Gratitude Past and Present

Happy Thanksgiving all readers everywhere. What could be a bigger blessing than a free press and the right to read anything we want? My favorite activity is reading. I can even remember the first book I ever read on my own. Ironically, it had to do with Thanksgiving.

I had finished all my school work. Our class room had three grades together. The teacher was occupied with the older kids. We had just learned the alphabet and were beginning to read. She said I could choose something from the books on a special shelf. So I picked one.

The name of the book was Hoot Owl. There was a little pilgrim boy who wandered off from his friends and family who were preparing a wonderful Thanksgiving meal. The little boy got lost in the woods. But he was rescued by a kindly little Indian boy named Hoot Owl who was happy to help him find his way back home. Elated, the community joyfully urged Hoot Owl to invite his parents and their friends to join them for the abundant Thanksgiving feast. The Indians accepted and everyone became great friends.

The ending made me incredibly happy. I simply glowed with the realization that our Pilgrim fathers were magnanimous generous people and the native inhabitants really, really appreciated all of our friendly gestures.

Yeah. Well. You've got to remember, this was first grade--a long, long time ago. I wonder if the book would get published nowadays. Besides, the big underlying dazzling magic was that their were books right there in our humble class room that actually had stories. I didn't have to put up with Spot and Jane and that wretched ball any more.

Usually, in a Thanksgiving post, I express my heartfelt appreciation for my family. That's still my biggest blessing. But right up there in the gratitude category is my reverence for libraries and the access we have to books in this country.

Thank you, thank you librarians everywhere. God bless all the writers who keep books on the shelves and the readers who keep us going.

And God bless little Hoot Owl who warmed my heart and made my first book such a happy experience.

The First Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday. It was the first time I hosted a large family event in my home since moving to Fort Collins. I was amazed at how my house accommodated the group. The too small kitchen seemed to swell to include all the women who had their fingers in various pies. There was even room for the essential pitch table in the living room.

I have a large leather sectional that is just right for viewing movies. A large arched three-shaded lamp provides plenty of light for those who want to knit or do needlework.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year. This autumn has been one of the most spectacular I've seen. The weather has been gorgeous and the country is slowly emerging from the wounds afflicted during the recent election.

Thanksgiving is the source of one my happiest memories. I was introduced to reading through a little book about Thanksgiving. The title was Hoot Owl.

I wanted to learn to read more than anything in the world. We were in a tiny school where three grades were together in one room. No pre-school or kindergarten. No TV, Sesame Street, or clever toys. My mother read stories sometimes out of the old Book of Knowledge. We were simply jump-started into first grade.

I thought reading was a trick or a revelation. I emulated a third grade boy I especially admired. I sat exactly as he did, held my head at the same angle, frowned like he did. But I couldn't read. Then one day the teacher told us about the alphabet and that the alphabet formed words and the words then became sentences and sentences were the basis of stories. I was swept with a wave of white-hot fury that it was that simple and everyone had withheld it from me.

The alphabet and everything connected with it became an obsession. And then came one of the most joyful days of my life. After the class had endured yet another fumble-through with Dick, Jane, Spot, and that damned ball and I was out of anything to do, the teacher told me I could choose a book to read.

And I could! I could actually read. And these books all had plots.

 The first book I ever read on my own was Hoot Owl. It was about a little pioneer boy who got lost in the woods. Just when everything seemed the darkest and he despaired of ever making it back to his colony he was befriended by a little Indian boy, Hoot Owl, who took him to his stern, but kindly Chief. A group of Indians guided Hoot Owl back to his anxious parents who, along with other welcoming colonists, were preparing a Thanksgiving feast. Naturally, the grateful colonists invited the Indians to share their meal. It was the first Thanksgiving and everyone lived happily ever after.

There now. Wasn't that wonderful? The shelves were full of similar books and I was off and running.

Waldeinsamkeit and Winnetou

 Jeanne Matthews is the author of the Dinah Pelerin international mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press, including Bones of Contention, Bet Your Bones, Bonereapers, Her Boyfriend’s Bones, and Where the Bones Are Buried. Originally from Georgia, Jeanne lives with her husband in Renton, Washington. For more information, visit her website at www.jeannematthews.com. Or, follow her on Twitter @JMMystery.

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Sometimes one word can convey a mood or a sentiment that requires many words to articulate. It may hold special meaning in the language and culture that coined it, or the feelings that it connotes may have to be experienced to be understood. Vladimir Nabokov, who was fluent in both English and Russian, struggled to translate the Russian word toska. “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.”

While in Berlin researching my new Dinah Pelerin mystery, Where the Bones Are Buried, I discovered a similarly complex German word – Waldeinsamkeit. The approximate meaning is the feeling of being alone in the woods, of being connected to Nature. During the Romantic period between 1800 and 1850, there was a great longing for a place of tranquility in which to contemplate the loneliness of existence. Poets wrote about the quest for spiritual wholeness in Nature and the aesthetic and healing pleasures of woodland beauty. But as Germany transformed from a rural country to an economic and industrial power, the cities grew and the forests shrank. Two devastating World Wars in the 20th Century reduced the realm of Nature still more.

Today, Germany is one of the most densely wooded countries in Europe, but its forests are not primeval. Most are planted and maintained for the production of timber. It’s hard to be alone in the forest and there’s no longer the danger – or the thrill – that one might fall into the clutches of witches or wolves. The enchanted forests found in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm have disappeared. The hero or heroine can no longer enter into the dark unknown and encounter magic. In his novel Rat, the writer Günter Grass expressed that sense of loss:

“Because men are killing the forests the fairy tales are running away… [they] have trotted off to the cities and end badly.”

The idea of the forest occupies a profound place in the German psyche, which may explain their fascination with the American frontier and the untamed tribes who once roamed there. This fascination began with the adventure novels of Karl May, who created a fictional Apache chief named Winnetou, a “wise and noble savage.” Without ever seeing the landscape he wrote about, May pictured the scenery and characters so vividly that he lost track of reality. He came to believe that he was the living embodiment of Old Shatterhand, the white blood brother of Winnetou. May died in 1912, but his tales of Winnetou and the “Wild West” continue to have a grip on the German imagination. Over two hundred million copies of his books have been sold and they have inspired numerous festivals and theme parks. One such park, Pullman City in southern Germany, is special. A recreated frontier town straight out of a Clint Eastwood western, it encourages visitors to regard themselves as actual cowboys and Indians rather than as spectators. Like Karl May, they mingle reality with fantasy and join in the saloon gunfights and Indian rain dances.

The inspiration for Where the Bones Are Buried occurred when I learned about der Indianer clubs, in which aficionados dress as Indians, adopt Indian names, collect Indian artifacts, and gather for drumming ceremonies and powwows. Some go so far as to live in teepees in their back gardens, sew their own deerskin clothes, and eschew all technology. At first, I thought this Indian obsession bizarre, even laughable. But when these people speak of their affinity and nostalgia for the Comanches and Apaches of long ago, they are touchingly earnest. It’s an astonishing subculture that defies both time and geography. Since Dinah is a cultural anthropologist and also part Seminole, the phenomenon seemed a perfect motif for another of her foreign exploits.

I don’t know if the German desire to play Indian reflects something as psychologically abstruse as toska – a vague yearning for wilderness and for a romanticized past that never really existed. I don’t know if the concept of Waldeinsamkeit blends into the mythology of Winnetou. Maybe wearing feathered headdresses and buffalo horns is a way to hold onto a semblance of magic, a way to keep the fairy tales from trotting off to the cities forever. Understanding the mystery requires a journey across cultures, which is the kind of journey Dinah loves best.