peace unearth

Published December 23, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I was a very young woman when I found this phrase, “peace unearth.”  I think it might have been in the book Notes to Myself, whose author I no longer remember though his impact on me was great.  I made last-minute Christmas cards with it, the words floating under turquoise decoupaged tissue paper, and even sent a few out.

     "Last minute” has come to characterize my Christmas preparations.  It’s not just that I’m lazy or tardy, though I am both of those.  I am also one of those who is aggrieved by the appearance of Christmas decorations in Target and Walmart the day after Halloween, the sound of Christmas music in the grocery stores before Thanksgiving.  These “jump the gun” people seem futuristic to me, and set my brakes screeching, sometimes against my will.  The sound inside my head is illness-making.


     Each year around this time I remember that I moved to small-town Lindsay in search of a more meaningful Christmas.  At that time my family seemed destined to cash in the year’s income in order to mound presents under the tree, and I needed to disconnect from that compulsion.  But more important was the need to grasp the true meaning of the Bethlehem story for my entire life, not just for the month of December.


     The streets of our small towns this past weekend were strikingly empty.  The merchants’ doors were open, but the customers filtered through in thin wisps.  I was out looking for a few treasures and found them, but the spirit of Christmas was vaporous.  My small-town antennae picked up warning bells.

 
     The pews in my church were almost as vacant.  We listened to a gaggle of beautiful children sing, heard Mary’s part of the Christmas story once again.  The organ piped out “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night” while we sang along, anticipating the birth just a few days away.  But the future of the church matches that of the small towns, both being eroded by the centralizing forces of the consumer empire.  Until people learn to tend these critical components of small town existence, our future is on the auction block.


     The Christmas cards are fewer this year, too, as more of us increase our reliance on sending e-wishes.  The shift from paper to light and electricity has its benefits, but leaves some of us wondering what will become of the word, spoken or written.
     “As healthy and active as ever, I became old in this, my 79^th year,” wrote my friend Jann Maguire by email, “perhaps because of living in the same house for half my life.  Everywhere I looked, I saw the past peeking through: open school campuses, now with high locked gates; houses, including my own, where the dear departed used to live; almost empty churches where I once worked and worshiped.”  Catching herself in easy melancholy, she got out her verbal shovel and started to dig.

     "I’m grateful for study with wise teachers in vast virtual classrooms and for community service promoting art, feeding my spirit,” she declared, unearthing some peace.  “I pray we keep our hearts open and light in spite of the daily news,” she added, digging a little deeper.  “I revere the babe in the manger, the carpenter who healed, the Cosmic Christ and the Mother and Father of All,” she ended, at rest.  “Amen” I say to that.    
    
     Another friend wrote his hope that I would enjoy this season walking around town like we did my first Christmas in Lindsay, enjoying the sights of lighted houses and yards, the fires stoked, the neighbors outside taking in the stars and the night air.  We’re still safe enough here to do that, by and large.  What a gift.    


     May you unearth some small-town peace this Christmas, courtesy of the Bethlehem story.

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Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte elf in Grinch clothing.  You can send her your peace digging stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

Dos Libros

Published December 16, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


Dear Readers,

            There’s something I want you to add to your Christmas lists: some new light from Sylvia Ross.

            Sylvia is a local treasure whose books I have reviewed before in this column.  She was featured by the Book Garden in Exeter Dec. 3^rd, where she signed copies of her two newest children’s books, Fables In An Old Style (Bentley Avenue Books, 2015.) 

            I wouldn’t know Sylvia if I hadn’t been blessed with a job at the Book Garden eight years ago.  We kept and ordered copies of her first two children’s books published by Berkeley’s Heyday Press, The Lion Singer and Blue Jay Girl, and she would come to the store when she needed one.  The realities of the publishing world at that time meant that we could order copies of her books cheaper than she, the author, could.

            In the interim, the small miracle of self-publishing occurred, unlocking the doors of print media and unleashing writers from the stranglehold of the publishing world.  In the case of Sylvia Ross, the result has been the betterment of our culture and our communities.

            Fables In An Old Style / Fabulas En Un Estilo Antiguo, Books One and Two, are billed as “Comparative Literature for Children.”  Ostensibly they are children’s stories, but I found them more an immersion in real life through stories about children, through children’s eyes, for adults.  It’s just who she is, this Sylvia Ross who lives up the road, around the bend in Lemon Cove with her wonderful husband Bob and children and grandchildren.  She doesn’t discriminate according to age cohort or gender, much less race or ethnicity.  She paints them – us – altogether, just like in real life, and reminds us of that reality in the process.

            There are two terribly delicious distinctions between Sylvia’s Fables and most children’s books you’ll find on bookstore shelves.  The first is that they are bilingual, written in English and Spanish (translated by Rosalinda Villareal Teller.)  As you open the books, you find that the story progresses page by page with English on the left and Spanish on the right.  For families hoping to maintain some semblance of both languages, these books offer evidence of the importance of that effort as well as a tool for assisting in it.  For those of us hoping to expand into one or the other of our two major language systems in this valley, it’s a breath of fresh air.  Hope.

            The other distinction is that they are meant to be colored in.  Once an illustrator for Disney, Sylvia has drawn lovely pictures reminiscent of coloring books interleaved in the stories, and suggests in the table of contents that we buy a set of colored pencils to accompany the gift of these books.  “Some books seek a little desecration,” she noted in Book Two.

            But it’s the stories themselves that are the gifts in these books.  We meet children both naughty and good-hearted, fathers with tempers and women who forget the importance of common things, good kings and bad neighbors, and even one dragon.  We learn the relation between good and bad, about growth of character, the development of morals, the loss of goodwill and blessing, and the critical role of love in the world.  Billed as “fables,” the stories are parables about real life, and reading them, whether aloud to a little one or silently, letting the storyline work its magic inside our heads and hearts, we are reminded what life is all about.

            I encourage you to meet the village gardeners, wizards, witches and woodworkers who Sylvia has gathered together for us to learn from, and take them home for Christmas.  You’ll see the holidays through sweeter eyes and watch otherwise invisible miracles occur if you do.

             Blessings as you go through these next short days.  Yours, Trudy

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Trudy Wischemann is an avid reader who would be dead without books.  You can send her your favorite fables c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.