Author Archives: sydlogsdon

Symphony Christmas, 3 of 10

Leave a reply

Because I intend to publish the novel from which this excerpt comes, Symphony Christmas will not be placed in Backfile.

Rosa desperately needed for someone to hold her, and tell her she was good and pure and valuable.

Neil could not. He could not touch Rosa, or any of his girls.  Carmen could and did, Fiona did when she was so inclined, Pearl mothered them all, and students came from everywhere to be hugged by Donna Clementi. But no student ventured near Glen Ulrich; and Tom Wright, young and friendly as he was, kept them at arm’s length.

Women teachers can hug and touch. It is expected of them. It is “motherly”. But let a man teacher touch his girls and he is a lecher; let him touch his boys and he is a pervert.

It isn’t fair, but it is the way of the world.

After a while, Neil went to his tape collection and put on Art Garfunkle’s first solo album. He juggled the fast forward until he found the cut he wanted, then listened to it twice through. Then he took pencil and paper and ran it through until he had the words copied down, then typed them onto a ditto master. 

*****

On his way to school the next morning, Neil stopped to buy a bag of Christmas candies. The first hour, the students read, and when they returned from their break to start the second period, Neil announced that they were going to have an early Christmas party.

That met with uniform approval, and none of it was silent. He added, “Just stay in your seats. Rafael, please give everyone a paper towel to use as a plate. I have some Christmas candy I’ll distribute as soon as Rafael has finished.”

Rafael worked quickly and a festive atmosphere filled the room. Neil waited until the boy had taken his seat again, then went around giving out candy.

He gave Duarte one piece, Sean one piece, Rafael five pieces, Laura Diaz eight pieces, Raul Fuentes six pieces, Stephanie one piece, and Oscar no candy at all; and so on, around the room.

As soon as they noticed, the fireworks began.

“Hey, you got more than I did.”

“Mr. McCrae, I only got one piece!” (This Neil ignored.)

“Get your hand out of my pile.” – “But you got more than I did.” – “So what?  Its mine now.”

“Mr. McCrae . . .?”

“Hey, what’s going on?”

“That’s no fair!”

“That’s cheap!”    continued

62. A Christmas Booklist

Leave a reply

DSCN3974 Here is the annotated booklist I promised you yesterday. You could also Google Christmas or old Christmas, or search either of those subjects on Amazon. I suggest you do. This is not a best list because there are too many books on Christmas for anyone to have read them all. This is simply a list of what I’ve discovered over the years, minus the clinkers. Some of these are easy to find, others will lead you through the back stacks of used bookstores, but there’s no harm in that.

A Christmas Carol by Dickens has to head any list. He also wrote many other Christmas works and gets his own post next Wednesday, the 23rd.

Washington Irving had a powerful influence on Christmas, which is largely forgotten today. Among his followers was Clement Moore of Night Before Christmas fame. They also get their own post, on Christmas Eve.

The rest of this list is in order from decorator froth to historical complexity.

Go to any bookstore and you will find dozens of Christmas cookbooks and books on Christmas decor, sometimes with historical tidbits. You’re on you own here, with one exception. The Spirit of Christmas series by Leisure Arts is classy, has been around since about 1990, and fills up ten pages of Amazon with choices.

Christmas in Colonial and Early America, 1975, by World Book, is an early, sepia toned version of this kind of book with a little more meat in it’s history.

For almost two decades, Ace Collins has been writing books titled Stories Behind . . . , beginning with Stories Behind the Best-loved Songs of Christmas. The title tells the tale; the individual stories are interesting and heart felt.

The Curious World of Christmas is lightweight and breezy, a book of short entries which can be digested one little bite at a time.

The only recent Christmas book I can’t recommend is Nicholas, by Jeremy Seal. I found it dark and tedious, and couldn’t get past page 42, but if you want a detailed look at how St. Nicholas became Santa, it’s the only work I know completely devoted to that subject.

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford and Inventing Scrooge by Carlo De Vito each tell the story of the genesis of Charles Dickens’ most famous story. As a writer and a lover of Christmas, I couldn’t choose between them. Read the one that is easier for you to find. Then read the other one next Christmas.

A Mark Twain Christmas has been sitting on my next shelf for a couple of weeks. I will give it a tentative approval based on a thumb-through, and the fact that it is also by Carlo De Vito.

A Christmas Treasury of Yuletide Stories and Poems by Charlton and Gilson has works by every famous author you’ve ever heard of, from St. Matthew through The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

Ruth Kainen’s America’s Christmas Heritage contains well written regional histories of Christmas at a level of detail that is satisfying without being overwhelming.

John Matthews’ The Winter Solstice has a look similar to the decorator/cookbook works above, but with a unique twist. It concentrates on the Roman, Celtic, and Germanic contribution to Christmas. It feels like the Middle Ages, without falling into the trap of New Age Gaia worship.

Christmas Customs and Traditions by Clement Miles is a Dover reprint of a 1912 work. It is an old fashioned history of the evolution of Christmas from Roman times to what was then the present.

Christmas in America by Penne Restad is a scholarly telling of the history of American Christmas. 172 pages of text, 36 pages of notes. You get the picture; a book for the overeducated Christmas nerd, but it is still a good read.

The remaining “recommendations” are probably over the top.

I have in front of me Christmas in Early New England, 1620-1820: Puritanism, Popular Culture, and the Printed Word by Stephen Nissenbaum, published by the American Antiquarian Society. I have already confessed to having two masters degrees, one in Social Science and one in History. This is the kind of thing I used to read for a living. I still read them, but only if they are on a subject that really interests me. Nissenbaum taught at Amhurst; you will find his original research referenced in many of the less scholarly books above. His book The Battle for Christmas was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, but a scholarly work of 400 pages is not something to take on casually. I confess to not owning it; I read it on interlibrary loan years ago. If, however, you are a Christmas nerd and a history buff, it is available in paperback. Go for it; what have you got to lose?

Now it’s your turn. Since blog posts hang around forever, any reply you make to add your Christmas recommendations will remain attached, even if I repost this next Christmas.

Symphony Christmas, 2 of 10

Leave a reply

Because I intend to publish the novel from which this excerpt comes, Symphony Christmas will not be placed in Backfile.

Neil is reading papers written by his sixth grade class.

Lauren Turner wrote:

Every year we go to my granmas house for christmas. she has a great big living room where we all put our presents. I get presents from my mom and dad but nobody else gives them to me. I mean I get presents, but my brother always gets twice as many and they are always neater than mine and i don’t think its fair ! ! ! !

Oscar Teixeira wrote:

My Dad gets me chemistry sets and sport shirts and ties and last year he got me a calculator. What I really want is a baseball mitt and a football.

Stephanie Hagstrom’s paper was well written, in beautiful handwriting, and decorated with candy canes in all four corners.  She detailed what presents she got last year, told how happy she was to have Christmas with her parents, and told what she expected to get this year.

Rosa Alvarez’s paper was not so well written, although it showed great progress for her. It said:

This year I don’t think we will have much of a Christmas because my Daddy has lost his job and Mommy’s job at the bank doesn’t give us much money.  My Oldest brother has gone back to Mexico, but Daddy said that what money we have will go to buy toys fo the little kids.  That’s OK, I don’t mind.

Neil lay back on his couch and wiped his eyes.

He remembered fellow teacher Carmen’s voice the first day they had looked at his students’ folders. Carmen had told him about Rosa. Then she had passed him Stephanie’s folder, and had said, “This is Rosa’s competition. She will take all your time if you let yourself be seduced by success. Stephanie will sound smart because she had mastered English; Rosa will sound stupid because she has not.

“The Stephanies of this world always get more than their fair share.”

He thought about them for a long time. He loved both girls, not merely in a vague way as he did all his students, but intensely and personally because they had both come early to his attention and he knew them well. Stephanie knew her own worth; her parents had taught it to her early. But Rosa was one of the meek ones. She desperately needed for someone to hold her, and tell her she was good and pure and valuable.    continued

61. Christmas Potpourri

Leave a reply

DSCN8392

Welcome to my favorite season.

But first, a word from our sponsor. My upcoming novel Cyan has been delayed. It will be out in April or May, not in January as originally announced. Because of this, about a dozen Cyan related posts had to be replaced with new, season appropriate material. All that is done now, and things are back to calm.

*****

When I was a child, I enjoyed Christmas without having the full joy of it. That came later, with marriage to the right person. On our first Christmas together, we decorated the tree on my early December birthday, and that tradition has continued unbroken since.

The season of our second Christmas the musical Scrooge came to theaters. Even though I had no VCR, I bought the tape while I had the chance. Who knew it would be around forever.

Seeing Scrooge led to reading A Christmas Carol, and that led to reading the four other Christmas stories Dickens wrote in subsequent years.

I was vaguely aware that our Christmas was an amalgam of Christian and pagan practices and, being historically minded, I sought out the details. That led me through a forest of books, which I will share tomorrow.

*****

One of the difficulties of being an underpubished writer is all the novels bubbling in your head that you fear will never come to be written. One of these is a novel of lives lost and reclaimed in and around Philadelphia in 1789, set during the Christmas season and giving a picture of Christmas before Santa was invented. As an early Christmas present this year I gave myself permission to write the Christmas Eve chapter of that unwritten novel and present it here. Unfortunately, time came too short. Maybe next year.

Instead I am presenting the Christmas section of a completed novel Symphony in a Minor Key. It tells the story of Neil McCrae, a teacher, during the Christmas season of 1989. Symphony in a complex novel, and the excerpt given only touches on surface events. Nevertheless, Neil and his girlfriend Carmen are nice people, and I think you will enjoy spending the holidays with them. Pop on over to Serial where the story starts today and runs through Christmas day.

Symphony Christmas, 1 of 10

Leave a reply

This is from the novel Symphony in a Minor Key, a complex book with a number of intertwined story strands. This excerpt describes the experiences of Neil McCrae, a teacher, during Christmas 1989, leaving out a good deal of material you would have to read the whole novel to follow. I particularly like this piece because it is not a story. It doesn’t have a beginning, middle, and end, and everything is not wrapped up in a shiny Christmas bow at finis.

Symphony Christmas
Because I intend to publish the novel from which this excerpt comes, Symphony Christmas will not be placed in Backfile.

On the day appointed for Neil’s evaluation, the principal came earlier than Neil had expected and sat down before the tardy bell had rung. The more mature students tried to look at him without seeming to do so. The others just stared. Neil rapped the desk for attention and took roll. Then he said, “I had intended to tell you today that Mr. Campbell would be coming by for evaluations, but he has gotten here sooner than I had expected. How many of you have been through these teacher evaluations before?”

Probably all of them had; a third of them remembered it well enough to raise their hands.

“Who can tell me what their previous teacher told them at evaluation time?”

Tony Caraveli thought he could remember. Neil distrusted the devilish look in his eye, but told him to go ahead.

“Make me look good!” Tony said.

The children all laughed, but it had a nervous and restrained sound. Bill Campbell did not react, which made them more nervous. Neil said, “Whoever told you that was probably joking.  Who else can tell me?”

Sabrina said, “Ms. Thompson told us to just be ourselves and act like there wasn’t anyone in the room.”

“Good. That is just what I want you to do. Ignore Mr. Campbell; it won’t hurt his feelings.”

This time the children’s laughter was more relaxed, and Bill acknowledged it with a wave of his hand.

Neil read to his class for twenty minutes from The House Without a Christmas Tree. He led a discussion about the story, and from that drew the children into talking about how their families celebrated the season. Neil made notes from their discussion on the chalkboard, then told them to write a paper on Christmas in their homes.

Neil’s lesson plan had been worthwhile but unexceptional. He had not intended for it to be earth shaking, but when he sat at home that night reading the papers, he found that he had cut close to the bone.

Casey Kruger wrote:

We don’t hav Christmas at our house.  My parents say that it is a peagan rittul.  Jesus was born in a stabul and din’t have any presents, so we don’t have any present either.  I wish we did.

I would really like to have a real Christmas this year.  continued

60. Thank You, Harold Goodwin

Leave a reply

BOOKSI have a December birthday, which worked out well as a kid since books were my favorite gifts, and winter is a prime time for reading. The gifts I got were locally sourced and cheap, mostly published by Grosset and Dunlap, Whitman, or Golden. For anything by a normal publisher, I depended on libraries.

Heinlein’s juveniles were legendary, but he wasn’t the only writer of juvenile science fiction. Norton made a carreer of it before she branched into fantasy. Donald Wohlheim wrote a eight book series about a secret project of young astronauts called Quicksilver which shadowed the accomplishments of Project Mercury. Joseph Green wrote a six book series built around the character Dig Allen. All of them kept me entertained through long Oklahoma winters.

Nobody, not even Heinlein, did it better than Harold Lee Goodwin, although the comparison is apples to oranges. Heinlein’s juveniles were set in space and used future science reasonably  extrapolated from the present. Goodwin’s stories, with one exception, were set in the present and built on extant science.

If you’ve never heard of Goodwin, its largely because he worked under the pseudonyms Blake Savage and John Blaine. If he gets no respect, it’s largely because he was published by Grosset and Dunlap. That meant Goodwin’s Rick Brant books shared bookstore space with Tom Swift, Jr and the Hardy Boys – series that were written to outline by anonymous hack authors.

I read all three G & D lines as a kid, and enjoyed them because they were all I had. They taught me to read and to love reading. But when I try to reread Hardy Boys books today, they come off dull and dumb. Tom Swift, Jr. – well, I can’t force myself through them, although I still try from time to time.

Rick Brant holds up. A few years ago I reread the whole series from start to finish and they were as good as I remembered them. The same was true of Goodwin’s single outer space adventure, sometimes titled Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet and sometimes Assignment in Space with Rip Foster.

Rick Brant lived the perfect life. I would have traded with him in a heartbeat. He had adventures, twenty-six eventually, which he shared with Scotty (Don Scott) who was the ideal older brother figure. They appeared to be seventeen and eighteen in the first book and were still the same age forty-three years later. That’s good work if you can get it.

Rick lived with his family on Spindrift Island where his father was the head of a diverse group of scientists. Each had a different specialty, allowing for a wide range of stories, and they formed a dozen of the best uncle figures any boy could imagine.

Rick was bright and a bit precocious, but he wasn’t a wunderkind. Elsewhere he might have seemed nerdy, but on Spindrift he simply seemed a bright young scientist among brilliant experienced older scientists. He was always learning. He often saved the day, but he never had to save the world.

In short, he seemed real.

I wish I could recommend Rick Brant to today’s audience. Certainly it would be hard to match the series’ quality, but the same timeliness that made it work on publication, makes it dated today. A kid with a smart phone is not likely to be impressed when Rick invents a miniature walkie talkie, and that’s just too bad.

Harold Goodwin was a diver, worked for Civil Defense, NASA, NOAA and other agencies, and said that his books “were often a spinoff from my technical work.” His lengthy obit is reprinted in Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487756.Harold_Leland_Goodwin?from_search=true

 

59. Don’t Look at Me

Leave a reply

dont look topDuring my last couple of decades of teaching, my friend Crystal got me into several situations I wouldn’t normally have experienced. She was a teacher of second language students whose dedication went above and beyond what anyone could expect. Because of my respect for her, and my affection for the students we shared, I occasionally found myself doing extra things to back her up.

For several years she had taught a summer writing program for new English learners which included a guest writer. Funding for the guest writer dried up and I was the only writer she knew, so I volunteered to step into that role.

I only had two pieces which were age appropriate, so the first year I taught a poetry lesson using There Am I (see post 8. Written on 9-11). I talked shortly about myself, read the poem, led them through brainstorming, and set them to writing a poem.

One lesson teachers have to learn is when to back off and shut up. I have aquired that skill, but it’s been hard for me. At the appropriate time, I sat quietly at the head of the table for fifteen minutes while they worked.

I knew some of these strudents from having them in large classes, but I did not know them well. Many of them I did not know at all. We had seen each other on campus, but they were sixth or seventh graders who had not reached me yet.

They were under my eye. That is a powerful phrase. They had to produce for a man they did not really know. If they had been students in my regular classroom it would have been easier, but not easy.

They had to write, under my eye, and then they had to submit what they wrote for judgement.

When I was a child, I loved school, but I have no difficulty understanding why so many hate it. As I watched these children try to write, I considered how I would have felt in their place. Then I took up paper and wrote a new poem while they worked.

dont look full

Technical note for fellow bloggers. Since the theme I use does not allow full control of vertical and horizontal spacing, this poem had to be written on a drawing program, converted into a JPEG, and inserted as if it were a picture.

58. God, if he were God

Leave a reply

170px-1099jerusalemMankind has problems, vast, complex and intractable. We pray for help from a wide variety of Gods. But God, if he were God, might well find that all of our problems stem from one excess, which we could correct ourselves, if we only recognized it.

The imagery, of course, comes from  growing up with thrice weekly sermons of hellfire and Armageddon ringing in my ears.

God, if he were God

God, if he were God,
Would call up troops of angels,
Asbestos wings and swords of fire.

And setting out to cleanse the Earth, would stamp
His heavy booted foot upon Jerusalem.
Where men of every race and creed
Cry out his name, while each the other rends.

There God, if he were God,
Would pause and see.

This crowded planet,
Multiplying sorrows,
Where every baby born,
Every ailment cured,
Every life revived,
Compounds the horror
Of numbers grown
Beyond endurance.

One alone is empty.
Two may reside in love,
Three, a family make,
And a hundred make a town.

But the numbers that beset this earth,
Create a taste of Hell.

57. Going to War

Leave a reply

220px-The_USS_Arizona_(BB-39)_burning_after_the_Japanese_attack_on_Pearl_Harbor_-_NARA_195617_-_EditIn 1941, Americans were of two minds about the war in Europe, but after the December seventh attack on Pearl Harbor there were no more questions about whether to fight.

Forty years later, things were not so certain. In March 2003, Bush Two was ready to take America to war and those of us who had seen this movie before were not convinced he was wise.

*****

That year, like every year, I had already taught the story of the space program in eighth grade science. Explaining its origin requires compressing fifty years of history into a forty minute presentation suitable for eighth graders.

World War One left Germany crushed by post-war treaties, the Great Depression made a bad situation worse, Germany rebuilt and, following a madman, set out to take revenge. This drove Russian and America into temporary alliance. During the war, America developed the atomic bomb and Germany perfected the V2 rocket. Russia – and the Russian winter – destroyed German forces on the Eastern front. The rest of the allied forces entered France and fought their way into Germany. Germany was divided among the conquerors; the allies split into two camps, America, France and England on one hand and Russia on the other; and World War Two morphed into the Cold War.

What does that have to do with the space program? Everything; it was both the why and the how. Fear by Russians of American nuclear might, and fear by Americans of Russian nuclear might, led both sides to seek superiority in space. And the same gargantuan descendants of the V2 which brought about the fear, also carried astronauts and cosmonauts into space.

The space program was an offshoot of the Cold War, and the Cold War had shaped my 2003 students’ world before their birth. Now war in Iraq was going to shape their future, and I felt obligated to help them understand the situation. But how do you teach about a war that hasn’t happened yet? And how do you tell the truth impartially to students whose parents are sometimes hawks and sometimes doves?

I chose to present two lessons from history.

I told my students the story of Neville Chamberlain returning from Germany to Britain, waving the agreement that he and Hitler had signed which guaranteed “peace in our time”. I explained that Hitler had only signed it to buy time to complete preparations for war. Then I told them of Kennedy and Johnson fighting a proxy war in a country they did not understand, and sliding down the slippery slope to disaster.

The two historic events presented two very different lessons. From Chamberlain, we learned that if you must fight, then attack before it is too late; from Kennedy and Johnson we learned not to start a war for the wrong reasons in a country you don’t understand.

I explained to my students that those were the lessons of history that our leaders had to consider in choosing whether or not to attack Iraq. No one could know with certainty which lesson would apply to the present situation. Only time would tell.

That was twelve years ago. Now we know.