Joe L. Wheeler's Blog, page 16

BLOG #51, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

OUR NATIVITY SET

December 19, 2012

It started long ago in Guatemala City, that Christmas of 1947. My father was a missionary, and my mother home schooled me and my brother Romayne; it would be here that our sister Marjory would be born.

How well I remember that first Christmas in Guatemala’s capital city. The bells. The bells. The bells. Our parents found getting acquainted with new people in a new culture to be rather difficult. Not so for Romayne and me, for we spoke the universal language of children around the world, roaming at will in and out of each others’ homes. Each time I’d enter one of their homes, inevitably we’d end up in the very heart of the home—and there would be the creche—or a Nativity set. My friends would approach it softly, almost reverently, as though it were a holy place. There would be no Christmas tree as there was in my home, nor presents. Presents would arrive on Day of the Wise Men—or Epiphany—on January 6. The Magi would bring them.

I remember feeling shortchanged: how come I felt closer to the Christ Child in these Catholic homes than I did in our Protestant one? Finally, I confronted my parents with my concerns. Their answer was almost immediate: they took me to the vast “mercado” and set me loose. It being the Christmas season, there were Nativity figures and creches everywhere, in all price ranges. After studying them all, I bargained for each one (for to accept the initial price would have been to deprive both the vendor and myself of the joy of haggling). Finally, when the vendor had shrieked maledictions at me, and declared I was depriving his children of the food they so desperately needed in order to stay alive—we’d settle, each convicted we’d got the best of each other. “Greedy Gringo,” the nicest thing he said about me. My parents would stand afar off, pretending not to know me, and unable then or ever after to play the grand game. And so each hard-fought battle would end with more Nativity figures (brightly colored Magi, sheep, camels, angels, shepherds, Joseph, Mary, and the Christ Baby). At home I reverently assembled them in the focal center of our home, and proudly showed the Manger scene to the neighbor kids. At last, I was one of them!

Each Christmas, the honor of setting up and taking down the Manger scene was mine—until some years later, in the Dominican Republic, when I returned, alone, to study in California. During those following years, I’d miss—a lot—that much-loved Christmas tradition. So much so that when I graduated from college, married my lovely bride Connie, and settled down as a junior high teacher in Placerville (an old mining town in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains), I determined to round up a Nativity set as much like the Latin American set I put together all those years ago as I could find. Miraculously, I assembled an almost carbon copy of the old one.

It is still with us. And each Christmas we once again gently unwrap each figure and position them around the crude stable. They’ve moved to Sacramento; to Huntsville, Alabama; to Keene, Texas; to Nashville, Tennessee; to Boulder, Colorado; to Thousand Oaks, California; to Annapolis, Maryland; and to Conifer, Colorado. Those long journeys have taken a real toll on our Nativity grouping: one camel died in transit; a second had a foot amputated (we have to prop him up so he doesn’t fall over). Besides Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Baby, we still have five curious sheep, a shepherd with a lamb curled around his neck, six Magi—three standing afar off (being three times the size of the originals—purchased them in Mexico one Christmas), three angels (one hanging on a Stable nail, one standing, one kneeling), a donkey, a cow, a dog; and the latest added just today by Connie: a quizzical furry fox.

Christmas has come once again to our home. And the Little Lord Jesus is at the heart of it.

Wishing you—each and all— a Blessed Christmas!

    BLOG #50, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

 STINKY, THE SKUNK THAT WOULDN’T LEAVE

Our 80th Book

December 12, 2012

Ninth in “The Good Lord Made Them All” series, and our first 2013 title, advance copies of Stinky are now available for this Christmas season.  The category for this year’s collection: “Strange and Wonderful Animal Stories.”

Not until the last minute was the cover story decided on: Never before that day had we known that Tony was such a master storyteller.  As he relived this story, we laughed until it hurt.  We wouldn’t let Tony return to Florida until he promised to write it down for us.  He enlisted the assistance of his father and mother in fleshing out the complete story.  Just two days before the manuscript for this book was due, Tony e-mailed us the story.  There was no question but that it had to anchor this collection!

This moved the pressure to that master of cover art, Lars Justinen.  Not one of his first eight cover paintings has been less than a home run; could he do it the ninth time?  Could he somehow capture the essence of this pugnacious never-say-die-skunk?  You be the judge if he pulled it off.  But how could he miss?  Justinen used to have a pet skunk of his own.

So here we had a one-of-a-kind skunk story; but how could we put together a collection of one-of-a-kind stories?  Not possible.  So we settled for second best: stories that were one and all both strange and wonderful.  Twenty-three of them!

•    A helpless fawn nursed by a killer dog.

•    “‘Don’t poo on the rug,’ Casey [the African grey parrot] ordered,” in Pat’s voice.

•    We’ve all heard the old expression of raining cats and dogs—but this is ridiculous!

•    But Dan had risen, too, his brown eyes brimmed with pleading and penitence, fire and love.  His arms—emptied of Cynthia’s little brother—opened for Cynthia, and, without waiting for any explanation of all, Cynthia. . . .

•    Turns out two swallows could have given Alfred Hitchcock a run for his money!

•    The great stallion seemed determined to kill Gaspar—yet look what happened during the hurricane!

•    Eben Brown’s combination snake seems right out of the pages of Mark Twain—but isn’t.

•    The canary had no intention of joint-tenancy.  The wrens disagreed—mightily!  Which would win?

•    Is it even possible that a mouse could think and bargain like a human?

•    Is this a horse story?  A marriage story?  A love story?  A God story?  Or might it be all of the above?

•    Who but God can fathom the heart of a dog?

•    “But it is a bear, and he’s eating all of my currant jelly!  Please send a policeman right away!” cried Betty.

•    And they say—animals have no sense of humor!

•    A musical mouse?  Surely you jest!

•    Everything was going so well—until Dan’l Webster and his out-of-control gang of turkeys demolished Finch & Richards’ big market.

•    The children were buried in a cave-in, and no one knew where they were.  No human, that is.

•    Do animals deliberately commit suicide?

•    A bear terrified of a little kitten?  Are you pulling my leg?

•    No one had ever been able to get the best of Old Baldy yet. That’s why he changed hands so cheaply.  Then along came Deacon Barnes, as stubborn as the ox.  However, in the showdown, all bets were on Old Baldy.

•    After reading this story, many readers will never look at a cat the same way again.

•    They were all mixed in together—Peter Murphy and scholarships and wild-eyed cows and Shakespeare.

•    It was a most unlikely combination: a rapidly rising young reporter, a very pretty girl, two unmanageable and ungrateful cats, and a streetcar full of chuckling observers.

•    . . . . and a tap-dancing skunk with an attitude.

You may purchase a copy of this wondrous book, and get it inscribed too, if you so designate:

Stinky, the Skunk that Wouldn’t Leave and Other Strange and Wonderful Animal Stories (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 2013). $13.99, plus shipping.

P.O. Box 1246, Conifer, CO 80433.  Phone: 303-838-2333.

Email: [email protected].

BLOG #49, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

STEVEN SPIELBERG’S LINCOLN

December 5, 2012

Everywhere I go, people, knowing I wrote Abraham Lincoln: A Man of Faith and Courage (Howard/Simon & Schuster, 2008), ask me if I’ve seen the new film. Finally, I’m able to answer film-related questions. Connie and I took our daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons to see a Maryland, Sunday matinee. The theater was packed. And, just as was true with our son’s earlier experience in Florida, there was enthusiastic applause at the end.

I’ve been burned so many times by attending so-called biographical films that I was a bit apprehensive about this one; but not too much, for Doris Kearns Goodwin was staking her reputation on the film’s authenticity. And of all the sixty-some Lincoln biographies I studied before writing my own, her Team of Rivals outshown them all. What prodigious scholarship!

In short, Goodwin did not let me down. Neither did Spielberg, Sally Field, Daniel Day Lewis, or the rest of the cast. Spielberg was wise to zero in on such a short time-period that suspense and character-revelation and development was possible. Lewis was magnificent as Lincoln. Somehow, in this film, he became Lincoln. It was almost eerie to me: after a lifetime of studying Lincoln and collecting stories written about Lincoln, Lincoln with all his complexities (so complex that even his closest associates were never able to pigeon-hole him or predict what he might or might not do), I felt that somehow Lewis had managed to get inside his skin. An incredible feat given the fact that there are over 16,000 books about Lincoln to draw from.

Most certainly, Goodwin was the mentor-in-chief who helped create this near miraculous resurrection of abstract history into flesh and blood reality. But mentoring alone is powerless to create living prototypes; it also takes a mentoree with rare gifts of assimilation.

And never was a film such as this one needed more, for, as famed historian and biographer David McCullouch put it, several weeks ago, “America is facing an unprecedented crisis of historical literacy.” Neither our schools nor our homes are passing on to children, youth, and young adults an even elementary understanding and knowledge of our past. And given that books, newspapers, and magazines are being beaten back, back, and back by electronic sound bytes, democracy itself is at risk.

Sally Field excelled in her portrayal of the tormented Mary Todd Lincoln, who had lost two of her sons to disease. Antibiotics were unknown back then and doctors and midwives, with unwashed hands, carried death from one patient to the next. Had it not been for her husband, she would have completely crumbled against the forces determined to bring her down. When she lost him too, it is little wonder that she all but broke.

To us today, who have just endured a brutal no-hands-barred election campaign decided by incredibly vicious attack ads created for and by anonymous sources accountable to no one, we certainly cannot claim clean hands. Lincoln had made a solemn vow to God that he would do his utmost to remove the quarter-millennium-old curse of slavery. A superb tactician, he accomplished what no other known man could have: winning the war in spite of 750,000 casualties [the latest figure]) when so many were willing to settle at any price, and then, by marshaling so completely the war-time powers of the Presidency, along with being a shrewd judge of human nature, almost unbelievably, orchestrating the passing of the Sixteenth Amendment.

Not surprisingly, given today’s secularism, Lincoln’s deep relationship with God was shortchanged in the film. Without doubt, he was America’s most spiritual president, who was convicted that, behind the scenes, God called the shots. He could only do his utmost, then leave the rest to God. Scholars today appear to share an agenda that calls for stripping from Lincoln the spirituality that made him what he was, and give him the strength to stand–alone–against forces that would have brought down a hundred lesser men. His clear-eyed vision, coupled with moment-by-moment dependency on God, carried him on to Ford’s Theatre, the safe harbor reached at last. Wisely, Spielberg concludes the film with the high tide of passing the Sixteenth Amendment rather than the assassin’s bullet that, ironically, insured Lincoln’s immortality, saving him from the horrors of Deconstruction that followed.

In spite of its flaws, which are amazingly few, the film ends up about as historically accurate as any such film I’ve ever seen—an amazing feat!

BLOG #48, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB #15

LLOYD C. DOUGLAS’S HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

November 28, 2012

Book-length Christmas stories have fascinated me almost as much as individual Christmas stories. But there has been one crucial difference between the two genres: Although thousands of writers have written individual Christmas stories, very few have tackled longer Christmas stories—and far fewer yet are still remembered today.

One of them that is still remembered—but is barely hanging on—is Lloyd C. Douglas’s Home for Christmas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1937). The author has long been one of my all-time favorite inspirational writers. Dr. Douglas (1877 – 1951) burst into the publishing world late in life, for he’d been a pastor, chiefly in university centers, for more than a quarter century, and was more than 50 years of age, when he wrote his first novel, The Magnificent Obsession in 1932. Defying all odds, that first book became a blockbuster, both in print and in film, exceeded only by The Robe in 1943. Douglas’s novels tended to be fictionalized homilies that expounded the gospel that men and women could live good and successful lives through altruism and amity based on New Testament principles. Douglas, a Congregational clergyman, was spiritual heir to a long tradition of ministers who used fiction to popularize spiritual truths for the masses—such as Charles Sheldon, Henry Van Dyke, Harold Bell Wright, and others.

* * * * *

Our readers are really going to have to seriously search in order to unearth copies of this title as it is today one of Douglas’s scarcest titles, but it will be well worth your time to do so.

Following is the introductory blurb on the First Edition dust jacket:

The Claytons spent all their childhood in a little farmhouse. Now there were Gertrude in New York, Claire in Louisville, Nan in Detroit, Fred in California, and Jim in Chicago—all prosperous American citizens. Nan had kept the old homestead just as it was when the Claytons were young, and it was her idea that they should all go back there for Christmas to live for a few days as they had done in their childhood, remembering the hardships and pleasures of those far-off years.

Nan’s project sounded a little alarming to her older brothers and sisters settled in their comfortable ways, but every one of the Claytons was a good sport. All the in-laws were banished, and the five gathered by themselves in the little farmhouse. What happened there is told in a novelette full of humor and tenderness and intertwined with a delightful love story.

Happy hunting first of all, then, on some cold winter night, settle down by the fireplace for an unforgettable Christmas read.

BLOG #47, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

PAC MONEY AND ATTACK ADS

November 21, 2012

In all my life, I’ve never seen or heard anywhere near this level of post-election disillusion and borderline despair, the general feeling that America—that hope of the world—has reached the tipping point, and that the next steps may prove unreversible.

The catalyst, of course, was the entire unbelievably vicious and below-the-belt attack ads, paid for mostly with PAC funds conveniently hiding the identity of the attackers in walls of anonymity. Neither party came out of the fray with clean hands, but in retrospect, what is likely to leave the longest and bitterest legacy has to do with the early-in-the-campaign poisoning of the well, when Romney, who had exhausted his funding during the hotly contested primaries, found himself up the proverbial creek without a paddle, unable to fund a counterattack to the blizzard of attack ads geared not only to discredit his achievements but to utterly destroy his character. They worked: Romney was never able to fully recover.

The Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to the scorched-earth-leave-no-survivors blitzkrieg of unsubstantiated anonymous attack ads might very well be perceived by future historians as the beginning of the decline of the world’s greatest democracy. In Colorado (one of the so-called Nine Swing States), for month after month, we have had to endure such a blizzard of attack ads, from both sides, that, at the end we were left numb and nauseous. It was a veritable nightmare!

The logical result of all this would be to scare off, in the future, America’s best and brightest from even considering a career in politics. Why would any sane person subject his/her family to such vicious character assassination? Children and young people had to emerge from this mud bath with feelings of revulsion: If all politicians are unethical, unprincipled, unpatriotic, unempathetic, and uncaring, then why even vote at all? For the first time since I can remember, what a politician actually stood for or believed in, or had either achieved or hoped to achieve, was buried in layer after layer of sizzling hot verbal lava that left no reputation untarred.

Nor is the entire swing-state scenario a pleasant one to consider. Have we indeed reached the level where only nine states really matter? And the other 41 do not?

One thing I wish to make clear: I am not claiming one party can justifiably lay claim to the higher ground here. What I am hoping to accomplish by this blog is to add my frail voice to what needs to become a national movement to restore civility, not just to elections but to the periods in-between, when no one reaches across the aisle to the other side, and polarization and the annihilation of the moderates who once served as agents of synapse, has all but brought government to a standstill.

It is terrifying people I’ve interacted with, on all sides, to be reduced to near hopelessness in terms of their perception of America’s future.

But, as one near despondent Kiwanian said last week, “In all this, friends, please don’t despair: God is still in His Heaven.”

BLOG #46, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

OUR 79TH BOOK

BLUEGRASS GIRL AND OTHER HORSE STORIES FOR GIRLS

November 14, 2012

We’ve just received copies of Bluegrass Girl, the second book published by eChristian’s Mission Books. Turns out it’s everything we hoped it would be—and the evocative cover alone should sell a lot of books.

Last week, in the blog centering on Showdown, and Other Sports Stories for Boys, I referenced a life-changing discussion I had last December with Focus on the Family’s Editorial Director Larry Weeden and then Focus Bookstore manager, Bill Flandermeyer; life-changing because it changed the course of my publishing career. But it was equally significant in terms of what came next in our discussion of what the current critical publishing needs were perceived to be:

“What about girls—are we meeting their book-related needs?” “Well, partly. Girls are into sports too, just not quite to the extent that boys are. But one thing there is that is almost a universal with girls: Between the ages of eight and fourteen, girls tend to go through a horse-crazy period. They devour fictional stories and full-length books about horses. Walter Farley’s books come alive again for every generation of girls….so what do you have for them?

I answered that my anthology, Wildfire and Other Great Horse Stories included a number of girl-related horse stories, but that didn’t satisfy them, for they weren’t stories geared “just for girls.”

And thus was born Bluegrass Girl, when the opoportunity arose in our strategizing session with the publisher of eChristian, Dan Balow; his associate, Dave Veerman; and our agent, Greg Johnson.

When you give one to the girl in your life—keeping in mind the fact that girls don’t forget their love of horses just because they’ve discovered boys, horses just aren’t the priority they were earlier; but almost invariably that love for horses returns again during their adult years, thus Bluegrass Girl ought to appeal to all girls, regardless of their chronological age—, here is what they’ll find:

• “A Bluegrass Girl” (the title story), by William H. Woods

• “Oatsey Remembers,” by L. R. Davis

• “Emily Geiger,” by Nina N. Selivanova

• “Little Rhody,” by Charles Newton Hood

• “Rich but Not Gaudy,” by Ruth Orendorff

• “A Satisfactory Investment,” by Eveline W. Brainerd

• “The East End Road,” by George C. Lane

• “River Ranch,” by Aline Havard”

• “The Lone Stallion,” by Gil Close

• “In the Toils of Fate,” by Virginia Mitchell Wheat

• “Betsy’s Horse Show Ribbon,” by Lavinia R. Davis

• “Rusty Takes a Short Cut,” by Paul Ellsworth Triem.

Ordinarily, each book in this Mission Book series contains twelve stories, however, this one brings the total to thirteen; but unlike all the other stories, this is a story poem rather than prose, a genre I love but rarely feature in my prose books. In my Appendix introduction, here is what I wrote about it:

MY MOTHER’S LOVE FOR “KENTUCKY BELLE”

Joseph Leininger Wheeler

It is impossible to think of my dearly beloved mother, Barbara Leininger Wheeler, without also thinking about her love for story and poetry—and she loved most those that combined both, a synthesis we call “story poems.” Mother was an elocutionist, a stage performer who had memorized thousands of pages of stories and poems. But out of all of them [a number, such as Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman,” Bayard Taylor’s “Bedouin Love Song,” and Frank Desprez’s “Lasca,” had to do with horses], none did she love to recite—or we children to hear—more than Constance Fennimore Woolson’s “Kentucky Belle.”

As I read the poem today, the cold print blurs because the words—the lines—are, in memory, watered by my mother’s tears. For she could not recite this poem without crying. Because of this, because reciting it drained her so, she was always limp at the end—as were we. Yet, because of those poetic-line-induced tears, or in spite of them, it remained our constant request, “Mom, please recite “Kentucky Belle.”

Back during those growing-up years, I knew little about that bloodiest of all American wars, the Civil War (a war that was anything but civil). Nevertheless, in a very strange way, the poem so dominated my childhood that it almost predestined my career in literature, history, and biography.

It would not be possible to write “Kentucky Belle” today; only someone who had lived through that gut-wrenching conflict that pitted brother against brother, and ripped families apart. Constance Fenimore Woolson, niece of that great frontier novelist, James Fenimore Cooper (author of books such as Last of the Mohikans), was born in March of 1840, thus she was 21 when the Civil War began and 25 when it ended. She died in 1894 at the young age of 54. She was a prolific author, but is remembered today mainly because she penned one of the most emotive and deeply moving poems in the English language, “Kentucky Belle.” Of all the great Civil War poems that have lasted until our time, none captures more completely the torment of both sides than this. Nor is there another that so captures a girl-woman’s heartbreak at losing the most beloved horse she would ever know.

In order to better understand this poem, we must step back in time to an age where few Americans traveled far from the place where they were born, thus they knew and loved their land with an intensity that is all but lost today. That is why this poem is such a celebration of a meandering strip of blue called the Tennessee River (the principal tributary of the Ohio, that is the principal eastern tributary of the Mississippi). It is born in the Appalachians near Knoxville, Tennessee, and flows southwest to Chattanooga, west through the Cumberland Plateau to northern Alabama, turns north as the boundary between Alabama and Mississippi, continuing across Tennessee and Kentucky, where it merges with the Ohio at Paducah. All the land watered by this 652-mile-long river is known as “the Tennessee.” Only as we are aware of this can we fully understand this poem’s poignancy to the generations of Americans who have loved both this country and the river that gives the heart of it its name.

But all this is merely a preamble to the poem itself, and the horse it immortalizes.

The horse in the poem is also a metaphor for the all-consuming love a girl-woman had long ago for the Tennessee, and the Kentucky Bluegrass Country. And even today, when the subject of Kentucky is brought up, immediately images of the horse and the Kentucky Derby come to mind. The state and the horse are so intertwined that they are inextricable.

My mother loved Kentucky Belle the horse so much she was a living thing to her, as real and three-dimensional to her as were her three children. And the rhythm of Woolson’s lines gallops like hoof-beats through the minds of everyone who experiences the poem performed out loud by a master elocutionist such as my mother.

* * * * *

Details: Publisher: Mission Books/eChristian

Publishing Date: 2012

Price: $12.98

Shipping: $5.00 first book; $1.00 for each additional book. You may secure them through us. Let us know if you wish them inscribed; and if so, to whom. Provide your mailing address. You may email us at: [email protected].

BLOG #45, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

OUR 78TH BOOK

SHOWDOWN, AND OTHER SPORTS STORIES FOR BOYS

November 7, 2012

We’ve just received copies of our newest book, published by eChristian’s Mission Books, the first of six contracted books with this publishing house. For months, we’ve been eagerly anticipating this book’s release, hoping it would come out during this Christmas season. The cover alone sells this first book. Will tell you about the second next week.

Now for the story behind the book: Last Christmas season, for the sixteenth Christmas in a row, I read a story from the latest Christmas in My Heart to the staff of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Afterwards, I signed their books all day at the Focus in the Family Bookstore. In the early evening, after the last book was inscribed, then bookstore manager Bill Flandermeyer and Focus Editorial Director, Larry Weeden, and I debriefed about the day. And then—I never cease to be amazed by God’s choreography!—, this subject came up: When someone comes into this bookstore, are there any book requests we can’t meet? If so, do we turn them away disappointed?

Without pausing for a second, Flandermeyer shot back, Yes. Books for boys! “Can’t find them. Especially story collections. Lots of books for girls, but not for boys.” We then got into a general discussion of the plight of boys in American society today. How they are dropping out of schools at an ever younger age, finding little in their classes to motivate them. Dropping out and dropping into virtual reality electronic games, videos, et al; as well as substance abuse, pornography, and crime. As a result, on today’s college campuses, there are 1.5 coeds for every male! At the rate the trend is tilting, educators fear it will be 2.0 to 1, resulting in depriving women of intellectual equal spouses and depriving adult males of top-level jobs, locking them into minimum wage jobs or unemployment. We are indeed in a national crisis where boys are concerned!

After the discussion, Weeden and Flandermeyer turned to me, and asked what I had for boys. I answered that our story collections are for all age groups. “But what do you have just for boys?” I could only answer, sadly, “I don’t have any.”

So then, we discussed subject areas that fascinate boys. Sports, naturally, being boys’ #1 interest. But I had nothing in sports to offer.

God times events perfectly in our lives: Early in the new year, the Publisher of eChristian, Inc, Dan Balow, who I’d worked with for many years when he was in marketing at Tyndale House, got together with our agent, Greg Johnson, Dave Veerman, Connie and me, to discuss a new and exciting publishing venture possibility. Would we be interested in expanding beyond such series subjects as Christmas, Animals, Great Stories Remembered, Heart to Heart, Forged in the Fire, and Classic Books into heretofore unexplored genres, drawing from our extensive story archives? Books to be released both in paper and digitally.

Would we! It would be an answer to prayer, and, if successful, would not only enable us to more fully utilize our story archives, but also preclude our ever retiring (not good news to Connie.) . Once we gave the green light to their proposal, the subject of which genres would come first was discussed. Immediately, that recent discussion in the Focus on the Family Bookstore came to mind, and after sharing it with them, it was concluded that Sports Stories for Boys had to be our first story anthology offering!

Together, we hammered out a collection worthy of being the engine with the potential to pull a train of future story anthologies from a wide variety of subject areas. For months, Connie and I ransacked our archives seeking out twelve of the strongest male-oriented sports stories we’ve ever found. Then we chose twelve stories incorporating twelve different sports. And here is our Contents menu:

“Introduction: “Boys and Sports “Stories” – Joseph Leininger Wheeler

“Showdown,” by B. J. Chute – Basketball

“An Hour of Victory,” by Earl Reed Silvers – Football

“Between Strokes,” by Walter R. Schmidt – Sculling

“The Captain Who Did Not Play,” by Ira Rich Kent – Baseball

“Speed Peters’ Finish,” by T. Morris Longstreeth – Hockey

“The Brat,” by Ralph Henry Barbour – Tennis

“Pompey Plays the Game,” by A. May Holaday – Track

“The Bicycle Race,” by Walter Camp – Cycling

“The Reef,” by Samuel Scoville, Jr. – Diving

“The Tiger at the Ford,” by William Hervey Woods – Fishing

“Which One Won?” by Anna P. Paret – Golf

“An Alpine Adventure,” by Grace Wickham Curran – Mountain Climbing

* * * * *

Details: Publisher: Mission Books/eChristian

Publishing Date: 2012

Price: $12.98

Shipping: $5.00 first book; $1.00 for each additional book. You may secure them through us. Let us know if you wish them inscribed; and if so, to whom. Provide your mailing address. You may email us at: [email protected]

BLOG #44, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB #14

BOOTH TARKINGTON’S PENROD

October 31, 2012

For November’s book, I’m reaching back to my childhood for one of the books I loved most during my growing-up years. Coming in the midst of Hurricane Sandy devastation, I felt following up Mendenhall’s Cool Names with a book like Penrod might be an additional opportunity to stir in a few chuckles—well, more like a lot of them.

Another reason for choosing this book is that it graphically—by contrast—highlights how much childhood, family life, and community interaction has changed since Booth Tarkington launched his bad boy on an unsuspecting public. “Bad” is a poor choice of words, for Penrod can more aptly be described a tornado of mischief wrapped up in boys’ clothing.

In reading Penrod, our readers will rediscover this America that is no more. A world of picket fences, stay-at-home moms, two-parent families being the norm, fathers being the breadwinners, and children feeling free to roam in and out of neighbors’ homes at will, children living and playing out of doors, and boys having the opportunity to be boys.

The contrast is obvious: today, with pedophiles being a constant threat outside, porn criminals weaseling their way into home computers, and violent crimes becoming the norm in society, no one—least of all children—feels safe anymore.

I’m not claiming that world was utopian, for there were also dark sides to it: racial stereotyping and inequality, inadequate career opportunities for women, to name just two. But the beauty of reading Penrod is that you the reader have the unique opportunity to vicariously immerse yourself into that world, sort out for yourself the positive and negative aspects of it, and draw your own conclusions.

But, as a child, I read Penrod first not for its social commentary but because I laughed myself half to death over Penrod’s antics: getting in big trouble for his mischief only to get deeper into trouble the next day. There is a direct correlation between Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Tarkington’s Penrod. Given that today it is so hard to find a book that appeals to boys, here’s a heaven-sent opportunity to set a boy loose on Penrod, and just let him cackle as the town’s goody-goody boy, Georgie Bassett, gets his comeuppance. The “Little Gentleman”/“Tar” sequence by itself is one of America’s all time classics of humor.

Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was born in Indianapolis, and remained there for much of his life. During his life, he won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for The Magnificent Ambersons in 1919 and the other for Alice Adams in 1922.

Donald Heiney declares that Tarkington was an expert satirist, one of the first to depict the urban middle class. Heiney also notes that Tarkington had a marvelous talent for creating unforgettable characters. His key fictional milieu has to do with the rise of a midwestern aristocracy, essentially Victorian and conservative, beginning in the 1890′s Gilded Age, its ascendancy, then gradual decline at the hands of a new industrial and mechanical generation.

Tarkington wrote three Penrod books: Penrod (1914), Penrod and Sam (1916), and Penrod Jashber (1929). In Seventeen, Tarkington depicts an older character than twelve-year-old Penrod. Interestingly enough, today’s teenagers are so much more sophisticated, jaded, and cynical about life that they’d have little in common with the protagonist of Seventeen.

So welcome to the three worlds of Penrod.

BLOG #43, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

MENDENHALL’S COOL NAMES

PART TWO

October 24, 2012

MENDENHALL’S SECOND LIST

As promised, here is the second batch of “Cool Names” Dr. Mendenhall sent me to offset our October attack ads. Read ‘em, and cackle. Then see how many cool ones you can think of to build on Mendenhall’s two lists.

Enjoy!

Lou Keemiah                    Al Packa                               Ginger Snapps

Karen  Keeping                Esther Pance                       Bobby Soxx

Joe Ker                              Sonia Papermoon              Asa Spades

Nan King                           Penny Pasta                        I. C. Spotts

Terry Kloth                       Oswald A. Peesagumm     Rosetta Stone

Jack Knife                         Pat Pending                        Grant Stoom

Shirley Knott                    Barry Picker                       Max Stout

Manuel Labor                  Stew Pidd                            Kay Surrah-Surrah

Marsha Lartz                   Sam and Ella Poyzning     Ty Tannick

Crystal Shanda Lear       Gene Poole                          Dick Tater

Earnest Lee                      Will Power                           Anne Teak

Frank Lee                         Rachel Prejudic                  Will N. Testament

Peg Legg                           Karen Protectio                  Tom Thom

Vi Lentz                            Dusty Pyle                           Tess Tosterone

Mandy Lifebotz              Jon Quille                            Nan Tuckett

Terry A. Littlelonge       Jack Rabbitt                        Ken Tuckey

Isiah Littleprayer           Amanda B. Reckondwith Paige Turner

Penny Loafer                  Alan Rench                          Beau Tye

Kara Lott                         Anna Rexia                          Justin Tyme

Hal Lucination               Dusty Rhodes                     Mark Tyme

Dan D. Lyon                   Bev Ridge                             Amy Ubbull

Ole Mackerel                  Jerry Rigg                            Phil Ubbuster

Jerry Mandering           Jack D. Ripper                    Hal Uhtosis

Randy Marathon           Tara Round                         Barry Ummenamuh

Ole O. Margarine          Harley Ryder                       Bob Uppendown

Marsha Mello                Arthur Rytis                         Sue Uprising

Ella Mentry                    Chuck Roast                        Russell Upsumgrub

Sal Minnella                   Mike Robial                         Noah Vale

Pete Moss                       Kurt N. Rodd                       Minnie Vann

Bessie Mae Mucho        Rose Royce                          Ella Vayter

Anna Mull                       Rhoda Ruder                       Sue Veneer

Sue Nahmi                      Len Scapp                            Di Vinn

Jim Nasium                    Bea Seated                           Rhonda Voo

Justin D. Nickatyme     Barry Senshulls                  Claire Voyant

Lee Ning                          Homer Sexual                     Beau Vynes

Jim Nist                           Cam Shaft                            Chuck Wagon

Hazel Nutt                       Sharon Sharalike               Walter Wahlkarpet

Paddy O’Furniture         Rick Shaw                           Jay Walker

Lynn Oleum                     Tyrone Shoelaces              Luke Warm

Cy O’Nara                        Jim Shortz                           Juan Way

Angie O’Plastie               April Showers                     Bob N. Weeve

Rick O’Shea                     Lou Siddity                         Bob White

Travis T. Onjustis           Frieda Slaves                      Sherry Wines

Al O’Vera                         Jane Smoker                       Holly Wood

Ala Wrench                     Eileen Wright                      Sybil Wrights

Bob Wyre                        Sheik Yerbouti                     Gordon Zola

Sue Zuki

BLOG #42, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

MENDENHALL’S COOL NAMES

PART ONE

October 17, 2012

A little over a week ago, as we drove west reveling in the dramatic fall colors with our cherished friends, Bob and Bev Mendenhall, en route to one of our all-time favorite breakfast watering troughs, Sunshine Café in Dillon, Colorado, Bob (a fellow wordsmith and punster) and I got on the subject of strange family names. I chanced to think of the true instance of a clearly sadistic set of parents with last name of “Hogg” who named their daughter “Ima.” To my disappointment, however, I later discovered that it wasn’t true that they named their second daughter “Ura” (certain to have resulted in bitter fights).

Well that started it. The rest of the drive was dedicated to loony name combinations. In the end, I made Bob promise to send me a copy of his favorites when he returned to Keene, Texas, where he chairs Southwestern Adventist University’s Department of Communication. This week’s blog features half his list; next week’s blog, the second half.

At any rate, we all need a blessed change of pace from these disgusting and vicious political attack ads that poison television viewing during October. “Cool Names” ought to help.

Perhaps you’ll find it possible to add some gems of your own?

MENDENHALL’S FIRST LIST

Al Abbaster                Rose Bushe                    Gloria N. Excelsis

Ben Addrill                Preston Buttons            C. Howett Feels

Cary Ahn                    Stan Bye                          D. S. “Al” Fine

Mary Ahtchee           Jay Byrd                          Grace Flexit

Terri Aki                    Russell Caddle               May Flowers

Bob Alou                    Polly  Carbonate            Tom Foolery

Sal Amander             Iona Carr                         Sally Forth

Al Amony                  Justin Case                      Bob Frapples

S. P. Anaj                  Belinda Chinashop         Orlando D. Free and

Kris  Anthemum      Seymour Clearly                    Homer D. Brave

Julie Ard                    Billy Club                         Al Fresco

Penny Arrabbiata     Dot Comm                       Roland Function

Natalie Attired          Anna Conda                     Clara Fye

Jerry Attrick              Norman Conquest          Greg Garious

Kenny Kerry Attune  Cookie Crum                   Max Glucose

Ginger Ayle                Hugh N. Crye                   Dag Gonnett

Teddy Baer                Wanda Danse                   Billy Gote

Carrie A. Balance      Wayne Dantz                   Anna Gramm

Krystal Ball                Harmon Danger              Doug Graves

Al Bania                     Al B. Darned                     Carrie A. Grudge

Robin Banks             Otto DeFay                        Cliff Hanger

Candy Barr               Art Dekko                          Phil Harmonic

Sue Barroo               Crystal Shan DeLear        Hardy Harr

Dwayne de Bathtub   Jimmy DeLocke            Mary Hart

Sandy Beaches        Lois and Carmen              Marian Haste

Paul Bearer                   Denominator                Moe Heakin

Rose Beef                 Al Dentay                            Helen Highwater

Sarah Bellum          Marcia Dimes                     Rhoda Honda

Moe Betta                Phil Dirt                               N. “Vince” Hubble

Lois Bidder              Sues Doku                           Amanda Huggenkiss

D. Linus Bizzy         Duncan Donutz                  Gary Indiana

Ken U. Bleevitt       Ben Dover                            Gene Jacket

Bertha D. Blues      Neal Down                           Dora Jarr

Rita Booke               Pat Downes                         Mason Jarr

O. Danny Boyd       Erasmus B. Draggon          Shirley U. Jest

Lance Boyles           Kenny Duitt                         Kit N. Kaboodle

Xavier Breth            Stan Dupp                            Al Kahall

Donnie Brooke       Cy Dwok                               Patty Kate

Sandy Brown          Barb Dwyer                         Betty Kant

Vesta Buell              Ray D’Yo                              Tom Katz

Al Bumin                 Sam and Janet Evening    Buck Keaney