Five Women Giving Thanks Amidst the Mayhem

Essentially Grateful

By JoAnne Young

 Before we get too far away from the core of the pandemic, those long months that stretched into more than a couple of years, I want to thank again the essential workers that kept us afloat in those times. Doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and legions of health professionals certainly deserve our gratitude, and continue to need our thanks.

 Many others helped us through those dark days. Grocery and restaurant workers delivered food and other needed items to our doorsteps. Journalists, writers and podcasters gave us much needed information. The people behind the scenes at Zoom and technical workers kept us connected and able to do our jobs. Teachers kept us learning. Child care providers showed up for us. Those in law enforcement and corrections worked overtime to give us order. Transportation workers helped move us along. Scientists gave us hope with vaccines and treatments so more of us could survive. Mental health providers kept us ever so slightly sane.

 This work hasn’t become less essential as our lives become more open. The people left to carry the load deserve our respect, our gratitude and our continual thanks for being those footprints in the sand that carried us.

***

Thank You – for Keeping Democracy Alive     

By Marilyn Moore

 I’m a news junkie, always have been.  I read two daily papers in print and several daily news reports that hit my email inbox.  I listen to NPR news in the morning and late afternoon and catch the 5:30 national news on a mainstream network.  Online updates fill out the day and evening.  If it’s happening, locally, nationally, or globally, I want to know about it.  “The news” is both energizing and discouraging, but I’ve decided it’s better to know than to wonder, or fear.

 My thanks go to journalists, those brave, smart, and persistent reporters, both print and broadcast, who follow the story, so they can tell the story.  From coverage of our local city council to the January 6 insurrection to the front-line reports from the battle fields in Ukraine and Gaza, we know what’s happening.  Journalists ask the questions beyond the first question, digging deep to find the “why” and the “what’s next.” 

 Journalists are protected, in this country, by the first amendment, but that doesn’t mean their job is easy.  They endure scorn and evasive answers, and sometimes physical danger, but they tell the story.  And without knowing the story, the whole story, in all its complexity, a vote is an empty gesture. 

 An informed voter and a vibrant free press are the front-line defense of democracy.  Thanks to journalists, we have a chance to keep democracy alive.

***

Thank You … for Fixing Me When I Was Broken

By Mary Kay Roth 

This week I met with my oncologist’s team for a follow-up exam. 

My cancer is gone. Officially, miraculously gone. 

I offer up hugs and tears, and whisper a prayer of gratitude to these extraordinary people who threw me a lifeline and gave me my life back.  

“Our patients come to us at their most vulnerable,” they tell me. “It’s an honor to walk through it with them. We have loved walking through this with you.”

I thank them for allowing me more sunrises and chocolate, more hugs and cups of coffee – for giving my grandchildren (Scout and Everlyn, Alera, Legacy and Lauren) more time with GranMary.

 I thank them for:

·       Their bold, unblinking honesty.

·       Holding my hand whenever I cried.

·       Listening, patiently.

·       Always remembering the name of my dog.

·       Being so damn good at their work.

·       Fixing me when I was broken.

 Finally, I head out of the exam room and pause for a moment in the continually packed front lobby.  I wonder who I’m making room for.  Because I know patients will keep coming, and my oncology team will remain steadfast in walking each of them through their journey.

 Then I turn and stroll outside, free falling into a golden autumn day.  And I go buy a cup of coffee. 

***

Grateful for the Grand-ness in Life

by Penny Costello

Green Bean Casserole. It’s a Thanksgiving staple, a tradition on so many holiday tables. In my family, one of our Thanksgiving traditions is dinner with my dear friend and Maven of Mayhem, Mary Kay Roth and her family, which have included our grandkids, Carson and Cassidy. My contribution to the table has always been green bean casserole.

As a child, I was blessed to spend a lot of time with my paternal grandmother. A ranch wife, well-versed in cooking for large gatherings, whether they be family holidays, or for branding and haying crews, she expressed love in many ways, including food. I learned so much from her about cooking, and about how to be a grandmother.

This year, we scheduled our Thanksgiving get-together on the Saturday before the actual holiday. But, COVID threw a wrench on the works for me, when I tested positive two days before. So, I would be in quarantine, and not at the table this year.

Cassidy was really looking forward to the gathering, and to my green bean casserole. So, bless her heart, she stepped up and asked me to teach her how to make it. We connected through Facetime video chat so I could guide her through the process of putting it together, baking it, and adding the onion crisps at the right time. From all reports I’ve heard, her casserole was well-received and enjoyed by all.

I’m grateful to my grandmother who taught me so much about cooking, love, and being a Grandma. I’m grateful for the technology that enabled me to safely impart that cooking lesson to my granddaughter. And I look forward to tasting her green bean casserole in years to come, and enjoying the special flair and flavor she’ll bring to it, just as she does with pretty much everything in her life.

***

What Am I Most Thankful For?

By Mary Reiman

 YOU.

 I am thankful not because you read my blogs, but because you are my friend, and have been for many, many years. We have a shared history. You have sustained me, and I have not said thank you often enough.

 Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and wonder if you know. You comment on my blogs with such kind words. I can only hope you are reading this now...and that you know. You have carried me through it all. You have soothed my soul. You brought joy and goodness, just when I needed it. You still do.

 Whether you were my first friend when I moved to Lincoln, there for me during my LPS years, or somewhere in-between, I am grateful for your friendship, support, love, kindness and caring spirit. Although we don’t see each other as often now, our stories, our history makes me smile. I hope you feel the same.

 It’s hard to know if I have said thank you often enough. In my head I have. But have I recently sent a text, called you, or sent you a hand-written note? Probably not.

 Please, please know I am so very thankful for YOU.

***

Tears

 

By Marilyn Moore

They come suddenly, sometimes at the sight, or sound, of something that is nearly unspeakably wondrous.  Sometimes from loss, or fear, or frustration.  Sometimes springing from great pain, or great joy.  I know that there are some experiences that almost always bring tears to my eyes: hearing “Taps” played in a cemetery, seeing a tender moment between a parent and a child, reading beloved lines of poetry, standing at the top of Flattop Mountain or seeing a sunset at the farm, hearing the choral music from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, remembering my mom’s voice, or the feel of my dad’s wool coat.   All of those, and countless more, tears guaranteed….

But what about those moments when tears are a surprise…when you think to yourself, I wonder where that came from…and you wonder if anyone else noticed, and if they did, should you try to explain what you already know you can’t explain, or just shrug your shoulders, or lift an eyebrow, as if to say, “I don’t know….did this just happen to you, too?”  

Frederick Buechner is a favorite writer.  About those unexpected tears, he says, “Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.  They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where…you should go next.”

I’ve been thinking about those unexpected tears, so I took intentional notice of those times over the past couple of weeks…where I was, what was happening, what were the words, or events, or sounds, that caused my throat to clutch and my eyes to water….

Singing an anthem, these words, “All embracing Church…by the font and meal, signed and marked and sealed…” Tears of anguish, perhaps, at all the times the Church, including the denomination of my lifelong church, has been anything but embracing.  Tears of thankfulness for those moments when the Church has indeed embraced all.  Tears of wonder, and wonderment, of “signed and marked and sealed….” Just what does this mean…..

In the movie “Coco,” on stage at the Lied with a big-sound live Mariachi band, Miguel is signing “Remember Me” to Coco, his grandmother, who is almost literally brought to life by these words and this melody….tears of joy at the power of music and the love between a boy and his grandma….

Listening to a mom describe her child’s improvement in reading after a one-semester specialized reading program, “I don’t ever hear her read one word, one sentence, or one book, without realizing all over again the power of her teacher.”  Tears of gratitude for this teacher, and for all teachers, who every single day teach a skill of value to a learner, and the impact lasts forever….

In the Big 10 documentary about Nebraska Volleyball, the video of the team walking through the tunnel to enter the stadium, where 98,000+ fans were waiting.  The camera was from behind them, and as the team approached the tunnel opening, the players reached for each other’s hands, walking hand-in-hand toward that event that was unknown, but bigger than they could have imagined.  Tears of memory, and gratitude, for the many times I’ve reached for a friend’s hand, a colleague’s hand, knowing I would not be alone with whatever was on the other side of that door….

From the play “Not Too Far Distant,” two such moments.  When George, the staff sergeant from Nebraska who is in France and Germany during WWII, reads letters from his wife, Gretchen, and writes back to her that he so appreciates her letters, “…a letter is like a little piece of home on a page.”  I remember the times when I was far from home, when phone calls were expensive and letters were the only way to communicate, how glad I was to get a letter from Mom, filled with all the ordinary news of the day, and home didn’t seem so far away….  George’s words brought those tears of loneliness, and no-longer-so-lonely, right to the surface again.  

And at the end of the play, a young man’s words, speaking to George in the latter years of his life, “Some of history is really hard to talk about, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”  Tears of despair that we should be hearing voices in this day that want to shut down the hard-to-talk-about history, and tears of determination to not let those stories go untold.   

Listening to a non-profit board member describe the moment when the organization whose board she chairs had successfully raised the funds to complete the payment for the building they had purchased, “So I drove to the bank, and wrote the check, and paid off the mortgage!”  This is one of Lincoln’s many fine non-profits, but I think these words, and the resulting tears, were more than just this building…it’s tears of celebration of the importance of home, and sorrow that there are people who will never know that comfort of having a place to call home….

There have been other times of tears in the past two weeks, but not unexpected.  It’s Thanksgiving time, and preparation for Christmas, and hymns from those two holidays always bring tears.  We celebrated Dorothy Jo’s life, and how can you celebrate a woman who lived to be 99 with such vigor without crying both in celebration and in loss.  The news coverage daily of the damage and destruction and loss of life, first in Israel and now in Gaza, must certainly bring any person of compassion to tears.  How can we not find a better way to resolve long-standing and deeply-held conflicts….but I digress, that’s another blog, for another day…..

It's the unexpected tears that caught my attention the past couple of weeks, and still leave me wondering what they say to me about the secret of who I am, and from where I have come, and to where I might be called….  

I often say that I write to figure out what I think, and that is especially so in this case, but I’m not there yet.  It’s not finished, I’m not finished.  I invite you to join the blog, with your own stories of unexpected tears…..

Finding quiet sanctuary on a November afternoon

By Mary Kay Roth

Winds generally blow harsh atop this lonely hill, just outside of Otoe, Nebraska. But breezes seem gentler today, a whisper of breath on a November afternoon sending dry leaves skittering across graves where tombstones manage to capture them.  

Some headstones here are new and polished, glistening under the honey autumn sunshine, casting long shadows upon barren, freshly tilled dirt. Other grave markers look almost ancient, their neglected marble faces chipped and worn, their etchings grown indecipherable.   

This is my favorite time to come to the rural Otoe cemetery, a solo visit I make each year when the weather turns chill, a moment I like to think I tuck my loved ones into bed for winter.

My parents are here, alongside my older brother, Doug.  Just down the hill are my maternal grandparents and, scattered everywhere, are aunts and uncles, first and second cousins.

A silent sanctuary surrounded by farm fields on all sides, the Otoe cemetery always feels like the quietest place on earth to me, half an hour southeast of Lincoln and only scarcely connected to the world via a tenuous network of desolate gravel roads. Dandelions fill the grounds in the spring, the roar of harvest fills the air in fall. 

My mom and dad brought me here as a girl, helping decorate graves on Memorial Day – roaming the land on summer afternoons as they pulled weeds and planted perennials. And each fall, when we were finished with our labors, my mom would teach me how a cemetery tells tales.

“Listen carefully and you’ll hear the stories,” mom would counsel, treading ever so softly among the rows.

Listen … to the soldiers buried here from way too many wars. To the achingly painful graves of children, spaces filled with unicorns and teddy bears. To the abandoned stones in the pauper’s section. To a farmer whose marker is trimmed with a cowboy boot – and buckles from his overalls. To a teenage boy’s grave, still bathed in bright flowers and longing, where we often saw a teenage girl, kneeling, sobbing. 

When you stand in a cemetery, something shifts inside, something grounding and true, an awareness that the disparate states of life and death cannot be detached.  It’s where time stands still, a coming together of the past and future, a reminder about the forever folly of human beings. 

Personally, I find our real world particularly harsh right now.  

But a cemetery stands sentry against the storms outside its gates, kindly guarding each soul here, each narrative. Time capsules of a community’s past, open-air museums of sorts.  

During my senior year in college, I joined another student, Rebecca Brite (now an editor in Paris), in choosing a “grave” mystery for our class project in depth reporting.  The Greenwood Cemetery in York had long lodged an inexplicable, tin painting that pictured three women – clad in clothes from the 1800s – bearing the banner, “We are waiting for Papa.” 

No one knew who they were.  But months of research unraveled the puzzle, the banner was a symbol of a man’s love for his family. James Bauer’s wife, Theresa, had died of gall bladder disease in 1895, their two daughters gone  before – Rose as a result of appendicitis and Frances after a miscarriage.  At some point after his wife’s death, James asked his brother-in-law to create a painting as a soothing reminder that he was not alone, that they were all waiting for him … in heaven.

Today an estimated 4.11 million graves lie in in the U.S. – with 20,250 registered cemeteries in the country, probably 150,000 cemeteries when you count every church, family and private plot.  

Rebecca and I had managed to find one cemetery’s untold story.  I still go looking for them everywhere. 

Above-ground stone crypts poised over the swamplands of New Orleans. The quirky, crowded cemetery in Key West – the vast somber National Arlington Cemetery in Virginia – Sleepy Hollow in upstate New York where Washington Irving is buried, and probably his Headless Horseman.  The peculiar, stacked bones in the Catacombs of Paris. The haunting funeral pyres outside the mystical city of Varanasi, India, where Hindus believe the Ganges River will free them from the cycle of rebirth. 

Back in Lincoln, blocks from my house, the wondrous Wyuka offers grave sites for everyone from the illustrious Gov. Charles Bryan to the infamous Charles Starkweather – and, inescapably, the tombstone with a photo of a melancholy little girl whose eyes follow you everywhere.

Each of these sacred spaces are meditations for me, places to catch your breath, reflect – not just about the mortality of those who are buried here, but about the richness of your own mortality, your very own story. 

These days, when I walk the Otoe cemetery with my granddaughters, I try to pass on my mother’s lessons. 

Hush, I tell them, and listen. Here’s the oldest monument in the cemetery, dating back to 1872 – and here are the folks who perished in the notorious tornado of 1913. Your uncle Doug lies in this space, right next to your great grandparents.  And over here is dear Aunt Emma, who, just before she died at 102, made a pact with my mom to go dancing together under the moonlight – far above the fields of the cemetery.    

Inevitably, of course, my girls want to know where GranMary will land.  And I tell them about the strangest Christmas present I ever received from my parents, two plots in the Otoe cemetery. 

“Why two?” I had asked my mom, confused. To which she replied, matter-of-factly: “Yes, we know you are divorced, but we will never give up hope for you.”

Surprisingly, still chuckling to this day, I’ve come to love that goofy, precious gift. Unless green burials arrive in Nebraska anytime soon, my kids know I want to be cremated.  But my daughter has asked if it would be ok to sprinkle at least some of my ashes here in Otoe. And how about a headstone?  And, mom, she continues:  "Look around the cemetery, which shades of marble stone do you like?"

I’ll let those questions wait for another day. Right now, as the sky darkens and dusk settles, I gaze out over the contours of the land and the changing seasons. 

I realize someone continues to tenderly tend the grounds here. I’m not sure who, but I send them a quiet prayer of thanks. I bid my parents and brother a peaceful winter slumber.  I remind my mom and Aunt Emma to dance under those starlit skies.

And I head for home.

A Special Bond

 

by Mary Reiman

When my sister and I were together last week, I told her I wanted to write about our last chapter, at least what felt to me like the last chapter of this part of our journey. Back in Iowa together, honoring our parents, visiting the farm, seeing the quiet beauty of fall at Lake Okoboji, with the vacationers gone and the rides at Arnold Park silent. Closure was upon us.

I wanted photos of what fall brings to this part of the country. As I turned onto the rural road, there was a woman and her child taking lunch to her husband in the field because he didn’t have time to stop while combining. The memories bubbled up and I found myself stopping for pictures of the flat golden cornfields, the combines whirring, more wind turbines that have been added since the last time I had driven on that road, and the autumn shades of vibrant trees and bushes.

Somehow, I knew I would weave those into this story about the land.

We both arrived in Milford about the same time, she from two hours north and me from four hours south. I always let her know when I am in South City so she can begin her trip and meet me at our hotel (we think it's ours since we've been going there so often in the past 10 years and they know us well). As always, we then ate lunch in our favorite cafe and headed to the farm. I made her stop along the way so I could take pictures of the vibrant trees,

the neighbor's field of hay bales,

and the combine methodically heading down the corn rows. So many of our childhood memories surrounding us on that sunny October afternoon. 

Then we drove into our driveway, stepped out of the car and stared at the land. That’s when I took this picture. And I realized none of this journey would have been the same without her. My sister. 

We have each spent this past year maneuvering through the process of understanding how to traverse the rest of our life’s journey without mom’s presence here on earth. We were well aware, especially my sister, of how to pay the farm bills, how to understand what CSR (Corn Suitability Rating) means, and who to talk with at the county courthouse to have our farm questions answered. 

More than ever, I realize my sister is the reason it’s not as hard to go back to Iowa, to visit the cemetery, to finalize the paperwork. She’s always been the organizer. She is meticulous. She was the executive secretary of a school. She took care of everyone and everything. Not sure where she got all those genes, but she’s made good use of her organizational skills throughout the years, especially when mom could no longer take care of her own taxes and paperwork. And when I am with her, I see and hear mom. Sometimes that is almost spooky, most of the time it is soothing.

I wasn’t going to write about her, I was going to write about the land. But last week I realized that being beside her on that flat, flat land is what makes my heart happiest. Sharing our love for the farm, listening to her talk about her great joy and appreciation for the soil that produces crops that ultimately help feed the world.  

Of course, the farm looks different. The house is no longer there. It has moved down the road to provide shelter and security and a home filled with love for another family. The groves of trees are gone. The front yard where we learned to ride our bikes, before mom let us out on the gravel road, is now an access point for the farm equipment. The barn, the corn crib, the cattle yards gone, now all cropland. 

But the driveway is still there, and when we drove in on Tuesday afternoon, we were instantly consumed with all the memories of growing up in that peaceful, safe, loving environment.

This is our world. These are our roots. We are grounded in the earth, on that beautiful quiet land.

It is so very clear to me that the land would not have the same value for me now if it were not for her. We share the love, admiration and history of the farm, and of our parents. No one else will pour over our childhood photos and be filled with such deep joy of those memories, or laugh as hard about our various hairstyles or about the fact our dog (Tootie) always sat on her lap instead of mine for photos. OK, maybe I'm still a little jealous about that! 

And she knows me. It is that simple. Since she was married, we have never lived in the same state. That hasn’t mattered. She’s always been my protector from afar.  I have always sensed it. She’s the one. The one I want to call when the news is good...or bad. She provides me with a sense of calm when I am with her, and it lingers with me long after we head off in opposite directions, back to our daily lives.

Thank you, Cindy, for your unconditional love. We do indeed share a special bond.  As you said in my birthday card, “I hope we never have to go more than 5 days without talking to each other.” 💕

This I believe

                                                                      

By JoAnne Young

I believe in girlhood. 

 

The ring of that statement sounds strange in my head. For years I’ve been on a self-determined campaign to persuade people to stop using “girl” when they are actually talking about women. “I’ve started seeing this girl,” says the man dating a woman in her 30s. Or, “I have this girl that does my taxes,” about the well-established accountant. And, “that girl on the volleyball team,” who is 21. It’s demeaning, referring to a grown woman as if she’s a child, immature, lacking authority. Unconsciously or consciously, it implies the “girl” is inferior to men who are her peers. 

 

That being said, I’ve recently begun thinking about my own girlhood, the memories I abandoned as I focused on womanhood and all the complications that came with it. 

 

I flashed on pulling a catfish from an Arkansas lake with my dad. 

 

I smiled, remembering collecting box turtles from the woods behind my house, thinking I could contain them in an open box lined with grass and lettuce, only to have them disappear back into the woods by morning. 

 

I thought of riding my beloved blue bike up and down a deep, wide ditch, my green cowgirl hat hanging loose and cool at my neck. 

 

I marveled at my determination to carve an ice rink into my back yard, below freezing temperatures and me shoveling for hours in the deep northern Michigan snow. 

 

I summoned my high school days, the fun of piling into a convertible, a dozen of us girls riding around the school parking lot, nowhere to be but in the moment.   

 

Then there’s the one I’d rather forget. My first kiss, at age 11, from a man in his 50s who lived three houses down. He had lured me into his backyard shed under the pretense of tuning up my bike, once there pulling me to him, putting his mouth on mine and telling me to open wider. Dumbstruck as I was, I didn’t even notice what other touching was going on. But I knew, even then, to pull away and get out the door. I booked it home, only to encounter another breach of faith when my parents told me to return to the shed for my bike, while they waited and watched from three lawns away. 

 

The effect of that stiff, repugnant first kiss, that kiss that would covertly afflict so many kisses to come, was delivered in the undergrowth of girlhood, but manifested in the clearing of maturity. For all of these grownup years, when friends would float through stories of their first kisses, I could only listen and nod, never to tell my own. 

 

Now, so many decades later here I am, asking to reclaim my girlhood, pronouncing my belief that there was a freedom in spending hours on something that would produce nothing. A freedom in pretending to be someone I would likely never become. Freedom in summer play in which I would Peter Pan promise myself to never grow up. 

 

And most importantly, I believe in the loosening of the bonds of silence given to those men who would sully our girlhoods and have us forget. 

This I believe, in remembering and reviving the girl and the unspoiled days of the spring of our lives. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

What's In A Word

 By Marilyn Moore

In a word, power.  That is what’s in a word.  The power to convey meaning, either orally or in writing.  Organizing thought, conveying meaning, to others who understand that meaning…that’s power.  And wherever there is power, there is someone, or several someones, making a decision…about who has it, who can access it, who benefits, and who is left out.

A book from my summer reading remains lodged in my mind.  The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams is a story embedded in the history of the Oxford English Dictionary, the OED.  I’ve seen copies of the OED in libraries, in offices, and in at least one living room.  It is a gigantic dictionary; in its own words, it is “an unsurpassed guide for researchers in any discipline to the meaning, history, and usage of over 500,000 words and phrases across the English-speaking world.”  

The first edition, which took more 70 years to compile, and was finally completely published in the 1920’s, had 414,825 words.  It’s still a work in progress, of course, because our language is a work in progress.  According to the OED website, recent additions include, among others, speech-to-text, anti-terrorism, gummy, and final frontier.  Among the list of updates words are bedlam, lardon, six-pack, and bitter.  A glimpse into our world….

The question that lingers in my mind is the one that is at the heart of Pip Williams’ book: who decides what words will, or will not, be in the OED, or any other dictionary?  The original OED is described as a massive crowd-sourced document; scholars and readers and researchers and members of the public from English-speaking countries across the world submitted words, and citations using those words, to the editor and his assistants, who would verify the words, and their citations, and resolve differing definitions, and decide if the word would be included.  

Ah, the power of deciding…which words to include, and which words to exclude.  To be included, a word had to have a citation; in other words, it had to have been used in some written source that could be verified.  Think about that for a moment…this decision rule meant that words that may have been in the common spoken language at that time, but that had not been set down in writing in some verifiable text, would not be included.  And whose words might those be? Words used by persons whose language was not typically set in writing…. women, immigrants, those who had not had the opportunity to learn to read and write.  

All this is not to disparage the OED; it is a massive undertaking, and it continues to be a source of not only the meaning, but the history, of words.  It’s just that, as in so many other efforts, decisions about what to include, and what to exclude, meant that decisions were made not only about words, but about people, groups of people. 

If words that describe your history, your language, your culture, your people, are in the dictionary, you’re in the in group, with the power that comes from inclusion and recognition and affirmation.  If words that describe your history, your language, your culture, your people, are not in the dictionary, you are not in the in group, and you lack the power that comes from inclusion and recognition and affirmation.  

And if this is true of words, it is even more true of stories.  Because stories have power.  When we read a story, we may be learning about someone or some setting or some culture quite different from our own…and that knowledge is powerful.  Or, it may be that when we’re reading a story, we’re reading our own story, perhaps in a depth or from a perspective we had not previously known…and that self-knowledge is powerful. 

The very real power of that knowledge, the power that comes from stories, is what drives many of the challenges to books in school curriculum, school libraries, and public libraries.  We are just completing the acknowledgement of Banned Books Week.  A display at one of Lincoln’s public libraries informs the public (data from the American Library Association) that there were 2571 challenges to books in 2022, compared to 1858 in the prior year, a 38% increase.  (Historical context:  there were 339 challenges in 2012.)

Not surprisingly, given the political climate in which we live, the most commonly challenged books are those that are about persons from the LGBTQ+ community or by authors from that community.  Books about race, or racism, or prejudice, are also challenged.  Sometimes the challengers will say that such books conflict with their religious beliefs.  Sometimes they will say that they don’t want their children to know about gay families, or multiracial families.  Sometimes they will say that books about racism or prejudice will make their children uncomfortable.  And because they don’t want these stories for their children, or for their family, they don’t want them available to anyone else.  

It is deeply disturbing to me when a book is challenged by someone who wants the book to be banned from a library collection – a story that is not told, not honored, not made visible.  It is even more disturbing to me when elected officials propose banning books, because that action, if taken, becomes the official stance of the school district, or the state, or the nation.  And using the power of the state to squelch the story, whether in a work of fiction, a graphic novel, or a history book, is essentially saying to those whose stories have been banned that their story, and they, do not belong – this in a country whose founding documents, with a boost from subsequent acts of Congress and Supreme Court decisions,  purport to affirm the value of every person.  It is even more troubling when this position is taken by those running for office, a position that is calculated to win votes, a position that invites voters to affirm that the stories of some are not to be heard, are not valued, and do not belong.

Banning words, banning stories, banning books, has been attempted and done across centuries and across cultures and nations.  Enslaved children in the US were not allowed to learn to read and write; the enslavers knew the power of the written word.  The Germans burned books in the lead-up to WWII amidst the rise of fascism and the Nazi party.  The United States banned words and language and culture, as native children were forbidden to use their tribal language in the residential boarding schools.  Popular sentiment in the United States tried the same during WWI, as German immigrants and German-speaking US citizens were pressured to not speak German.  (The US Supreme Court ruled that Nebraska schools could not be prevented from teaching German, however; it is a landmark decision that affirms the value of the power of words.)   And today, some words must not be uttered in classrooms in Florida, and an Oklahoma leader has made the preposterous suggestion that the Tulsa race riots could be taught without bringing race into the lesson.  These actions reflect the power of words and stories, and the extreme measures which some will take to squelch that power. 

There are heroes in this struggle.  Librarians are on the front line, and they are strong in their commitment to the freedom to read.  Boards of Education in Kearney and in Papillion-LaVista have taken action in the past few months to retain books that have been challenged in their school libraries.  As the popular Facebook meme notes, the book burners have never been seen by history as the good guys. 

Let’s tell the stories, then, and listen to the stories, and keep the stories in libraries.  Stories of girls who become astronauts and boys who become dancers.  Stories of gay kids and straight kids.  Stories of families of many configurations.  Stories of the wise and the foolish, the engineers and artists, the dreamers and the doers.  Stories of generous hearts and stories of scammers. Stories from cultures from around the world, and stories from our own neighborhoods.  Stories that cause us to cheer, and stories that cause us to weep.  Stories that hurt, and stories that heal.  And then, let’s talk about the stories, and learn from another’s perspective.  

Words have power, stories have power; this is a cause for celebration, a cause to defend.  I will do both. 

Finding bite-sized, five-letter moments of instant gratification – in a crazy world

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By Mary Kay Roth

Azure. Daddy. 

Two simple words.

And yet over the past two days, they brought hundreds of thousands of people together, worldwide.

You see, lately I’m obsessed with how many five-letter words exist in the English language.  It varies. The Free Dictionary lists more than 158,000 words with five letters – the official Scrabble Dictionary puts the number around 9,000 – and after sorting down to a more reasonable list of easily identifiable words, you come up with 2,315.

Whatever the number, when you find the right five-letter word out of all those possibilities, you find the magic of Wordle – that aha moment – the self-affirming fist pump – a wave of triumph quietly reverberating across the planet.

Took me three tries for azure, on Friday.  Four for daddy on Saturday (those three bothersome D’s perplexed me). And yet it still made me ridiculously happy when I got them right.  

OK, I know all the bad stuff going on. This weekend the government almost shut down. Apparently, Covid is coming back. Icebergs are melting,  mosquitoes are thriving.  And I’m pretty sure there’s a nail in my tire.

None of that matters.  

Because the moment I conquer Wordle, all’s right with the world.

When you Google the question – “Why is Wordle so popular” – you’ll find hundreds of explanations. It’s a simple yet addictive game with easy access.  It’s free, no pop-up ads, no paywall.  You don’t have to register.  It’s limited to one a day.  And in all honesty, it’s not that tough.

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But for whatever the reason, an estimated three million players (“whordles”) are now signed up – attempting to guess that golden five-letter word.  

Sometimes you breeze through in minutes.  Sometimes you get miserably stuck.  For me it’s a practically perfect combo of challenge and luck – smarts and serendipity.  

And each day we all come together to solve the same puzzle.  Seeking that delicious, bite-sized moment of instant gratification when all five letters come up – gloriously green. 

For the uninitiated, here’s how it works:  Open up the game and you’ll see five empty blocks across, stacked in six rows down – one row for each guess. You have six chances to puzzle out one five-letter word.  And after guessing each time, the game tells you whether your letters are in the secret word. 

• Green means the letter is in the word and in the correct spot. 
• Yellow means the letter is in the word, but in the wrong spot.
• Gray means the letter is not in the word at all. 

In fact, there’s nothing like the feeling of dread when you type in your first guess and all the letters come up gray. Or when you have identified three or four letters and for some infuriating reason – after frantically scribbling preposterous possibilities on scratch paper – you are completely gutted.

 Good grief, I majored in English and Journalism.

The overall average number to nail the secret word in the United States is 4.019.  Sweden is home to the best Wordle players, who complete the puzzle with a 3.72 average, followed by Switzerland (3.78) and Poland (3.79). The USA ranks an uncomfortable No. 18.

North Dakota is the state in this country with the highest success rates.  New Hampshire has the most Wordle cheaters. 

And according to the PGA, the odds of an average golfer making a hole in one are 12,500 to 1. The odds of solving Wordle on the first guess are around a couple thousand to one.

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I don’t watch my stats all that much.  But I do know that twice I have guessed the Wordle in two guesses.  (Never in one.)  And I’ve been completely stumped by one completely silly word.  Froze.  Go figure.

Some all-knowing psychologists believe you can tell a lot about a person from the way they attack Wordle.  

Many people watch their statistics meticulously. Lots of folks post their results in social media. Some begin with the same word every day, often drawn to words with two or three vowels and common consonants: audio, adieu, alone, canoe, edits, least, media, sauce, slate, train.

I use a different starter word every day (which supposedly means I like taking risks).  I keep a running list of past Wordle words (which means I am methodical).  

And I refuse to look at any of the Wordle spinoffs (which means I am a traditionalist). However, if I were curious, I could choose among variants that include Absurdle, Wordle’s evil twin where the secret word keeps changing – and Sweardle, a four-letter puzzle limited to swear words (damn, how many obscenities are there?).

The origin of the REAL Wordle is a sweet story. Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, knew his partner Palak Shah loved word games – so he created a guessing game during Covid for just the two of them. The game went online November 2021 with 90 players – and grew to 300,000 in just a couple months. The New York Times Company acquired it in January 2022 and today it is recreated in 50 languages for more than three million players of all demographics and ages.

In truth, when I pick up my granddaughters from school these days, they come running into my arms, give me a hug – then ask whether or not I’ve done Wordle yet.

And yes, I know there are snobs who look down their noses at this inane little game, probably people who do the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink.   

I still like a good crossword puzzle, a robust game of Scrabble. I am even lured by the likes of other New York Times games like Spelling Bee and Connections.

But thank goodness there are enough five-letter words to get us through at least seven years of Wordle, because of course it’s about more than guessing an elusive word. 

Wordle is about celebrating the small stuff, a spark of momentary happiness and grace, a tiny semblance of peaceful control over my small space in this chaotic universe.

Each day, for one sweet moment, all those letters eventually will come up green.

And whether I get the Wordle in three, four, five guesses, or – dang it – six, I know it will all soon be forgotten.  Tomorrow I’ll have a clean slate, another try, a fresh Wordle word.  

And life will be good. 

Whether or not the government shuts down.

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