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To This Great Stage of Fools: Born March 17th

Mar16

Kate Greenaway, b. 1846. In the US we award the Caldecott Medal to the best illustrator of a children’s picture book each year. In Britain, they give the Greenaway Medal “for distinguished illustration in a book for children.” Many of the illustrators who have won the Greenaway Medal are unfamiliar to me, but I do know something of the work of Lauren Child, Helen Oxenbury, Alan Lee (Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships Before Troy), Janet Ahlberg (Jolly Postman books), Jan Pienkowski, Pat Hutchins, Gail Haley, John Burningham, Pauline Baynes (illustrator of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books), Brian Wildsmith, and the first medal winner in 1956 Edward Ardizzone (Tim All Alone). Kate Greenaway, the illustrator for whom the medal is named, died in 1901.

Frank Gilbreth, Jr., b. 1911, co-author with his sister Ernestine Gilbreth Carey of the childhood memoir Cheaper By the Dozen and its sequel Belles on Their Toes. Brown Bear Daughter is reading these books for fun. They’re nothing like the Steve Martin movie, by the way, except for the fact that the Gilbreth family did have twelve children. All homeschoolers should read these books, especially Cheaper by the Dozen, because they have a lot to teach about education in general and about family life. The Gilbreth family didn’t homeschool; in fact, Frank Gilbreth, Sr., the dad, pushed his children through public schools, encouraging them to skip grades and graduate early. However, in another sense, Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreth were schooling their children constantly, teaching them everything from languages to typing to Morse code to swimming using a number of ingenious methods—some of which worked better than others. Bribery and the Tom-Sawyer-whitewashing-the-fence method were particularly effective.

Brown Bear Daughter warns that Cheaper By the Dozen has some bad language, and if you’re reading it to younger kids you should skip the bad words. She liked it because it was about real people and the family was interesting. She would like to live in a family like the Gilbreths, but she would want her daddy to go to church. She says it would be cool if her mom and dad were famous like the Gilbreths—not just a famous blogger, like her mom, but really famous.

To This Great Stage of Fools

Mar15

One US president was born on this date in 1767. Another was born on March 16, 1751. Yet another was born March 18, 1837. Con you guess the name of any one of the three or the names of all three?

No prizes, just the satisfaction of knowing how presidentially astute you are.

Pegeen by Hilda Van Stockum

Mar15

I was thrift-store shopping the other day, and I went into a dark, rather depressing junk store. Proceeds from the store went to support some charity. The books were in the back corner, in no discernible order, shelved on homemade shelves made of two by fours. I looked over the assortment of paperback bestsellers of days gone by and old college textbooks, and I found one book that looked as if it might be worth looking into: an old library copy of Pegeen by Hilda Van Stockum. The only reason I paid 25 cents for this book was that I had heard of the author; she had a book listed in my Sonlight curriculum, albeit one I hadn’t read.

Pegeen, published in 1941, was definitely worth the money and the time I invested in it. This children’s book tells the story of an Irish orphan girl, Pegeen, who loses her only guardian and the only family member she knows, her grandmother. She goes to live with friends while the village priest searches for her uncle who has emigrated to America. The O’Sullivan family of Bantry Bay take care of Pegeen in the meantime—even though Pegeen is a very naughty little girl. She likes the family she lives with, and they are good to her. However, Pegeen is a spirited young lady who manages to get herself into all sorts of trouble just by being herself. In fact, Pegeen is something of a wild thing who makes up stories and dances like a gypsy and gains the affection of the entire O’Sullivan family in spite of her irresponsible ways.

Hilda Van Stockum was an artist before she became a writer, and her illustrations for this book are beautiful, pen and ink drawings that give a lovely picture of Irish country life in first part of the twentieth century. Mrs. Van Stockum’s descriptions are beautiful, too; for instance, these are the opening lines of the book:

A late sunbeam struck the little whitewashed cabin that lay snuggled against the mountainside, and picked out the red flash of a girl’s petticoat. She was sitting on the doorstep, her chin cupped in both hands, wide eyes raised to the smoldering sky. Blue shadows stole up around her, hiding the shining playthings of the day; a sound of lamenting and weeping came from the cottage, where candles burned around a still, white figure.

I was so impressed with this story of a little girl who is not perfect at all, a family that has its tensions and problems, yet with faith in the Lord and patience with each other, they all come through the problems and manage to show real love for each other. The book isn’t didactic; rather the events in book demonstrate the meaning of mercy and patience and perseverance and joy. The themes and the stories that make up this little book are probably much too “precious’ for modern day sensibilities, but since my younger children, at least, haven’t been inducted into the cynicism and pride of our age, I plan to read Pegeen to my little Betsy-Bee and maybe to Z-baby.

Pegeen should be a classic family story ranked alongside All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor and Little Pear by Frances Lattimore. Hilda Van Stockum wrote at least two other books about the O’Sullivan family of Bantry Bay: Francie on the Run, which takes place before Pegeen and The Cottage at Bantry Bay, which I think is the third book in the series. I plan to find these and read them as soon as I can. It’s my loss, and now my gain, that I had never heard of these books until I came across my worn copy of Pegeen in the thrift store. You never know what treasures you might find in unlikely places.

Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres

Mar14

I can’t reproduce my original non-review. My server went down and apparently lost all my posts from last week. However, I am still concerned about the allegations that Ms. Scheeres makes in her book, Jesus Land: A Memoir.

I didn’t want to believe the story that Ms. Scheeres tells. Stereotypes and caricatures abound in her memoir. All the Christians, and most everybody else in rural Indiana where Julia Scheeres grew up, are hypocrites, child abusers, racists or simpletons. About half of her book is about her life growing up in a Calvinist Christian home with parents who were negligent and emotionally abusive when they weren’t being physically abusive. Ms. Scheeres has three older siblings who seem to have escaped the abuse she chronicles, and she has two adopted brothers who, according to the author, bore the brunt of the physical abuse that took place in the home. (I know I keep qualifying my statements, but I can’t help it. I do not know whether to believe the story that Ms. Scheeres tells or not.) The two boys, who are black, are repeatedly beaten by their doctor father, and one time David, the brother Julia loves and is close to, has his arm broken when Dad hits him with a 2×4. Her other brother, Jerome, is abused also and becomes an abuser in respones, sexually molesting his younger sister, Julia. As the situation at home gets worse, David is sent to a Christian school for troubled teenagers, Escuela Caribe in the Dominican Republic. Julia becomes the focus of her parents’ abusive behavior, and she rebels, sleeping with her boyfriend, running away from home, and finally getting arrested for being out after curfew. Of course, none of the trouble she finds herself in is her fault. At seventeen years of age, she tells the court that she would prefer to join her brother David at the Christian school in the Dominican Republic rather than go home or declare herself an “emancipated adult.”

The school, a sort of Christian reform school, is filled with more racism, abuse, and spiritual hypocrisy. One of the junior staffers is a college-aged girl who is obsessed with abortion. She spouts anti-abortion platitudes constantly even when unborn babies and abortions are clearly not the issue at hand. The male staffers are all racists, male chauvinists, and abusers. Teenaged students at Escuela Caribe are punched, slammed against walls, and forced to participate in midnight calisthenics, all in the name of Jesus and in the hope of teaching them to respect authority and love the Lord.

The most disturbing abuse that Ms. Scheeres documents in her book is spiritual abuse. Counselors and house parents force teens to mouth words of repentance and faith in Christ in order to earn points toward release from the school. Even though the James Frey debacle has placed a pall of suspicion over the memoir genre, and even though I have grown up immersed in evangelical, fundamentalist, and Calvinist Christian culture and have never witnessed anything like the kind of abuse that Ms. Scheeres tells about in her book, I am forced to believe that New Horizons Youth Ministries may have been guilty of a serious betrayal of the trust placed in its program by parents and their children.

Then again, maybe not. See the post below, reposted from a few days ago because of my server issues. I emailed New Horizons Youth Ministries after reading Jesusland because I was disturbed by the story that Ms. Scheeres tells in her book. The email below is the response I received.

I continue to hope that someone with more financial and journalistic resources than I have will investigate Escuela Caribe and New Horizons Youth Ministries. If Julia Scheeres is telling the truth, young people and families who are already vulnerable and hurting are being further abused in the name of Christ. Such a travesty is unacceptable. If, on the other hand, Ms. Scheeres is lying in order to make a buck or get revenge against her parents or for some other reason, New Horizons Youth Ministries deserves to be exonerated.

New Horizons Youth Ministries, the ministry that runs Escuela Caribe and two other schools in Indiana and in Canada.
The Truth about New Horizons Youth Ministries, a website that posts the stories of former New Horizons students, many of whom say that they also were abused and mistreated at Escuela Caribe or one of New Horizons’ other schools.
Julia Scheeres’ blog.
International Survivors Action Committee, a volunteer group that is dedicated to monitoring reports of abuse at youth treatment facilities.

Response to Jesus Land

Mar14

This email, which I am posting in its entirety because I think it’s only fair to hear both sides of a story, is in response to my email asking some questions about the allegations in Julia Scheeres’ book, Jesus Land:

Dear Sherry,

I have been forwarded your email and will take the time to respond at length
to your concerns if you do not mind. I think this email will be the body of
a response that we will need to make in light of this injurious book written
by Ms. Scheeres.

I have been with New Horizons since 1981 but had left to attend seminary
during the year she was a student. I did return in 1987 to take over as
director and was the director there for the past 18 years ending this past
summer. I have not read this book but will cover some issues that have come
up due to this. Please note I will not be negative toward any former student
as we love the kids God has sent our way over the past thirty-five years. I
am also married to a former student who I met when she returned to work as a
staff member in 1982.

I would begin by informing you that we require all prospective parents to
call four parents of students that have been in the program over the previous
two years, they are given all names any who are happy or upset with us.
Also, our board is made up of parents of former students, former staff and
former students who oversee our work.

Please understand we work with the more difficult to manage youth, not Sunday
school kids, the kids that get kicked out of school, kicked out of other
programs and even kicked out of church. We take the more difficult to manage
kids in the DR and the more manageable here in Indiana.

I would like to answer your questions, yes Julia and Dave were students at
Escuela Caribe. No, a student was not impregnated by the preacher, he did
get emotionally involved with a girl, was kicked out, and she being 18 got
together with him post program, they married and then divorced. It was a bad
year and I was called to return there due to these issues and became the
director.

We have had cases of typhoid, but it is usually para-typhoid but no this is
not commom there and I have had three girls born and raised there and in my
20+ years there, never had typhoid.

No we are not a cult, do not use psychological control, not a boot camp, not
emotional control, we confront issues and deal with reality. What she writes
about is more than twenty years ago. This is not us now. Yes in the past we
had more strong armed tactics, took crisis to the end, did not give up till
we had submission. I personally took the tactic that I would take the heat
of the teens wanting no staff to be abused or struck and would take a kid
down as needed.

What we have done is we have training in TCI or Therapeutic Crisis
Intervention for all our staff that have to deal with student crises. This
is a two man take down procedure that was developed at Cornell University but
is secular and I have developed an in house training as well.

Let me point out something if I can. In the past few months, we have had a
student hold a knife to his throat and hold a house hostage, a student who
double punched a summer staff who stood up to disrepect toward a woman, a
girl who had to be restrained till 2 am and then had to be sent to jail to
settle her down. This is our life and some of the kids we work with,
oppositional defiant, conduct disorder and borderline personality disorder
type kids. Many of our youth are not ones who have crises, do well, settle
their issues and go home, the latter two groups create pain.

We are a therapeutic residential care facility and are licensed in the State
of Indiana and we seek to abide by those guidelines in the DR. We have
licensed therapists and counselors alongside our staff. Do note that our
culture is moving toward a no touch policy with youth and since 1997 when we
really began to back off in crisis my staff in the DR have been assaulted,
kicked, spit upon and attacked, before that no staff member was ever struck
when I was director. Here in Indiana we have police in the grade schools and
we see a five year old being handcuffed and taken from a school in Florida.
Yes, our culture has changed.

We love our kids, we invest our lives in helping youth and families in
crisis, it is a thankless job but we are called to do it. I will say that
Ms. Scheeres visited our school under false pretenses, then returned to her
blog and maliciously lied about a couple at our school. I do not believe her
stories or renditions. Yes there have been things that have gone wrong,
staff that have crossed lines, but things have been dealt with and handled
with families. In Indiana we call the sheriff when a student gets out of
control. I could not do that in the DR and had to be the end of the crisis.
I am good at what I do and committed to youth.

There are many people on our campus all through the year, college groups,
church groups, we have day students attending school at Escuela Caribe,
missionary kids and others, church groups from northern Indiana have been
coming to our school for 14 years each January and stay for three weeks on
our campus and work alongside our kids and even eat in the houses. Many
parents and former students are rallying to our suppport during this time as
well.

The negative website was shut down by the man who launched it. It was going
the wrong direction and in his words was being used to sell her book. The
content was stolen and put back up in another site. This did not settle well
with the small group of negative students and they turned on him as well.
Their blog is declared for hatred and revenge, any former student who is
positive is kicked off thus they started their own blog at NewHorizonsStaff-
Students@yahoo.groups.com. The four or five negative former students have
gone there to give their input as well. We have current staff on there as
well as two current mothers of students.

I am going to ask a former student as well as some others to connect with you
if they would like. We will be putting together a group to deal with this
stuff as we do need to address this as a ministry.

Thanks for your concern. I know this all looks bad and we are not perfect,
but have made so many changes that this coming up now is really old hat but
hurting real time. Many former students call me now and it has been great to
reconnect and hear of their lives. I had a former student in my home this
past weekend, had been abandoned on a church’s steps in Chicago, severe abuse
and thanks to his time with us, over three years he has been married to the
same woman for 14 years. He and I remodeled my bathroom while we revisted
the past, he was the most abused by life boy I had dealt with, ran away 4-5
times down there as well. He is disabled, not completely normal, but calls
us family.

Blessings to you and please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,

Charles P. Redwine, D.Min.
COO New Horizons

I am sorry that your comments have been lost (apparently) by my server. I still think this school should be investigated in light of the serious allegations that Ms. Scheeres makes in her book. I’m sure Mr. Redwine and those who work at Escuela Caribe and New Horizons Youth Ministries would welcome such an investigation by responsible journalists. WORLD Magazine? Christianity Today?

I will try to re-post my initial reaction to Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres later today.

I’m Back

Mar14

Maybe you didn’t miss me in the first place, but my server went down Sunday evening. I couldn’t even get in touch with them, so I still don’t know what happened. However, it’s back up this morning–missing all of my posts from last week.

I’ll have to try to replace the missing posts if possible. If I disappear into cyberspace again, never fear. I’ll be back.

Book-Spotting #6

Mar4

A novel in which the protagonist rewrites Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice because she believes the novel was really intended to be about Mary Bennett? I’m such an Austen fan; this plot idea could either be really entertaining or really bad.

Another Jane Austen tie-in: A movie is being made in UK about “the doomed love affair” between a young Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy, a young man of her acquaintance who later became Chief Justice of Ireland. The movie is based on the book,Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence.

This idea also sounds like fun: books about the history of a house, Home: The History of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House by Julie Myerson and The House By the Thames: And the People Who Lived There by Gillian Tindall. I wonder who lived in our house before we did? What if you found out something nasty while researching your house? Would it make any difference to you if your house had been the scene of a murder or some other horrible crime? Wow, this thread of thought is starting to remind me of Agatha Christie, particularly Sleeping Murder, the last of the Miss Marple mysteries.
(HT: Suitable for Mixed Company, a great blog for finding interesting tidbits about books and bookish things.)

The Slaves of Golconda have chosen The Virginian by Owen Wister for their next reading/reviewing selection. As I understand it, anyone can join in, and I may just do so since I’ve been intending to read this book for a long time.

Here’s a beautiful story about the power of great literature. Although Gilead didn’t affect me quite so profoundly as it did this lady, I did enjoy reading about how much she loved the book–because I liked it very much, too.

River Rising by Athol Dickson

Mar3

Once upon a time, several lives ago, I was a Spanish major in college, and for a literature class I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic, Cien Anos de Soledad—in Spanish. In the middle of the book something odd happened; it started raining yellow flowers, I think, or something like that. I re-read and re-read, but I couldn’t figure out whether there was some Spanish idiom I wasn’t getting or if it was really supposed to be raining yellow flowers. I had to ask the Spanish professor, and he said that yes, it was raining yellow flowers, and that was my introduction to “magical realism.”

So, when I read on the back cover of River Rising that the novel “explores a variety of complex issues, such as racial equality and religious faith—all with a tasteful touch of magical realism,” I thought I should prepare for a wild ride. What I wasn’t prepared for was the “variety of complex issues” part. And I wasn’t prepared to be blown away by the powerful story that Dickson tells. Comparatively speaking, the magical stuff was fairly tame. It was the part of the book that could be real, the part that felt real, that made me stop, think and breathe deeply.

River Rising is set in southern Louisiana, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, just before and during the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927. The characters are residents of Pilotville, LA, a small town surrounded by swampland, and one stranger who comes to town to find out about his parentage. Hale Poser, the stranger, grew up in an orphanage, became a preacher, and now has come to Pilotville in hope of finding out something about his heritage. As soon as Rev. Poser hits town, strange things start happening, odd things like fruit growing where no fruit is expected to be, things that are attributable either to God or to chance or to Hale Poser the Miracle man. Along with the good and the merely odd, evil things begin to happen, too. A baby is kidnapped, and Mr. Poser may be responsible for her disappearance, or he may be her saviour.

By the time you get this far in the book, I think you’ll be hooked. As you read on, you’ll encounter more “magical realism” but also more and more Biblical allusions and symbolism and more and more food for thought. Hale Poser is Moses, or maybe Noah, or a miracle worker, or a prophet, or maybe a representative of Satan. Pilotville is heaven on earth where black folks and white people work together and help each other and get along, or it’s a hell on earth where things are not at all what they seem to be on the surface. There’s a flood, reminiscent of the Biblical deluge, but also strangely enough, a reminder of recent events in New Orleans, events that hadn’t even occurred at the time that River Rising was written. Even so, the book shows, as Katrina’s devastation showed, that such a flood can be horribly destructive, but also can provide an opportunity for cleansing and for a new beginning.

The novel also explores slavery and race relations using a plot premise that may be as old as the hills but one that I hadn’t thought of before. I don’t want to give anything away, but I was surprised and and intrigued by the basic plot of this story and the possibilities inherent for drawing analogies to spiritual realities.

River Rising was published by Bethany House and is available from Amazon or other bookstores. In case you need more information or persuasion to read this spiritually challenging and fascinating novel, here are a few other blog reviews of River Rising:

Lars Walker: “Buy this book (or at least keep it in mind for when it comes out in paperback). Bethany should be rewarded for publishing something this good, and Athol Dickson ought to be the bestselling novelist in CBA. He ought to be a bestselling novelist in mainstream literature, for that matter.”
Christian Fiction Review: “If this is an example of what Christian fiction will bring us in 2006, we are in for a banner year. Highly Recommended.”
Violet Nesdoly at promptings: “Dickson does not hesitate to sink his teeth into some pretty grand themes.”

Thank you to Bethany House for sending me such an excellent piece of fiction to review.

Stories Waiting

Mar3

. . . no matter where you go, east, west, north, and south, there are stories. People are forever asking me where I get my ideas, but one only has to listen, to look, and to live with awareness. As I have said in several of my stories, all men look, but so few can see. It is all there, waiting for any passerby. Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour

Patry Francis, the novelist who blogs at Simply Wait, fits with this quotation. For all I know she got the name of her blog from Louis L’Amour’s book, although I can’t find anything that says so. Maybe great minds just think alike.

Anyway, I have been so impressed with way that Ms. Francis finds stories just lying in wait for her in the most unlikely places: a New Orleans cab, behind the scenes at the country club, at the gym, even walking by a neighbor’s house.

Ms. Francis obviously listens to the stories that intersect her life. That’s something I’d like to learn to do.

Lenten Thoughts

Mar1

I’m a Baptist at heart, even though we’re now members of an Evangelical Free church. In case you didn’t know, Baptists don’t celebrate Mardi Gras, or Lent or or Good Friday or even Palm Sunday; we go straight from Christmas to Easter. No preparation–just jump right from birth to resurrection, skipping lightly over that nasty old cross and those hard things that Jesus said about loving enemies and carrying your own cross. Actually, Baptists like to talk about the blood of Jesus and the old rugged cross quite a lot, but we usually save that kind of talk for summer youth camps and fall revivals.

We discussed Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday at the supper table last night over pancakes and sausage. I tried to explain to Karate Kid (who had heard that there was something bad about Mardi Gras) what the celebration of Fat Tuesday was all about and also the meaning of Ash Wednesday. The urchins are all discussing “giving up something for Lent,” but I’m trying to see this time as a time of adding something–some prayer, some silence, a little joy. Adding a little of each of those three disciplines to my life would be a good preparation for the glorious celebration of the Resurrection. And I don’t mind giving up some clutter and some noise and some wasted time to make room for the good stuff. How about you? What are you adding to your life for Lent? What are you giving up in order to make room for the important things?

Also, can anyone suggest a good read aloud book for a sort of Baptist family to read during Lent? Something that leads up to Resurrection Sunday?

The Anchoress: There’s Something About Ashes
Lent and New Year’s by Steven Riddle at FLos Carmeli
Mother-Lode: Thorns & Thistles