Congratulations!

Congratulations

to Mary Maresh of Caldwell, Texas, who celebrated her 105th birthday Monday April 28.

Her long life makes her special, but so does the fact that, at age two, she rode the Orphan Train from New York to Texas. There a loving family adopted her.

Latest statistics imply that as many as 400,000 children rode the trains to almost every state in the Union. Today, it's estimated that fewer than 50 of those children remain alive.

So Mary Maresh is also to be congratulated for being a member of that diminishing group.

from Marilyn June Coffey, MAIL-ORDER KID

A Tale in Three Parts

A Tale in Three Parts

Part 1: The Invitation

Melany Wilks, Library Director, Pioneer Memorial Library in Colby, KS, asked me to come speak and sell my books at her library during National Library Week.  I would be one of several writers who spoke at her luncheons during the April 14-18 week. Typically 35 to 70 people attend each presentation.

"Our audience loves to have authors share about their books, themselves and other interesting tidbits," Ms. Wilks wrote. "They like to purchase books and get them signed as well." 

I accepted.

Part 2: The Journey

When my straw boss, Paco Keopanya, and I set out from Omaha Monday morning for our 350-mile journey, the rain pelted the windshield.  

Somewhere near Lincoln, sheets of rain became sleet. Paco slowed down.  

Along about Grand Island, the sleet became a torrent of snow. The windshield wipers flapped wildly. Traffic slowed. Visibility plummeted. 

Rather than risk passing the Brown Transfer semi creeping in front of us, Paco followed it. He flipped on warning lights, and we inched along. Hardly anyone passed us. The few cars that did slipped in the growing piles of slush covering the left lane. 

The truck rolled slower and slower. Finally it, and we, stopped. After we sat for 15 minutes or so, Paco eased into the left lane. Trucks and cars lined up ahead of us as far as we could see. On either side of us, wet snow fell in lacy curtains in the silent afternoon. The sight took my breath away.

When the two-truck accident cleared ahead of us, we moved on into Kearney for gas. As we stepped out of the car, slush piled up around our ankles. "Shall we stop?" I asked Paco, and we nearly did, but instead pushed south on Highway 183. 

South of the Interstate, the blizzard broke. Big state trucks cleared the highway. We thought we'd stay over night in Alma, Nebraska, and drive to Colby in the morning. Food strengthened us. After a late lunch, we pushed on gratefully along a clear road through beautiful country. Snow? No one had seen it.

Part 3: The Insight

I'm used to public speaking. Since 1967, I've given more than 200 presentations in a variety of places: coffee houses, colleges, libraries, galleries, etc.  But this time, I decided to try a new way of warming up my audience.

I handed out sheets listing 10 possible questions audience members might ask about me as a writer. I answered one, as a sample, then asked people to call out the number of a question they wanted me to answer.

This worked well. I answered about three or four before I went on to other topics. These questions seemed to make people comfortable asking their own questions during my presentation.

Here are the ten questions I used.

About the Author 

Marilyn June Coffey 

Curious? Ask me to tell you about any of these topics.

1. My decision to become a writer.

2. My first publication.

3. My Saturday Evening Post publication.

4. Interviewing my dad when he was a senator.

5. Why I quit working for a liquor magazine in Denver.

6. Covering a murder for the Hastings Daily Tribune.

7. Getting in trouble working as a typist in San Diego.

8. Should I be a strikebreaker for the Portland newspaper?

9. Two weeks in New York City, already working as a tour guide.

10. Getting fired from Good Housekeeping.

11. Search for news reporting job in New York's major papers.

12. Helping Associated Press publish a book on Kennedy's death.

Or how I wrote any of my books: Marcella, a novel; Great Plains Patchwork, essays; Pricksongs, poetry; or Mail-Order Kid, biography.

What a Find!

Such a delight, reading Michael T. Keene's Abandoned: The Untold Story of Orphan Asylums! It is exactly the book I'd of given an eye tooth for in the 1990s when I was researching my own orphan train book, Mail-Order Kid. At that time, I knew that the Children's Aid Society and the Foundling weren't the only New York orphanages in existence, but where were the others? I could find out little about them, but Keene has done that footwork for all of us.

He delineates, in his plain style, the histories of eighteen orphanages, most in New York City or state. He focuses on people, on the wide variety of benefactors, visionaries, and saints who founded these asylums, and he adds tidbits about orphan train agents and riders. 

An interesting history it is, too, touching on such details as children being hung by their thumbs for punishment, the abduction and conversion of a young Jewish boy, the incineration of the Colored Orphan Asylum, and the accidental discovery of numerous bones of babies drowned by their unwed mothers. P. T. Barnum and Abraham Lincoln are bit players.

In short, Keene's Abandoned is a must-read for students, researchers, and descendants of orphan train riders. It reunites us with an important segment of that history.

-- Marilyn June Coffey

RESOLVED: I will not kill myself

RESOLVED: I will not kill myself

over this unexpected, gloomy turn of events.

At home, one mid-December afternoon, I heard something hissing. "What's that noise?"

"What noise?" Jack said, but he's three-quarters deaf so his response didn't count.

Maybe the furnace, but when I listened, I could hear both the furnace and this hissing noise. Same with the refrigerator. 

I walked all around the house, and that noise, which never crescendoed or decrescendoed, went everywhere with me. Anguished, I plugged my ears, but the noise did not stop. With growing horror, I realized the source of that noise was me. My ears were ringing.

I jumped on the Internet, stepped quickly from "ringing ears" to "tinnitus." Here's what I found.

Tinnitus (tin-EYE-tus) is the sensation of sound in one's ear when actual sound is not present. The sound can be various. It may ring, click, buzz, pulse, wheeze, hiss like a radiator, or chirp like a cricket. Mine drones like a chorus of cicadas, not loud, but persistent.

Most folks whose ears ring aren't bothered by it. They dismiss it in the same way one might dismiss traffic noise. But others, like me, get irritable or depressed.

What causes ears to ring? For most people, loud noise brings tinnitus on, but that's not true in my case. I'm not sure what caused it: a side effect of aspirin or lithium, my low thyroid, aging or vertigo (dizziness). But I haven't been dizzy for a couple of years, keeping my vertigo at bay with a weekly Epley maneuver. Aging seemed more likely. That didn't make me happy.

The really bad news: tinnitus has no cure.

When I realized I must live with my cicadas day after day (and night after night) for the rest of my life, I got a bit glum.

However, I took myself in hand, saying, you've got to learn to live with them. And I tried.  

I quickly realized that the more real noise in the room, the less my cicadas bothered me. Sometimes I forgot them altogether, if the radio played or if I talked to someone on the phone or if Jack declaimed about punctuation errors (or the marvels of the universe). Even cooking supper could take my mind off my beasties, but they intruded in what used to be "my" space whenever background noise got low or whenever I forgot to ignore them.

They really butted in when I tried to write or to sleep.

In my office, I turned my two sound masking machines on high and ran the heater, the way I do when Jack turns his DVD volume up. That helped.

At night, I kicked up the volume on my sleep music, currently an Arctic Wind white noise CD, and that helped, too.

But nothing shut them up.

Nights were the pits, especially when I woke surrounded by zilch but blackness and cicadas. Then I felt sorry for myself. "Oh, God!" I cried. "Give me one second, just one second of utter silence!" He remained silent but the cicadas droned on and on and on.

Tinnitus has no cure, but doctors came up with "maskers" that may disguise the sound. And with therapy which might retrain a person's brain, teaching it how to ignore the constant sound. That's good news.  

But not good news is the list of things a person can ingest that may worsen the cicadas' drone. "Eliminate consumption of brain-altering substances like caffeine" is the way they oust my cravings. Drink no coffee or tea and eat no chocolate? Good grief! 

Now should you have a cheery thought left after reading all this, please send it to me. I could use some rose-colored stimuli. 

Xmas 2013

How was my Christmas Day?

Thanks for asking.

I rise with alarm, make tentative love (Back ache. Try to remember I can't shovel snow like I could even last year.)

Dress. Two strings of beads, one green, one red, for the day.

A sudden hug causes accidental tip-over in kitchen. Slam into stove, moisten pants, but Jack & I both okay.

Breakfast as usual. Fresh strawberries, blueberries, banana slices, assorted nuts slathered with Greek yogurt. Slice of Ezekiel bread toasted with peanut butter. Coffee with heated milk.

Read OMAHA WORLD-HERALD. Only two comic strips, Doonesbury and Get Fuzzy, have no Xmas theme.

Exercise to Mannheim Steamroller's Xmas carols.

Find an area rug to replace the skimpy towel on the front porch, a Xmas present for Jack's two feral black cats that eat and drink there. Don't tell. He's breaking the law.

Fill bird feeders.

Sandwich for lunch. Fresh organic grapes and cherries.

Listen to Jack sing "Deck the Halls with Moe and Curly" and recite "'Twas the Night before Solstice," his parodies.

Want to walk outside but it's gray and windy. Postpone working out on the treadmill. After all, it's a holiday.

Work on Hoffa book. Doing research on Josephine Poszywak who married Hoffa, a clear case of opposites attract.

Salad for supper. And ice cream, a splurge.

Read Colin Wilson's THE CRAFT OF THE NOVEL, to Jack. We talk, and laugh about PAMELA. What a break through!

Do dishes. Put pills in little boxes for next week.

Read two more "father" poems from Sharon Olds's STRIKE SPARKS. She's terrific. I've never been so moved by death-of-a-parent poetry since Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish" blew me away.

Collected my good night hug and went to bed.

That's how my Christmas Day was. How was yours?

Engaging Answers

Where were you when President Kennedy was killed?

Here's some engaging answers written by compeers.

Country school with no tv. The neighbor called to say what happened.

LaRayne Meyer Topp

Nebraska Writers' Guild

I was in my 1st grade room when the principal announced it over the loud speaker. We cried.

Nancy Nielsen

Nebraska Writers' Guild

I was on a bus going to Kansas City when in Topeka a young man came running up and started pounding on the door. The bus driver wouldn't open the door but finally the boy yelled the news loud enough for us to hear. Someone then pulled out a small transistor radio and we all listened the rest of the way.

Charlene Neely

Nebraska Writers' Guild

My class had just returned from lunch. The principal abruptly put a radio station on the intercom, saying, "The President has just been shot." We never changed classes the rest of the afternoon. We sat and listened to impossible news. Impossible? We were studying "Macbeth." Students had said things like, "Nobody kills kings." They never said that again.

 

David Prinz Hufford

(find David's poetry on Barnes & Noble or Amazon)

I was sitting in my living room in California watching a rerun of "I Love Lucy". I had a three year old at my feet and I was feeding my five month old. The Lucy episode was of a gutted television set with Lucy crouched inside it. She said, "We interrupt this program to bring you a special report" Almost immediately the television flashed Walter Cronkite with the same message. I had to take a double-take to understand it was real. I was a basket case the rest of the day. Bawled my eyes out.

Frieda Dryden, 

Author of:

Leonard's Wife, Misty's Child

Evil Seed, Trailer Trash

 I was a Freshman at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, just leaving my final class of the day, American History, when I heard people saying, "the President's been shot."

"That just can't be," I thought, but more and more people were saying it was true, so I rushed toward the dorm, to get to a television, fearful, needing to find out what was going on.

I'll always have the shock of hearing of Kennedy's assassination accompanied with hearing  bells, the library bell ringing overhead signaling time for the next class to begin.

 

Kay Golden

This is Ralph's memory of meeting JFK June 1963 in England:

Transcending all though is my own memory from June, 63 of the few moments experience of the dazzling smile, the sheer personal up close aura, the firm handshake and the quick exchange of a few sentences of wit and wisdom with the man himself.

Kennedy had taken time out from his visit to Eire to visit the Chatsworth Estate in Derbyshire, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire to whom he was related by the marriage of his sister Kathleen. She died here in an air crash either late in WW2 or just after, and her grave is in the churchyard of Edensor, a village on the estate.

All local press in the region were told at fairly short notice, which included the group I was training with, Formans, whose main titles were The Nottingham Evening Post and the morning Guardian Journal. Nottinghamshire is the next county east of Derbyshire.

The photographer whose bags I carried hauled me out of the darkroom saying: "This is your chance to see President Kennedy!"

We sped along as he explained why and joined about 40 others in a press pound a few yards away from the church gate.

There was soon a whump-whump of helicopter rotors and two landed a short distance away.

A small knot of men, some uniformed, others in "plainclothes" suits formed from the machines, then more than five detached and walked towards the church and us.

One lone figure clearly gestured the rest should wait and became quickly recognizable as JFK.

He walked to the church gate and went inside. Emerging awhile later he paused for us at the gate then headed our way, waving the obvious Secret Service men to stay put.

Reaching us he said something like "Hi, thanks for coming along, gentlemen." 

He then looked at me, put his hand forward and said; "You look very young to be involved in all this."

From somewhere inside I found a calm voice pitch, shook the hand and said; "I'm learning about it, sir. I've heard a lot of people say you look very young to be in your job too!"

The eyes flashed and he laughed and replied, "It's never to soon to be a journalist! Good luck it's an honourable profession. Maybe I'll be doing it again if I don't get reelected next year!

With that he stepped back, posed briefly again and walked back to the other men.

Ralph Stephenson

(his photos can be seen on www.flickr.com)

Nov. 22

Where were you  today, Nov. 22, in 1963, when JFK was assassinated?

I perched on a stool at a curved wooden bar in a dark New York City tavern. My long-legged boss, Patricia "Pat" Chapman and I were running late, so we ordered beers and sandwiches. Our beers slid into place.

A blaring TV hanging above us featured "As the World Turns." Pat and I groaned at the low-class fare, then laughed. 

Our sandwiches came. We munched down.

Above us, Thanksgiving provided a crisis for the TV soap.  "Nancy" tried to bring "Grandpa" up to date when a CBS News Bulletin broke through. Walter Cronkite's voice said, "Three shots fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas." My head snapped up. "Seriously wounded." I struggled to believe this.

Pat stood and fumbled with her purse. "Come on," she said. 

Cronkite's voice continued: "Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy. She called, 'Oh, no.' The motorcade sped on." I wanted to howl in protest, but I had no time. Pat slapped cash down. "Let's move it!" Our lunch stayed on the counter.

We ran and jogged back to the office, Home Furnishings Daily (HFD), our handbags slapping our thighs. By the time we arrived,"seriously wounded" has changed to "dead." I felt glazed.

At HFD, sister paper to the famous Women's Wear Daily, I worked as a market reporter. Our trade paper appealed to buyers and makers of home furnishing products. 

Gender lines divided the paper. Men wrote the page-one stories that dealt with important products that women couldn't understand. Washing machines, for instance. Pat and I wrote inside stories for less significant items like wall decor and bone china.  

At her office desk, Pat divvied up the work. We turned to our phones. I called manufacturers and importers of dinnerware, asking each the same thing: "How will the president's death affect your business?" I found the question difficult to ask but jotting down answers proved even harder. 

Our routine reporting seemed distasteful. Kennedy, to me, had been larger than life, so asking how his death might affect business seemed crass and disrespectful. My body didn't stiffen, but inside, something congealed. 

That night, my husband, Tom Henshaw, a feature writer for Associated Press, called from the office. "We're putting together a book about Kennedy, all stops pulled. We want to be the first out with a hardcover book, but we need copy editors. Can you come down?"

So I put my feelings on hold and worked around the clock with the AP guys to produce The Torch is Passed. Heady with our achievement, whatever I might have felt about Kennedy's assassination disappeared.

Until now. Until I saw, on YouTube, in black-and-white the familiar face of CBS anchor Walter Cronkite detailing Kennedy's death. Then, I broke down. I sobbed, moaned, and keened for the young president that I had loved and lost to an assassin's bullet. For the smashing of his Camelot. For weeks and months that could have been.