Credible Allegations

I've been Catholic all my life. I love the Mass. Right now I am really struggling with the hierarchy of the Church. The Pennsylvania report of 300 priests molesting over 1000 children broke me.

My husband said he didn't understand why I was so upset now. He pointed out that we've known of all this--the assaults, the cover-ups, the pious-looking pedophiles--for a very long time. He said, "Nothing's changed."

I said, "That's why I'm angry. Because still nothing has changed."

My husband suggested that instead of writing a blog post I write to the pope, but honestly, I'm too angry with the pope to talk to him right now. I'm too angry that he suggested that the way out of this morass was for the laity to fast and pray. I think the correct answer is that every bishop who ever covered up an allegation or moved a molesting priest to a new parish or who did anything other than order an immediate investigation involving law enforcement, resigns immediately, forever, and that all allegations not affected by the statue of limitations be prosecuted, and that we extend the statute of limitations on any cases where the victim was a minor.

People from my high school class have been discussing this on Facebook a lot lately, mostly sharing memories of the horrible rampant predator priest actually who lived in an apartment at the Catholic high school I attended. He had already molested a bunch of boys in previous assignments, so he got transferred to a place where he'd have unlimited access to the boys' locker room, among other things.

The worst of it is that so many of us knew about him, even then. Adults must have known. There's no way it wasn't widely known. And it was ignored.

Today the current bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese released this list of diocesan priests accused of sexual assault. One of my classmates just posted, "five 'credible accusations' when me and his dozens of other victims know what the real tally is."

Is it really such a big deal? I'm also reading a bunch of crap today about poor Brent Kavanaugh, who might not get to be a Supreme Court Justice because he almost raped a girl when he was in high school. If I hear another person say, "boys will be boys," or, "well, it was a long time ago," or "well, he was drunk," I will be sick. Priests will be priests, anyone? You can't be angry about one and ignore the other.

It is really such a big deal. Oh, Lord. Ask me how I know. It never leaves you. It changes you. Permanently. Forever.

Read the list from Fort Wayne. Look at the dates of ordination and the dates some of the men were removed from the priesthood, and see what a long span it was. Notice how some of them molested children in this decade--less than ten years ago, even though we're expected to believe that we're safe now. Notice how many pedophiles worked at Catholic high schools, or were the chaplain for Catholic boy scouts, or somehow involved in Catholic schools. 

Over and over and over. And adults knew, and did nothing.

Many of these creeps still live in Fort Wayne. The ones who assaulted children, and the ones who let them get away with it.

A visit to the coalfields

Yesterday Tracy and I drove to the coalfields of southwest Virginia and delivered the first sets of teacher books for Appalachian Literacy Initiative.

ALI has a seven-person board, but it's Tracy and I who came up with it, meeting over coffee all through last winter and spring, hashing out what was possible and what was helpful and learning all the things we needed to do to get it done. (Tracy created our website. I figured out how to file the paperwork with the state and the IRS.)

So yesterday was a red-letter day. Yesterday we began.

This is an experimental year. We need to learn what works in reality, and what's actually helpful to teachers as opposed to what we think will be helpful. So we'd made an appointment with this particular school, our first. (Note: if you've applied to our program, don't panic that you haven't heard from us. We're making final decisions at our board meeting tomorrow regarding how many schools we can accept. The school we visited yesterday has a private sponsor, a alumna, so is automatically in.)

There's one combined elementary and middle school in this small town. We met with the principal, who was kind and welcoming. He told us that when kids were avid readers you never had to worry about their test scores. He said he was facing not only entrenched poverty but sometimes entrenched, generational disability, when whole families thought they weren't capable of anything. There's no bookstore nearby, of course (the closest is probably in Bristol, a 90 minute drive away, though there may be a Wal-Mart nearer and they do sell some books), and the closest public library is one town over, reachable only by car, which many of the students' families don't have. So no, they don't have access to books.

We met with the fifth-grade teacher and the school librarian. Only fourth grade is part of our pilot program but we'd like to help as much as we can. The fifth-grade teacher uses some trade books--right now she has a class reading Wonder. The librarian can buy some new books each year. (This isn't true for all public schools). I let them sort through a pile of new and gently used books I'd collected--the beginnings of our mobile book fairs--and both took half-a-dozen titles. The librarian was thrilled to get The Day You Begin. "I love Jacqueline Woodson," she said. I said, "Me, too."

To the fourth-grade teacher we explained our program in detail. Here were two copies (she teaches reading to 67 students) of the ten books on our initial list. We piled the books on the table. She could keep them. Tracy gave her a written synopsis of the books--we took it off Common Sense's website--and we showed them to her very briefly--that Roller Girl was a graphic novel, that How To Steal a Dog featured a sister and brother who lived in their car, that The One and Only Ivan was told from the point of view of a gorilla. The teacher told us that, of her 67 students, she had 4 or 5 who were stellar readers, who loved reading and read on perhaps 8th grade level. She said she had many more than that who were at "pre-primer" level. She didn't use trade books in the classroom because she found it difficult with such a wide range of abilities. She was trying hard to bring them all up to speed.

"They'll probably all want Diary of a Wimpy Kid," she said. We told her that was fine. If her order came back for 67 copies of DoaWK, that's what we'd send her. Then, in December, her students could all pick a second book. If they all wanted the second in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, that's what we'd send.

What if no one wanted some of the books? Then no one would have to have those books. We stressed to her that if we'd gotten the age ranges wrong, or if her students all really wanted to read something else, we were flexible. There would be 3 more sets of books to choose from and we'd change the books as needed.

They really like graphic novels, she said. The ones that can't read can still follow the pictures.

We really like graphic novels, we said.

Do you need them to write about their book? Do you need proof they've read it? Nope.

Here's what we're doing, we said. Your students will each chose a book. Then a big box of books will come to the school, and each student will get the book they chose. Brand-new, to keep, with nothing required of them. No matter what their reading level. No matter how much money their families have. No matter what else is happening in their lives: everyone gets a nice new book that they chose. The end.

The principal said, "Fourth grade is when we start losing them."
We said, "That's why we're starting with fourth grade."

If you've been reading my blog you've heard of some of this already, and I have to warn you you're likely to hear about it again. Thanks for reading. Thanks so, so much. We've had schools apply from Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. I so want to help them all.

If you’d like to support the work that we’re doing, you can mail a check to Appalachian Literacy Initiative at PO Box 3283, Bristol, TN 37625, or click here to purchase books on our wishlist from Parnassus Books, our preferred bookstore. You’ll receive 10% off with the code GIVEREADING, and Parnassus will ship the books to us free of charge. You can also purchase books from our Amazon wishlist by clicking here.

Again With The Asking For Books

Y'all are going to be sick of hearing about this, bummer. At Appalachian Literacy Initiatve we had a pie-in-the-sky vision of helping 20 classrooms of fourth graders get books this year, our first. Several schools have told us their applications will get to us this weekend, but even without them, I'm sitting on requests from 30 classrooms, 591 students. I look at the numbers (Hawkins County, Tennessee: 100% free or reduced-price school lunch, 42% reading at proficient level) and don't want to turn any of them away.

Our partner, Parnassus Books, has just created this page for us. If you'd like to donate actual physical books, you can do so here--no shipping, 10% off, you're supporting a real bookstore AND most importantly you're directly handing a book to a child who may never have owned a book before.

Sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. One of the teachers wrote on her application that she'd just asked her fourth-graders--40% of them--8 actual children--didn't have a single book in their home.

Not one.

https://www.parnassusbooks.net/readappalachian

P.S. We're putting our own money into this. 100% of our board has donated. We've applied for some grants, which we'll hear about in a few months, and we've raised about $11,000 so far (in addition to some donated start-up costs). But it looks like we're going to need north of $30K.

Sign up for Free Books from ALI

I have a thousand things to write about today. Most of them are about the Catholic Church. They're fluttering around in my head, things like anyone who covered up for an abuser should lose his job and way past time for women and married priests and even now, the hierarchy doesn't get it, thinks silence is the answer. 

I can't find a coherent way to write about this stuff, not yet. I'll get there.

Meanwhile it is September fourth. We have eleven days left for fourth-grade classrooms to sign up for Appalachian Literacy Initiative's first book list project. Please spread the word.

The application is available here. It's short. Classes who sign up get free books. Teachers will end the year with a classroom set of 28 books; each student will get four books of his or her choice. We want to know test scores and a teeny bit of demographic information.

Last week John Schu, whom I love and adore, posted on Facebook how shocked he was when he gave a student a copy of a book (The One and Only Ivan, which is on ALI's inaugural list) and the boy, thanking him, said it was the first book he'd ever owned.

John Schu, you know I love you, but what schools are you visiting that this could still shock you? Have you never been to my part of the country? Happens. All the. Time.

I found a website that evaluates what seems to be every school in the country. You can search by school name, by county, by state, public or private, high school or elementary. For each school it lists, among other things, % of students reading at proficient level, and % of students receiving free or reduced-price school lunch.

Spend a little time there, poking around. Pull up the stats from the best-performing schools in your area. Pull up the stats from the worst. Observe that the higher the poverty level, the worse the reading scores. Ask yourself, what level of illiteracy is acceptable in America today? Ask yourself, why should rich children get such a better chance to succeed?

Kids need books that they can read over and over, until the covers come loose and the pages are stained. They need books they can dip into, again and again, savoring favorite passages, rereading moments of triumph or bravery or sorrow. More than that--they need access to the words, over and over. Reread a book and you've seen all those words again. They become familiar. Easier. You're practicing with every sentence, without knowing it, because the story sweeps you away.

I read to my children every night from when they were born until they were firmly into middle school. Let's be conservative and say I read 1000 words a night. (Less when they were babies, but way more as they grew older--we tackled some pretty long novels by the end.) Birth to their 13th birthdays (again, conservative). Do the math. It's nearly four and a half million words. No, they themselves didn't read every one of those words. But they heard them, in sentence form, words they knew and words they didn't.

Four and a half million words.

Access to books is a social justice issue. ALI aims to close the gap.

Sharing a post on Catholicism

I've read as much of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report on child abuse within the Catholic church as I can stand. I'm reeling from it. I don't know why this one has hit me worse than others--we've been down this road so many times before. As my husband reminded me last night, we knew a predatory priest, growing up. We knew he was after boys. Everyone knew, in silence.

I don't have my thoughts together enough to write about it. I'm under deadline and need to go concentrate on that. But meanwhile, here's a blog post I came across that resonated with me.

If you want to appreciate the scope of the problem, head to the site Bishops Accountability

Pope Francis has called upon the entire Church, predominantly lay members, to pray and repent. I say eff that. Let's throw these suckers in jail, and, if we can't do that (statute of limitations) let's at least throw them out of the priesthood. And maybe share the power--it's past time to ordain women.

Filling my Writer’s Rolodex

I’m in Ireland with my husband and both children—so so happy to be traveling as a family of four once again. The first time we came to Ireland they were seven and four—our first overseas trip. We loved it then and we love it now.

On one of the first days of the trip, my husband was trying to remember the name of a minor ancient Egyptian god—not Anubis, but like Anubis—and couldn’t. “Never mind,” he said, “I’ll go through my mental Rolodex. It’ll pop up eventually.” Our daughter, a child of the 21st century, was bemused by the word Rolodex. “You know,” my husband said, flipping through an imaginary file with his fingers. “I’m in the section marked ‘dog’—flip, flip—Cava—flip, flip—there’s Under, Polly—flip—Funny Face—flip flip—Heidi—

“Heidi?” Our daughter asked.
“One of my childhood dogs,” I said.
My husband was still flipping. “Anubis—“ he said. “I’ll get there. Might take some time. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and there it is!”

For me that’s part of the fascination and necessity of traveling: I fill my writer’s Rolodex. Sometimes I’m traveling for specific purposes—I went to England with a list of stuff I needed to learn for The War That Saved My Life. But on that trip I also learned things I didn’t realize I needed to know. I got lost on country lanes and found myself at the top of a windswept hill with a far-ranging view of the sea. That became Ada’s lookout hill.

I remember on my honeymoon being fascinated by odd Parisian toilets. Now European toilets are just another Rolodex card. Odd skinnny European trucks—same. It’s pretty simple. If every dog you’d ever seen was a German Shepherd, a toy poodle would astonish you. The more things you see, the more your mental Rolodex files expand.

For example, I know I’ll write a book sometime about a fictional castle, so I’m always looking to add to my castle Rolodex. On this trip we went to Kylemore Abbey, a “modern” castle built by wealthy Victorians with a marvelous walled garden. We saw Blarney Castle, half-ruined with strange mazelike passageways. Dundrum castle—a mere ruin with a sweeping view of the sea. The Rock of Cashel—a city stronghold. Each one different. Each added features to what castles might possibly be.

I’m also intrigued by wooden sailing ships. Always have been. We visited one of Ireland’s “coffin ships,” used for mass emigration during the famine. Mmm. I could see possibilities there. (My husband thinks the Irish Famine too depressing of a subject for a children’s book. See also “you can’t set a book on the Appalachian Trail” and “no one wants to read about a kid with a club foot.”) (Which is not to say I’ll write the book. Ideas are everywhere. Good ideas are harder to come by, and you can’t always tell which is which.)

Tomorrow we head home and I put my head down for a final week on the current draft of my Egypt Book, which is starting to really need a name. I’ve worked hard this vacation. My Rolodex is bigger now.

Warning: You May Love Gay People

I've been sharing with you how tremendously excited I am about the Appalachian Literacy Initiative, my new non-profit that will be giving brand-new high-quality children's books to area students in need. I believe access to books is a social justice issue. It's a battle I'm pleased to fight.

Today I heard that I teacher in a very poor, rural area, when invited to enroll in our program, declined--not because her students don't need books. They do. It's because two of my novels have an adult character who is gay.

I so wish I were making that up.

Earlier in the summer, I was having a lovely conversation on my porch with friends visiting from Scotland. I don't remember how the subject of transgender people came up, but my friend Calum said, thoughtfully, "I've never met a transgender person." It wasn't an important part of our conversation, but I recalled him saying it later a few weeks later, when I was reading post on Facebook by a transgender friend of mine, because I realized, reading the Facebook post, that if you met my friend for the first time now, after her transition, you would never guess she was transgender. It would never even occur to you. So my Scottish friend--and, in fact, all of us--have almost certainly met people who are transgender. We just didn't know their backstory.

The teacher who doesn't approve of gay characters in books is teaching a classroom of students, at least one of which, statistically speaking, is gay. As prepubescent kids, they may have no idea. If they are aware of their sexuality, they probably aren't going to talk about it, at least not with their teacher. They're ten.

No one becomes gay by reading about gay people. No one is prevented from becoming gay by avoiding books featuring gay people. We are who we are.

Gay people might be your young children. They might be your neighbors. They might be your beloved grandchildren, or your child's fantastic best friend. The number of gay people in this world is not dependent on your approval of them.

Be careful who you decide to hate. It may be someone you already love.