Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien/Corbis Outline

Several years ago at a dinner party, each of us described how our families were persecuted in their original homeland.  A Chinese friend described the treatment by the Japanese during WWII.  A Korean had her own stories of suffering during the same era.  Our Jewish friends ticked off one pogrom after another.  Then it was my turn, “I’m Irish Protestant, I’m the oppressor!”

My great uncle was the pastor of a large Presbyterian Church in Belfast, so it’s no surprise where my family stood on the Irish conflict.  But, I’m three generations away and tend towards questioning rather than accepting.  When I studied Irish history here’s what I found:  bombings, terrorism, oppression, discrimination, hate, hate, and more hate.   To a Southern California girl it all felt very distant.  And then Frank McCourt wrote Angela’s Ashes.  Frank put a face on the suffering of a country stuck in a cycle of vindictiveness.  We can study the facts of the conflict for the rest of our lives, but Frank showed how it feels for an ordinary family to live it.  If I were teaching a history class, his book would be required reading.

Most of us experienced Frank McCourt as a writer, but a few thousand lucky Stuyvesant High School students learned creative writing from him (can you imagine?).  We have a silent partner on Bookstore People, Colin Summers is our computer genius who keeps the blog going while Claire and I write away.  Truth be told, we can hardly find our blog e-mail without Colin’s help.  Colin was one of Frank’s students and wrote a moving memorial of him on Vanity Fair Online.  Colin shares Frank’s humor and his incredible memory, plus you’ll learn how Colin’s first girlfriend dumped him.

After reading the comments on the NYT’s McCourt article, Claire and I have a new favorite McCourt quote sent in from a former student, Peter A. Geiger:

Frank McCourt was my English teacher in my senior year at Stuyvesant (class of ‘74). He introduced us to African literature such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which sounded even more dramatic in his thick brogue.

When one student asked why we should read this book, what possible use would it be to us in our lives, he answered, “You will read it for the same reason your parents waste their money on your piano lessons. So you won’t be a boring little shite the rest of your life.”

It was the most honest answer to such a question I ever heard from any teacher. Whenever the question came to my head about any subject thereafter I fondly remembered Mr. McCourt and resolved not to be a boring little shite.

The perfect way to memorialize Frank McCourt–try not to be a boring little shite.

Kyle and Kim

Last year Keith and I were driving Kyle and his friend to an event and I asked the friend what he was doing the next day for Mother’s Day.  He answered that he was reading his mother a poem.  Keith and Kyle almost fell over in astonishment and the friend was confused.  I explained that they were expecting (hoping) that he would say “what, tomorrow is Mother’s Day?” and his answer just showed up whatever plans they made.  Kyle’s friend explained that the kids have a little show for their mother every year. 

Keith and I went on to dinner with two couples and I told them about our car conversation.  One husband spent the rest of the evening conjuring up poems, or maybe sailor limericks would be a better description.  The second husband worked with his daughters the next morning to plan a list of reading material including poems and excerpts from Little Women and Pride and Prejudice and read them to her throughout the day.  So, surprise the Mom in your life and spend a few minutes reading to her. 

Suggestions for what to read to your mother:

- Kyle’s friend read  “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins and it is a perfect Mother’s Day poem, especially for a child still in school.

- The few pages in Little Women in the first chapter starting with the paragraph “The Clock struck six” when Beth lays out Marmee’s slippers, to when Marmee comes home and announces “I’ve got a treat for you after supper.”  Or don’t stop, it’s such a lovely book.

- The poem “To My Mother” by Wendell Berry, perfect for an adult child.

- You may have a wife or friend who needs this story:

“Kids are Dogs, Teens are Cats” by an unknown author

I just realized that while children are dogs … loyal and affectionate …
teenagers are cats.

It’s so easy to be a dog owner. You feed it, train it, boss it around. It
puts its head on your knee and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt
painting. It bounds indoors with enthusiasm when you call it.

Then around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns into a big old cat.
When you tell it to come inside, it looks amazed, as if wondering who
died and made you emperor. Instead of dogging your doorstep, it
disappears. You won’t see it again until it gets hungry … then it pauses
on its sprint through the kitchen long enough to turn its nose up at
whatever you’re serving. When you reach out to ruffle its head, in that
old affectionate gesture, it twists away from you then gives you a blank
stare, as if trying to remember where it has seen you before.

You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think something must be
desperately wrong with it. It seems so antisocial, so distant, sort of
depressed. It won’t go on family outings. Since you’re the one who
raised it, taught it to fetch and stay and sit on command, you assume
that you did something wrong. Flooded with guilt and fear, you redouble
your efforts to make your pet behave.

Only now you’re dealing with a cat, so everything that worked before
now produces the opposite of the desired result. Call it and it runs
away. Tell it to sit and it jumps on the counter. The more you go toward
it, wringing your hands, the more it moves away.

Instead of continuing to act like a dog owner, you can learn to behave
like a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the door and let it come to
you. But remember that a cat needs your help and your affection too.
Sit still and it will come, seeking that warm, comforting lap it has not
entirely forgotten. Be there to open the door for it.

One day your grown-up child will walk into the kitchen, give you a big
kiss and say, “You’ve been on your feet all day. Let me get those dishes
for you.”  Then you’ll realize your cat is a dog again.

Do something wonderful for a mother in life and enjoy the weekend!

Mr. Lincoln’s Boys by Staton Rabin and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

I was particularly attracted to  Mr. Lincoln’s Boys because it tells of the mischievous adventures of two young boys living in the White House just at a time when two young girls (who look to have an abundance of personality) have moved into the same home.  I like it when history books for children can be relevant for today.  Three sentences struck me as an echo across the centuries:  “And wherever his sons went, strangers pointed at them.  “I wish they wouldn’t stare at us so,” Willie said.  “Wasn’t there ever a president who had children?”

Wille and Tad Lincoln were rowdy rascals.  They irritated the adults around the Lincolns.  Mr. Ibatoulline’s beautiful illustrations portray various expressions of frustration on the part of a general, the White House gardener, and Mr. Lincoln’s secretaries.  The boys trick of wiring the bell system to go off all at once or interrupting their father to climb all over him and pinch his cheeks show the boys exuberance, but also the President’s indulgent love.  The book opens with young Tad waking from a bad dream about people fighting and looking to his father for comfort.  It sets the stage of a serious time without over-emphasizing battle.  The boys lived in a White House at war and their naive fascination with the soldiers caused them to play solider games of capturing their Zouave Jack (think a Civil War GI Joe) as a spy and punishing him or later requesting a pardon from their father for the soldier’s transgressions.   The book gives a sense of the time with a lovely humane portrait of Abraham Lincoln.  A gentle man that is wise, but not intimidating to a young reader.  For the crafty reader who would like to delve into Abraham Lincoln a bit more, check out the stove pipe hat project.

Tad Lincoln’s Father by Julia Taft Bayne

Julia Taft Bayne

Staton Rabin actually recommended Tad Lincoln’s Father to me.  Tad and Willie had two best friends, Bud and Holly Taft, and the four of them set of on one adventure or another.  Bud and Holly’s older sister, Julia Taft, often accompanied them to the White House and became friends with the entire Lincoln family.  Julia wrote this memoir sixty years later and doesn’t claim to write with “historical exactitude, [but to] set these things down as they live in [her] memory, impressions of that tense, waiting period when the war-clouds gathered for the storm that was soon to shake the nation to its foundation.”  And that’s what I love about the book, Ms. Bayne remembered what struck her as important as a sixteen year old, such as how rude people were to President Lincoln during the Inaugural Parade, how tense everyone was that the capital wasn’t protected, how in a military camp she heard the “long roll” calling the soldiers to arms, and how the slaves in Washington DC were whisked south just before the Emancipation Proclamation so they wouldn’t be freed. 

Her portrait of Lincoln is warm with a great love for his family.  Time and again he joined in his children’s antics by attending their circus show after paying 5 cents, wrestling with them on the floor, and stopping by to tell them a story.  The motto of the White House parents was “let the children have fun.”  Ms. Bayne notes several times that the presence of the children lifted President Lincoln’s spirits.  This book is appropriate for children, teens and adults because it gives a view of a rambunctious family with lots of stories of antics and a peek into the atmosphere of a very important time in our nation’s history.  It provides an insiders loving portrait of one of our greatest Presidents.  One section struck me because it highlights the humility of President Lincoln, a trait I also admire in our current President:

There was little of the pride of position in Mr. Lincoln.  My mother would say, “I wish President Lincoln would always remember that he is the President.”  She called it his “provoking humility.”  Colonel Lamar, the marshal, kept his eye on him to shoo him into his proper place, the first, which belong to his rank.  He opened a door for me once and held it, and I was horror-struck.  I could not precede the President!

Celebrate Abraham Lincoln

There are so many ways to learn about Abraham Lincoln.  Adult books were reviewed by William Safire in the New York Times Review of Books and three books were highlighted on NPR.  Scott Simon gave a wonderful tribute to President Lincoln and his step-father, the owner of Abraham Lincoln Bookshop (I’m making a beeline for it the next time I’m in Chicago).  Listen to a recording of Copland’s ‘Lincoln’s Portrait‘ or read the poem Walt Whitman wrote in response to President Lincoln’s assassination.  We are a better country because of him, so take the opportunity to experience a little bit of Abraham Lincoln this holiday weekend.

I am mad about John Updike. I never had the discipline to wait for a paperback when a new book came out. Several years ago, one of my like-minded fellow fanatics told me Updike was doing a reading/signing gig at the library downtown.  There was never any doubt that we’d go and see him (in the middle of a work day like thieves sneaking into a museum).  I was so twitterpated while we listened to him read to us that I almost cried.  I felt so lucky to be in the same room with him, actually looking at his silver head, LISTENING to him while he read something he had written. My guy J.U…..right in front of me!!!   It was overwhelming.  He was wry, handsome, smart…and then he signed my book.  I got back in my car, squeezed my fists tightly, and squealed.  Only Mick Jagger has gotten a bigger reaction from me.

I am a big fan, even when a lot of my other bookish friends weren’t as crazy about him as I was.  I think he got the short end of the stick simply because he was Grisham/Cornwall prolific, and also because he was living in the same world that Philip Roth moved in.  For some reason John Updike (like my boyfriends Pat Conroy and John Irving) doesn’t get the same press. Harrumph.

When I beg my book groups to do an Updike series, I always lose the bid. I have to remind people he won the Pulitzer – twice.  (Faulkner also won twice: fitting company.)  Maybe those Rabbit books were too long ago,  or maybe modern readers picked up the prize winners and didn’t start at the beginning of the series, so they never knew how good the reading was.  I say “reading”, not writing, because I am a reader after all.  So often we praise writers for their writing style – but I loved that Updike was a good read.   He made me squirm in my seat as he described a particularly sordid sexual encounter.  He made me hold my breath as a I read about the death of a child.  He sucked me in.

I remember my Dad reading the Rabbit books, so Updike has a warm family, WASP, familiarity to me.  Rabbit, like my Dad, was a high school sports star from a town in middle America.  Rabbit, to me, is real and really American.  He’s a car salesman (!) who ages, who marries, who suffers disappointments in his children and his wife.  He ages, and the reader gets to know him, and to feel things with him as his life fades.  There are Rabbit Angstroms around every corner where I come from.  

The holidays always find me shopping to buy other people things they want.   Inevitably, I end up a at a book store, and have to buy myself something too.  Last Christmas, I went to a funky local book store, Equator Books in Venice, CA, that sells used, classic books and vinyl.  I admit that I got waylaid briefly by the Jesus Christ Superstar brown album…but then I saw the first editions of the Rabbit books.  I dropped the JCS vinyl like a hot potato and clutched the Updikes in speechless happiness.   I had to go back home for more dough – but before I did that I asked the guy at the counter to hold them because – get this – I was so afraid someone else would see them and beat me to it.  

RIP Johnny U.  I’ll continue to beg my reading friends to dig you out of the back shelves.