Miss Minerva and William Green Hill

 A 2009 study at the University of Sussex found that reading can reduce stress by up to 68%, lower heart rates, and ease muscle tension.

Perhaps that is why I have always turned to books when I am down or when I feel stressed. Books surround me and my house is filled with them. One of the oldest books I have is a book titled Miss Minerva and William Green Hill. This book was read to my third grade class by Mrs. Chapman, a gifted teacher who read to us for the last thirty minutes of the day. 

When the school year ended, Mrs. Chapman, who knew how much I loved the book and her reading it, let me take the book home so I could finish it over the summer. I am sure Miss Minerva would be banned today because of the language used between the white kid, William Green Hill (Billy) and his friend, a black boy his age. The dialect used through out is difficult to read, and I admire my teacher for doing such a good job with it. I think the author was being true to the culture of our country at the time, the early twentieth century.

The two children loved to be together and played together, got into loads of mischief that brought Miss Minerva, Billy's aunt, down on them with angry words. She preached to Billy, and he responded with words that often made his aunt stop and think. The book will make you smile and laugh but you need to know it is full of stereotypes regarding race. 

When I ran across the book in a used book store about twenty years ago, I had to have it. When I opened it and tried to read it, I was amazed at how much dialect was used and how difficult it was to read. I didn't remember it that way.

In writing classes today, we are encouraged not to use heavy dialect in our writing because it often stops the reader who has to go back and try to understand the weird writing. We use only a few phrases or words to indicate the dialect, but it is not acceptable to misspell words or write a sentence with so much dialect the reader must struggle to understand what the author is trying to say.

The Miss Minerva books, and there are several, remind me of the Mark Twain books which also reflected the culture of the time. The author of the first book in the series is Francis Boyd Calhoun. After her passing the books were written by others. I loved the book when I was a child. The reviews of the book tell the same story of kids who were read this book by adults and insist their own children hear it. 

Did you read this book when you were a child? Did you have a special book you loved as a child and bought it as an adult?

John Lewis was refused a library card when he was a child. So was a little white girl.

Today I found myself shedding tears, watching a horse drawn wagon carry the body of a special man, a leader who was willing to give his life for freedom for all in this country. A man who was spat on, beaten and threatened, never gave up.

 His story is touching and shows that determination and doing the right thing can raise a man, the son of a tenant farmer in Alabama, the deep south, to the halls where major decisions are made in the United States of America. I doubt that he ever thought he would reach such heights when he was a young man in his twenties, a follower of Martin Luther King, the pacifist black man who changed our country.

The story told about John Lewis that brings tears to my eyes is not the horrible beating he took on the bridge in Selma Alabama in 1965 when I was a young married woman. It is the story of him going to the library in Selma when he was a little boy and being refused because "the library is for white people only." This child had a hunger for learning, but he was poor and black, and was denied the only place where he thought he might find books so he could read and learn. 

I was a reader from the time I was small and loved to see the Book Mobile come to my house on the farm where I loaded my arms with books to last me until that book mobile came again. I wonder now, did that book mobile go to the homes of the black farmers whose farms were adjacent to our place?

John Lewis' story is a sad reminder of a little white girl who lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Pelham, GA. She, too, loved to read but the only books available to her were at school. In the summer she told her mother she would like to read. She was told to walk downtown a few blocks away and go to the library. 

PELHAM CARNEGIE PUBLIC LIBRARY, 133 Hand Street

The little girl, excited that she would be able to find a book to bring home, made her way down the road and across the dividing line of the Haves and Have Nots, the railroad tracks. She approached the large library doors, already feeling intimidated, and entered. Amazed to find so many books on all the tall walls, she didn't know what she should do, where she should go. Behind a large desk an older woman sat oblivious to the little girl who had just entered. 

"Can I get a book to take home to read?" The shy little girl asked the woman behind the desk. 
That little girl never forgot the look the woman gave her or the words she said. "No. There are no books for you here."

The little girl turned and walked through the big doors. Tears ran down her cheeks as she made her way back across the tracks. 

Eventually the little girl and her family moved to another town and another school. The little girl excelled in school, was a favorite of one of her teachers, and was given a college scholarship. She always loved books, fine literature, best sellers, and even in her last days she found reading a great comfort.

Today, one of her great nephews is head of the libraries in the region of Pelham, GA. I would like to tell him this story and ask what librarians today would say or do if that little girl came there. I hope they would help her.

Visit this site today to read more about John Lewis and my brother-in-law, Stu Moring.
https://www.glendacouncilbeall.com/2020/07/congressman-john-lewis-servant-leader.html#.Xx3azlVKj3g

ARE YOU A WRITER?

The definition of a writer:
WriterWrit"er\, n. [AS. wr[=i]tere.]
1. One who writes, or has written; a scribe; a clerk

I can't remember when I didn't write. I have so many journals and diaries it would take a strong, strong person to haul them off to the dump. With all my de-cluttering going on here at my house, that is where they might end up.

Thousands of words on paper, written over a life span of more than a half century. Still, I never called myself a writer until I had taken several writing classes and been assured by my mentor, Nancy Simpson, poet and teacher, that I am indeed a writer.

The definition of a writer is "one who writes or has written." I had been doing that most of my life. The definition does not say you have to be published in magazines. It doesn't say a writer is an author of a book. A writer is one who writes.

Now I know I have always been a writer. When I sat high in the chinaberry tree in the back yard with my pencil and spiral notebook writing stories about me on my black horse galloping over the pastures and through the woods, I was already a writer. My imagination took me where I couldn't physically go, and I felt impelled to write those scenes.

My sister, Gay, says she is not a writer, but she wrote letters from San Francisco with such feeling and imagery that I saw the fog drift out of the envelopes when I opened them.


writ·ing n.
1. The act of one who writes.
2. Written form: Put it in writing.
3. Handwriting; penmanship.
4. Something written, especially:
a. Meaningful letters or characters that constitute readable matter.
b. A written work, especially a literary composition.
5. The occupation or style of a writer.
Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006

Writing is the act of one who writes. Reading is the act of one who reads. I loved both reading and writing from a very early age. When my sister, June, read stories to me, and when my teachers read to the class, I listened and lost myself in the scenes and images made by the writer putting meaningful letters on a page.
Have you read books you enjoyed so much you hated to reach the last page? Having always been an insomniac, even as a child, I read in bed and, when the book ended, I'd turn off my light and continue the story in my mind. This was especially true if I had fallen in love with a character. I wanted to keep that person in my life, like a new friend I didn't want to let go.

Sharing through writing is a joy I hope I never loose. Are you a writer? Do you keep a journal or diary?
Do you keep a book, or several going all the time? Tell us what you write or what you like to read.