Warren gives the reader a glimpse into the reality of life during war times, her research takes us beyond the halls of Grand Rapids, Michigan’s South High into the bomber itself during its final hours and into the community it impacted. This is a not-to-be-missed story of determination and possibilities.

And I meant every word!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen 

Back to School Shopping, The "Not" List

I made the mistake of going shopping yesterday, the Friday before school opens for the 2015 academic year here in the county where I live. It was not quite Black-Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopping, but close enough that I should have known better than to darken Walmart's automatic sliding doors.

All I needed were name tags and ink pens, my assignment for tomorrow's annual homecoming at the church I attend. In the process of searching this megastore with the hordes, I happened down the same aisles as the back to school crowds doing some searching of their own...for ink pens...and note cards and lined paper and whatever else was on the list. Yes, they each had a list specific to his or her own classroom. Cool idea.

If only I could have given a list to my students back in my teaching years! I would, however, have given a "not" list. First on the list, please do not purchase paper in spiral (wire) bound notebooks. Years of picking up shreds of paper bits taught me that precaution, not to mention the straggly papers causing havoc in the stacks of my homework each night.

Please do not purchase high school ruled paper. Fourth graders' cursive writing is still developing and thinner spacing between lines makes for difficult days ahead. (It's the simple things.) Grade a math paper done by a fourth grader on high school ruled paper and you'll know exactly what I mean.

Don't waste money on 132 count fancy crayon boxes. I had plenty of long nubs left from accumulations in years past. Besides, by fourth grade, crayons are the least needed of instruments that were once so necessary.

Don't invest in ink pens. I did not accept work done in ink simply because of the strike overs that are so frequent in children still learning. They need the possibilities of correcting mistakes with old fashioned erasers in orderly fashion.

Don't buy flip flops for school shoes. Walking through crowded halls in flip flops is torture. So is gym class.

Don't spend money on scissors (provided) or rulers (provided) or calculators (yes, provided) or noisy electric pencil sharpeners (hand crank models provided).

I'm "Old School." I expected my students to come prepared to work with loose leaf paper, number two pencils, a belly full of breakfast (provided) and an open mind.

That worked well.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Granny Camp and a Book Idea

Another session of what I laughingly call Granny Camp is now over. I've caught up on my rest, the cat is once again sleeping without watching over her back, and the house is clean...and way too quiet.

The highlight of this week's time together, for me at least, was our Wednesday road trip to Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. Along the way we stopped for a quick visit and photo op with the illustrator of my most recent book, Hoop Hike.

Artist Bobbie Gumbert with the real Reagan

Look behind Bobbie and you'll see more of her paintings on the wall. In fact, art fills the home she has made for her and her husband (my cousin) Gerald. I enjoyed being there and discovering her newest projects, one of which on this visit was a parasol that she gifted my grands.

Artist Bobbie and my other grand, Gracie

The butterflies and other art on the top of the parasol are not visible in this photo, but trust me, they made it come to life, which, coincidentally enough, is exactly what our next project will be about: an umbrella and a rainbow hike with the same characters, Sue and Lou and Reagan Roo. The grands threw out ideas on the way to Bobbie's house, some unbelievable that caused us to giggle, some too impossible to include, but most delightful and fun...And we arrived at Bobbie's...And she had the parasol...And met the main character, Reagan Roo. It was like the forces of the universe collided and poof. New book!

Birthing a book is a strange process. The idea often comes from nowhere, almost bonks you on the head. From moment of conception to book in hand is a labor of love filled with excitement and possibilities and yes, pain and frustration. But so worth it. 

Now to write down those ideas before I forget.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen