The reason our first son began his school career in a Montessori classroom was an innocent sign on the public school kindergarten teacher’s wall that said “Teaching kindergarten is like holding 25 corks underwater all at one time”.  I was trying to be a conscientious parent, investigating options and objectively choosing the absolute best for my son, but  this image of holding my baby underwater like a cork was just horrifying – plus the public kindergarten had a really awkward schedule that didn’t work for anyone.  So with minimal knowledge or conviction about the benefits of Montessori, we started him there.  Ironically, when he did go to public school the next year, he got that same teacher for two years and we all loved her.  Her little sign was just ambulance humor that did not strike me as funny at the time.

My lack of humor was fortuitous though since I then learned about the brilliant Maria Montessori and her theories of teaching young children.  In the briefest nutshell, Montessori determined that  young children go through stages of development at their own speed, and if appropriate tools and “jobs” are available to them, they will gravitate to the tasks that teach them the skills that match their developmental window.  The children focus on a skill until they master it.   It is hard to picture this working out in a classroom setting, but it sure can.  The emphasis is on sensory exploration and manipulatives.  Lots of manipulatives, which certainly suited my active boys, and in my opinion, suits  most kids.  Both sons attended Montessori preschool and kindergarten and then moved into a traditional public school  My daughter missed the opportunity because we moved, but I had enough indoctrination then to make sure manipulatives were still part of her life.  While living on a ranch certainly helped, we made sure all three children benefitted from working with their hands.

(While I could, and probably too often do, rant about the focus on screen time in classrooms now,  I will skip it.  Honest, I will, but I don’t think Maria would have liked it either.)

My point here is that children still need to learn how to do stuff.  Real stuff like cooking,

cleaning, fixing engines, making clothes, building, caring for animals, knitting, growing peppers, whatever.  It is practical, they can then take care of themselves and others, they learn skills that are helpful to employment, they appreciate when difficult things are done for them, and it gives them confidence.  While some good vocational programs and teachers are still around, we can’t expect all that teaching to happen in school anymore, if we ever could.

Early days learning to walk pigs

Getting ready to show.

Matt and Ashley sharing the turkey experience

Answering the judge.

Community Service projects

Learning to multitask.

Proud of their new skills

Responsibilty starts early.

Yes they made these!

Mini member art.

An old but useful skill.

“Education is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment.”  Maria Montessori

So now is the time to sign up children as 4H members, and adults as 4H leaders.  4H is still a great place to learn how to do real stuff, but its future looks bleak.  Membership is dropping because, ironically, so many other opportunities are available.  Active kids in supportive homes end up being overscheduled and stressed out trying to take advantage of all these opportunities, which is bad.  Some kids don’t get to participate in much at all for hardship reasons, which is also bad.    There are strong arguments for all enrichment programs, but for whatever reasons, the practical  projects of 4H that are often the first activity to get chopped.  There is no team to “let down”, the initial monetary commitment is minimal, and the schedule can be crazy.  Then, when a shortage of leaders results in  projects getting cancelled midyear or unavailable altogether, kids are less likely to sign up again.

4H is made up of local clubs under the County/State Cooperative Extension umbrella.  The real action takes place locally when local adults take on a project.  Leaders are all volunteers with the multitude of other commitments we all have, and it gets tough.  But, here is my plea,  a project can be as little as 6 hours of meeting time, and even with the inevitable prep time, many people COULD fit in 6 to 12 hours of volunteer time.  Of course there are higher levels of commitment available and needed too, but PROJECT LEADERS are the most pressing need. Fun projects keep kids interested.

Projects can be very specific, like cord bracelet making or salsa preparation.  People have taught beginning dog training, trap shooting, archery, gardening, small engine repair, bread baking, knitting, recycled object crafts, paper airplane making, hiking, creative writing, photography, photo editing, and there are so many more cool ideas. As a kid in 4H,  I learned to cook, make sauerkraut and jam, raised dairy goats and lambs, and learned cake decorating (which then became my college job for quite awhile).  Projects can be geared towards “mini-members”, ages 5-8, or older members 9 and up.  Older members can help as junior and teen leaders.  It is not a bad gig!

Getting to know these great young people and helping them learn practical skills is, in my opinion, the best way to stay optimistic about our future.  When you see all the memes and political cartoons bemoaning the problems and gaps in the upcoming generation, you can think,  “well at least there’s Josi, Michael,  Dani, Jared, Harrison, and ________ that know how to do things.”

If you are interested in volunteering as a 4H leader, come talk to me, or the 4H office 760-873-7854. (http://ceinyo-mono.ucanr.edu/4-H_Program/)

If you are interested in the notion of practical learning, here are a few related books.  We may not have them on the shelf, but can certainly help you find them!  There are many more, and I would love to get your recommendations if you have read some. 

Shop Class As Soul Craft: an Inquiry into the Value of Work  by Matthew B. Crawford .  This is a philosophical and practical look at why we need to be sure the trades are not forgotten and physical labor is not to be reviled.  Crawford now has several more books in a similar theme.

The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker by Mike Rose.  Rose investigates what should be obvious, that intelligence and calculation is essential to jobs like waitressing and carpentry.  This book  is credited with being able to shape both public policy and general opinion.

The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori.  Montessori has quite a few books on early childhood development, but this one is a classic.  Also check for biographies like:

Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work by E.M. Standing.

The Unsettling Of America or What Are People For? by Wendell Berry.  Philosopher, cultural critic, poet, and farmer, Wendell Berry always has a lot to say about the need to stay connected to the land and the discipline of work.  Any of his works will give you new appreciation for labor.

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben This book explores the need to refocus our economy on local production of food, goods, and even entertainment.  That requires people who can do things!

Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think and What We Can Do About It, by Jane Healy.  This is a  discussion of developmental windows and how missing them affects higher levels of reasoning.  I loved this book. This was published in 1991, and things have changed.  Healy has quite a few new related books out which likely address these changes, but I haven’t read them myself.

So, from a current 4H leader, and a former 4Her, please consider volunteering.  And if not in an organized program, make an effort to teach some children practical skills.

I think I’ve said before that if a new bookseller wants to do his or her job well, he or  she’d better study up on the mystery authors.  Every day I have customers saying they “need to find a new author, I’ve read all of my favorite author’s books”.  So…. who to recommend?  There are so many “subgenres” in mystery and suspense it can feel impossible to hit on a winner!

Quite a few readers, including me, enjoy a mystery that immerses you in a region or time period, whether it is Cadfael’s medieval monastery or even Stephanie Plum’s New Jersey.  A good mystery series involves the reader in the lives of a cast of interesting characters, one of which has to be the location. When it comes to mysteries set in the West though, I have a love-hate issue:  I love the location but can really be unnerved by the number of murders taking place somewhere that could be MY home.  Really people, if you have 6 grisly murders occurring every month, move away already!  Trenton, New Jersey, or London are one thing, but rural Montana, Window Rock, Arizona,  Absaroka County,  Wyoming, or  Niniltna, Alaska…. you don’t have the population for that kind of mayhem!  Or, don’t take your murder mysteries too seriously I suppose.

If you can stomach murder mysteries in your own backyard, the spectacular scenery and isolation of the Eastern Sierra provides the backdrop for a number of authors I like to recommend.  Although not easy to find, Kirk Mitchell is at the top of the list.  Mitchell worked for law enforcement on the reservations of the Owens Valley for a time and has authored a number of mysteries as well as science fiction, alternate history, and movie novelizations.  Four  books are particularly close to home, the Dee Laguerre series featuring a Basque heritage BLM ranger who takes on range wars and green guerillas in High Desert Malice and our own Owens Valley water war in Deep Valley Malice.  His first “local” book though was, Black Dragon from 1988.  It is set in Manzanar during the Japanese internment, and a more recent mystery, Under the Killer Sun, is set in Death Valley with a Shoshone heritage investigator.  (I haven’t read that one yet!).  Mitchell’s Emmett Parker (Comanche) and Anna Turnipseed (Modoc) series is also very good, frequently compared to Tony Hillerman in that the novels rely on Native American culture and settings.  Mitchell’s mysteries have plenty of action and bloody detail as well as the cultural aspects, to satisfy all but the “cozy mystery” lovers.

If you are interested in Mitchell’s mysteries, let us put your name on the Wants List or special order them, because they don’t last on the shelf!

Along with Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller brought to life the scrappy female private investigator genre.  Her Sharon McCone series is set mostly in San Francisco, but P.I. McCone finds her way to the East Side every so often, particularly in the 1991 mystery Where Echoes Live.  McCone spends a season next to a Mono Lake look-alike, Tufa Lake, investigating a corpse in the lake, a Nevada mining company bent on destroying the environment,  and a new murder every week or so….not the best thought while enjoying your Frosty Cone in Lee Vining.  McCone’s love interest with a local continues in the series, so the ties to Mono Lake country do as well.  It is a fun series with a strong, smart, and politically active woman character, well worth reading.

Sue Grafton ‘s female P.I., Kinsey Milhone, barely needs an  introduction since her “alphabet” mystery series is so well known.  If you haven’t read it though, you will enjoy Milhone’s foray into the Eastern Sierra in N is for Noose if for no other reason than to see how Mammoth Lakes, Bishop, Independence, Mono Lake and the other landmarks get tossed and jumbled together in this story!  While this mystery did not get the critical acclaim of other Milhone adventures, you will also enjoy Grafton’s humor and the plot twists that get her back to her home turf in Santa Teresa (Santa Barbara).  The “good ol’ boy network” may resonate or be an irritating stereotype, so…you’ve been warned. Kinsey Milhone is addictive (X comes out in August!) and a perfect, quick summer read.

An almost local author, David Sundstrand from Reno, Nevada, has clearly spent a lot of time in the Eastern Sierra, traveling up and down Highway 395.  He only has two books published so far, but the locations range from Randsburg to Topaz Lake.  Frank Flynn, protagonist and BLM investigator, melds the cultural heritage of the desert in his DNA with Irish, Paiute, and Mexican ancestry.  All contribute to his unique ability to solve grisly crimes in, quite literally, our backyard, usually involving poaching or some other resource damaging behavior as well.  These mysteries are page turners, on the bloodier side of the mystery novel spectrum, and other than a remarkable ability to travel really long distances in an eyeblink, (a trait shared by other authors writing about the West, even Tony Hillerman –  who wants to read about a six hour car ride to get back to headquarters anyway?) they are a good read.  Believe me, you will remember these stories when you pass some more colorful (or eccentric) homesteads and watering holes on Highway 395. Sundstrand clearly appreciates the unique characters of desert communities, and that is not something you read every day.

Since I am continually looking for interesting mystery authors to read and recommend,  please let me know if you have other authors to add to this list!  I know we also have several local self-published authors with mysteries to their credit,  so send me a review if you are familiar with any of them.  I’m sure someone has done psychological research into why we are so fascinated by murder and crime, but with these regional settings you can always claim you read them for the scenery.  And we don’t judge, read what you like.

Anyone with a history  in Nevada will recognize the name Laxalt.  Paul Laxalt was Nevada’s governor from 1967 to 1971 and then beat  Harry Reid for the US Senator seat which he held through 1987.   His political legacy is solid, and his career started as a boy when he rubbed shoulders with politicians in his family’s Basque hotel, later the Ormsby House, in Carson City.  His extensive family is entwined throughout Northern Nevada’s public life and history.

His younger brother Robert though, is the one with a hold on me.  Robert Laxalt ( 1923-2001) is an author at the top of the list that I Must Have Shelf Space For.  Laxalt began his career as a journalist, and his spare, to the point, and vivid writing in both fiction and nonfiction works reflects that training.  He is often compared to Ernest Hemingway who had a similar journalism background.  He writes about Basque American sheepherders, the sagebrush, and family.  If you know Nevada or the intermountain West, you know these people and places,  If  not, you want to know them.

Sweet Promised Land, Laxalt’s first book from 1957,  is based on a trip he and his Basque immigrant father Dominque took to the homeland after Dominque’s 50 years in the deserts and mountains of Northern Nevada.  Appreciation and affection grows for his father in the process, and we come to love and appreciate the whole family before the book ends.  Sweet Promised Land , in fact, is frequently credited with winning elections for Paul, but politics aside, this is a beautiful family story, an immigrant story, a coming home story.  I recommend it to everyone.

Charles Kuralt’s review of a later book says, “Somewhere along the line, many of our writers have forgotten how to tell stories, set in places the reader can see and feel and smell with the characters the reader cares about.  Robert Laxalt hasn’t forgotten how.  He has written a yarn that I, for one, believe and cannot get out of my head.”   Readable but rich, action packed, likeable characters- these ingredients add up to a satisfying book for young adults, and Sweet Promised Land was actually a Weekly Reader publication for many years.  When Laxalt helped found the University of Nevada Press, his books were then all published by the small university press and continue to be a mainstay of the UNR backlist.

Laxalt followed Sweet Promised Land with a dozen more Basque-American stories, some loosely based on his family history, some focused more on the Basque homeland.  A Cup of Tea in Pamplona about smugglers in the Basque Pyrenees is colorful and riveting.  A Man in the Wheatfield features Italian immigrants to Nevada, and is probably the most complex and ambiguous of his fiction works.  The American Library Association named it one of the most Notable Works of Fiction in 1964, on the list with Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow.  The Basque Hotel, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, brings in more of the family’s hotel heritage and Laxalt’s strong, competent mama.  Nevada, A Bicentennial History of course tops the nonfiction list.

Time of the Rabies, a novella and one of Laxalt’s final books, verges on a horror story, of  the compelling, can’t-put-it-down variety.  Based on an actual rabies epidemic in the 1920’s, the short story follows a sheep rancher and crew as the rabies epidemic sweeps over their operation and lives.  Yikes.  Nightmare material for everyone I know that read it, but so, so good!  He captures that complex relationship with nature and livelihood ranchers and farmers know too well.  Read it please, but not while alone or camping….

If you are a poor soul who hasn’t experienced any Basque American culture, start with Robert Laxalt’s books.  Then get yourself to the JT Bar in Gardnerville, or the Marvin Hotel in Winnemucca, the Star Hotel in Elko, or any number of other great traditional Basque restaurants across Nevada, Idaho, Montana.  You can still find good Basque food in Bakersfield with that area’s history of sheep herding.  Thanks in part to Laxalt, Basque festivals are common in the region too, Reno has a great one coming up in July. (click here for more information) It is an ancient and fascinating culture, with deep roots now in our sagebrush and aspen west.

Landscapes of a Western Mind by Ivan Doig

Last week before I heard author Ivan Doig had died of cancer, a customer relayed a great personal story about crossing the Sierra at age 14 with cows and a pack string in early spring. The snow got so deep they had to put the little calves into pack bags with their little faces poking out and let the biggest mule break a trail through the snow to get through. It was a great story, and I can’t do it justice. After reading Ivan Doig’s obituaries about his constant habit of carrying a notebook and jotting down good stories and phrases, I could just picture him in my store taking down notes to include another colorful story in a novel someday. What I, and so many fans, love about his work is how he captures those stories of unique but completely believable characters dealing with the land and the elements. Of course he has cowboys and plenty of sheepherders, but all the other individualistic characters that make up the remote regions are there too, in perfect accents and detail. The characters are there sometimes by choice sometimes by happenstance, but it is never recreation. It is full on living and making a living in a hard place as best they can.

When we were agonizing over a name and corresponding image for our new store location, Ivan Doig was one of a small group of authors I kept at the top of my list for the type of regional Western emphasis I wanted to infuse through the new store – a regional emphasis that is very much tied to the land and characters shaped by the landscape. Of course our landscape includes the Sierra peaks and lakes, the glamour girls of the local scenery, but it also includes the Whites and Panamint Ranges, Silver Peak and Montgomery Pass, Adobe Valley and Keeler. Literature is said to put the whole world in reach, and it does, but I can’t house all of it in one store (valiant effort though if I do say so). Instead I want to increasingly emphasize what makes the Owens Valley and Western Nevada unique and special and worth calling home, or at least visiting. Ivan Doig’s stories take place in Montana and the Northern Rockies, not geographically that close to our locale, but the remote and vast lands he describes are plenty familiar. He would recognize my Range & River region I think, and thanks to his 16 wonderful books, we can all recognize his.

If you have not yet read any of Doig’s works, I think starting with his first book, and memoir, This House of Sky would be the best idea. It is a painful but beautiful story of tough, tough people. I typically shy away from ANYTHING described as painful, but I loved this book even if it made me cry. It was honored as a National Book Award finalist in 1979. In fictional works, he is probably best known for Dancing at The Rascal Fair, part of the McCaskill Family trilogy of homesteading Scots emigrants in western Montana, and The Whistling Season, a New York Times bestseller in 2006, a tribute to rural school teachers, set farther east in Montana. With bestselling author status and eleven fine books to his credit, Doig was awarded the Wallace Stegner prize for literature in 2007. The Bartender’s Tale came out in 2012, and is one of my favorites. It’s written from the perspective of a 12 year old boy who is trying to figure out complex family relationships along with his own place in the world. You will love the father and son in this one, and the piles of stuff in the barn, don’t miss it. Doig’s sixteenth book Last Bus to Wisdom, will come out posthumously this summer and will return to the McCaskill’s Two Medicine Country with another precocious 12 year old’s story. I’m sure it will be wonderful. Doig’s website is very personable, with Readers’ Group discussion questions, synopsis, and background on each of his novels – don’t pass up that fine resource either if you want to fully appreciate his books.

Every obituary from The Missoulan to The New York Times identifies Doig as a fine writer of the American West, which is what I love about him as well. I want to leave you with his own words though, from his website, on the subject. Of course, he nailed it.

One last word about the setting of my work, the American West. I don’t think of myself as a “Western” writer. To me, language—the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose—is the ultimate “region,” the true home, for a writer. Specific geographies, but galaxies of imaginative expression—we’ve seen them both exist in William Faulkner’s postage stamp-size Yoknapatawpha County, and in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s nowhere village of Macondo, dreaming in its hundred years of solitude. If I have any creed that I wish you as readers, necessary accomplices in this flirtatious ceremony of writing and reading, will take with you from my pages, it’d be this belief of mine that writers of caliber can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing of that larger country: life.