Author: Natalie Hart

Review: The Mighty Miss Malone

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

Books like this are why I love to read and why I want to write. Miss Deza Malone is a diamond of a character. It isn’t just that she is bright and has a sparkling personality (both of which are true), but it’s also that she is so clear. Christopher Paul Curtis has given us a child who is clear about who she is. She knows herself, her family, her community.

What a pleasure to read about a child who has been loved and known and encouraged by an intact family for her entire 12 years. I adore the Malone family — not perfect, but real and loving and firm and funny. Deza’s compass for truth and nonsense come straight from what her parents taught her and what she observes of how the world works. The family has a hand signal to warn each other that they know someone is trying to string them along: they put their hands on the imaginary steering wheel of the Manipula-Mobile. The father often speaks in alliteration, and has long alliterative names for everyone. They so clearly love each other. So often, main characters in children’s lit are orphans, or one parent has died, or they have at least one terrible parent, so it’s a testament to Mr. Curtis’s skill that he crafts such a dramatic story for this great family.

Deza is intelligent and curious and asks for an explanation when she runs across something she doesn’t understand. That last thing is a great personality trait in a character, because the author gets to explain things that would be beyond a child’s normal understanding or experience. It is a regular refrain in the book that she will become a writer, that she’ll go to college. Deza lodged herself in my heart and I’m dying to know whether any of that happened. PLEASE, Mr. Curtis, write a sequel some day.

She’s also self-aware. I loved how she’d talk about her reactions when things didn’t go her way or something really bad was happening.

I’m different from most people and one of the main reasons is, I think I might have two brains. Whenever I get nervous or mad or scared or very upset, I have thoughts that are so different from my normal thoughts that there isn’t any way they could be coming from just one brain (p31).

She usually grits her rotting back teeth until the pain stops the bad brain, because she is a child who values truth and honesty. But the couple of times she takes the bad brain’s counsel are fantastic.

 The Mighty Miss Malone is, akin to the Newberry-winning, Bud, Not Buddy, a road book for part of the time. The book takes place in mid-1930s Gary, Indiana and Flint, Michigan, cities that were devastated by the Great Depression, even more so for Deza because she and her family are African-American. She and her mother and brother ride the rails and live in a shantytown — where she meets Bud. Deza appeared in Bud, No Buddy, so here we get the same scene from her point of view. (I didn’t remember this. It had been years since I’d read Bud, so I had to google it.) It’s a sweet little moment.

I won’t tell you all the stuff that happens, but, in many ways, it’s typical of other stories about the Depression: the father leaves to find work, promising to send money, and then doesn’t. Things get really tough. Here’s how Deza describes it.

If somebody came along and saw us walking they’d mistake us for a very quiet parade instead of what we really were, a river of people who didn’t know what city we’d be in tomorrow, or what we’d be eating, or even where somebody would let us stop and rest (p227).

Hoping is such hard work. It tires you out and you never seem to get any kind of reward. Hoping feels like you’re a balloon that has a pinhole that slowly leaks air (p232).

And I won’t tell you how it ends, either, but it makes you root for them to get to where their family motto says they’re heading: “We are a family on a journey to a place called Wonderful.”

Well, this novel is wonderful, and the cover is killer good. Along with being a good, dramatic story, it’s accurate history. I highly recommend it.

SYTCD: Performance Show 3

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

I love So You Think You Can Dance. The dancers are young and at the top of their game. They show every style of dance. It is wonderful and inspiring! And because I have a blog in which I write about things I think are wonderful, I can indulge my passion for the show and my many opinions about the dancers and dancing. If this isn’t your thing, I’ll catch you next time.

George and Tiffany: That was some great, precise, fast hip hop. I was impressed with how they did, although those outfits didn’t do them any favors — way too heavy with the cutesy. Their moves had more toughness than their costumes gave the impression of. And I remember how great Christina Applegate was as a judge last year; love her suggestion to make the slow moves “soupier.” She was right on.

Brandon and Amber: This is one of the new partnerships after last week’s eliminations, and I’m looking forward to it. Brandon is a better partner for Amber than Nick was. She looked so much physically stronger than Nick, but Brandon is big enough to make her look little and delicate. Amber was amazing. Her smile was so personal, not at all a big “I’m dancing on the stage and don’t I look pretty” smile. Her dancing was free and strong and gorgeous. It came from way inside. She way out-danced Brandon. He was fine, but this one was all about Amber. In that way, it kind of reminds me of several seasons ago, the dance Twitch and Katie did to “Mercy” — Katie did all the athletic and amazing stuff and Twitch mostly strutted around looking hot and lifting her now and then.

Darien and Janelle: It wasn’t a particularly sexy Latin dance, and it wasn’t technically great, but it was cute. I have a thing for men on this show who have eyes-only for their partner, and he looked at her like they were dancing for real. I’m worried that they’re in the bottom three, because these comments are worse than I would’ve expected (and the judges already know who’s in the bottom).

Cole and  Lindsey: The first week, they did the best Paso Doble I’ve ever seen on this show. For the first time, the dance didn’t seem like a histrionic joke. However, their choreography didn’t do them any favors last week. Fingers crossed about them getting Mandy Moore this week. I didn’t get the “story,” but that was gorgeous, the two of them so strong with such long, beautiful legs. The lighting was the best ever, not distracting, helped us focus on the dancing. Cole is so explosive with his movement, and can be so light, just wonderful. Christina is right about the hair hiding her face too much. I really liked this one.

Will and Amelia: There really was something about Will in this number. I would never have thought to put him in a white suit, but he looked great in it. His movement worked well with it. I didn’t think Amelia’s quirk fit with this number. There wasn’t enough to connect with. But he did the “care for his partner” thing that I like so much.

Ryan Gosling, oops, I mean Matthew and Audrey: Oh no. I have a sense of foreboding. They are wearing the kiss of death matching red shiny costumes that Daniel and whatsername were stuck with the first week. Fingers crossed that these two pull it off and that Audrey can lose her “cute” for the salsa. Nope. No sex appeal. Great moves and tricks, but little connection with each other. The music was too grandiose for them.

Chehon and Witney (yes I spelled that correctly): I have high hopes for these two, especially if Chehon can finally release his ballet posture. I love me some Stacey Tookie. LOVED THIS. On a purely frivolous note, Chehon should always dance shirtless. But this had emotion and tenderness and passion and I loved it. Great combination of speed and slow. Crazy big opening lift. Insane for the move when he pushed her across the stage from behind. The two times she just put her head on his arm. It was all just perfect. It made me teary and gave me goosebumps. Best number of the night, and possibly of the season so far.

Cyrus and Eliana: Big hopes for this. The last time a real hip hop person and a ballet dancer did a Nappy Tabs routine, it was insanely good. This was really good; not as exhilarating as Twitch and Alex Wong, but so, so good. The charm of these two dancers was off the charts. And Eliana locked and isolated so well. Actually, Christina came up with the best word for this routine: sublime.

Nervous about the bottom three. This time, it contains people I really like, and people who danced really well tonight. I predict Amber and Brandon will go home. Their solos didn’t connect; they were too flaily (yes, I just made up that word, means “too much flailing about”).

And we get Alvin Ailey dancers. I am a happy woman. Although I am also a little shallow. The skirts these men are wearing look like the kind of skirts the women on this show often wear during the paso doble — reversible matador capes. This is a little distracting to me, but now that I’ve gotten that comment out of my system, maybe I can concentrate on the dance a little better. I’d call this, “histrionic androgyny.” It was physically demanding and cool, but I wasn’t feeling it.

I was right about both. At least Amber got to go out on such an amazingly high note.

I Wish There Wasn’t Evidence

~ Natalie Hart ~ 3 Comments

Oh, the diaries project is getting bad. For those of you new to this party, this is a series in which I go through my childhood diaries. Verbatim. With you.

I wish there was more evidence of me as a child who read a lot, loved school (except 8th grade geometry), had babysitting and painting jobs, loved her family, went to church even when the rest of her family didn’t, and went on as many young people’s retreats/conferences and service weekends as she could. Those were all true. Yet I get this:

grade 8 graduation

 

Thurs., Feb. 5, 1981, age 13  Teen Club tonight was a learning experience to say the least. At first, I thought my only friend was K. But then I was hiding with D. and he asked me if I hated his guts. I said no, not necessarily. Then I got the surprise of my life, he said he liked me. I wasn’t expecting that. And on the way home I found out that J. doesn’t hate me. Or he did a good job of covering it up, but I think he likes me (normally of course). Bye-bye.

 

At least that took place at church. There was spiritual content to the club meetings, I swear. But it was clearly eclipsed in importance by the social angle. I’ll do well to remember this when my kids’ reports on their youth group evenings include nothing about God or Jesus.

According to the evidence, during those early teen years, I mainly wrote diary entries when I had something of a romantic nature to report. The next entry after the above was July 31, 1982, then September 15, 1983, and then August 24, 1984. Yup, I really got around. Even less when you consider that only one of those was about anything actually happening.

Let’s rip the band aid off and not delay another second.

7/31/82, age 14  Haven’t seen ya in over a year or so. Tell you what’s new. I’m going into gr. 10, I don’t like anyone in particular, I’m a Gen. Hosp. and Y&R nut. I’m fat. I’m not really that fat but I’ve graduated to a size 30 jean and weigh a touch over 130. So, I promised myself that in August I would do swim training, and, I suppose I will. I really have to lose weight/fat and get rid of my zits. I have 6 weeks until school and I’m doing to do it!! It’s 11 p.m., R’s at camp and I’m going to dreamland good-bye.

9/15/83, age 15  What a frustrating weekend. JW is a really nice guy. We went for 2 long walks in the total dark, arm in arm. That’s all he did. I think he liked me because we were around each other a lot but we could never really talk. He was too serious anyway. And the ass didn’t even acknowledge my presence that Sunday. (This was at the Kwasind weekend.) Boy was I pissed off. Oh well. This was an almost fling. He never tried anything beyond arm in arm.

16th birthday

 

8/26/84, age 16  I had a fling today in Michigan! J and I went to the Hope College dance and on the way we met G and another guy. We went to G’s house (he looks GREAT in a towel). Not until Highway to ____ song did we dance and boy did we dance. To make a long story short we ended up making out all over the place: room off the dance floor, dance floor, car…. He gives the impression of tenderness and reverence by touching my hair, face, arms and back softly.

 

I can’t even tell you how much I hated typing all that. I hate the evidence of how I talked to myself about how “fat” I was, of how much mental energy I wasted, making elaborate plans to solve that non-problem. I did have spectacularly bad skin. Any attempts to address it only made me feel worse about myself, so I alternated between ignoring it and loathing myself for it. Which I suppose is how I’m feeling about those long ago feelings. Come to think of it, I did lose weight before school that year — I got really, really sick, like 104 degree fever sick.

Something more properly momentous happened at that 1983 weekend: it was the first time I took Communion. It was a mixed-denomination retreat for teenagers, and when Sunday came they served Communion. I took it even though I hadn’t done Profession of Faith yet. The blurb in the program invited everyone who believed in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour (it being Canada, we had the “u” in savior) to participate. So I did. I was such a rebel. Actually, it did feel rebellious. That weekend, my heart pounded with nerves both because I was taking Communion when I “shouldn’t have” and because a boy I kind of liked didn’t try to kiss me. Those 2 walks in the dark out in the country, sitting on a dock overlooking an inland lake, no light pollution, falling stars, etc. were worth it, even if they didn’t result in what I wanted.

The 1984 entry sounds like more than it was. J and I went to this guy’s house, but he was our age, so it was his parents’ house. It was show-offy of him to come out in a towel, though, before returning to his room to get dressed. I’m sure he had some reasonable explanation, like that he’d just gotten back from work. And someone tell me why I could make out with a boy I’d just met, yet wouldn’t spell the word “Hell” in my private diary entry? Oh the contradictions.

My family and I listen to a lot of Bill Cosby when we drive anywhere that takes longer than a half-hour. His “75$ Car” bit is mostly about a junker he drove, but he starts out by detailing the relationship with the girl he drove the junker to go see. It has a few lines about kissing that are filled with nostalgia for the days of endless kissing (my favorite line is “kissin’ up on the whatnot shelf”). The days when it was just about kissing and not anything further. At 16, for me, that was all it was about. That and G. did what I call the Sound of Music kiss, which was worth a diary entry.

When Captain von Trapp kissed Maria for the first time out in the gazebo, putting his hands tenderly and reverently on her face, it was imprinted on me as the ideal romantic kiss. I remain impressed that a 16- or 17-year-old boy had that in his repertoire. It’d be almost 10 years before a boy did that again — and I married him.

So, people, throw that one in now and then. It’s a lovely kiss. Maybe enough to inspire a diary entry even now.

 

When a Drudge Becomes a Callling

~ Natalie Hart ~ 3 Comments

The first time I taught Sunday School, I was 17. I don’t remember much, other than my felt board and singing the occasional song that got so loud the grown ups could hear us upstairs.

The next time, it was called Children’s Worship, and I was a thirtyish mother of very young children. During that year, I saw a child truly worship — close her eyes, raise her hands, and sing to the Lord with every fiber of her first grade self. It was one of the most beautiful and pure things I’d ever seen. That was also the year I played poker with a few young gentlemen during their choice time, because it was the only way to keep them from wrestling. Neither beautiful nor pure, but fun.

When we moved to the multiracial church when my youngest was 2, I formalized the children’s worship program and lead it every Sunday for eight months. I knew only a few adults in the congregation, but I really got to know the kids. I was the only leader, so I had all the kids, ages 3-2nd grade, and, before I got tough, multiple young helpers. It was exciting and energizing and exhausting.

Then more leaders came on board and there was a schedule. And the next year, even more leaders, enough to split into two classrooms. It felt like such a luxury for me to only lead the preschoolers. There were such competent people involved that I began to daydream about handing over the responsibilities and focusing on dance and drama. I took some seminars, talked to some people, and felt like God was moving me away from children’s worship and towards new opportunities. It was exciting and energizing. And then the church imploded.

In the ensuing storm after discovering that a trusted member of the congregation had embezzled thousands of dollars from the church and the pastor, dozens of people left the church, including 6 of my 7 other children’s worship leaders. I went from thinking I’d be happily taking my shift while someone else was in charge, to being one of two people, in charge again — no separate classrooms, with the kids fully half of the time I was at church.

I gritted my teeth and did it because I believed strongly in the benefits of kids being presented with the great stories of the faith and with church at their developmental level. I like to think I didn’t take it out on the kids, but that was the year Miss Natalie would go into her office for brief timeouts when things got too frustrating. There were so many Sunday mornings I cried, exhausted, telling God that I had nothing to give anymore, so He needed to supply me with some of His energy. He always did. There were many beautiful and fun moments during those hard years when we couldn’t keep a third leader; people would sign up, do it a couple of times, and then leave the church.

I was getting bitter. I didn’t want to be “the kid person.” But after a few years everything shifted during a conversation with my other stalwart leader. We were complaining about our situation and he said something like, “I do it selfishly because of my kids, but you do it because you love it.”

He was right. I did love it, and I loved the kids, and that was why I did it. And just like that, I settled back into the role. I didn’t do it begrudgingly anymore. I didn’t need to beg God to make sure I wasn’t a bitch. I embraced the gifts God had given me. And God brought me leaders enough to split the kids into two classrooms. I wrote a new preschool curriculum with felt board-based storytelling and had a glorious year with my kids — the wild ones I had to rein in and the ones who’d tell me they weren’t going to sing but found themselves singing and doing actions when I sneakily did all their favorite songs. And then the church imploded. This time, I was one of the people who left.

Which means it has been six weeks since I’ve told a Bible story to children or sung silly-yet-spiritual songs with them, and I’m jonesing. So indulge me here. It’s a longish one, but I had so much fun telling this last fall.

As the children arrive, give them one “stone” (a soft ball from the basket that will be waiting by the door). Tell them to hold it carefully and sit in the circle. When everyone’s there, tell them that we’re going to try to defeat our enemy, the filing cabinet. First, does anyone want to try to push it over? Let everyone who wants to, give it a shot ONE AT A TIME.

Now, does anyone want to see if throwing your stone at it will hurt it? Again, ONE AT A TIME.

Segue to the story.

Well, we didn’t defeat the filing cabinet today. But let’s listen to a story about how David, when he was just a kid, a long time before he became king of Israel, defeated someone way, way, way bigger than him with God’s help.

This story takes place during a time of war: a people called the Philistines were at war with Israel. They were on either side of a valley, with a stream in the middle.

 

Every day, a giant came out on the Philistine side. He made fun of God and of the Israelites and challenged them to send one fighter out: if that one fighter could beat him, then the Israelites would win the whole war. If that one person lost, the Israelites would be the Philistine’s slaves.

Goliath was huge, and he had a big sword, and a javelin and a fancy helmet and even his shield was bigger than a regular-sized man.

The Israelite soldiers were terrified of the giant Goliath, and none of them went out to fight him.

David’s three older brothers, Eliab, Abinadab and Shammah were in the Israelite army. One day, David’s parents sent him with some food to give to the army.

When David got there, his brothers gave him a boost so he could see Goliath come out and taunt the Israelites.

Goliath had been doing that for 40 days, and nobody had even tried to fight him. When David heard that, he was upset that none of the soldiers trusted God enough to help them, so he went up to the king and volunteered.

Well, some people laughed and David’s big brother Eliab got angry at him. David was still just a kid, maybe 15 years old. But David insisted that God would help him and he could do it. So King Saul let him. The king tried to give David his own armor, but it was way, way too big.

David took off all that stuff and walked forward with only his shepherd’s staff and his sling.

When Goliath saw that Israel was sending a kid to fight him, at first he laughed, but then he got offended and he ran towards David with a roar.

David walked across the stream and picked up five smooth stones.

While he ran towards Goliath, he put one stone in his sling, swung it over his head once, and let go.

The stone went right for the unprotected part of Goliath’s forehead, sunk in, and stunned him. He fell face-forward on the ground.

He was still alive, so David took Goliath’s own sword and cut off his head.

David had done what all the grown-ups couldn’t do: he defeated the giant, because he trusted God to help him, so God did.

My Men In Black Image of God

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

Here is something I missed during the recent heat wave: thinking random and occasionally deep thoughts while my brain was occupied with the domestic task of making dinner. The oppressive heat has broken, so I cooked last night. And my random and possibly deep thoughts revolved around God and a character in Men In Black 3 and the future.

Griffin (in the center) is an alien who can see the future: all of them at the same time. There are many possible futures, each one affected by the choices the characters make. He is a sweet, sweet character, wanting the good futures to happen, wanting people to make the choices that lead to the good futures, but he sees all the negative consequences of various actions, as well. He helps the Will Smith character, guides him as much as possible, and gives him a very important gift that could save the world, but it’s up to the players to act and react and make the good future happen.

At a couple of points in the film, he stands outside the action, saying, “I hope this is the one where this happens.”

While grating cheese to go over the mushroom ravioli, I realized that this is my image of God and God’s plan for my life. I can totally imagine God watching me, seeing my various futures arrayed in front of me, hoping I choose a particular path, but prepared to work with me no matter what I choose.

There are a lot of Christians who are earnestly searching for God’s Plan/Will For My Life, as if it were one official plan that each of us had to figure out and then just go along with. This is certainly the point of view of the devotional we’ve been reading with the kids at night (Jesus Calling for kids). As if God has a planner, and if we miss an appointment, we could miss the entire plan. There is an expectation that God’s plan is detailed and specific: you need to find the one right college God wants you to go to, the one right career path, the one right spouse, the one right church, etc. If you ask my best friend, Mr. Google, how to “find God’s plan for my life,” you will find millions of posts with authoritative directions and multi-step processes.

I don’t see it that way, but I can see how people get there. After all, Jeremiah 29:11 says, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘They are plans for good and not disaster, plans to give you hope and a future.'”

I was going to go into a paragraph about my understanding of Hebrew ideas, that they are less fixed than Western ideas of the same term, but Skip Moen already did it for me, and much better. He says the Hebrew word for plans in the above passage means, “thought, plan, or invention”:

“I know the new ideas I have for you.”  God’s plans are never cast in concrete.  They are flexible, adjusting to our lives as our circumstances change.  It is easy to think that God has only one perfect plan for your life and that if you make a mistake or sin, the plan will be forever destroyed.  Then you will have to live with second best, then third best and so on each time you fail to meet expectations.  But God does not have one perfect plan for you.  He has one purpose – one goal – that you become all that you were meant to be through conformity to the image of the Messiah.  The goal never changes.  But the plans are new ideas every day.  God is full of surprises.  An eternal inventor.

This makes me grin. The questions about “what should I do” become not, “Am I following God’s Plan for Me?” but “Will this help me conform to Christ’s image?” and “Can I be a faithful follower and servant here?” maybe even “Can I learn more about serving God here?” It could even be, “Which choice will bring me the most joy?”

My family is facing a church decision. We left our previous congregation a month ago, and while we’d prefer to wander around a variety of churches this summer and make a leisurely decision, that doesn’t seem to be where things are heading. My husband is being courted for a possible part-time job at one church. It feels too soon, but we’re pursuing it, praying about it, not putting up any roadblocks yet. Letting this surprise play out.

With my Griffin from MIB3 image of God, God is watching us on the cusp of this new direction, giving us bits of guidance and encouragement, and hoping we will make the decision that will bring about the most glory for God’s kingdom. For some people, God will give them very direct instructions: turn here, go there. give that person a specific amount of money. For others, it will be a piling on of circumstances, a layering of “coincidences” that all point in a specific direction.

The most direct message God has sent me is “Serve where you are planted,” which could mean a few different things: serve in the neighborhood you live in, no matter where you are you will serve, I will plant you somewhere and you will serve there, stay where you are and serve. It wasn’t a clear answer to the anguished prayer I had at the time, but I have served wherever it was that I was planted, and I’ll continue to do so.

However, the Griffin analogy breaks down, because he doesn’t make this promise: “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” (Rom. 8:28).

Whatever we decide about this church, God will work it for good. Not necessarily for pleasant or for perfect, not always for fun, but for good. And God is with me however this plays out. My favorite promise of the three I’m quoting here is this one from Jesus: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

Of course, we can choose wrong. We are sinful and often stupid, selfish and self-justifying. We can make cascading bad decisions. But God will keep throwing new ideas at us, plopping some miracles in our path, giving us chances, trying to nudge us into better decisions and more faithful futures.

In this way of looking at it, God doesn’t send us bad things, either. It might just be the spiritual toddler in me, but I can’t think that God “sends” cancer, rape, pulmonary embolisms, drowning, etc. These things happen and God works with them to wring as much good as can come. From this point of view, God didn’t give my cousin cancer so she could be more secure in her father’s love and esteem than she ever was when she was healthy. But she got cancer and that was one of the goods God wrung out of it before she died.

So those were my deep thoughts over the stove last night. And I didn’t even burn anything. What are you thinking about these days?

 

 

 

Stealing from Life: Don’t Forget the Prankster

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

I will admit that I’m writing this post as a not-so-gentle nudge to get back to work on the 2nd book in the David and Saul series — my lack of alone time in summer wreaks havoc on my concentration. Also, I’ve told a story from my Hart side that influenced a scene in It Is You (the 1st book), and it’s time my Steenwyk side got a little glory.

The book series takes place around 1,000 BCE. Things were not luxurious for most of my characters. Theirs was a survival economy and survival was tough. So I’ve tended to make everyone focused on survival all the time, with very little lightheartedness once they reach early teen years.

But I forget about my grandfather, John Steenwyk. He was born in 1915 in Chicago, but moved to Byron Center (when it was all celery farms) soon after. They were, apparently, impressively poor. Even other poor people remember thinking, “At least we aren’t as bad up as the Steenwyks.”

And there were a lot of them — seven kids to feed and put to work to survive.

Yet Grandpa, the oldest, was a lively and curious kid who loved building things, messing around with electricity and chemistry, and playing pranks. The quotes below are in his own words.

Four of us boys all slept in one bedroom in two beds. My brother Herm slept with me and brother Joe slept with Lou in the other bed. Sometimes Herm and I would talk together about some scary things, like falling stars, to get Joe and Lou in a scary mood. One night I started telling a scary story about the stars falling down, and the boys, Joe and Lou, asked questions, you know. “Does it make a big noise when they fall?” They fired all kinds of questions at me. So I said, “Yes, sometimes they do.” Well, finally I said, “Well, let’s go to sleep now.”

Herm and I had made up a plan together. I gave him a very heavy book and I said, “You bang this book together when I give you a nudge.” Now, I had about 4 or 5 dry cell batteries under the bed with wires connected going up the window to a light I rigged outside the window. When the boys were just about nodding off, I gave Herm a nudge with my elbow so that he would bang that book together. Meantime, I snapped that switch off and on and that bulb shone and flashed in that dark room real bright. Those boys were so scared, especially Lou. He thought the house was on fire.   They were scared stiff! They thought sure that a star had fallen. 

Herm told me the same story at Grandpa’s funeral; it was a great memory of his boyhood. He said that the book closing was as loud as a gunshot and Joe and Lou thought the world was ending.

What did I learn from this? Even in desperate situations, people like to mess with each other, especially boys. Given that this David story is mostly about male persons, I can’t forget this.

Grandpa didn’t grow out of pranking, either. During the Depression, when he was 18, he joined/was drafted into the Civilian Conservation Corps, and cut down the forest to build roads in northern Michigan. He wound up with a group of only guys, living in barracks, doing hard, physical work all day.

Another story of the CCC Camp: On Saturdays we didn’t have to work all day. We could take the afternoons off and if you wanted to go to town and they would take you in the truck. Some of the guys would go and get some booze to drink. One Saturday evening, there were some fellows who had come back from town. They had been drunk and had gotten in a fight in town. Then me and a couple of pals and another fellow who liked to fix radios too, Joe Hamilton from Detroit, decided to play a hoax using my radio.
 
Joe had given me some parts so I could fix my old radio. Way out there in the sticks my old radio didn’t get the best reception but by adding a tube in there, I made my radio more powerful so I could get reception none of the other radios could get. We could even get police broadcasts on my radio and pretty plain too. So we made up together with a guy, Bucky O’Connor, who had a big voice like a truckdriver, a plan to pull off a hoax on those guys who had gotten drunk and in a fight.
 
Bucky was the broadcaster. I had run a fine wire over the ceiling from my bed towards Bucky’s bed, connected to an earphone which he was going to use as a microphone. He was going to pretend to be sleeping in his bed with the comforters thrown over his head. I had the radio. The plan was that when I gave the signal, three taps on the floor, he would begin his broadcasting.
 
So first I turned my radio on and got some regular police calls and the guys who had gotten drunk were playing cards at a table and they didn’t pay much attention. Then I gave the signal and there was a call about “a drunken brawl in Nigawni, Michigan, and the perpetrator alleged to be in the CCC Camp” and that sort of thing. So then those guys pricked up their ears and started to get really worried. Then, to tease them a little, I would turn on the regular police broadcast for a while, and then a bit later, give the signal for Bucky to do his broadcast again. Now I had about 30 of those guys going; they stopped playing cards and said, “Now, listen! Listen!” And then they all looked at the guy who had been involved in the fight and he said there were others who had been involved too.
Pretty soon, Bucky accidentally disconnected the wire to his earphone microphone and didn’t know it. My radio went dead and there was a muffled mumbling coming out from under Bucky’s comforter: “Calling all cars! Calling all cars!” Someone ran over to Bucky’s bed and pulled off the comforter and there was Bucky with that microphone, trying to broadcast.
 
All we had to do was connect that wire and we were in business again. The fellow who had been so scared from our hoax wanted to pull that same hoax on two other guys that were involved too. So we could continue the hoax when those guys came in.

Then everyone wanted to broadcast too. Half of the guys wanted to broadcast. Some had guitars; some had mouth organs and other things. The other half would go outside and stand in the cold snow listening. So that was some excitement there that they had never experienced before.

I have to add a prankster to this manuscript. Of course, there was no electricity to aid in mischief, but I’ll think of something. I’m at the point in the story when David is first living in the caves in Judah. He’s hiding out, but more and more men escape their desperate situations and come to him. And wind up in an even more desperate situation. It’s not like he has giant reserves of food for them, yet, as their leader, he has to figure out how to provide for them and (in my version) to do it as honestly as possible. Even so, there’s got to be some nonsense happening, just to blow off steam, and to make David frustrated.

J.K. Rowling used the Prankster to great effect, with Peeves and the Weasley twins. So today, while I go about my business, I instruct my imagination to get to work on some first century BCE pranks.

Wherein I Win at Relaxing

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

A couple of months ago, the family and I took a trip to Chicago, to the Museum of Science and Industry for the fantastic MythBusters exhibit. While there, we played Mindball. In this game, two opponents wearing headbands sit opposite each other. Sensors in the headbands detect each person’s brainwaves, and the most relaxed person moves a little ball towards the less relaxed person. As the MSI says, “Compete to Relax … Relax to Compete.”

This is how NOW Magazine describes it:

Mindball is “an experience product.” Players use their alpha and theta brainwaves (two of four major brainwave types) to control the rubber-coated steel ball and move it across the 4-foot-long game table. Each player wears a headband equipped with electrodes that act as biosensors to measure their brain’s electrical activity as recorded from the scalp – similar to how a neurophysiologic electroencephalogram(EEG) machine is used to assess brain damage and epilepsy.

The person with the stronger alpha and theta brainwaves will be able to “push” a magnetic carriage under the table (visible to players and audience as a ball on the surface) into their opponent’s goal and score a point.

On the face of it, this isn’t a game I should win, especially against my husband. One of the major ways we complement each other is that his steadiness and general relaxedness balances out my excitability and general high-strungedness. If you were to try to give him a neck/shoulder massage, you’d find the area pliable; he never needs a massage. I’m always in need of one; the area between my neck and shoulders is constantly tense.

Yet I beat him in the game of relaxing. This was even more odd because I was not relaxed. My heart was pounding and there was a small crowd around us, watching, so I also felt like I was performing. I love to perform, but it makes me tense and nervous, especially when I could hear them comment on our competition.

So how did I win?

Alpha brainwaves are strongest when a person is relaxing, when the brain is neither actively working through something nor engaged in an activity that requires thought. Meditation or yoga often brings on alpha waves. Theta waves are slower than alpha, and can occur when a person is daydreaming, or when engaged in an automatic and repetitive activity, such as driving on the freeway (all those times you can’t remember the last few miles) or exercising outdoors.

My husband was trying to empty his mind, which is what the MSI worker told us to do. I couldn’t empty my mind if you paid me serious money, so I closed my eyes, worked to control my breathing to a steady four beats in and four out (no matter how shaky those breaths were), and I mentally counted those 4 in and 4 out.

I won, not because I was the most relaxed, but because I was concentrating on something utterly repetitive. One line in the NOW Magazine article allows for this: “What adds an unusual and exciting twist to the game is the fact that alpha and theta waves are strongest when a person is calm and relaxed, or concentrating intently.”

It’s no surprise that my powers of concentration are stronger than my brain’s ability to relax, but I sure was amazed that I beat my husband in this game.

It should also be noted that he made the mistake of opening his eyes and peeking at where the ball was. Maybe all the above is hogwash and he defeated himself. But every now and then, I like to gloat that I won at relaxing.

Diaries: Ordinary Teenager

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

What do teenagers do? Sleep in, watch a lot of movies and TV, and obsess about their appearance and social relationships. Yup.

1/3/81 Today I watched football, washed my hair and returned some overdue books. My hair finally went the way I wanted it to. Then we had a speedy dinner  with Oma and then went to Ordinary People. It’s a really neat movie. It was really good. A mature movie, excellent acting. I really enjoyed it. Bye-bye.

1/4/81 I was asleep ’till 11:00 a.m. so I missed half of the day. I saw the movie Seems Like Old Times for the 2nd time. I think it’s really funny. Then I watched skating. Two people skated separately then got marks together. There were 3 10’s given. One to Dorothy Hamel and someone else. The other two were given to Peggy Flemming & Toller Cranston. Tomorrow we go back to school. Bye-bye.

2/5/81 Teen Club tonight was a learning experience to say the least. At first, I thought my only friend was K. But then I was hiding with D. and he asked me if I hated his guts. I said no, not necessarily. Then I got the surprise of my life, he said he liked me. I wasn’t expecting that. And on the way home I found out that J. doesn’t hate me. Or he did a good job of covering it up, but I think he likes me (normally of course). Bye-bye.

Indeed, ordinary teenager stuff. I remember the February incident. D. is the boy I loved when I was 9. Even though I was all of 13 here, he still made me feel all fluttery and terrified. On this day, we were either playing Sardines, a fun variant of Hide and Go Seek (coincidentally, that my kids learned from their Canadian cousins this month), or Hide and Go Seek in the dark. In Sardines, one person hides and everyone else seeks. When a seeker finds the hider, they hide with him or her, until everyone is squeezed in like sardines and the last person finds everyone.

D. and I were hiding in a supply closet at church. I, true to form, as soon as he entered the closet, stumbled over church decorating supplies in my haste to get deeper into the closet, as far away from him as I could, something that could be mistaken for distaste, but was more like the terror of a mouse when the cat is near. I’m ridiculously overstating it even now.

What’s curious about this is the question of how to use these memories of teenage crushes in my writing of the David book. Being a teenager in 1,000 BCE was not the same as being a teenager now. They were essentially adults. If I had been born then, I probably would’ve been married off at 13, not lazing about thinking about who liked me. Boys were working in the fields since the age of 10 or so, although they didn’t marry until the end of their teenage years or later.

Still, there had to be some of the same emotional immaturity teenagers now have. In my telling of the story of how David came to marry Saul’s daughter Michal, Saul throws a dinner to officially introduce David to the rest of his family. At this point, David has served in the army with Saul and his sons who are of age, but since Saul clears the room when David plays for him, and since any smart king would keep his young daughters away from the army, David has only caught glimpses of the daughters, maybe heard them from out a window, and probably heard servants gossip about them during his years of living in the fortress. Just enough contact to know that Merab is a pill and Michal is intriguing enough that when the offer from the king turns from marrying Merab to marrying Michal, David doesn’t fight quite as hard against it. Here are some snippets in which I try to uncover some teenage romantic angst (David is 18).

Did the king order him to wear the cloak so he’d look marriageable tonight? Or was it a not-so-subtle signal that Saul would try to kill him again if he didn’t cooperate? Knowing the king, it was probably both.

The cloak made all the spots on the tunic stand out, so David wrapped it tightly enough that less than a handbreadth of the tunic was visible. He secured it with his own belt, which was actually Jonathan’s. It looked so disreputable next to the linen, it was a joke: you can dress up a goat, but you can’t invite it to dinner unless it’s dead.

He tugged at the lapel to smooth it against his chest and fingered the embroidery. The sandstorm in his stomach made small, swirling eddies that died down when he breathed deeply. He grabbed his lyre and trudged up the hill to the city proper.

***

Not singing words was odd, but the rest of it was fine with him. Sitting in a corner and playing his lyre was something he could do with his eyes closed, so he did. As usual, joy and peace sunk into his soul while he played. He couldn’t keep silent, so he sang sounds, his voice bending and sliding and adapting to his mood.

He opened his eyes a sliver to gauge whether they were enjoying the music. Michal was watching him through the curtain of her hair, out of the corner of her eyes. His skin went hot and prickly and his throat closed up. Now that he’d caught her looking at him, he couldn’t stop himself from checking to see whether she still was. After the fourth time, he shifted so she wasn’t in his sightline.

***

At breakfast the next day, David stirred his leban. The paleness of the yoghurt and wheat nestled in the warm brown bowl reminded him of Michal, her creamy cloak next to her nutty skin.

Oh, I’m so glad I’m not a teenager anymore. I have one in the house, though, so I’m going through those years again, whether I want to or not.

 

Apt Analogies

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

When an analogy works, it’s a beautiful thing. The reader has both a richer and more precise understanding of the situation being described.

This is my new favorite, from The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements.

The author, Sam Kean, is talking about the element gadolinium and its many unpaired electrons (he credits this brilliant analogy to Wolfgang Pauli in 1925):

Despite the willingness of electrons to bond with other atoms, within their own atoms, they stay maximally far apart. Remember that electrons live in shells, and shells further break down into bunks called orbital, each of which can accommodate two electrons. Curiously, electrons fill orbitals like patrons find seats on a bus: each electron sites by itself in an orbital until another electron is absolutely forced to double up (p.170).

It’s rare that a book on science manages to make me laugh out loud, but this is so perfect, even a humanities person (and ex-public transportation rider) like myself can instantly picture what’s going on. I totally get it. And can probably even remember it.

Following are three of my analogical attempts. The first one occurs when Saul is first introduced to David. David has just walked into Saul’s receiving room. The place is unusually crowded because people want to see whether this kid will be able to do anything to help the king, which makes Saul feel self-conscious and paranoid and angry that all these people are speculating so freely about his problems.

The whispering in the room that had started up as soon as Saul returned to his throne got louder, worming into Saul’s ears, swirling in his head like dry leaves.

Looking at it all by itself, naked there on the page, I realize that I’m mixing metaphors, with both worming and swirling. It might still work, because there’s a circularity to both motions, but I think I’ll have to decide which I like better and only keep one. It’ll be the dry leaves. But it’s still too wordy. I’ve got a little more work to do there.

The next one comes courtesy of Jonathan, reminiscing with his father about a particularly satisfying defeat of the Philistines:

“And then the Lord made the rest of their army panic until they were swinging their swords like blind men trying to kill bees.”

That’s a pretty good one, although it reminds me a bit too much of me standing at my open screen door yesterday and waving to my neighbor, but the wave turned into wild swiping when a bug flew too close to my face. If I looked even half as stupid as I felt, it had to be pretty funny.

The next one might be my favorite analogy in the entire manuscript. It’s certainly one of the earliest ones. I had this image in my head long before I started writing the Goliath scene.

Goliath was closer to the other end of the Israelite front line with his back to David. “I’m getting bored,” he shouted. “Maybe I should choose my own challenger. Someone from here.” He took a few running steps towards the army. “Or here.”

Wherever he aimed his body, the Israelite soldiers faded away and shifted like a flock of birds in the sky.

If you watched the “Murmuration” video about two young ladies kayaking and the flock of starlings that put on a spectacular shifting show, you know exactly what I had in mind. While googling about to find that video, I found out that murmuration isn’t just what they named that video, it’s the actual name for a flock of starlings. What a gorgeous term. It might tie with my usual favorite word, susurration (a soft rustling sound).

Then again, doing a search for “like,” so I could find all my analogies, I discovered yet another overused word in my manuscript. Will it ever end?

Hearing Their Story

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

According to this great TED talk by Andrew Stanton (of Toy Story and WALL-E fame), Mr. Rogers carried this quote around in his wallet: “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love, once you’ve heard they story.”

In the last twenty years, readers have definitely grown to love all kinds of characters who’ve traditionally been villains: vampires, thieves, werewolves, etc. I certainly found this to be true while writing the first David and Saul book: writing Saul, the “villain,” the “failure” of the piece, made me more sympathetic to him. In the first book, anyway, I find him a more interesting character than the upright David. (David gets more interesting in the 2nd book, when he has to compromise his very high principles in order to survive.)

Saul “fought against his enemies in every direction — against Moab, Ammon, Edom, the kings of Zobah, and the Philistines. And wherever he turned, he was victorious. He did great deeds and conquered the Amalekites, saving Israel from all those who had plundered them” (1 Sam. 14:47-48). Yet he’s remembered as a failure. The book of Chronicles (the point of which is to detail the reign of the kings of Israel) contains only the story of his death, nothing about the 42 years of his kingship.

The more I wrote in his point of view, the more compassion I felt for him. His main qualification for being king, other than God choosing him, was that he was tall, head and shoulders taller than everyone else. He seems to have been a good son and a hard-working farmer, but when he and his servant went out looking for some lost donkeys, the servant was the one who thought of seeking out a seer and who had silver to offer Samuel. After Samuel privately anointed Saul and told him the Lord was appointing him leader of all Israel, God had to change Saul’s heart (1 Sam. 10:9) to get him with the program.

Even after this and after all the signs Samuel predicted came true, after prophesying (and being made fun of for prophesying) and having the Spirit of God fill him, he didn’t tell his family what had really happened. The next time he’s anointed, it’s going to be at an official ceremony, but Saul hides in the baggage. And I don’t blame him. Who else gets to start his coronation by hearing how upset God is that the Israelites wanted a king, how God felt it was them rejecting him? Not exactly a rah-rah endorsement.

At first, Saul does the smart thing. “When Saul returned home to Gibeah, a band of men whose hearts God had touched became hi constant companions” (1 Sam. 10:29). There were some haters, but Saul ignored them. When there’s a threat to an Israelite town, he answers in dramatic fashion: cuts up the oxen he’s plowing his father’s field with and sends it around Israel as an incentive to get people to come and fight. They do. There’s a tremendous victory and another public ceremony to crown him king.

Depending on what the “then” in 1 Samuel 12:1 means, it could be that right after Samuel re-re-re-anoints Saul, Samuel gives a long speech detailing precisely what is wrong with the Israelites for the extreme offense of asking for a king. (Or it could take place at some unknown time later in Saul’s reign. Storytelling in the Old Testament is not necessarily linear.) Samuel gets the Lord to send thunder and rain and the people are terrified and cry out, “Pray to the Lord your God for us, or we will die!…For now we have added to our sins by asking for a king.”

No matter when the above scene happens, Saul is most likely standing right there. No matter what kind of character you bring to the situation, that’s a lousy position to be put in.

So I feel for the guy. He was given a job that he didn’t want, that he was unprepared for and that the people were unprepared for. No wonder he so often responded to situations out of fear and insecurity.

At the beginning of this post, I put quotes around “villain,” because I don’t think of Saul as a villain. I write him more as a foil for David because I have pity for him.

So the quote Mr. Rogers carried with him is true from the positive side, but also from the negative side. A couple of years ago, my book club read Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. It takes place in post-WWII Mississippi, telling the story of a landowning white family and an African-American sharecropping family who each have a son who comes home from the war. There are a half-dozen points of view, half white, half black. It is a deep and gripping story. But there is a villain. The father of the landowner is evil. He isn’t given any redeeming characteristics that I can recall. He makes everyone’s lives miserable and sets into motion horrifying events. As we were discussing the book, one of us noted that the author had originally included some passages in that man’s point of view. My reaction was immediate and visceral: I was glad she took them out. I didn’t want his point of view, because that would make him human. I didn’t want to know his motivations or how his upbringing and experiences brought him to where he was at the time of the story. I just wanted to be free to hate him.

Are there stories you can think of that got you to feel sympathy for the villain? How about villains you’re happy to be free to hate?