A life of words

Posted on April 16, 2012 by sheilawill

Sometimes I forget that I owned a bookstore. People came into Oz Books because they trusted our reading suggestions, our “homey knowledge,” as the Oz bookmark said. There was the parent who followed me around the store wanting to know if it was okay for his kid to read so much fantasy (booksellers are often seen as therapists).

“I’d like him to read more nonfiction. Don’t you think he should read books that he’ll learn something from?”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge,” I replied, quoting Albert Einstein, assuring the dad that innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs often read fantasy and science fiction as kids.

What did I read when I was young? The now boring “Happy Hollisters” series, that’s what I remember. I regret not tracking all the books I’ve read during my reading life, a gazillion words.

In today’s New York Times Book Review there’s a piece, “My Life With Bob” (Book of Books) by one of the editors  who’s noted all the books she’s read since 1988. Wow.

A friend recently told me that my reading history, at least since I’ve been in Tucson, would be on the Pima Tucson Public Library’s website. I dashed to my computer but nope, no reading history. Damn. I hadn’t hit the request button that the library required. Ten years of book titles lost.

Knowing what books I’ve read, beyond looking at what’s in our bookcases, might have revealed  something I didn’t know about myself. Wouldn’t it be fun to line up, at least virtually, hundreds, thousands of books in order of when I read them, a kind of self-therapy project? Tonight I turned on the library’s accounting of my reading history.

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Anonymous benefactor continued: OZ Literacy Fund

Posted on April 13, 2012 by sheilawill

Oz Books closed on March 17, 1997. My still unknown anonymous benefactor decided to set up a nonprofit for me to run so I could continue providing literacy programs on Mount Desert Island, Maine.

I found out my “guardian angel” was around 70 at the time, a quiet woman who visited the bookstore every summer. She wanted to help me make the transition from being “the Oz lady” to regular life. She paid me a larger salary for three years than I ever made running Oz. What a joy it must have been for her to be a mystery-woman philanthropist.

The Oz Literacy Fund was born. No more bookstore but other treats were in store for the MDI community — and me.

The Oz Literacy Fund was administered through Harbor House Recreation Center in Southwest Harbor. After “The Soul of a Business: Managing for Profit and the Public Good” by Tom Chappell of Tom’s of Maine came out, we sponsored a business breakfast/talk that drew more than 200 people.

The fund brought children’s authors like Vera B. Williams (“Chair for my Mother”), Ashley Bryan (“Beautiful Blackbird” and many more), Margy Burns Knight and Anne Sibley O’Brien (“Talking Walls”) and then Maine Poet Laureate Baron Wormser to schools around the island.

It was a joy for me to continue bringing such talent to our local schools. I returned to my first career, teaching social studies, at MDI High School. I’ll never forget when Baron visited my Honors U.S. History class. I had given my students the somewhat nebulous assignment of writing a history poem. Baron and I were blown away by the passion and creativity in the room that day. So were the kids.

Their enthusiasm was partly due to knowing Baron would really listen, that he believed in the power of poetry to make history come alive. And it was a different kind of assignment; I think they appreciated that. I was never a teacher for answering the questions at the end of the chapter; guess I wasn’t even one for reading the quotidian chapter (always wanted to use that word!).

Back to my second career. Oh the places I went (Thank you, Dr. Seuss) during the years of Oz Books. I’ll never forget the summer of 1990, when Judy Blume came to town. I wasn’t a fan of her books, but was gracious when I spotted her in the store trying to remain incognito, wearing a kerchief over her head and big sunglasses.

I invited her to lunch. We debated the worth of “Blubber,” one of her books that turned me off. She made some valid points. We became friends that summer.

Wait, here’s her inscription in my copy of “Fudge-A-Mania”:

“To the best “Sheila” in Southwest Harbor! (even though I had to rename you “Dorothy” for this book). Thanks for your friendship, which made a cold summer warmer.”

I haven’t seen Judy and her husband, George, in years. They never returned to Southwest Harbor — because, uh, it was too cold — but I visited them in New York City. I learned that she too was a caring philanthropist.

Wish I knew who my benefactor was.

Posted in Fight wimpiness, Mount Desert Island/Maine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

No more crapola

Posted on April 8, 2012 by sheilawill

Last year’s birthday present to myself was a MacBook Air. I had lusted after one since they first came out — the sleekness, the silverness, the speed. Dan only had to watch me with my new toy for a day or two before dubbing it “The Precious.”

It was expensive. Dan and his son — both avid Apple aficionados — couldn’t fathom why I didn’t get a PowerBook, which can do a whole lot more. I didn’t care. Brook loved her MacBook Air, and like her, I wanted something portable with a keyboard for writing. Besides, “The Precious” is a work of art. 

This year it’s “The Pretty.” Last week, after discovering I had won a Rockower Award — clever Dan dubbed it “The Jewlitzer” — from the American Jewish Press Association (Jan. 8, 2011 Gabrielle Giffords shooting), I bought a new bike. 

The Fuji Absolute 2.0 was also expensive. It’s smooth, it’s fast, it’s quiet.

I start collecting Social Security this month, but who knows when I’ll be able to retire. “The Pretty” matches my MacBook Air in color, a muted silver, with lovely lines that somehow remind me of the archway to the tiny purple-carpeted reading nook at Oz Books.

Ah, the sheer beauty of purple and/or silver.

The discarding of crapola started with the purchase of a new windbreaker at REI a few years ago. I didn’t have that essential article of clothing for heading to Mt. Lemmon on a windy day. Dan encouraged me to buy a decent one, not look in Savers or another local thrift store. I’m grateful to him.

It’s time to get rid of the crapola. I want to bicycle more, keep up with Dan better when we do ride together,  and not be burdened by an old clunker bike that has a mind of its own.

“Holy shit,” I often blurted out as the clunker decided to shift gears moments after I did.

No more crapola means knowing when I can afford what I really want and not settling for less. So let some University of Arizona coed thrill to the clunker’s purple and white streamers flying in the breeze. I’m moving on.

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Hip brasserie vs. pollo feliz (happy chicken)?

Posted on April 6, 2012 by sheilawill

Wednesdays are half-price days at Pollo Feliz, the home of Mexican grilled chicken here in Tucson. A big white truck with a  trailer full of prickly pear pods, rakes strewn everywhere, pulled in front of me while I waited to turn left on Broadway Blvd. But that was it. No long lines waiting to approach the take-out window for the bargain of the century.

I had picked up a new Tucson Weekly to read just in case. I took it from the passenger seat, discovering that “A Dangerous Method” will be at the cheap movies starting tomorrow.

That’s all I had time for waiting for dinner, which would be accompanied by a big salad, serving five back at home. Our friend Karen brought a yummy bottle of red wine that tasted like flowers and cost more than the entire already cooked dinner.

Yes, I’m a proud commercial for Pollo Feliz. 

My culinary tastes extend to newly opened Tucson restaurants (I like to be in the know). Tuesday night was young women’s happy hour — the youngest among us just turned 32 and is pregnant with her first baby. Guess who’s the oldest? 

The just opened Augustin Brasserie advertised P.E.I. mussels. I figure they would have those slightly crispy Parisian pommes frites, like I had with my kids at a Belgian mussel restaurant in NYC. Alas, the Tucson attempt at a brasserie was off the mark. The place was all woody and airy and smart looking, but the menu was sparse.

Mussels tasted fresh. Our server said they’re flown in almost daily from one of Canada’s two island provinces (quick, who can name the other? You win the fur-lined earmuffs, as my father always said). 

The broth was pretty amateurish, not enough butter, missing garlic and fresh herbs. The fries were tasty but the portion was small, and as Erica pointed out they’re not as good as at Bob Dobbs, our neighborhood bar/burger joint. 

I wish the brasserie well. Let them get their act together. The young women’s happy hour celebrants will return when they have an actual happy hour. Oh, did I tell you that the cheapest glass of red wine was $9?

Epiphany: It’s worth buying a flowery bottle of wine for twice the cost of one glass, and showering your friends with goodies from Pollo Feliz.

 

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Going forward, remembering my anonymous benefactor

Posted on April 2, 2012 by sheilawill

It’s been a while. I’m starting a big writing project, no, continuing a project I’ve been working on my whole life.

Here’s my request: if I tell snippets of a story will you let me know what questions you have, what confuses you or what you’d like to know more about? A little online workshopping since I’m not about to apply for an MFA program.

Here goes: When I opened Oz Books in 1982 my dream was to have a real business, one that provided an ongoing income. My bigger dream was to make a difference, bring great books to kids, share a love of reading in my community. That happened.

Anybody ever seen the old TV show “The Millionaire?” The anonymous benefactor’s bearer of good news (his name was something like James Jay Fertipton) comes to the door of some poor shlump’s home, hands her  check for $1 million.

Nobody gave me $1 million, but I didn’t need that.

It was 1997. I saw the writing on the wall. With a new Borders Books an hour away, money-grubber landlords who had me paying the brunt of all the tenant’s rent, and my being an orderholic who didn’t have the heart to reduce employee hours, I had no choice but to close Oz after 15 years.

It was heartbreaking. I had already returned to teaching part-time at Mt. Desert Island High School. I don’t remember what the season was. Was the sun shining, ice bearing down on tree branches? Was I talking about the Supreme Court or were my U.S. history students working on their Bill of Rights Amendment projects, hovering over each other in small groups?

The intercom phone buzzed loudly. Picking it up, I figured one of my students needed to go to the office.

“Sheila, you have a phone call,” the office assistant said. “Oh, please get a number and I’ll call back,” replied, thinking it was a credit card company telling me my payment was overdue.”

“You better take this. It’s from the Fiduciary Trust Company in Boston.”

“Uh, oh. This is really bad,” I told her.

I was so wrong. On the phone was the trustee of my anonymous benefactor, a summertime philanthropist who loved my bookstore, appreciated all I had done for reading, for kids, he said. There had been a recent story in the Bar Harbor Times about Oz closing. She had read it. This quiet woman, a real-life philanthropist in her 70s, wanted to help.

I walked back down the hall to my classroom in a daze. The Cox twins, Rachel and Kate, were heading toward me. I think Ethan was with them. “Someone wants to save OZ,” I blurted, letting it sink in. We put our arms around each other, started jumping up and down, not being at all quiet in the hallway but who cared. “She wants to save Oz! She wants to save Oz! Woo hoo,” we hollered.

Posted in Journalism/Writing, Mount Desert Island/Maine | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

The inconvenient truth about education

Posted on March 20, 2012 by sheilawill

I needed a large iced coffee to head to the Loft Cinema on a sunshiny Saturday morning  a movie, a documentary at that.  “The Inconvenient Truth behind Waiting for Superman” was too New Yorky, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some truth to it.

The film brought me back to the early ’70s when I was in graduate school getting my M.A.T. degree. We knew then — and we know now — that the most important elements of good schooling are classrooms with fewer than 18 students, led by experienced teachers.

And I’ll add, let those teachers be learners who care about kids. Provide “a culturally relevant curriculum.” We sure know about that here in Tucson where a highly successful ethnic studies program was wiped out as being racist. Huh, maybe too culturally relevant?

(My son, Ethan,  a graduate student at Rice, just called after hearing a University of Arizona professor speak this evening about Tucson’s defunct ethnic studies program, one of  the latest in unfathomable educational decisions made by Arizona’s powers that be.)

During the 2000 presidential election, when Gore and Bush were talking about education, I figured that was a good thing. Somebody cared. I was wrong, oh so wrong. Naive maybe, even after all my years as an educator.

I couldn’t figure out why the Gore people weren’t talking to educators like Yetta and Ken Goodman, now UA professors emerita and emeritus of the Department of Language, Reading & Culture, or Phyllis Brazee, professor emerita of education at the University of Maine, who almost singlehandedly trained teachers to raise reading/writing skills in students by uh, reading real books and engaging kids in their own lives.

Kids don’t vote. And unfortunately, many parents don’t complain about their children’s so-called education, which has become more political than educational, overladen with meaningless testing. Enough.

I’m addicted to “The Wire.” The fourth season focused on the plight of middle-school kids in inner-city Baltimore. The kids who didn’t have caring parents or clean clothes or the confidence to imagine themselves doing anything but selling drugs on street corners broke my heart.

I had a few students at Mt. Desert Island High School who weren’t going anywhere, were into drugs or booze,  and didn’t care much for education. Somehow, we connected.

I liked that they weren’t shy about expressing their opinions. I joked with them. One of my favorites started asking me for books he could read on his own. He became a lobsterman, may still be a rowdy guy, but he sure could think. 

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Quickie on context

Posted on March 18, 2012 by sheilawill

The story’s in the details, says Gus, city editor at the Baltimore Sun in the last season of “The Wire.” We’re doing an all-day watch of the last 10 episodes so no spoiler alerts please! Wish I could start all over again; as the Washington Post or NYT review said this show is/was the most literary, authentic show ever made for TV.

Give me context or give me death. Keep pitching that context. I’m a journalist digging this fifth season. How much context is enough, that’s the question. Enough to make it real.

Though the extreme violence upsets me on “The Wire,” I keep watching. I won’t go to violent movies. The bigger context is that the conflict of telling truth to power and how that plays out in a major American city plays out repeatedly in “The Wire.”

In the third episode of the journalism season the new mayor’s chief of staff, Norman, is having a beer with Gus, the Sun’s city editor, who’s an old colleague of his. “From one whore to another,” he says to Norman, what’ve you got?

This is rich stuff. It stopped raining so I’m going outdoors for a short walk before having dinner with Dan’s folks. Then we’ll be back to watch the rest of season five.

 

 

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Tucson Festival of Books Afterglow

Posted on March 13, 2012 by sheilawill

When I come to the last sentence of a book I’ve loved, there’s a little sadness and quiet exhilaration. I sigh. I sit quietly. I may say wow or dang that was good! 

Today I had all those feelings. And I also felt high. The Tucson Festival of Books dazzled readers/writers this weekend on the University of Arizona campus. Now it’s over.

I drove cross-country to Tucson in 2002, clueless about what I’d do for work. I quit my teaching job, I closed my bookstore in 1997, and there was no way I’d make a living teaching yoga dance. 

 Greg Brown CDs blaring across the miles through Knoxville, Tenn.; Fort Worth, Texas; and who knows where, N.M., I sang along. Maybe I could plan author events for bookstores. After all, I figured, Tucson is a university town.

My first six months in Tucson I tried to line up author visits for schools but came up with only one gig for the Tucson Unified School District’s Young Authors’ Conference, bringing my children’s author pals Ashley Bryan, Thacher Hurd and Vera B. Williams to town. 

I was told that “Tucson isn’t a literary town.” “We’re not on the author circuit.” All that changed four years ago with the Tucson Festival of Books, the inspired vision of Bill and Brenda Viner, and a few others.

 Every author I spoke to this past weekend at the festival said something like, “I’ve been to lots of book festivals but none have been so well-organized as this.” There’s a lot more to it than if you build it they will come…where have these 115,000 book lovers been (it was reported today that attendance rose from 100,000 last year).

If you do something right, people will come. Tucson is on the author circuit! I’m in book country again. 

Kudos to the Viners. Kudos to Helene Woodhams, who heads the author committee, receiving and responding to so many emails. Kudos to my incredible colleagues on the author committee, especially Holly Schafer, Gwen Harvey and Bruce Dinges. Kudos to Ken McDonald, who for months sends updated author grids, in three different formats. Kudos to 1,500 volunteers who escort authors such as Richard Russo, Kim Edwards, Mary Johnson, Elmore Leonard to their workshops, panels and interviews where we listen, ask questions and celebrate words.

Luckily, we won’t dawdle before reconvening to start planning next year’s TFOB on March 9-10. I’ll only have a month to feel sad about the festival being over. It brought a book-loving community together. I feel high.

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Children’s books/authors are on my mind

Posted on March 6, 2012 by sheilawill

Maybe it’s owning a bookstore for all those years, maybe it’s remembering all the fun we had with authors at Oz Books in Southwest Harbor, maybe it’s the impact that author friends and books have had on me my whole life. I’m so excited about the Tucson Festival of Books, and proud to be part of it this weekend!

Takes me back to Maine summers, a chilly breeze coming in off the harbor. Barbara Cooney introduced “Miss Rumphius,” my all-time favorite picture book, in 1982 as part of the first OZ Guest Author Series at the Southwest Harbor Library. She had a great sense of humor; she was always gracious in public but could be a little sarcastic. A baby kept crying during her presentation at the library. When the mother got up to go, Barbara said, “Don’t worry, the crying doesn’t bother me. It’s not my baby.”

A few years later, she returned to sign books at the bigger, expanded Oz Bookstore. Adoring customers were lined up outside the door. One woman asked Barbara to write something like “To the most beloved grandson, may you enjoy this book forever. Love, Barbara Cooney.”

“That’s not my message,” Barbara said. She asked me to get her a drink —  a stiff whiskey — after signing what must have been hundreds of books. We sat around talking into the night, she with her unbraided long white hair and gleaming blue eyes, me knowing she would be always be one of my role models. She was irreverent. She was always nice to small children. She chuckled a lot. She used the most exquisite blues in her illustrations. (I still think of Barbara when there’s a perfect, cloudless sky,  and say it’s an “Island Boy” blue day, after her picture book.)

“To be at all creative I need to spend time away from lots of people, alone in my garden tending flowers,” she told me. I listened.

Robert McCloskey was another icon of Maine children’s books. When we visited his beloved Scotch Island he picked us up in his little lobster boat, just like in “One Morning in Maine.”

He would visit me at OZ, quietly striding into my office to sign books generically and sip a cup of tea. Customers  generally left him alone, allowing him his privacy. He must have been in his late 70s,  a few years after he was widowed,  when his “girlfriend” moved from her apartment in their retirement complex to his.

“Everybody in the whole town knows who I’m shacking up with,” he told me. I almost fell off my chair, but managed to not burst out laughing.

There are lines from Brook and Ethan’s favorite children’s books I’ll never forget: “Happy Winter rise and shine, I love the early morning time” or “Born at sea in the teeth of a gale, the sailor was a dog. Scuppers was his name.” Or little Alice sitting on her grandfather’s knee, listening to him tell her, “Go see the world. Come home to live in your house by the sea. Do something to make the world more beautiful,” in “Miss Rumphius.”

See you at the Tucson Festival of Books! I always stroll around the children’s section. Maybe you’ll be there too.

Posted in Mount Desert Island/Maine, Tucson Festival of Books/good books | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Restored Faith: an Independent and a Republican

Posted on February 29, 2012 by sheilawill

A brain is a terrible thing to waste. Education isn’t about being a “snob”; it’s about questioning your own views and considering those of others, reading and listening and evaluating. It’s called critical thinking, not making up your mind about everything on blind faith.

This morning I went to my car repair establishment for an oil change. Scott, the owner, is trustworthy, considerate, smart, and a Massachusetts native so we have that New England connection. Every few months we have a thought-provoking political discussion.

Scott is an Independent. He voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but tells me he won’t vote for the prez this time around. Consider who he’s up against, I tell Scott. He wishes Obama had a stronger opponent to really debate the issues. He’s not done thinking about what he’ll do on Election Day.

And there’s something else nagging at Scott.

“I don’t think religion has any place in politics,” he says.

We agree. Faith — whether it’s based on religion or no religion, the color of the sky at sunset, or some deeply held ethical principle — is a personal affair. So-called conservatives who insist that religion belongs in government are missing the entire backbone of their supposed political philosophy. Don’t conservatives spout the need for government to stay out of our lives? Whose view of religion wouldn’t make Santorum throw up?

More important,  the separation of church and state is a key element of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment assures that all Americans have the right to freedom of religion, and it does not prohibit the establishment of a new religion, which inherently means no government intrusion. (OK, I’ll stop being Ms. Social Studies Teacher).

Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican (one of the last two, along with Sen. Susan Collins from Maine), announced today that she won’t run for re-election. She’s tired of  the “my way or the highway” politics in Washington today. I commend her, as I did when we chatted at a cocktail party on Mount Desert Island years ago. She refused to jump into the partisan fray against President Clinton during the ludicrous impeachment proceedings against him. Olympia Snowe is civilized.

Thank you Scott for running an honest Tucson small business.  Thank you Senator Snowe for representing Maine honorably for more than three decades. Today I have faith — and it’s not religious — that sensible Americans (not just Mainers and other New Englanders) — will vote for a presidential candidate who uses his brain.

Posted in Fight wimpiness, Mount Desert Island/Maine, politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments