Who Are These People?

Let's be honest.  Most of us are curious about the lives of others.  Okay, some of us - writers in particular - are downright nosy.
 
I know that young readers share that curiosity, and it's part of what makes writing biographies for them so rewarding.  But I'll admit a bias: A biography written for young readers should not only educate but also inspire.  (I won't be writing about Charles Manson anytime soon.)  I choose my subjects carefully, for that inspirational angle.

Right now I'm researching the lives of four native-born Coloradans, all of whom have achieved admirable accomplishments, here in Colorado, in Washington, D.C., and all the way into outer space.

A second bias pushes me to look for elements that shape a person's life story into a graceful arc, the old beginning-middle-end of the fiction writer.  Of course, not everyone's life fits that mold and the arc of a biography shouldn't be forced, but I'm always looking for connections that will wrap a young reader's understanding of a subject into a neat package.

One element is contrast, especially the difference between childhood circumstances and adult accomplishments.  Ken Salazar grew up on a ranch in Colorado's San Luis Valley.  The family home had no electricity, no telephone.  (And he's younger than I am!)  Today Salazar is U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

Coincidence is another intriguing element.  I remember being enthralled by all those chance meetings between characters in Charles Dickens' novels.  Two of the Colorado-born NASA astronauts I'm researching, Vance Brand and Jack Swigert, were born the same year, 1931, Brand in Longmont; Swigert in Denver.  During high school they both played football and may have been opponents in one important game.  During Brand's senior year, according to his school's yearbook, Longmont was trounced 34-0 by a "big bunch of boys" from Denver East, Swigert's school.  Both went on to make history exploring the outer reaches.

Scott Carpenter, born in Boulder, spent his childhood living in his maternal grandparents' house at the corner of Aurora Avenue and 7th Street.  He named his 1962 space capsule Aurora 7.  (According to Carpenter, that was pure coincidence, not intentional.  He says, however, that people in Boulder still like to believe their local intersection is memorialized in NASA history.)

So now, it's back to fitting the pieces of those arcs together into inspirational - and true - stories.

Lessons in an Ear of Corn

It’s corn season.

At my neighborhood grocery store, boxes of sweet corn are stacked nearly as high as the stalks they grew on here in Colorado. I like buying local produce. It makes me feel good to support the area economy; it keeps the impression of my carbon footprint a bit lighter; and it puts the sweetest corn on my plate just a few days after harvesting.

In each ear of corn – from Sakata Farms near Brighton – lives the sweet story of America’s promise and the generosity of its people. In light of today’s brutal economy, cynics may say the American Dream is all but dead. They may claim that success stories are old-fashioned and, frankly, a bit corny. (Sorry, I could not resist.)

But Bob Sakata’s success and his generosity grew from similarly bitter soil in one of the nastiest national climates in our history. The U.S. had limped through a crippling economic depression. Immigrants and the children of immigrants who looked “different,” including sixteen-year-old Bob, were perceived as threats and “the enemy,” even though he had been a citizen since birth and wanted only to finish his high school education and launch a career. Sound familiar?

There are lessons waiting to be pulled from an ear of Sakata Farms corn by a thoughtful parent or teacher. There are lessons about the hopes of two centuries of immigrants to our country. Lessons about personal tragedies and the exhausting effort needed to overcome them. Lessons about goals and heart and intelligence and, most difficult perhaps, forgiveness and generosity in the face of discrimination and hatred. And, did I mention, lessons about success.

Bob Sakata

At 84, Bob Sakata still loves to share those lessons with young people. In fact, Bob admitted to me that the one reason he agreed to sit for interviews was that my book would be written for young readers. Specifically, I believe, he wanted to help preserve the story of the 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who held their heads high and obeyed our government’s order to assemble for internment – imprisonment really – after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Bob Sakata’s story is about so much more than corn, but whether you are at the dinner table or in the classroom, I invite you to dig in!

My biography of Bob Sakata for ages 10 and up is available from http://www.filterpressbooks.com/.

Bent's Fort Celebrates an Anniversary

Bent's Fort as it might have looked in 1846

Bent's Fort celebrated an anniversary of sorts the weekend of June 5th.  The fort marked its 50th year as an official National Historic Site, part of the National Park Service.  And what a weekend!  Costumed "interpreters" - including barefooted kids - brought the year 1846 to life.  Fiddles screeched, cooking fires burned, and horses whinnied.  It reminded me of my first visit to the fort in the summer of 1993, when I caught the Western history "bug" and bad - but that's a good thing.

The fort's bookstore manager, Elaine Leadabrand, had invited me and I was happy to join the anniversary festivities.  In my writing I try to demonstrate for young readers how similar their lives are to those of folks from the past, but on the morning of June 5th I was reminded of one noticeable difference: the pace of life.  On the way to the fort I managed to get myself positioned right behind a dozen or more mountain men on horseback who were also headed to the fort's rendezvous.  For the record, mountain men on horseback travel five miles per hour tops, even when accompanied by the county sheriff.

My years of teaching high school ingrained my neurological system with a keen sense of timing.  I'm never tardy for a class...or an appointment.  But I'd never been behind a band of 1846 mountain men on the way to class, either.   At nine o'clock, the hour I'd promised to be at the fort, I saw a road sign that read "Bent's Fort 10 miles."  Doing the math, I knew I would be quite late, but after about 20 minutes of the 1846 pace, during which I literally stopped to smell the sage brush, the mountain men found an open field and rested their horses.  I was back to 2010 and 55 miles per hour. 

My late arrival was no problem, but I sure got a good dose of perspective that morning about time and distance in the 1800s.  It's a lesson I will definitely incorporate in my writing from now on.  As remote as Bent's Fort is, there was already a parking lot full of visitors there that morning, including a former student of mine and his parents.  Wow, you never know who you'll run into in 1846.  In fact, I talked with many families who share an interest in Colorado's history and the Santa Fe Trail; and I enjoyed making my small contribution, playing and singing "the greatest hits of the 1840s."  It was the first time I had actually sung those songs on the Santa Fe Trail!  I hope it won't be the last.

 

Read the history in Bent's Fort: Crossroads of Cultures on the Santa Fe Trail http://www.amazon.com/Bents-Fort-Crossroads-Cultures-Santa/dp/0865410623/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312643600&sr=1-1