Housekeeping, plus the Utah Legislature (something stinks)

Well, I call this housekeeping. Looks like my dance card is full with booksignings from now to the end of April.  This Saturday, March12, I'll be at the new Seagull Bookstore in Springville from 10 a.m. to noon. On Saturday, April 2, I'll be at the Book Shop in Cardston, Alberta for another signing. This one is especially fun, because it gives me an excuse to visit/stay with my son on the border in Montana. On Saturday, April 9, I'll be at the Deseret Book on 989 S. University in Provo. April 16 will find me at one Seagull Bookstore or another - Cedar Fort isn't sure which one yet. And somewhere there will be a Friday signing at another Seagull Bookstore.

Probably the most fun gig will be a Saturday, April 23 booksigning at the library in Mount Pleasant, Utah, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Megan Osmond called me to arrange it, and she said it's a grand reopening of the library, after a length renovation. I love to be in places where books are. She also told me that she finished Borrowed Light at 3 a.m. Monday morning. She said, "There in the living room, I gave you a standing ovation!" I laughed. She's arranging for the booksigning through Cedar Fort, and I'll be bringing along copies to sell of Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army, which was published in 2004 by Teacup (Texas Christian University Publications:TCUP).

The Cedar Fort folks wanted me to be at the BYU Bookstore the following Saturday, April 30, during Women's Week, but that's when I'll be in Fort Robinson, Nebraska, for the biennial gathering of Indian Wars scholars at a conference. I spoke one year, and a friend of mine is speaking this year, and it's a great chance to see my friends. We're a close-knit group. We all go to the same conferences (there arren't that many of us older specimens), have the same friends, etc. You get the drill. I never miss the Fort Rob gathering.

And good news from Amazon: Borrowed Light is now available on Kindle.

But here's what I want to talk about: politicians and human nature.

In 1972, it was Richard Nixon versus Senator George McGovern, Dem-S.D.  Nixon was a shoe-in for his second term, but Watergate rumblings had begun. A friend of mine convinced me to vote for McGovern, and I did. Well, Nixon won that by a landslide, as well all know, because few of us voted for McGov. But wait: there's more. Watergate happened, and Nixon resigned the presidency.

The strangest thing happened. Through the years, more and more people claimed that they voted for McGovern. (No one wanted to be associated with Nixon, of course.)  Some pundit humorously stated, years later, that if all the people who claimed to have voted for McGovern had actually done that, he'd have been elected!

So it goes, but what about that stinky bad bill HB477, that the Utah legisslature passed recently. Basically, the bill allows for much less transparency in what goes on in the state legislature: never a good idea, except for sneaky lawmakers. There is a special session coming up really soon to probably repeal it, mainly - or maybe only - because the good citizens of Utah ALL cried foul, and demanded it be repealed. Already, I have been amazed how many members of the legislature have been nimbly leaping away from their own complicity in initally signing that stinker. Pretty soon, nobody in the house or senate will have signed that bill, in the first place!  What we will see is the immaculate conception of bills in the Utah legislature. No one will have signed it, so it must have been a miracle that it passed and was signed into law by our guv.

I'll call this the Nixon/McGovern Syndrome. I think the legislators have felt the heat and realize they are in serious danger of being booted out of office, when their time comes to face irate voters. And sure enough, before it comes to that, every legislator will swear he/she never voted for it in the first place. Ah, yes, the Nixon/McGovern Syndrome in action. Oh, I do love politics.

In the horror section?

If I think about this much longer, I'm certain my head will explode. It concerns a certain major store, prominent throughout the United States, and Canada. We will call it StallMart, just to give it a name. I think it was called Mega-Lo-Mart in "King of the Hill," which I always enjoyed.

The folks at StallMart were nice enough to arrange a booksigning for Borrowed Light last Saturday in Price, Utah, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m.  The first sign of trouble happened the Thursday before the signing, when I dropped by the store to just make sure there were enough books on hand, since none of them seemed to be on the shelf in the LDS Book section.

When two assistant managers showed up to answer my questions, they told me that the main guy was out of town all week. When I asked about the books, neither man seemed to have the slightest idea what I was talking about. Oops. One of them thought there might be some books arriving on Friday, and he wandered off to find out. I left then, went home, and e-mailed Emily Showgren, the trusty PR lady at Cedar Fort. She promptly contacted the WalMart buyer, who said that 75 books would be delivered the next day.

When I checked on Friday, sure enough, there were books available. None were on the shelf, though. Maybe that was a new concept. I put up an "Author Signing" poster on an easel which Dave kindly located, and left it in the Customer Service section. And when I showed up at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, there was a table and chair inside the front entrance, near the bananas and the GloDomes, whatever they are. It was a good spot.

I think I signed between 25-30 books, and was OK, considering that there was a parade in downtown Price at noon that kept some potential buyers busy elsewhere. No matter. I was happy enough. (Didn't sell any GloDomes, though.)

On Monday in water aerobics, Mayzell mentioned that she had stopped by earlier that morning at StallMart to buy Borrowed Light off the shef, but there weren't any. She asked about it, then went back later, and found one, which I signed the next morning.

Wondering myself now, I stopped by Tuesday to see if there were any copies of Borrowed Light on the shelf. I figured there must have been at least 30 left over from the booksigning, so surely some would be on the shelf. Nothing (and don't call me Shirley). I checked with yet-another assistant manager, who had no idea. He did say there would be books on the shelf. When my daughter stopped in StallMart that evening, she couldn't find any.

I was in StallMart this morning to get some veggies, and went back to the book section just to see. Nothing. When I got home, I called the store and asked to speak to someone who knew something about the book section. She sent me to "Electronics." The lady who answered there didn't know anything. When I explained the situation, she said they had nothing to do with books. I suggested that some human had to put the books on the shelf, and she grudgingly agreed.  I told her the name of the book and the author, and she asked me to spell them. I spelled Borrowed and Light, and then she asked me if maybe the book was in the Horror section. I told her I sincerely hoped not, because it should have been shelved under LDS Books.

Here's all I can figure: Either Borrowed Light is selling like hotcakes and they can't keep them on the shelf, or no one has a clue at StallMart and only puts out one or two at a time, as the mood directs. I'm realistic enough to think it's probably the latter.

Ah, well. There's a booksigning at the new Seagull Books in Springville on Saturday, March 26, and one in Cardston, Alberta, on April 2, and I have high hopes for both. Randy Prete at the Book Shop in Cardston has already been in touch with me for a bio, so he can put it in an initial e-mail sent to all bookstore patrons. He's right on top of everything, and I'm grateful. There will be a Deseret Book signing at the DB store on South University in Provo on April 9. Maybe I'll have someone take a photo of me there so I can give a copy to the assistant managers at Price's StallMart and show them that the book exists.

I shoulda been a plumber.

Roads taken

I didn't mean to put bloggers on Big Ignore last week, but I was busy, driving from Wellington, Utah, to Waukesha, Wisconsin, and back again, to fetch my daughter, Liz. The original plan was to take a more leisurely trip and spend a little time with friends in Torrington, Wyoming, but Mom proposed, and daughter's cats disposed. Not to say that Mr. Pants and Flower weren't about as good as cats could be, cooped up in a minivan for three days - still, it was better to move along more quickly to avoid 1) incoming storms  2) kitty meltdowns.

The only bad weather happened where it could be expected to happen: in Wyoming behind Elk Mountain. Sure enough, there was about an hour's worth of blizzard - blizzard definition: cold (check), snow (check), wind (check).

Here's the deal with Elk Mountain. It's a big hunka mountain just west of Laramie, and I swear it makes its own weather. In the 1960s or '70s, when I-80 was going through southern Wyoming, the smart engineers in the project planned to build that stretch of highway at Elk Mountain lower than old highway 30. The locals advised the hotshots to reconsider, because doing that would mean a real problem with winter driving. In essence, the bigshot engineers patted Wyoming on its little head and said, "We're the experts. We'll put this highway lower and a bit straighter. It will save money in construction, and will shorten the travel along that stretch from Laramie west to Rawlins. We know best."

That's what happened. I-80 went through as the engineers planned. Big mistake. When the winter weather gets going, that hunk of interstate is just treacherous. Locals called it the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and wisely continued driving on old highway 30 from Laramie to Rawlins.

I took the Ho Chi Minh Trail on the way to Wisconsin, because I did want to save time. It was none too good then. On the way back, we were obviously headed into a winter storm and I did the smart thing and took Highway 30 above Elk Mountain. Yep, there was an hour of tense, watch-the-yellow-line driving, but then it cleared up and the road was fine. Even in the worst spots on Highway 30, I knew it was worse on I-80.

Sometimes it's good to stick to the tried and true path. Sometimes it's best to listen to the voices of experience, rather than the guys with slide rules (in those days) who only think they know, but who really don't know Wyoming as well as the veterans who have been driving that route for years.

Besides, when you take highway 30, you get to stop in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, the "home" of Owen Wister's 19th century Western (the first, maybe) called The Virginian. Liz and I stopped in Medicine Bow and went to the Virginian Hotel. The folks there are pleased to show off the really great old 1911 hotel's rooms. They're open for business, and plan to celebrate The Virginian Hotel's centenary in June of this year.

I'll be going through the area again in April, and I plan to spend a night at the Virginian Hotel, soaking in the atmosphere. Um, I hardly need state that there is no atmosphere on I-80 between Laramie and Rawlins. Sometimes you have to try the blue highways, instead. Safer, too, in the winter. And if you remember Wister's grand Western, you can think, "When you call me that, smile!"

The Envelope Please

I'm in a motel in Evanston, Wyoming, on my way to Wisconsin, for a particular visit with my daughter, Liz. I just finished watching the Oscars by myself. Usually I'm with family members, but this is a trip I'm making by myself, and that's OK, too. I think the most fun I ever had at the Oscars was the night my daughter, Mary Ruth and I were in San Antonio at a motel, visiting my son/her brother Jeremy, who was going to UT-San Antonio. As I recall, we had Chinese takeout from HEB (oh, yes) and mostly enjoyed each other's company. I don't remember who won anything that year, but I'll remember this one, because Colin Firth won for playing King George VI, and he stuttered.

So do I. I always have. My stammer was more pronounced when I was younger, but I've never grown out of it. I've learned to breathe better and can accommodate it better, but the stammer is still there. I could totally and completely identify with Colin Firth's role in The King's Speech. I know the feeling of dread and desperation of having to speak, that Firth interpreted so well.

My dad was in the Navy (so was George VI), and we moved around every three years or so. This meant new schools and new opportunities to show off my stammer. Or so it seemed to me.  Given my own habits, I'd happily have stayed in the same place and never have to re-introduced myself every few years to new critics.  I remember the pain of having to read out loud in turn, because my stammer was always there. And sure enough, that first time would usually be followed by a visit to the school district's speech therapist. Nothing really made a difference. Visits to psychologists didn't make a difference, because stammers don't necessarily have psychological overtones. Now the consensus seems to be that stammers are caused by some synapse that doesn't click in the brain. Oh, well, whatever. It never affected my intellect and native cheery temperament.

But because we moved around, I always had to meet people. There would be laughs sometimes, but I'm a charming person and a good student, and I always had friends. I was never shunned or avoided because of my stammer, and I'm thankful for that, but it was always a black crow sitting on my shoulder, that only I could see, I suppose.

When I first heard about The King's Speech, I knew I would have to see it, no matter how far I had to go from my little rural home. I have always liked Colin Firth's performances, even when he played that thoroughly nasty royal in Shakespeare in Love. But it was my huge respect for King George VI that was always the main reason for seeing the movie, because I do what he did. I have to think that most of the world's stutterers feel the same way. It's nice to see one of our own get his due.

And what a king he was, even though he was a Navy officer, as he would have preferred to remain. King by default, he rose to soaring heights to lead his nation through the dark, dark years of World War II from 1939-1941, when England stood alone. He and his queen - they were best friends and lovers - reached out to their people. Those newsreels of the pair of them, strolling through blitzed out sections of London, were not done as cynical photo ops, but as a couple of Brits reaching out to other Brits. George and his queen remain stalwart role models of grace under extreme pressure - living examples of unflinching character in the face of the evils of Nazism.

What a man. What a king. A few years ago, my father, also a naval officer but in a diferent navy, gave me a coin from the Fiji Islands that he wore as a good luck charm in the South Pacific during his own war. It's a shilling, with 1942 and a turtle and Fiji Islands on the side, and King George VI on the other. I think I'll wear it more often now. My dad has always been my hero, and George VI is, too.

About my stammer. I've been slowly realizing in the last few years that as onerous as it was when I was younger, and even now occasionally, I don't think I would have changed a thing. Not one thing. What my stammer seems to have done for me is force me to listen more in silence, to learn how people act and speak, to listen to their stories, and build up an amazing vocabulary. All stammerers do that, I think, because we need lots of words. Some words are easier to say than others, so we learn a lot of words and their many meanings. And words are important to me and my characters.

I think The King's Speech is going to be my favorite motion picture for a long time. It almost feels like a personal victory. It gave a lot of us our own voice.

I hate my coat

Spring may or may not be coming, so it's time to recycle a column I wrote when I worked for the Times-Record in Valley City, North Dakota. I've updated it a little, and doubt many of you have read it, unless you live in Valley City. I wrote four years-worth of columns, which probably ought to be published in one collection someday.

It ain't heavy; it's just ugly

I hate my coat. This is problem, because it's only February, and with this winter, it's possible that spring won't arrive for another six months.

I knew this was coming. I hated the same coat by the end of winter last year, but the darned thing refuses to wear out. I can't afford a new one. Even if I could, such wild extravagance would send all my Scots relatives spinning in their narrow, frugal graves.

I bought the thing in December of 2000, because I was heading to Washington, D.C., for research, courtesy of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, and wanted a lighter coat for the warmer weather. I somehow thought denim would be lighter. It wasn't. In Washington, the denim coat didn't allow me to blend in with the natives, all of whom were wearing black in 2000. You'd have thought the District was a Johnny Cash convention with lobbyists. The other project researcher was a professor from North Dakota State University, and he wore his parka. We probably looked like Jean and Jerry Lundegaard from the movie, Fargo. You betcha.

If necessity had required that I wear the coat all year round, I would have worn it out sooner and replaced it. I've thought about leaving my coat somewhere, but it would probably come home like a cat, slinking up the driveway and flopping down on the porch.

Maybe I should name my coat. That simple act might have increased my affection. Years ago, my husband bought a used Buick, green and huge. We had five children at home then. In a pinch, I think we could all have lived in the trunk. Maybe even installed a hot tub.

Jeremy, in high school at the time, started calling that green machine "The Nimitz," after the aircraft carrier. We still remember The Nimitz with fondness, but what do you name a coat? Lester? Kiki?

To my relief (and probably everyone else's, who has to look at it), my coat is starting to wear out. I lost a button, which I haven't replaced yet. The cuffs are starting to fray, and it's getting shiny in the seat.

Still, there might be months and months to go until spring. Maybe I'll start a support group. Surely I'm not the only woman in the greater metropolitan Price/Wellington area who hates her coat. I'd offer to trade my dog of a coat to someone, but I'm too nice even to suggest that.

Something has to happen between now and summer, though, because I'm really starting to envy the German army of World War II. No irate, knee-jerk letters, please; hear me out. I know the Nazis were dirtbags. We historians - unless we work for Fox News - tend to look for the Big Picture. The Wehrmacht - the German army - was a bit different from the Nazis. The army had some remarkable commanders; the Nazis, not so much.

So here comes my guiltiest secret of all: I've long been an admirer of those sexy, ankle-length overcoats that German army officers wore. No army looked better than the German Army in wintertime, with those overcoats and shiny boots. It was Wehrmacht haute couture: warm coats, well-cut coats, grey double-breasted, kick ass coats with shiny buttons.

A few years ago, I taught a university course in modern European history. We spent some class time watching World War II newsreels, and I did a lot of reading. I invariably ended up at Stalingrad, a frightful slugfest on the Volga River that may have been the turning point of the war in Europe. Other historians point to the tank battle the following summer at Kursk, but it all is intertwined.

Of his namesake city, Stalin declared the Germans would not move beyond it. On the other side, Hitler said the German Army would never retreat. Between August 1942 and February 1943, two huge armies struggled by that bend in the Volga River, literally fighting room to room in the massive factories. (For a look at this, watch the 2001 movie, Enemy at the Gates, or the even better 1993 German film, Stalingrad.) The Soviets and citizens of Stalingrad gave new meaning to the word stubborn.

When it ended, the Wehrmacht's entire Sixth Army, bled white and starving, surrendered to victorious Soviets, who marched the 91,000 survivors to prison camp. Years passed. Fewer than 5,000 of those Germans ever returned to their homeland.

There is a terrible newsreel of a German POW walking by himself to internment and probable death. His beautiful grey overcoat is in shreds and he is wearing boxes on his bare feet because he has no fancy boots.

Suddenly, that coat I hate so well doesn't look too bad.



Water, water everywhere

I was looking at computer news last night, and there was the big article I'd been dreading but knew was coming: It looks like another bad flood year for the northern plains.

We left Valley City, North Dakota, in July of 2009, after Martin retired from teaching at the university there. We moved to Wellington, Utah, which is pretty much in the desert. We bought a little house that had a basement, but one which showed no signs of water damage. We'd been living in a lovely town in Nodak that turned into Flood Trauma Central, after a long, long snowy winter. It was a winter/spring where no one had seen Sheyenne River flood predictions that high since the 1880s, and no one was alive who remembered it. We didn't want to go through that again.

The Sheyenne River, normally beautiful and peaceful, winds through Valley City, turning it into what is known as "The City of Bridges." That spring of 2009 it was a monster. We had a smart and savvy mayor, Mary Lee Nielson, who started hauling dirt early. For a solid month, from early morning to late at night, big trucks rumbled through town, building makeshift dikes along the river. Almost everyone lives near the river in Valley City, and we were no exception.

Valley City State University is right on the river. Dikes went up, as well as dikes inside of dikes. The same thing was going on, on a larger scale, in Fargo, and in other towns. Most of the rivers in the area dump into the Red River of the North, which flows through Fargo and north into Canada. The rivers all rise at different times, and do their damage. Fargo went first, and we followed, as did Jamestown to the east of us, on the James River.

Soon all the bridges in Valley City were blocked off with dirt, except one, so people could still get in and - more important - out, if the need came. It used to be such a treat to drop down off the gently rolling prairie and into our little valley. Now our little valley was filling up with sandbags, dirt dikes, and that ever-growing Sheyenne River.

The university was finally shut down about a month before graduation, because it was just too dangerous to expose students living along the river to potential hazard. VCSU is the first university in the nation to go entirely wired and laptop, so kids were able to finish their classes online at a distance. It was my husband's last semester of teaching, and his final play of his career was cancelled two days before it opened, because the university closed. Sigh.

The public school system closed, too, mainly because as the water kept rising, the sewer collapsed. Mary Lee told everyone to evacuate, and many of us did. Our grandson, Noah, was living with us that year and going to junior high. We called friends in Fargo (their flood was receding) and asked if we could refugee to their house. They said sure, so we did. Gov. John Hoeven send out a statewide APB for us and towns like ours that were in trouble to send kids to school anywhere in the state. The state would pick up the book and lunch tab. Noah - um, what an appropriate name for the time - went to school in neighboring Maple Valley.

After about a week of this, we returned home. Our mayor had arranged for Porta Potties to be hauled into Valley City. The deal was, we could use all the water we wanted, but none of it could go down those drains. Hence, the portable johns. We met our neighbors in new and different ways for a few weeks, until an over-the-street pipe was jury-rigged to take sewage. In our house, we plugged the bathtub and took extremely brief showers, where the water fell into a bucket, which we dumped outside the front door. The rest of the water was drained by a shop vac and then dumped outside.

So it went for awhile. People in the northern plans are highly resourceful, and we managed. It makes my heart ache to think they're going to have to go through all that again. Valley City was mostly spared that year, and again in 2010. I say mostly, because many outlying homes along the river went under. I know they are worrying about this spring, which threatens to be as bad as 2009, if not worse. And I worry, too, because I love Valley City and the wonderful folks who live there.

Water is a funny thing - we need it, we like it, but it can turn on us. Right about when we think we can master it, water has a way of reminding us that we aren't in charge and never will be.

Whose life is this anyway?

On the way to water aerobics, Vondell and I pass a white house with a Utah Highway Patrol car on the curb. Sometimes he's there, suggesting that he works nights, and sometimes he's  not, suggesting shift changes. It interests me, because my son is in law enforcement and happens to be pulling a month of night duty right now. I am also in the habit of "creating" people's lives. It's the curse or blessing of the novelist.

Vondell and I have created our own fiction about the highway patrolman. A few weeks ago, when the black pickup was gone, and the cop car was in the driveway, we decided that maybe she had left in a huff and taken the kids with her. There was his lonely car, parked where the pickup usually was. Maybe he was inside on the telephone, pleading with her to come home.  A week later, when we saw the pickup back, and the patrol car, too, we figured they had made up. It's hard to be a law enforcement wife; maybe she needed a break.

Usually, the pattern seems to be that we'll see his patrol car on the curb and the black pickup in the driveway when we head to water aerobics. When we drive by an hour later, the patrol car is usually still there, and the pickup is gone, suggesting to our nosey minds that she is at work somewhere, and he gets to sleep in peace and quiet, after a night spent keeping Highway 6 relatively crime-free.

But today is Valentine's Day. We noticed on our return drive-by that his patrol care was still there, and so was the black pickup, suggesting, well, you know what it was suggesting. We both laughed and hoped the lovebirds had a good Valentine's Day. Even cops need love.

Vondell and I think we should find some subterfuge to knock on the door and see who actually lives there. We're too old to be selling Girl Scout cookies, so that won't work, and neither of us looks much like a meter reader. Maybe we need to rein in our imaginations. I just hope that we don't drive by some morning and see the patrol car gone and another car there, along with the black pickup. I'd hate to have to bang on the door and stage an intervention...

Or maybe we should drive down a different street and leave the poor cop alone.