Jean Hendrickson's book about her life at the Life Care Center

JOY – Living In A Nursing Home, by Jean Hendrickson, © 2011

Jean Hendrickson has published another book from her room in the nursing home at on Spring Street. She writes with honesty and directness about her decision to give up her independence and move into a skilled nursing facility. Her message might be surprising to many readers, because she proclaims that the decision was not difficult and the outcome is entirely rewarding.

I’ve been visiting the Life Care Center in Friday Harbor every week for almost ten years now. I bring books, magazines and movies from the public library to folks who want them, and the library offers a program where I read aloud. When I first became the outreach librarian this was the most intimidating aspect of my job. I didn’t know how to relate to people with dementia. Over the years, I’ve really come to appreciate the support residents each other regardless of their challenges. The staff working at the center set this standard with their gentle, consistent caring. Their love really opened my heart –making it easier for me to provide library service to this diverse group of people with a wide range of cognitive strengths.

I know that the materials the library provides, the large print books, cassette tapes, CDs and movies, make a difference in the quality of life for many of the residents. Because I have the privilege of working one-on-one with anyone who wants to see “the library lady” I can find out what kind of stories interest them and what format will best meet their needs. With books and stories, someone feeling trapped inside a nursing home or a wheelchair can travel freely in his or her mind, and in spite of physical circumstances, can continue to grow and enjoy life.

Jean Hendrickson is a rare elder who writes with grace about aging. Other residents at the center have other gifts: remembering poems, singing or sharing memorable histories. April is National Volunteer Month, and the convalescent center, with all the love flowing is a great place to volunteer.

Jean Hendrickson’s book might help a senior you know facing a tough choice. It might help the family of an aged parent when facing planning for the care of their loved one. You might learn that you yourself want to join the community of residents, staff and volunteers that make up the Life Care Center of the San Juans. I am grateful my work takes me there.

JOY – Living In A Nursing Home, like all books reviewed in this column, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

Jim Lawrence's memoir of a farmer-fisherman

Callused Hands, Hungry Heart: Memoir of a Fisherman-Farmer,

By Jim Lawrence, © 2011

Jim Lawrence will turn sixty this year. As a baby-boomer, he has lived through many of the experiences of the baby-boom generation, as his new memoir reflects. His book starts out with him dropping out of university in 1972, rejecting the abstract world of academia for the real world of logging clear cuts on the Olympic Peninsula.

But his life’s dream was always to be a farmer, and after some months of wandering, he ended up on San Juan Island, visiting friends, and stayed. Readers can pick up bits of island history in his recounting of work at the cannery, fishing to earn a living, raising dairy calves, and the evolution of his family farm. The book provides a window into the lives of the 1970s back-to-the-land community; their sacrifice of comfort and convenience, their ethic of opening doors to strangers, their struggle to find meaning.

Lawrence has written a very personal memoir. He recounts his struggle with learning disabilities with compassion for the boy who was literally sick with anxiety about failing in school. He evinces a gentle forgiveness for the young man who learned to cheat to protect his self-esteem. The Lawrence family is well-known on the island. Jim’s honesty in writing about his childhood and difficult relations with his parents will undoubtedly raise eyebrows if not ire. That Jim is publishing the book and distributing it where his farm’s products are sold show he has transcended much of the pain of his struggle as a child to learn.

Given the deluge of books on local foods and organic farming one might expect Lawrence to write about food and farm politics. He tosses off a few polemical remarks about corporate food, and the book devotes many pages to foibles of his farm. But this is a personal story, about Jim as a man, not a book about local food systems. He demonstrates courage in publishing it.

Callused Hands, Hungry Heart, like all books reviewed in this column, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

book c

Truth Be Told: Life Lessons From Death Row, by Agnes Vadas and Richard Nields, © 2006

Agnes Vadas led the San Juan chapter of Amnesty until her death in 2007. She wrote countless letters on behalf of prisoners and attended meetings of Amnesty around the country. And in May 1999 she began a correspondence with death row inmate Richard Nields that would continue for more than five years. The two exchanged letters, sometimes weekly, which finally totaled more than 200. Agnes Vadas, or Agi to those who knew her, learned about Rich through Amnesty International because, even though he admitted his guilt, this case was one where the application of the death penalty was inconsistent with law. Agi wanted to offer him some comfort on death row, and she wanted to save his life.

Then, on June 4, 2010, just days from his execution date, Nields was granted clemency. Mr. Nields’ death by execution was commuted when Ohio governor Ted Strickland, noting the weak basis for the death penalty in this case according to a Ohio Supreme Court judge and Federal Judges at the U.S 6^th Circuit, granted a clemency petition, and sentencing Nields to life without parole. And San Juan Island’s Agi is validated three years and a day after her death.

Readers can get a window into personal side of this story through the amazing book, Truth Be Told, which is their unexpurgated correspondence. The letters comment on music, books, and Shakespeare’s plays. Rich Nields and Agi discussed shared a distrust of former president George W. Bush and fierce hope through two election cycles that a Democrat would win the presidency.

Agi shared glimpses into her life here on the island as retired violinist and music teacher, talking a surprising amount about the weather, her pets and neighbors. Rich shared some of his frustrations, fears, and his terrible remorse for the crime that led to his death penalty conviction.  He asked Agi for books, which she faithfully sent. He read, and wrote about how he found escape and meaning and peace in authors from Larry McMurtry to Ernest Hemmingway and Kent Haruf. For me as a librarian, their discussions of fiction were some of the most moving parts of their correspondence. The reader discerns the importance of literature when one is confronted with one’s soul.

Agnes Vadas was a difficult person for me to like and work with. In her letters you can hear her laughing at herself, something I never heard in person. I read the Ohio Parole Board’s clemency report for Richard Nields online, and it raised my feminist hackles against serial domestic abusers—there’s an ugly story Nields never shared in his letters. Readers don’t have to like either of these characters, but one does develop compassion for each reading the correspondence.

Hats off, Agi! Just because Richard Nields is no saint, he should not have been executed. Your book helped raise awareness and make a difference here, as did the recent email network organized for clemency by Janet Thomas, Agi’s good friend, who took up the challenge in her memory and for her own conscience.

Truth Be Told, like all books reviewed in this column, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

Hanta Yo: An American Saga

I’d invited the group at the Mullis Center “Listen Up!” program to travel with me to Borneo and be on the first raft descent of an uncharted river.  What was going on: is the library now sponsoring adventure tourism? No, I was speaking metaphorically about the reading selection, an account from Tracy Johnston of her experience, called Shooting the Boh, from which I planned to excerpts.

 Hanta Yo is also a book that puts the reader in the scene. In this 812 page saga, San Juan Island author Ruth Beebe Hill, attempts to depict the life of the Sioux people over three generations from 1794 to 1835. In the novel, we travel with the Mahto (Grizzly bear) band of through their annual migrations from the hills to the plains. We learn about traditional hunting, scraping hides, customs for bathing, sex, eating, spiritual practices such as the Sun Dance, and making war.

Hill wrote a very unique style of English. She purportedly translated the novel “into archaic Dakotah and back into the English of the 1806 Webster’s dictionary” in order to assure the authenticity of the language. After a few pages, it ceases to be so odd, and helps the reader sense herself as living in this distinct culture.

Ruth Beebe Hill earned an honor from the American Academy of Achievement in 1979 for the novel. (Among the honorees from 1978: Reverend Jesse Jackson, William Webster, FBI director, and the director of the CIA.)

Unfortunately, Native American writers find much in the book to be nonsense and factually wrong. The dust jacket touts the novel having “the authority of a detailed ethnographic study.” Complaints about the ways that the novel fails the accuracy test can be categorized in two groups. Critics argue, for instance, about the comments in the book on the origins of the Sun Dance and its description of the use of eagle feathers to disprove the veracity of the novel. Other criticisms focus on the descriptions of sexual relations and individual choice, and point out how unlikely these characterizations might be.

The principal problem seems to be that Hill wanted the reader to believe the book was true, while she was writing fiction. Hill said she read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead 17 times. In The Nation, the reviewer DeMallie wrote that like Ayn Rand, “Hill feels the United States has gone sour, sacrificed individual freedoms for misguided social responsibility.” I would argue a novelist is entitled to a point of view. Hill’s concern with individual choice colors her understanding and portrayal of Sioux culture and customs. It may ultimately have led her to write a novel claiming to be a true depiction which is, in fact, so skewed from the foundations of Sioux culture as to be mostly false, colored with bits of historical fact.

Nonetheless, while reading this I neglected chores around the house and garden in order to disappear into Hill’s world of imagination on the high plains.  A good read. 

Hanta Yo, like all books reviewed in this column, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

Beth Helstien is the Outreach Coordinator for the San Juan Island Library.

That Frog, book cover, by Sam Connery

cover of Secret at Chipping Green

How do you read a book? Are you looking for beautiful prose or gripping action that makes you turn the pages? Do you crave characters that make you weep or a setting in a landscape or time far, far away? Or are you, like one of my favorite characters, Alice, looking for conversation? Do you like to peruse the pictures and perhaps the captions and maybe only then read the text if your interest is piqued?

Sam Connery is the kind of writer that visually oriented readers will like. His detailed illustrations draw the eye into the story with action, character, and setting. Sam has had experience writing and illustrating children’s books before: he wrote and illustrated remedial readers and worked on line drawings for workbooks for Reader’s Digest Services in addition to his career at Sunset Magazine. That was before he retired and developed his work as a landscape painter here on San Juan Island, where he is well-known for work both in water color and oil painting, and for being a downright nice guy.

In That Frog, a beginning reader, a boy brings home a frog and asks his dad if he can keep it. The amphibian gets loose in the house. Dad finds he has a hard time catching it again. The illustrations, reproduced in black and white from original watercolors are alive with the emotions of the characters, the movement of the animals, and the hilarity of the devastation caused by the chase.

In Uncle Willie and the Cheadle Cup, Connery is much more the writer and much less the illustrator, writing a chapter book for a slightly older audience. The line drawings in pen and ink are perfect for paperback reproduction. The story takes two children on a time travel with their grandfather. Kids love the repetition of the time travel journeys. With more prose and fewer pictures, Connery has fewer opportunities to shine at what he is best at it this book.

In Secret at Chipping Green, another chapter book, Connery finds the perfect balance between illustration and text, and most of the action takes place in conversation. He has written a book that kids will like, and he clearly had fun making the pictures. The sly humor in the art comes through, conveying characters’ idiosyncrasies and emotions with just a few lines. Many of illustrations are reminiscent of old fashioned comic strips, and they feel perfect for the setting of the book in the rural English countryside.

Secret at Chipping at Green, and the other titles reviewed here, like all books reviewed in this column, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

book cover of Pig War Islands

Pig War Islands: The San Juans of Northwest Washington by David Richardson

© 2009 by Beth Helstien

For National Historic Preservation Month I decided to review Richardson’s history. As I sat to write up my thoughts about it, I was also thinking about the impact the of the recent “Every 15 Minutes” program to reduce drinking and driving. So I dedicate this review to the many lives of islanders lost or maimed due to alcohol abuse.

Richardson did not intend it, but one can read his book as a chronicle of this community’s relationship with spirits. Each of the commanders of American Camp struggled with lawlessness in San Juan Town–historically located in Griffin Bay below the American encampment–due to excessive drinking and illegal activity selling alcohol. Capt. Pickett (camp commander from July to August 1859 and April 1860 to July 1861) begged civil authorities to enforce order. Capt. Bissell (camp commander from February 1862 to October 1865) resorted to de facto martial law. You can still find pieces of historic wine bottle glass along the shore at English Camp.

Another telling story is the founding of the county seat by Edward Warbass and how close the town father’s vision came to failure. When we speak with pride of the historic appearance of Friday Harbor, most of us probably are not thinking that the town’s success was the result of the opening of the second store with a backroom saloon when William Douglas became the third person to own a business here. Three business properties in “town”—two of them bars.

Customs was one of the sources of the conflict. The good people of the islands often preferred to get their products without the benefit of taxation. Before national jurisdiction was decided, importing from Victoria was a way of life. Such importation continued, without customs duties, after the national boundary was settled; only now it was smuggling.

During Prohibition, smuggling from Canada via the San Juan Islands flourished. Many islanders learned to keep silent about well known rendezvous location sites and to ignore the night time sounds of engines on beaches as exchanges took place. Rum-runners would sew their loads into gunny sacks in case of such emergencies. When a ‘rummy’ felt he might be boarded, he would toss the contraband overboard. There were benefits from close calls with the Coast Guard: locals learned to find the sack-wrapped bottles in the shallows, and would sometimes haul in the entire load before the smugglers had a chance to return to retrieve their jettisoned cargo.

Alcohol and the San Juans: is there such a thing as moderation?

Pig War Islands, like all books reviewed in this column, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

book cover of Precious Cargo

Precious Cargo © 2006 by Clyde Ford

© 2009 Beth Helstien

One can’t help but like Charlie Noble, the live aboard investigator in love with wooden boats, just learning to love a new woman after the painful death of his first wife, for whom he still grieves. With his earnest efforts to master the guitar, he seems like a nice guy. He listens well and compassionately, and he is even willing to delay his own cruising plans to try to bring peace of mind to two aging sailors. The couple has the misfortune to bring up the body of a young girl with their anchor one spring morning when heading north for the summer from Cypress Island.

But Charlie is a flawed guy. He takes on a case and delays his cruising plans without asking his girlfriend. He can get violent, and he in the midst of a fight, he seems to enjoy it, even if he is fighting for justice. His flaws make him real, and likable. As does the other three dimensional character in the book, Raven, a Native American with ties to both Lummi and Haida nations, and also a former U.S. Navy SEAL.

His case involves human trafficking and prostitution and indentured labor right here in the Northwest, and the book reads much like a screenplay, with fast cuts, lots of false leads and a rather complicated mystery. Are mysteries are now written for the screen, or has the screen so influenced our ideas of how plot should proceed that even in literature readers expect fast cuts and violence that moves so many mysteries and cop shows? One of the themes of the novel is ethnicity and race relationships, and the tangles between whites and blacks, and Native Americans and Mexicans.

I read Precious Cargo a few months ago; by now I’ve forgotten most of the violence, but I remember Charlie and the real murderer, who is one piece of work. If you like all that action, you will probably like this book. Even if you don’t like violence and foul language, you still might like this book. Ford gets the San Juan Islands ambience right, and more importantly, he gets something about difficult characters right that make his book memorable.

Precious Cargo, like all books reviewed in this column, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

cover of DVD Naturally Attracted: Connecting with Michael J Cohen

Naturally Attracted: Connecting with Michael J. Cohen © 2008 Charley Scull

© 2008 Beth Helstien

This DVD is about the truly original local teacher, psychologist and singer. You might know Mike from Sugar on the Floor or because of his music in interpreting the life of Captain Pickett, from contra dancing or from his creative work in psychology. Mike’s understanding of how humans interact with the natural world and his contributions to folk music are extolled by students, colleagues and friends; San Juan Islanders will recognize many familiar faces.

Naturally Attracted: Connecting with Michael J. Cohen, like all materials reviewed here, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

book cover of Getting Around in China

Getting Around in China: Notes from an American Traveler © Fred Richardson

© 2008 Beth Helstien

From Waldron Island, Richardson rights a practical handbook for anyone traveling, living or doing business in China. The first section of the book covers the basics–maps, getting around on boats, bicycles, and trains. Travelers’ concerns like safety, hotels and food, and others are given separate chapters.  The second section loosely mirrors the organization of the first section, and it is comprised of Richardson’s journal entrees over several visits to China over the years. Some entries evoke the strangeness of travel in the Orient, while some reflect the changes in China over the last two decades making travel there easier. These travel tales are satisfying for anyone interested in China, even those who have no intention of traveling there.

Getting Around in China: Notes from an American Traveler, like all books reviewed here, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.

book cover of MS amd Your Feelings

MS and Your Feelings: Handling the Ups and Downs of Multiple Sclerosis © Allison Shadday, LCSW

© 2008 Beth Helstien

Shadday shares real-life MS success stories and gives insightful professional advice derived from years of counseling hundreds of chronically ill patients. Her book offers readers hope, inspiration and validation. She addresses how to come to terms with a diagnosis; strategies for identifying and managing stress triggers; ways to cope with fear, guilt, anger, loss, depression, and isolation; and steps to enhance intimacy and develop a greater sense of emotional security. Shadday wants islanders to know that her book is applicable for people with many types of chronic illness in addition to MS.

MS and Your Feelings, like all books reviewed here, may be found at the San Juan Island Library.