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The stale coffee is boiling up but he catches it before it goes over the side, pours it into a stained cup and blows on the black liquid, lets a panel of the dream slide forward. If he does not force his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong.
–Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
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There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.
–Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
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“His voice is higher, lighter than I expected. He could be a gentle man, maybe, if this were a different kind of place. As it is, I see that he isn’t gentle, doesn’t even know what that means. Even though I myself have discarded any kind of softness as useless, I find myself thinking that something important is lost if this man has been forced to deny his own nature.“
–Allegiant (Divergent Trilogy, Book 3) by Veronica Roth
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June is LGBT Pride month.
I Will Survive (AKA: The Gay Anthem)
“At first, I was afraid, I was petrified.
Kept thinkin’ I could never live
Without you by my side,
But then I spent so many nights
Thinkin’ how you did me wrong.
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along.”“Well, now go! Walk out the door!
Just turn around now,
‘Cause you’re not welcome anymore!
Weren’t you the one
Who tried to hurt me with goodbye?
Did you think I’d crumble?
Did you think I’d lay down and die?”“Oh no, not I! I will survive!”
-I Will Survive (single) and We Will Survive (album), performed by Gloria Gaynor, written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris
Midwestern United States Pride Month Resources:
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In Or Out
“Guess there’s something wrong with me
Guess I don’t fit in
No one wants to touch it
No one knows where to begin
I’ve got more than one membership
To more than one club
And I owe my life
To the people that I love”
–Imperfectly by Ani DiFranco
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Anoka Minnesota puts on a huge Halloween celebration every year. While I have not had the opportunity to participate, I have heard about it and driven through the town during Halloween week. It’s a big deal. Really. Big. Deal.
Halloween and Community
While browsing my public library for books on the upcoming Halloween holiday, I ran across this local history text and found a few fun quotes about Anoka and Halloween. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the history of this celebration is the amount of community building that it provides – even during difficult times like the great depression.
Quotes:
“For most children in the early decades of the twentieth century, Halloween was a night for trouble making. The children of Anoka and their friends from the surrounding communities took this idea to a whole new level.”
“On the morning after Halloween, 1919, early risers in Anoka, MN were greeted by an astonishing sight. Cows, it seemed, had taken over the town! Bovines were browsing everywhere...in September of 1920 the citizens of Anoka turned to influential men in the community to see how to best avoid a repeat of the previous year’s trouble.”
“The following decade of the economic depression that devastated the nation affected Anoka, but the hard times did not dampen their spirits when it came to Halloween. The 1930s brought a series of new events to the Halloween celebration, including an activity that acted as a form of group therapy, the burning of Old Man Depression.“
GLBT Controversy
In the interest of fairness, I must mention the tragic events leading up to the Anoka Halloween parade controversy. In 2012, bullying of GLBT students in the Anoka schools lead to several suicides and a lawsuit, which made big headlines. It also spurred the creation of an Anti-Bullying task force and the non-profit Justin’s Gift. Unfortunately, Justin’s Gift was denied entry into the parade of 2012. According to the group’s website Justin’s Gift is hosting a Halloween party (no mention of the parade) in 2014.
Quotes:
“Justin’s Gift still had a presence at the 2012 Grand Day Parade. The organization had a booth set up in the parking lot of a church on the parade route where they sold t-shirts, buttons, bracelets and other items. Floats from other cities also showed their solidarity with the group by mounting signs next to their waving princesses that read, “We Support Justin’s Gift.””
“Justin’s Gift was able to proudly walk among its community members in the 2013 Anoka Halloween Parade. The group was met with cheers and support from onlookers.”
–History and Hauntings of the Halloween Capital
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As someone who was a teenager during the late 1980s, and fully remembers the hysteria surrounding AIDs, this book brought back many memories – not all of them good. It’s an excellent and authentic tale. However, it portrays teenagers doing things that most parents would prefer their children refrain from considering, much less actually doing. I highly recommend this novel to fellow cold-war era survivors, but I’m not certain I would feel comfortable handing it over to a teenager.
On the other hand, when I was a late-80s teen, teachers and other adults handed me novels like The Scarlet Letter, The Lord of the Flies, Watership Down and a handful of Russian novels that I strongly suspect I understood better than my instructors – particularly when it came to the methods of survival utilized by primary characters. Perhaps I am overly cautious.
Quotes:
“I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you’d have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed...I thought about Finn. How he did whatever he wanted. Just like my mother said. He never let the tunnel squash him. But still, there he was. In the end he was still crushed to death by his own choices. Maybe what Toby said was right. Maybe you had to be dying to finally get to do what you wanted.”
“I used to think maybe I wanted to become a falconer, and now I’m sure of it, because I need to figure out the secret. I need to work out how to keep things flying back to me instead of always flying away.“
–Tell the Wolves I’m Home
The quotes at the end of this posting come from books that address very specific and special circumstances. These are the kinds of children’s books that generate controversy in ways that I have never understood.
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Many years ago the book Heather Has Two Mommies (written by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Diana Souza) came out and caused a huge uproar in the Midwestern town I was living in. The local library secured a copy and a patron, who has (apparently) never been identified, pooped inside the book – yes, that’s right, an adult found the book, took it into the bathroom and pooped in it. (The book was found, damaged beyond all possible repair, in the bathroom.) Ever since then I find myself wondering which self righteous ‘adult’ is going to poop in the next ‘unapproved’ children’s book that happens to come along.
These two books fall under the ‘unapproved’ category because they cover things that children deal with, struggle with, and face enormous stress and pressure over – but are expected to never, ever talk about. Specifically: A parent’s addiction and the desire to wear unconventional clothes.
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In both cases these things must be talked about and accepted on the part of the child’s family, whoever that may be. Ideally, the situation would be lovingly and respectfully dealt with by the community at large – but that is an idealism. Regardless, these books are extremely helpful tools. They can provide support and get the conversation started, or they can help build a bridge when a parent realizes he or she has been addressing the situation in all the wrong ways.
They also have multiple uses. The Dragon is named Al and the illustrations and storyline clearly lean toward alcoholism, but it can be used to begin a conversation about any kind of addiction. Jacob likes to dress like a princess and wants nothing more than to wear a dress, which is clearly a problem simply soaked in gender-identity and gender-based expectations. But Jacob also wants to wear things that are different from what the rest of the kids are wearing – different from what he is expected to wear. He wants to do things that are different from what is expected of him because of what he looks like. There are many kids who struggle with being different, or wanting to be different, and needing to be accepted for those differences – and not all of them are gender-based variations from the norm.
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So, I was looking at these two books, thinking about how they are very good and necessary things. Yet, I was not (am not) dealing with these specific scenarios. Should I just put them back on the shelves and move on to something more standard and expected in the children’s literature stacks. Are these books truly problem (catastrophe) specific events? Are they best left to gather dust until a special situation arises, when they are pulled down and used to address whatever issue is at hand? Or, are they stories that should be read to all children, regardless of situation, in the same way that conflict resolution focused books are read – to prepare a child for whatever he or she may face?
As it happens, while I was busy mulling over the oh-so-important decisions adults must make, a child asked me to read both books. So (with his mother’s permission), I did – twice (at his request). I don’t think he saw them as special or even unusual. From a child’s perspective, they were just stories. Stories about a boy whose classmates were sometimes mean and about a family with a dragon. Stories about kids. Stories with pictures and adventures. Stories. Period.
None of it was as important or universe changing as I had made it out to be – which may be the lesson that I, as the over-thinking adult, may need to learn.
QUOTES:
“Dad explained to us that Al the Dragon will always be with us. He says he has to work a few simple steps to make sure Al doesn’t take over our lives again. Dad’s new best friend is his sponsor. The sponsor has a dragon, too. They go to meetings.”
–The Dragon Who Lives at Our House, A Story of What It Feels Like to Lose Control of your Life, written by Elaine Mitchell and illustrated by Norris Hall
“A bunch of kids laughed. Jacob felt his dress surrounding him. Like armor. Soft, cottony, magic armor.”
–Jacob’s New Dress, written by Sarah and Ian Hoffman and illustrated by Chris Case
(C) Adora Myers