Friday, February 26, 2010

Perspective

In the 1993 movie, Indian Summer, a group of childhood friends, now adults, revisit their old summer camp. One of the characters, played by Kevin Pollack, can’t get over how “tiny” everything looks to his now adult eyes. In one scene, he keeps repeating “Everything’s so tiny. Tiny, tiny, tiny!” The other characters ignore him until it’s clear he’s not going to quit talking about it. Someone finally says to him, “Look, everything’s the same size. YOU’RE bigger.” It’s true, our perspective changes. Knowing this, I often pause before deciding to revisit things from my childhood. I want my cherished childhood memories to stay cherished. So, when my eight year old daughter Megan and I were recently at the library perusing the audio books, I felt surprise, delight, and then apprehension when I saw Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle on the shelf. I loved the Piggle-Wiggle books as a kid! Four Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books were written by Betty MacDonald before she died in 1958. When I realized as a child that the author was already dead (and not just dead, but really dead – I mean, good grief, my parents were children in the 1950s and she had lived her whole life and died? It was incomprehensible), I was sad, to say the least. So I read the four Piggle-Wiggles many times. To those of you unfamiliar with Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, the heroine is a widowed, older woman who loves children, lives in an upside down house (except for the bathroom and kitchen, of course) and has countless “cures” for childhood ailments, such as taking tiny bites of food, being a bully, whispering all the time, that kind of thing. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s cures are based on the theory that immersing a child in the unwanted behavior s/he indulges in will rid the child of the behavior. For example, one of my favorite tales was about a girl who refused to bathe. At Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s instruction, the girl’s parents allow the girl to no longer bathe. When a layer of dirt covers the girl’s body, her parents tucked tiny radish seeds into the dirt. Once the seeds sprouted, the girl was mortified. She voluntarily scrubbed herself clean that day and every day after. On the day that Megan and I stood in the children’s audio books section at the library, I was torn – sort of, well ok, I couldn’t wait to read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle again and I prayed with all my might that I still like the stories. As we began to listen to the book, I noticed things I had never noticed as a child. Every child in the book comes from a two-parent home consisting of the child’s biological mother and biological father. Every father has a day job to which he goes every week day and returns home in the evening. Every mother stays home and works as a housewife (or Home Economics Engineer, as we might say today). Every family is, as far as I can tell, Caucasian. Every family has two to four children. I’m tempted to scoff at this, but I began to wonder, did the author really intentionally discriminate, or was that just her worldview? After all, she never lived to hear the “I Have a Dream” speech, the skyrocketing of the divorce rate, or the airing of problems like abuse. I couldn’t resist finding out more about MacDonald, so I did a little searching. As it turns out, Betty MacDonald herself divorced her first husband (and it seems Husband #1 did not live the traditional life, his life ended in 1951 when he was stabbed, yes stabbed, to death). Following her divorce, MacDonald spent nearly a decade struggling as a single mother. During that decade, she spent almost a year at a sanitarium receiving treatment for tuberculosis. While MacDonald did re-marry and settle into a more comfortable lifestyle, she was not done squaring off with hardship. She died at the age of 49 of cancer. So, this knowledge of course changes my view of Betty MacDonald. Maybe the Piggle-Wiggle books were served as a sort of escapist fantasy. Maybe the idea of being able to fix a problem in a chapter appealed to MacDonald. I guess only MacDonald knows and I won’t get the opportunity to chat with her anytime soon (provided I live a good, long life). Maybe someone should say to me, “The stories are the same, YOU’RE different.” One last thing, as I was working on this entry, I had the good fortune of being directed to another blog entry by childrens author Laurel Snyder. In Snyder’s entry, Snyder imagines the the last unwritten chapter of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. It’s hysterical, and I insist you check it out:
http://laurelsnyder.com/2010/01/02/the-last-days-of-mrs-piggle-wiggle/
And special thanks to Kurtis Scaletta (who directed me to Laurel Snyder’s blog) for knowing every one and every thing and his willingness to share.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Cindie's Stand

Beagle Books is a small bookstore and we tend not to carry a lot of hardcover books. To be honest, it’s often a great relief when a customer buys the one copy of a hardcover we’re carrying. The other day, a cherished Beagle customer complained that she did not like a book she recently read. When I heard which book it was, my heart sank – not because she bought a book she didn’t like (the reality is, that just happens sometimes) but because it was Beagle bookseller Cindie’s favorite book of 2009: Valeria’s Last Stand by Marc Fitten. Valeria is the author’s first novel. The author is from New York and no one in northern Minnesota (or at least very few) had ever heard of him. After Cindie read it, she raved about it to countless customers. She was able to sell a hardcover book of an author that our customers had never heard of and after reading it, customers would make a point to come back to the bookstore to thank Cindie for it. At one point, tired of ordering 1-2 copies of the book from a wholesaler, I called the publisher and asked for a case of books. When they arrived, I panicked, thinking, what if everyone in this area who’s going to buy this book already bought it? The case was gone in less than a month. To date, Cindie has sold FIFTY copies of this book! To a bigger bookstore in a bigger community, this number is nothing special, but for a store who is thankful to sell ONE copy of a hardcover, fifty is phenomenal. Even though it’s silly, I couldn’t help but feel protective of Cindie, “What do you MEAN you don’t like this book?? The other 49 people who read it LOVED it!!” Cindie didn’t write the book, edit the book, or have anything to do with its production. The author isn’t a friend or family member of hers, but still, her heart is invested in it, and I care about that. Cindie is so passionate about good books and is able to share that with our customers and most of the time, our customers are richly rewarded for heeding Cindie’s book advice. Cindie’s been working at Beagle for a number of years – she knows that not everyone shares her taste in books, or someone was in the wrong mood for a book, or a number of other factors may have come into play to prevent a person’s enjoyment of a book, but still— Despite all this, I have to admit, it is not a failure to have hit the mark 49/50 times. If bookselling were a class, 98% is not only an A, it’s practically perfect, so to Cindie, I say, BRAVO!!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Parker

From: http://www.parkrapidsdowntown.com/
Parker Meltdown Contest
Parker, the mascot for the downtown construction project this summer, went ice fishing this week and fell in the Fish Hook River. He's frozen like a giant ice cube so we took him to Pioneer Park. When will he melt? Your guess is as good as ours. For $1 a guess, you can enter the Parker Meltdown Contest. Tickets are on sale at the Park Rapids Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce, Citizens National Bank, Northwoods Bank of Park Rapids, State Bank, Bogey's, Royal Bar and Park Rapids American Legion. Check out Parker loves Park Rapids on Facebook.