Because I Said So: Grade-school lunchtime a real eye-opener for dad

While dropping G off this morning, I was called out by the principal of Richland Elementary School because of today's "Because I Said So" column. It seems she began the day with phone calls about it. I wrote about having lunch with G in their cafeteria last week - the smells, the food, the ominous silence.

Mrs. McNary took it all in the manner it was intended, laughing along with my desperate attempts at humor, but she also wanted to explain. Richland was built in 1957 by the progressive architect team of Bill Mann and Roy Harrover in a style that must have looked as futuristic then as TV dinners. Mann and Harrover were also responsible for the Memphis International Airport and Memphis College of Art among other well-known buildings. As contemporary and cutting edge as the school certainly was 55 years ago, things change. I don't know if the walls, floor and ceiling of the cafeteria became more acoustically cantankerous or if children have become louder since then, but Mrs. McNary told me this morning that a parent once took a decibel meter into a lunch and the needle was off the charts. They had an architect come in to study it for possible sound dampening measures and were told that it would cost close to $100,000. In lieu of spending that kind of cash, they opted for making half the lunch period silent.

This seems reasonable. I'm sure there is concern for the children's hearing long term and we've all been to too-noisy restaurants, that's never a pleasant dining option. G told me that day that they weren't allowed to talk while they eat because they might choke and I laughed out loud at the reasoning (I was shushed). A certain amount of control needs to be had at all times to prevent chaos and, I'm sure, once it gets beyond a certain point, there is no returning to normalcy.

The kids seemed happy and ate well in their antique/futuristic school, and that's what is ultimately important. I had a good time at lunch with G and her friends. Kids are funny in groups and for a limited amount of time. I hope you will find a quiet place to sit and enjoy today's column.

Grade-school lunchtime a real eye-opener for dad

I had a lunch date with my youngest child at her school last week. She was Star of the Week for her first-grade class, an exalted position that affords her, along with acting as emcee of her own daily show-and-tell, the honor of eating in front of me.

It's an interesting thing, sitting with a table full of 6-year-olds. I recommend you all try it at least once. One time should just about do it.

Walking into an elementary school lunchroom, for me, is like walking through a portal back to my youth, such is the power of the sense of smell to memory. It's that mixture of food smell with feet smell; that oddly comforting yet nauseating scent that is anything but appetizing. Lack of appetite was not a problem as it was only 10:15 a.m., lunchtime for Memphis City Schools.

Also not a problem because these kids were not sharing. The lunch box buffet laid out in front of me offered a tempting, yet off-limits feast of lunch meats, tubes of yogurt, grapes, cookies, cheese sticks, potato chips, mayonnaise, apple slices, crackers and juice boxes; I provided my own hand sanitizer.

The first-grade students were required to eat in total silence for the first half of the allotted lunch period, a policy I'm not on board with. Lunch should be the one place, after recess, when kids are allowed to socialize and laugh and cut up with each other. I understand the need for control of small children; I have four of my own. Without control there is chaos and possible mutiny, but I found the apron-clad wardens walking the line to be a bit much.

The kids I ate with last week were a chatty bunch, too. When, at the halfway point they were released from their shackles of shushes, we discussed summer vacation plans, loose teeth, tofurkey, big sisters, throwing up and middle names.
I asked the kids around me if they ever trade lunches the way I used to.

"We're not allowed to," my daughter said. "We'll get moved to another table."

What we have in the lunchrooms of local elementary schools is a failure to communicate, and solitary confinement is the preferred deterrent. It seems that a lunch spent in the box for these tiny Cool Hand Lukes is what keeps the room quiet.

"But only if we're caught," piped up one of her friends who shall remain nameless, but who will surely be at my table for our next lunch date.

Such hushed hegemony isn't exclusive to Richland Elementary, where I dined last week. It was the same scene when our kids were at Downtown Elementary several years ago. I'm not sure whether it's a Memphis City Schools policy or a practice the principals share at their regular district meetings. I picture them sitting around an enormous conference table, bottles of ibuprofen in front of them, popping them like Chiclets and sharing trade secrets for ways to infuse their schools with sweet, sweet silence.

Can we blame them? I just described the post-bedtime ritual at my house, and possibly yours, assuming you're also washing down the Advil with a glass of wine and soaking in a bath of antibacterial soap.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more from him at uurrff.blogspot.com. Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Because I Said So: Season of transition a fashion nightmare

My mother will take great pleasure in this week's "Because I Said So" column because I mention that my sons wear jackets to school regardless of the temperature. I did the same thing as a boy and it drove her crazy. I know it drove her crazy because it drives me crazy to see them leave the house with them on and then return home, when the mercury is hovering in the 90s, still wearing them. They say their schools are cold, but I've been in both of their schools in the past week and did just fine without an extra layer of fleece.

Today's column is about the transition from summer to fall, and the requisite lengthening of sleeves and pant legs that comes with cooler weather. For the smallest children, it's as though I'm asking them to hunt and kill a caribou, skin it, tan the hide and fashion their own winter wear.

I'm almost certain I've written a very similar column before, maybe last fall if not the fall prior, but that's what being a parent is, isn't it? It's that endless repetition of seasons and laundry and fits and tempers. For some reason, with each change of the season, I think it's going to improve. I really believe that this year I'll say, "You should wear long pants and a sweater" to whomever the youngest might be and they'll say, "Good thinking, sir, I'll go change into that right now." It's folly to think they'd ever call me "sir." And it's the blind optimism – or shortness of memory – that makes parenthood work. We have to think each year, each season, every day, will get better and easier because if we didn't we'd go mad; or madder.

So pull on your woolen socks, slip on your favorite cardigan, have a seat and enjoy this edition of "Because I Said So."

Season of transition a fashion nightmare

I just returned home from walking a few of my kids up to school, and there was something in the air this morning. It wasn't the apprehension of a looming quiz or the incomplete homework stuffed into backpacks, not this time. I walked on one side of my daughter, holding her hand, while the crispness of autumn touched the other. The sun was lower in the sky at that early hour, and we all remarked on the temperature difference from the previous day's walk.

It isn't cold, not by any stretch, but the thermometer does herald cooler days, days when we'll be donning coats and hats and gloves for the two-block walk each morning.

For now, though, it's simply cooler out, a refreshing respite. Perhaps a light jacket or sweater will suffice; a pair of long pants, certainly. Not for my daughter, though, not yet. For a 6-year-old, these are the days (weeks?) of transition. This is the end of the shorts and short sleeves, the end of sandals and skirts, but it's going to take some time to get used to such a sartorial shift.

Genevieve refused leggings worn beneath a skirt this morning, based solely on color. Navy blue? Not school sanctioned, according to her. The same jacket she wore every day last winter, in and out of school, is suddenly not a proper uniform cover-up. Not that sweater, no, not ever. "But they actually call it 'sweater weather,'" I pleaded.

Her parents, of course, don't know what they're talking about when they assure her that she can wear blue pants, that she can wear that very same jacket she wore only six months ago, that the sweater looks cute on her. But how could we possibly know anything?

This fight doesn't apply to the boys. To be fair, though, my sons have been wearing fleece jackets to school all school year — a year made up mostly of the month of August — as if their first class of the day is Intro to Igloos. It burns me up, literally, to see my son walk in at the end of a school day wearing an admittedly school-appropriate jacket, when the heat index is 103.

I've asked my sons not to wear jackets when it's still so hot outside, but they say their classrooms are cold. I tell my daughter she should wear one because it's cold in the morning, but she says it will be hot at dismissal. I stop talking. I need to have faith that somewhere, maybe in the pockets of that coat, they carry with them the common sense to stay warm or dry, to not succumb to heat stroke in the name of — or the profound lack of — fashion.

When we got to school this morning, we met up with Genevieve's friend, a little girl wearing navy blue pants who seemed comfortable in the morning air. I saw the opportunity to make a point. "See those pants, Genevieve? What color are those?"
The look she returned was chilling.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more from him at uurrff.blogspot.com. Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Hidden Memphis: Lloyd T. Binford

For almost two years, every other month, I've written the series "Hidden Memphis" for The Commercial Appeal. It's a lot of work, which is probably why it hasn't become a monthly series. Coming up with story ideas, researching them, locating experts or descendants or anyone who might have a connection to a 60-year-old building or industry or individual takes a lot of time and research. Looking at it as a freelance writer, it probably takes too much time when you get down to dollars per hour. But I love it. I love learning about little-known characters and finding images from our city's prodigious, notorious, colorful, shameful, hopeful, ill and progressive past, and sharing what I learn with others. And, to be truthful, the amount of time spent on any one story is probably, in large part, my own fault. When I get into the Memphis & Shelby County Room at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library and the helpful librarian brings me a stack (it's always a stack, if not a truckload) of newspaper clippings, scholarly papers, letters, photos or marginalia from early last century, I just can't help but read through it all. And when Wayne Dowdy, resident historian and manager of the room, happens by, I can't help but pick his own gray matter file for information and perspective.

Such was the case with the story that ran in yesterday's paper on Lloyd Tilgham Binford, the chairman of the Memphis Censor Board from 1928 until just before his death in 1956. I'd heard bits and pieces, anecdotes, about Binford over the years as I researched Film Row or the long-gone movie theaters of the past, but he was never a major subject in either of those stories so I just filed his name away for later. When my editor suggested Binford for a "Hidden Memphis" topic, I somewhat reluctantly agreed. It seemed to me that everyone already knew about him, how hidden could he be? And how much information could there possibly be on one man who wasn't a mayor or civil rights leader in this town? So I put out a call to all of the usual suspects, and some unusual suspects, that I look up for such stories, packed up my legal pad and pencils and headed to the Memphis Room. And, of course, they had everything I might need: pages and pages of stories and obituaries on Binford. He was quite notorious in his day, and quite often quoted. Perfect.

I pieced a story together through the voluminous wordage published on the commissioner, and talked with his great-granddaughter, Tamara Trexler, and grandson, Fred Trexler. I picked the brains of movie house historian Vincent Astor, University of Memphis professor Danny Linton, film directors Willy Bearden and Craig Brewer, film commissioner Linn Sitler, Malco magnates Michael Lightman and Nancy Tashie, Google and Dowdy. I sent the story in and, as I am wont to do, spent the rest of the week rewriting it in my head. The only problem with newspaper writing, I've found, is the limited space available; this story could have easily been twice as long.

I wanted to be fair to Binford, although being fair to someone when all evidence points to the fact that he banned films from the viewing public for racial reasons, or kept adults from seeing movies he felt to be too racy, both in image and language, is difficult to do. Government censorship doesn't deserve a fair shake. But Binford's background is interesting – a self-made businessman who grew his company from nothing, built an iconic home office that is a treasure in downtown Memphis today, and all with little more than a grade-school education. He also headed the Mid-South Fair from 1928-1931, and gave more than $10,000 to farm youth organizations. He was active in politics and acted as campaign manager for E.H. Crump. He was vice president of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce, a member of the board of trustees of the National Council and YMCA, on the board of Baptist Hospital; he was a Mason, Shriner and an Elk. And, according to newspaper accounts and Tamara Trexler, because of his charitable works here and in his hometown of Duck Hill, MS, there were over a hundred children throughout the south who had been named for him.

But then again, he banned movies from being seen because they deal " ... with social equality between whites and negroes in a way that is not practiced in the South." And in an attempt, seemingly, to reclaim - or dispute - his reputation, he was quoted in the Memphis Press-Scimitar on Sept. 26, 1947: " ... I'm one of the few white men in Memphis that got a six-pound fruit cake from negro friends last Christmas. I also received 18 Christmas cards from colored folks – and sent out the same number."

Does that help or hurt his case? Wayne Dowdy and I had discussions theorizing that Binford banned all-white or mixed-race audiences from seeing all-black or mixed-race casts for fear that the white audience members would riot and not for any danger from the black viewers. I looked for any evidence of this, for Binford simply mentioning it in one of the copious interviews he said he disliked to do, yet gave at the drop of a hat, apparently. I couldn't find anything concrete, so it remains a theory.

Regardless, it's the perceived fairness held in his own mind that makes Binford a complex and fascinating person; a real-life movie character himself who was, perhaps, stranger than fiction. The very fact that Memphis had a Board of Censors is strange enough until you place it in context, in a time when blacks and whites couldn't use the same water fountain or bathroom, when people were openly discriminated and physically assaulted for their beliefs. Strange times, indeed, and worthy of study so that they are never, ever repeated.

Banned or 'Binfordized

"Brazen." "Rowdy … unlawful … raw." "Salacious and risqué."

All adjectives that might be used to sell a movie to today's viewing audiences. You can just imagine such adjectives in big, bold letters plastered beneath the title or across the screen of a coming attraction. From 1928 until 1956, however, these were scathing words used by Lloyd Tilgham Binford as he edited films or banned them outright from being shown in Memphis.

Recently retired from the company he founded, Columbian Mutual Life Insurance Co., Binford wasn't looking for work in 1928 when he was appointed chairman of the Memphis Board of Censors. He awoke one morning to learn from the newspaper that he'd received the appointment from newly elected Mayor Watkins Overton. Binford accepted the position on a temporary basis for only 90 days "as a favor to the mayor," his obituary reads.

It was a title he would hold for 28 years, retiring at age 88 in 1956.

Born in Duck Hill, Miss., where he would eventually have a high school named after him, Binford had a simple, religious upbringing that would one day help to inform his decisions when it came to film censorship. He quit school at 16 and went to work as a railway mail clerk for the Illinois Central Railroad. As a clerk, his train was once held up by the famous train bandit Rube Burrow; as a film censor, he would outlaw films depicting train robberies and the like, including "The Outlaw," the serial "Jesse James Rides Again" and "Destry Rides Again." Though opposed to violence of any sort in films, he did allow that "if we stopped every movie with a murder in it, there wouldn't be any left."

Lloyd T. Binford

He went to work for various insurance companies, eventually starting his own in 1917. That company was moved over the course of a weekend from Atlanta to Memphis, where Binford would build a new headquarters, an iconic monument on the Downtown skyline, the Columbian Mutual Tower on the northern edge of Court Square. It was one of the first skyscrapers in Memphis; Binford ran his insurance and censorship empires from a top-floor office. The building would be sold years later and renamed the Lincoln American Tower, but the visages of Binford's children can still be found carved into the building's facade.

A millionaire when he retired from insurance, he accepted the chairman position for $200 a month. As a civil servant, he upheld the standards of the state, the city and the Hays Code, a set of guidelines used to govern studio film releases from 1930 to 1968, and named for Will Hays, a Presbyterian elder enlisted by Hollywood to improve the image of its studios. The Hays Code, also known as the Motion Picture Production Code, was used until 1968 when the Motion Picture Association of America adopted the rating code in use today.

As chairman of the Memphis Censor Board, Binford enjoyed free rein to edit films — known as having been "Binfordized" by Hollywood — or ban them outright. A moral gyroscope in the Crump political machine, he passed judgment on pictures that were "immoral or inimical to public safety, health, morals or welfare."

"The Little Tramp" did not pass muster with Binford. All Charlie Chaplin films were banned from Memphis theaters, Binford telling The Associated Press upon banning "Monsieur Verdoux" in 1947 that "we don't have to give our reasons" before adding that "(the film is) a comedy that makes murder a joke."

But the reasons weren't always found within the frame of a particular film; the character of the actor or actress mattered to Binford as well. He thought Chaplin a "London guttersnipe" and expounded to the Memphis Press-Scimitar in 1952 that "America has been good to Chaplin and has made him rich, but he has not been a good American … (Chaplin) is a traitor to the Christian American way of life, an enemy of decency, virtue and godliness in all its forms, a reputed endorser of the Communist Party."

Ingrid Bergman fell into his cross hairs as well with 1950s "Stromboli" being banned from cinemas. "It would be inimical to the public morals and welfare to permit the public exhibition of a motion picture starring a woman who is universally known to be living in open and notorious adultery," Binford told The Commercial Appeal in February of that year. Bergman was having a public affair with the film's director, and married man, Roberto Rossellini, at the time.

Binford's reach and notoriety stretched as far as Hollywood and New York, and screenwriters would send him scripts and scenarios ahead of time to get his approval and keep their product from being "Binfordized" after the fact.

In an era when movie theaters were segregated between the races with balconies reserved for African-Americans, if at all, or special days when they could attend movies, Binford sought to ban those movies with all-black or mixed race casts. Famously, Binford banned Hal Roach's "Curley" — a re-imagining of his "Our Gang" series — in 1947 for depicting white and black children in school together. United Artists would appeal and the case would ultimately make it to the Tennessee Supreme Court which, in 1949, stated that "the Memphis Board of Censors has no authority to disapprove a picture because there are Negro actors appearing in it."

"We'll just have to pass these pictures," Binford told The Commercial Appeal, though that same year he banned "Lost Boundaries," stating, "It deals with social equality between whites and Negroes in a way that is not practiced in the South. We banned it for that reason."

These are reasons that Binford's great-granddaughter, Tamara Trexler, wishes had not been. A film producer herself ("Charlie's War,"2003; "Dear Mr. Cash," 2005), she also was the Nashville Film Commissioner from 2000 to 2002, and would begin speeches in that capacity with anecdotes of her notorious ancestor. Her great-grandfather was an intelligent man who, though he left school as a teenager, wrote several volumes of his own encyclopedia with information on science, philosophy, religion and politics. And though she might agree with his notion that there is too much violence in films, on the racial issue, she says "that hurts that he did that."

Binford married Hattie Nelson of Memphis in 1895, and the couple had four children listed in his obituary as Mrs. Tom Thrash, Mrs. Fred Trexler, Mrs. Elizabeth Moon and Lloyd T. Binford Jr. Hattie died in 1927, and he married Jennie May McCallum in 1937, living at 1723 Peabody.

Trexler's father, Fred Trexler, is a Southern Baptist minister who recalls visiting Binford in his Midtown home. He remembers his grandfather as "very much an individualist with a very strong personality, that's why he did what he did." More exciting than those home visits, though, were the perks that went along with being Binford's grandson. "My mother and I would be invited on occasion to the Paramount where he previewed his movies."

Though movies might be banned from local theaters, it didn't mean they escaped the eyes of film buffs completely. "His iron thumb saw plenty of movies miss the Memphis market altogether," said Daniel Linton, a professor with the Communications Department at the University of Memphis. "Some of the 'scandalous' movies he banned were screened in West Memphis instead, and so a little booming film market was created in a place that doesn't even have a theater these days."

"It was the Joy Theatre in West Memphis, so I've been told, that showed the movies he wouldn't let play in Memphis," said local movie theater historian Vincent Astor. "It made lots of money."

Linton says: "Many major cities had similar boards, though they weren't always known as 'censor boards' per se ... This all sounds like ancient history, but actually the last one finally disbanded in Dallas in 1993."

Binford died on Aug. 27, 1956, and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. His legacy lives on in a city that has struggled with issues of equality and acceptance, and has, in recent years, seen a burgeoning film community take shape. From 1928 until 1956, however, Binford always had the last word on the town's big-screen culture.

"I have no regrets about the movies I've banned," he told the Press-Scimitar in 1947. "Take 'Duel in the Sun.' It was unquestionably the dirtiest movie I've ever seen. And I can't say anything too bad about that Charlie Chaplin."

Some Films or Stage Productions Banned or ‘Binfordized’

“Rope” (1948): Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; “brazen and immoral … revolting and repulsive.”

“Annie Get Your Gun” (1947): A Broadway stage musical with a mixed-race cast; the show “is not being allowed to play anywhere in the South, except Texas, and whatever those folks in Texas do doesn’t surprise me.” In addition to the cast’s ethnicity, “the musical score is suggestive, salacious and risqué.”

“Bamboo Prison” (1955): “Unpatriotic”; was to be exhibited by Malco, decision to ban later reversed after suit brought by Columbia Pictures.

“Forever Amber” (1947): “Entirely filthy.”

“Stromboli” (1950): On star Ingrid Bergman: “It would be inimical to the public morals and welfare to permit the public exhibition of a motion picture starring a woman who is universally known to be living in open and notorious adultery.”

“Lost Boundaries” (1949): “It deals with social equality between whites and Negroes in a way that is not practiced in the South.”

“The Wild One” (1954): “That was the worst, the most lawless bunch I ever saw and the most lawless picture I ever saw. There was nothing immoral in it, it was just rowdy and unlawful and raw.”

“French Line” (1954): Binford called police to keep the uninvited from entering a private preview of the movie at Malco Theatre.

“Miss Sadie Thompson” (1953): Banned for a dancing scene by Rita Hayworth; “The whole picture is a travesty on religion and everything in it is raw.”

“Tragic Ground” (1953): Play banned in Memphis that played at the Plantation Inn in West Memphis.

“Monsieur Verdoux” (1947): “a comedy that makes murder a joke.”

“A Song is Born” (1948): “inimical to the public welfare”; cast includes a “rough, rowdy bunch of musicians of both colors … there is no segregation”; “The musicians are raising the dickens … Jazz and the blues were actually born in Memphis anyway, down on Beale Street. There is too much French in New Orleans for jazz. It’s a rough, bawdy, noisy picture dealing with band musicians, in general a mixed-up jamboree.”

“Wedding Rings” (1930): “… the absolute violation of the sanctity of marital relationships …”; Shown at the Orpheum with a stretch of film bearing only the words “Cut out by board of censors.”

Others, banned unless otherwise stipulated:

“The Southerner”
“Brewster’s Millions”
“The Outlaw”
“Duel in the Sun”
“Jesse James Rides Again” (serial)
“Destry Rides Again”
“Jesse James”
“The Return of Frank James”
“The Daltons Ride Again”
“The Macomber Affair” (Hemingway novel, banned until deletions were made)
“Pursued” (censored)

HIDDEN MEMPHIS
This occasional series profiles people, places and things, past or present, that are quintessentially Memphis. Do you have an idea for someone or something for this series? E-mail Richard Alley at richard@richardalley.com.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Beautiful Ruins & One Last Thing Before I Go

So often I come across books by happy little accidents. While browsing through a used bookstore, a book with an interesting cover or with a synopsis on the back or flap will grab my attention. It is one of the most thrilling things to find a novel I've never heard of, even better if it's by a writer new to me. Many of my favorite books have come to me this way.

Occasionally, though, there are those novels that I know are coming out and I look forward to for months. Jonathan Tropper's One Last Thing Before I Go is one such book. I've read everything by Tropper and have been wildly entertained by all of them. Hearing that he had a new one on the way was like hearing that a favorite relative would be visiting for Thanksgiving. Conversely, Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter was one of those I happened on in the bookstore. It was new at the time and the cover was so striking that it drew me in. Since its release and before my purchasing it, I'd read about it and seen some great reviews, so my interest was piqued. I haven't read anything else by Walter, but I look forward now to delving into his other work. And I'm sure I'll look forward to his forthcoming novels as well.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (HarperCollins 2012) is a multi-generational story that takes us back and forth between 1962 and the present day. We are transported from the rocky coast of Italy to Hollywood, from Seattle to Idaho to London. Pasquale Tursi is the heir to a failing hotel in a failing fishing village called Porto Vergogna near Genoa. His dream for his hotel, which his father named The Adequate View after a conversation with the American war novelist Alvis Bender, is to attract Americans, and to that end he is building a beach on his rocky outcrop and planning a tennis court that will cantilever out over the water. His dream comes partially true when a young American actress, Dee Moray, shows up from Rome while on hiatus from the filming of Cleopatra. Her arrival sparks something within Pasquale and visits upon the poor Italian hotelier a host of characters including weaselly Hollywood publicist Michael Deane, a couple of thugs from nearby Portovenere and Richard Burton. But her arrival also brings something else to Pasquale: hope. He learns something of himself and his dreams in his conversations with her, and in the drama that unfolds.

Present day Hollywood shows us a Michael Deane who has become successful many times over, lost it all at times, and rebounded quite well. When Pasquale Tursi shows up, older now and searching for a lost love, he is given the chance to atone for sins from decades before. Whether he takes the opportunity is a matter of character and momentum built up from so many years in a shallow and crass business. The inclusion of Dee Moray's son, and the revelation of the identity of his father, is another turn in a novel full of intricate plot twists.

Where Beautiful Ruins spans 50 years and shows us how people's lives, hopes and dreams will change – or stay the same – within such time, One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper (Dutton 2012), spans one week in the life of Drew Silver. Silver, as he's known, is the one-time drummer from a one-hit-wonder band called the Bent Daisies. We meet him just before his ex-wife is to be remarried and just before he finds out he may die at any moment. Sound depressing? The talent of Tropper is that he can find the humor in the most mundane, and most frightening, occurrences in life. There is plenty of sadness and despair, some tears, and yet many moments of laughing out loud.

Silver lives in The Versailles, a long-term efficiency hotel populated by divorced, middle-aged men who see, or don't see, their kids intermittently, and who spend much of their time around the hotel's pool ogling young women visiting from the nearby college. Silver's own daughter is college-age, and long absent from Silver's life, yet determined to ease herself back in with the news of Silver's impending demise. His ex-wife's fiancee is the surgeon who diagnoses Silver's condition, and who ironically wants to save the life of the man who is a constant wedge in his relationship.

There are ruins in both books that are not man-made monoliths decaying from time and wear of the elements, but are the very lives and relationships of their characters. Pasquale Tursi's dreams are only partially realized, Drew Silver's were realized for a fleeing moment and may have cost him his family, if not his life. Dee Moray finds and loses love several times, while Michael Deane's life is merely a thin sheen of fame and fortune.

We all know pain, we all know loss and all of our dreams seem unreachable at different moments in our lives. It's in how we handle such adversity and longing, and even successes, that makes our lives into beautiful monuments or beautiful ruins. Both of these writers – Tropper and Walter – are adept at capturing the heartbreak and euphoria, and, even more difficult, they do so with a gentle, easy humor.

Because I Said So: Dinner table conversation a test of dad's knowledge

I could write a different version of today's "Because I Said So" column daily given the range of topics my kids come up with. Just last night we discussed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, The Cay by Theodore Taylor, Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, bad words, school and dreams we've had. It doesn't seem like supper should take long enough to eat to have the been able to cover so many subjects but, believe me, it does.

Please enjoy today's column, because Middle-Aged Man says so.

Dinner table conversation a test of dad's knowledge

Suppertime conversations around our table often jump back and forth in topic like a poorly edited film. Non-sequiturs are served as a side dish to fried chicken and pot roast. Talk of school and television, upcoming plans and the gossip of friends are revealed like the striated layers of a casserole.

The other night the subject of superhero powers came up. Specifically the question was "What two superpowers would you want if you could pick?" It's the sort of palaver a palate might appreciate with a Southern staple of meat and two.

The kids bandied about the obvious choices — flying, invisibility, being really small or really fast. Me, I told them my superpowers, if it were up to me, would be a tolerance for lactose and to shape shift into a morning person. Such is the secret identity of Middle-Aged Man.

Kids, on the other gloved hand, consider themselves immortal and dream to flaunt that immortality with an ability to fly or jump or to be unseen as they lurk from room to room.

I flew to the kitchen mid-meal to refill a wineglass and returned to suggest, "X-ray vision!" not realizing the talk had advanced with a new question: "What country, other than this one, would you want to live in?" My superpower exclamation was met with super sighs and eye-rolling, you have to be quicker than Flash to keep up with the plot points around this table.

Italy, France, Brazil, England and Greece were all mentioned in this category. I'm pretty sure someone suggested Florida. The conversation devolved into a stereotypical discussion of accents, informed more, I'm afraid, by years of viewing "The Simpsons" and "House Hunters International" than anything learned in school. The kids are conversational lightweights at best.

It occurs to me now that I probably should have visited my own wish list for powers upon this nascent Jobless League of America. What would I imbue them with were I to inject a Super-Soldier Serum similar to Captain America's into their meatloaf? Invisibility is a possibility, though super silence might be better.

I leapt to the kitchen to slice more bread (and to top off the wine) only to return and hear my son talking about Middle-earth. "That's not even a real place!" I scoffed, imagining him applying for a passport and visa. But they'd moved on without me to a discussion of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," something I know even less about than gamma rays or the value of the euro.

There are many times I'm left out of the main course of discourse altogether; times when the incongruity of subjects leaves me standing still and unable to keep up, like a Hobbit attempting to walk up a mountainside of mashed potatoes.

Eating with kids is not a dinner party of high society talk, but a whirlwind of issues and debates that require a superhuman attention span. Stan Lee tells us that "with great power comes great responsibility." I tell you that with a great big family comes great suppertime confusion.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A Thousand Acres

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. No one won it in 2012. In response to the non-win of this year, Michael Cunningham, one of three Pulitzer jurors, wrote a piece for The New Yorker about why, or why he thought, there was no winner chosen. In this essay, he writes:

A proper respect for the mysterious aspects of fiction is encouraged by the Pulitzer’s guidelines, which are gratifyingly loose. The winning book, be it a novel or short-story collection, must have been written by an American, and should, ideally, be in some way about American life.

That’s it.

Smiley's novel is so much about American life that it's almost embarrassing to read, whether due to the raw emotions and familial relationships that leave the reader feeling naked and, at times, stripped of skin completely; or whether it's the knowledge of farming and farm life that she imparts so adeptly, knowledge that leaves a city boy thinking for the first time, "Wow, that all seems really hard."

A Thousand Acres takes place on a farm. Never mind where it is (it's in Iowa), it could be anyplace that people make a life, such as it is, from putting seed in the earth, watering it, praying over it, and waiting a predetermined number of days before learning if they'll make enough money to sustain them until the next growing season when it happens all over again.

The farm is just as the title says, one-thousand acres, in Zebulon County and has been farmed by the Cook family for several generations. It's a hard life, a life filled with days of routine and back-breaking work, but it's a life the Cooks have come to know; the only way of life they know. Larry Cook, a widower, has three adult daughters - Ginny, Rose and Caroline - and Ginny and Rose each have married men who work the land there, and their families live on the land and within walking distance of the house where Ginny and Rose grew up. They enter each others homes without knocking, making coffee at will, preparing breakfast or dinner, as though they are one big happy family. In walking to each other's houses, however, they're crossing land that is fertile with family secrets that threaten to push through the topsoil like weeds. There is no chemical to stop them, no farmer's trick that will keep such secrets from invading the lives of those who live and work the fields and threaten to do more damage than drought or hail.

The story is intricate, and the setting and characters detailed. The pacing moves with the monotony of farm life, yet is not monotonous. We are caught up in the chores and the fears of weather, with the cycle of life for farm animals and the importance of teamwork. The plot blossoms like tomatoes on the vine, each revelation a succulent piece of fruit to be savored on the front porch.

The Pulitzer finalists in 1992 included Mao II by Don DeLillo, Jernigan by David Gates and Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig. I haven't read any of those books, so I can't say with any conviction that A Thousand Acres is better or more deserving, but I can say that it is "about American life." It may not be my life, and it may not be your life, but the emotions, the character traits, the fears and lost hopes and want of something better, if not for ourselves, then for our children, are attributes present in all of us.

Because I Said So: Launching youngest daughter in first grade has its hurdles

As a kid growing up with books of science fiction and black-and-white movies ful of creatures and oddities from outer space, my entire universe consisted of Earth and Mars. Sure, the Moon was there, but the Moon is a neighbor, as familiar to us all as the property fence or a dog's bark. But Mars is the next neighborhood over, familiar for its proximity, yet alien with its different trees, styles of houses, cars and people who look just like us, though they're not neighbors; not completely.

And yet Mars is close. Certainly close enough for alien beings to fly a saucer over for a cup of sugar or to sit on the porch for a spell and, eventually, eat that neighbor's dog. It's close enough for me to have thought as a kid that we Earthlings would one day put a craft, if not a person, on Mars. It was doable. Of course it would be possible, we put a man on the Moon and Mars is just around the corner from there, isn't it?

Probably a stranger concept to a 7-year-old boy than one day touching the surface of Mars is parenthood. Being a father was an entire galaxy away from where I was, and as alien as whatever that was that came from the ship at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At that age, there is no way a parent could understand what we feel, our fears, our interests, our complete inability to comprehend time and distance in outer space. And yet, when I took G to first grade last week and she melted into me with tears and pleading not to have to go to school, I knew exactly where it was she was coming from. It wasn't Mars, or even the Moon, it was a time and a place I remember well. It's another world called Childhood and it is as strange and exotic a place to me now as a planet called Parenthood seemed to me 35 years ago.

We're all explorers going through new worlds blindly whether those worlds encompass another planet, another continent, the next street over or being responsible for another little life. It's all exciting and, we find out, it's all very reachable. What we need to do is keep our eyes and ears open, learn as much about the landscape as we can and try to enjoy the ride.

This week's Because I Said So column from The Commercial Appeal:

Launching youngest daughter in first grade has its hurdles

Last week, I scattered my four kids like comet tails and left them with their various teachers at their various schools. For the older kids, this is old hat, they're pros who have been at this for years. They may not like it — in fact they don't — but they understand the routine and joined the countdown to the launch of another Memphis City Schools academic year.

But then there's Genevieve. She's the youngest and the most spirited, some will say. A challenge, her parents say. Things did not go well that first morning of first grade. There was a lot of clinging and tears, and even some desperate pleas for her sentence to first grade to be commuted. Alas, I left her there in the capable hands of Mrs. Armstrong and the whole Richland Elementary crew.

I came home, walked the couple of blocks back, and turned on the Internet to see that NASA's Mars rover Curiosity had landed safely the night before. Space exploration fascinates me, and I was enthralled watching video images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, as the rover touched down and the scientists went crazy with exultation.

That celebration was rightly deserved. Those people landed a buggy on a planet 35 million miles away with more ease and less drama than I had landed my daughter in a first-grade classroom two blocks away. Granted, they're rocket scientists and I'm only a parent, and parenting isn't rocket science. Or is it? Maybe when scientists come upon a complex theorem that becomes easily proven, they say, "Well, it isn't parenting."

Adam Steltzner, a mechanical engineer with the laboratory, said the rover's landing "is the result of reasoned engineering thought." Reasoned thought is as unnatural to a 6-year-old as space travel. When told that school can be fun or that it won't last so long or that her friends will be right there with her, all she can imagine is an endless expanse of black sky, a vacuum of loneliness.

Upon re-entry into the school's atmosphere, while dodging other children and supply-laden parents, my daughter began to break apart, the heat from the classroom too much to bear; the promise of another school year built up until not even her protective khaki jumper could withstand the pressure and she exploded in a barrage of tears. And what could I do? I'm helpless. I'm a parent. I'm ground control, yet I failed to keep her grounded in any sense of safety and serenity, while floating there among her friends and siblings.

They call it the "seven minutes of terror." That's how long scientists had to wait upon Curiosity's entry into the Mars atmosphere before they found out whether their rover was intact on the surface of the planet. It takes us about seven minutes to walk to school in the morning, but I had to wait seven hours to find out that Genevieve did eventually compose herself, that she acclimated to the foreign surroundings of first grade and that her own curiosity about it all proved to be stronger than her home's gravitational pull.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more from him at uurrff.blogspot.com. Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The Boost of the Olive Tree

Okay all you bookish people out there, it's time to rally the troops. My good friend Courtney Miller Santo has a major book release next Tuesday, Aug. 21, with The Roots of the Olive Tree (William Morrow). She has a lot of author events upcoming in places like San Francisco, Seattle, Nashville, Portland, Oxford and Asheville, so if you're in any of those cities, get out there and support her. And tell your friends!

Courtney also needs some reviews circulating out there, so give the book a read and tell the world what you think. Doesn't have to be long, just a few sentences, a paragraph or two, on your connection to the characters and stories. Now, we here at Urf! are big on books - paper, binding, covers, the whole package - but for those of you who like to download a novel and read it on your computer phones, the publisher has a great deal for you. For the rest of this week only, you can download The Roots of the Olive Tree eBook for only $4.99. You can do that right here. So go do that, I'll wait ...

Now, once you've read it, say something about it at the following sites (your review can be copied and pasted into each site to make things simpler):

Barnes & Noble (Scroll to the very bottom of the page to review)

Amazon (You can review the electronic copy now, but not the hardback)

Books-A-Million (Scroll to the lower third of the page, account creation required)

Reviews are also accepted at the Apple Store if an iPad or iPod are your preferred mediums

I was lucky enough to read an advanced reader's copy back in the spring and said a little something about it here.

I also wrote a feature on Courtney for The Commercial Appeal that ran in the paper on May 31, 2012. I'll copy that below so you can get a feel for where Courtney's story began and how it evolved. If this isn't enough, you can read her winning story for the 2012 Memphis Magazine Fiction Contest right here.

Thank you all for your help!

Writer's first novel followed storybook path to publication

Courtney Miller Santo grew up in conditions fertile for a burgeoning writer, a conservative Mormon household with seven children where there was no television to be found. Instead, the large and close family told stories and created plays. They interacted in ways almost unheard of today. And they read.

"My dad was always reading, he would go to bed at 9, and he would always have a book," Santo said of her father, an elevator mechanic.

Santo, the oldest of those seven children, describes her childhood just outside of Portland in Milwaukie, Ore., as "chaotic," yet a bookish manner set in and has paid off for her in a big way as she prepares for her debut novel, "The Roots of the Olive Tree" (William Morrow), to be released in August.

The story is threaded along one olive-growing season, taking a look at the lives of five generations of firstborn daughters and Anna, the 112-year-old matriarch, who wants to be the oldest living human being in the world.

The story, set at Hill House and the family's olive groves in northern California, centers on a geneticist coming to study the longevity of the family just as the youngest, Erin, returns home alone and pregnant.

It's a combination that, the dust jacket of an advance reader copy explains, "ignites explosive emotions that these women have kept buried and uncovers revelations that will shake them all to their roots."

It's a novel with a road to publication almost as intriguing as the tale within the pages. Santo entered her manuscript in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award competition in 2011. Out of 5,000 entrants, she made it to the semifinals and the remaining 50 hopefuls. And then she was eliminated. But that's only the beginning of the story because she was then contacted by an agent with the Janklow & Nesbit Associates literary agency who had read the manuscript excerpts posted at Amazon, and wanted to represent Santo.

It is on the West Coast where olives grow and fantasies are realized, and it was there in summer 2011 that Santo's life changed. "I was in the middle of this cross-country vacation that had been planned forever ... and the day after we get home to my grandmother's house in Vancouver (Wash.), she (the agent) calls me and says, 'Sit down, I have an offer, and it's a really good offer,' and she told me the offer, and I was glad I was sitting down because I did not believe it."

That offer was that the book, along with an unwritten second book, would be sold to William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins, for six figures. Foreign rights for "The Roots of the Olive Tree" have already been sold to Italy, England, Spain, Germany, Holland and Turkey.

Santo doesn't downplay luck in this adventure. "It just doesn't seem real; it didn't seem real for a very, very, very long time," she said. "This is the dream; this does not happen that you get a company that is so excited about a debut novelist that they put this much publicity and effort into it. I feel crazy lucky."

The women of her novel might be illustrated by a photograph Santo keeps in her office, a tiny concrete bunker on the University of Memphis campus. It's one of her and her daughter flanked by her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Santo is a collector of stories. "My mother is a storyteller," she says. "I come from a long line of storytellers on both sides." Some she recalls verbatim in her fiction, those from decades of family lore, and others from time spent as a journalist, and others she presses like olives for the oil and essence that add flavor to her characters.

Though her love of reading and the idea of writing began in the Pacific Northwest, at the age of 18, she "decided to get as far away from home as possible" and went to school at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. She met her future husband, Charlie, there and studied journalism. "I'm very practical, so to say something like, 'I want to write a book' seemed very stupid; it's like saying 'I want to be an astronaut.' Whereas being a journalist, you get your name in print every single day and you automatically get the title of writer. I think sometimes writers have a hard time owning that title."

She worked for the Roanoke Times and the Charlottesville Daily Progress. From those days as a journalist, Santo learned to love fact-checking and says that when she gets writer's block now, she does research. "Whenever I would get stuck, I had this huge stack of books that I checked out from the library about olive cultivation, and if I got stuck writing, I would just pick it up and start to read about how to take a branch from one olive tree and splice it into another olive tree, or about blight."

She would eventually end up in Memphis, where her husband took a job as associate professor of city and regional planning with the U of M, and it was here that she really began to own that title of writer. She worked as the editor of The Lamplighter, the newspaper of the Cooper-Young neighborhood, and was accepted into the Moss Workshop in Fiction, a community writing workshop with novelist Richard Bausch. "Once I got into his class, I realized all kinds of things, like there was such a thing as an MFA program," she said, laughing. "So Richard encouraged me to apply, and I got in and I got serious about writing."

The Moss Workshop took the idea of being a writer, in her mind, from being "abstract and foolish, to something that seemed plausible. But even though it seemed plausible, it's still not something I ever expected to happen in the way that it did." Through the MFA program, she met and worked with mentors such as Tom Russell and Cary Holladay.

"Cary really taught me that if you're going to write for somebody besides yourself, it comes down to revision," Santo said. "You have to be willing to roll your sleeves up and get into the prose and redo it, it's never perfect the first time out."

"She really listened, and she can recognize a good suggestion, and then she can just tear into it," Holladay said of her student and friend. "She's a very aggressive reviser of her work and, of course, it helps that she's got terrific talent and she's extremely well-read."

Last year was a good year for Santo, who also won the 2011 Memphis Magazine Fiction Contest for a short story that will appear in the upcoming June issue. "Her stories are just fun to read," Holladay said. "They're rich, and they're revelatory in terms of human character and experience."

Santo has her hands full with two children, Sophia, 9, and C.J., 7, and the writing of her second book as she anxiously awaits the release of "The Roots of the Olive Tree." But she loves teaching and intends to continue doing so with her undergraduate fiction and literature classes, saying, "I'm a better writer because I teach; it keeps me honest. It's very difficult to critique a student's work and see an error, or a way that it could be written stronger, and then not go back to your own work and recognize every single mistake that you've made."

Says Holladay: "I was eager to get her in the classroom, and right away I saw how comfortable she was as a teacher and how much her students liked her."

Though she writes these days in a place far from the Pacific Northwest, it's a land fertile with writers, where the streets teem with character. It's where her family has put down roots and made a home. "I feel like if you're on the right track, you get little nods along the way," she says. "So I feel like we made the right decision to move to Memphis as a family, and it's been the best decision we've made personally and professionally."

Because I Said So: Facing the new frontier (high school)

C, first day of kindergarten (2003)

I remember the beginning of high school. It's what makes it so difficult to believe that in just a few days my son will be a freshman in high school. I remember all of the larger-than-life worries, the drama, the heartache and unease, the lack of confidence and wonder of it all that I felt then. What a mess.

But perhaps it's different now. Maybe high school, and the ages of 14-17, are fun and simple and carefree these days. I'll just tell myself that because one of the treats of having kids is the chance to see the world through their eyes and to relearn life from their point of view day in and day out. And then they become teenagers and you're left thinking, "This? Again? But I've already done all of this."

When I become nostalgic, it's for an earlier time when I was seven or so and climbing trees in my front yard, riding bikes around the neighborhood and wasting time in front of three channels. If I have to go back, send me there. Or to the year I turned 40. Forty isn't so bad. But not high school, thank you. I'll take 1977 over 1987 any day.

As my oldest child stares down into the maw of high school, I take a look back for today's Because I Said So column to his first day of kindergarten (it seems like only yesterday) and find I owe a debt of gratitude to the great teachers he's had over the years. I wish I could have listed them all in today's paper, each one deserves it. He's a good kid and will do just fine at White Station High School, but as he registers and gets his notebooks and pens and lunch together, I can't help think to myself, "Better you than me, kid."

Facing the new frontier (high school)

Around this time in 2003 we started going to Downtown Elementary School. (This is how parents talk: "We" go to Richland Elementary or White Station Middle or Downtown Elementary. I haven't sat in a formal classroom setting since the late 1980s, but no matter; at some point it just becomes simpler to explain our kids' activities as a collective.)

Nine years ago we began school when I dropped my oldest son, Calvin, off for kindergarten. I'd been taking him to day care every single day for years and it had not gone well. Those mornings were full of screaming and clinging and pleading and teeth gnashing, by the both of us. I had little hope that day one of kindergarten would be much better.

But something happened that day and I don't even know if it was him or me or his new teacher, Mrs. Porter, but I got lucky. She and I stood talking for longer than normal due, no doubt, to my need for reassurance. The point came when Calvin seemed to grow so tired of standing around listening to us with his oversized backpack and overwhelming curiosity weighing him down that he wandered off by himself to find his assigned seat. There were no tears and only a wave of his hand in farewell. Thus began his educational career.

That little boy who surprised me that day with his courage and initiative and impatience with long-winded adults will walk into his first day of high school next week. I won't be there with him because that's just not how it's done at this stage and age. There will be no reassurance from his teacher (for me), no handholding, no oversized backpack. All I can hope is that we've done a good job through these first nine years of school, that he's taken to heart the lessons taught by Mrs. Porter and Mr. Scott and Mrs. Erskine and Mrs. Brenneman, and all of the other wonderful teachers who have influenced and guided him over the years.

I try not to write too much about my 14-year-old here; he deserves his privacy. It's a shame too, because in that hour he's not sleeping or eating, he's really quite engaging and funny. But this milestone deserves mention as it is a momentous occasion for our collective, it's the next big adventure in parenting.

As a student at White Station High School, Calvin will be dealing with a workload he has never known; with the constant reminder that every test, every grade, every club joined will have bearing on his college career and then his eventual career. Mixed in with that, there will be peer pressure and driving permits and proms and the whole high school caste system to negotiate. He will face growing pains unlike those that have propelled him to his nearly 6-feet tall.

It's a time I wouldn't wish on anyone, and yet I'm willingly sending my child into that roiling, bubbling gumbo of uncertainty.

We begin high school next week. Wish us well.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

(Classic) Because I Said So: Team Alley dreams of gold in 2024

This isn't the week for a new Because I Said So, but in honor of this year's Olympic games which began yesterday, I take you back four years – to that gold medal year of 2008 – and a classic Because I Said So celebrating all that is Greek and competitive and sponsored and wearing a unitard.

This column originally ran in The Commercial Appeal on August 28, 2008. Enjoy!

Team Alley dreams of gold in 2024

Five events my kids would excel in if they were actual Olympic events:

• Sofa jumping
• Spilling things
• Bath procrastination
• Falling down
• Screeching

We've been watching some of the Olympics at home. Not all of it, mind you, because there is just too much.

Not even my children, who are Olympic-level television watchers, could be expected to direct so much time and concentration toward the hours and hours of coverage that are available.

The kids are learning a lot from these games, though. They learn about hard work and determination, teamwork and patriotism. And nutrition; they have learned that eating McDonald's every day for lunch will set you on the road to gold.

They've also learned that their mother doesn't care for their father watching women's beach volleyball.

There have been some athletic dreams in the past week and a half. My kids know their potential and have pictured themselves running and swimming on an Olympian plane. They've also been known, though, to dream of eating a wall of Pop-Tarts and of being contestants on "Deal or No Deal."

If they ever expect to compete, it would probably be in 2024 when they'll be 18 to 26 years old. Although Somerset, who is now 5, could probably join the Chinese gymnastics team for the 2012 games.

As long as the Olympics coverage runs some nights, it would probably seem even longer with my children winning, due to the photo session following each medal presentation. After every snap of the shutter, the kids would find it necessary to run down off the podium and see the picture in the camera's little LCD monitor.

I would allow my kids to go through the grueling training regimen of an Olympic athlete only if I was sure we could stay focused, as a family, on what is truly important.

Endorsements.

I would dress my son up like Cap'n Crunch and push him into the deep end of an Olympic-sized pool if I thought it would get him a Michael Phelps-sized payday.

You want exposure? I've got a 5-year-old I'd strap to the back of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and paint Coca-Cola red for his next shot at the 100-meter record.

No major sporting event like this is scandal-free, of course, and the 2024 games would be no exception. The difference is you'd have my kids there to let the officials know who is doing what. To tattle on Australia should they take Uganda's spot on the couch when Uganda gets up to get a drink from the kitchen, or on Albania should they call Botswana a "stupid head."

Just rest assured that my kids would be there to give that extra amount of effort when it comes down to it, when they need to cross the finish line or pass off the baton, because they'd understand that the only way to come back home is with a gold medal around their necks.

And a Nike check in their pocket.

On Cotton Row

From Peter Taylor's short story "A Friend and Protector":

I stood at the top of the stairs watching the three old people ascend the two straight flights of steps that I had come stumbling up half an hour earlier – two flights that came up from the ground floor without a turn or a landing between floors. I thought how absurd it was that in these Front Street buildings, where so much Memphis money was made, such a thing as an elevator was unknown. Except for adding the little air-conditioned offices at the rear, nobody was allowed to do anything there that would change the old-fashioned, masculine character of the cotton man's world. This row of buildings, hardly two blocks long, with their plaster facade and unbroken line of windows looking out over the brown Mississippi River were a kind of last sanctuary – generally beyond the reach of the ladies and practically beyond the reach of the law.

From my piece on unique museums found within the Mississippi River Corridor of Tennessee for the River Times magazine:

Cotton Row in downtown Memphis was the hub of worldwide cotton trading in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Cotton Exchange – at the intersection of Union Avenue and Front Street, firmly in the center of the Row – was a place for sellers, traders and buyers to meet, discuss the issues of the day and industry, and keep track of the most up-to-date pricing. "A lot of our history, art and culture comes to us as a result of the people who gathered here," says Melissa Farris, special events coordinator for the museum. That exchange floor now is home to the Cotton Museum and welcomes those interested in agriculture – and the Southern way of life – from around the world.

Visit the Cotton Museum on Front Street and at memphiscottonmuseum.org.

Read Peter Taylor's story in his fine collection, The Old Forest and Other Stories.

Because I Said So: Don't worry kids, Dad is watching whether you want him to or not

Watch me copy and paste today's Because I Said So column over onto this weblog! Just watch.

Don't worry kids, Dad is watching whether you want him to or not

Hang on: My kids want you to watch them do something.

They want you to watch them jump in the pool. They want you to watch them swim across the pool. They want you to watch them jump rope, climb a tree, play a drum, eat a peach and act a fool.

Nothing happens with these children unless someone else is watching.

Did I do this? Did I instill this need for attention in them? Or did they miss the point of George Orwell's "1984"? The constant surveillance of Big Brother was supposed to be a bad thing, kids. ("Hey, Dad, watch me misinterpret a theme in classic literature!") Or perhaps it is Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and his culture of "look at me, I'm doing this right now" that has infected and inflated their egos.

I've heard a lot of talk recently about "helicopter parents," those parents that hover over their children, noticing every move, nudging them in the right direction, keeping them as safe as possible in the dangerous world of play dates and roller skates. Is this helpful or ultimately detrimental to a child's well-being and sense of autonomy? I have no idea. You raise your children the way you see fit, and I'll raise mine by shouting commands from the sofa in my office.

But then they find their way into my office. "Watch me tie a shoe. Watch me count to 100. Watch me spill this milk." They advertise their every anticlimactic activity in a manner even more irritating than television promos during sweeps week. It's as if Dave Brown was going to not retire every single evening at my house.

I don't recall this need for attention as a child, though it's possible I begged my parents to watch me struggle with my Stretch Armstrong, become more and more confused by my Rubik's Cube, or watch "The Six Million Dollar Man" again.

I know I don't do it now. You won't see me saying to my kids, "Hey, watch me come up with another metaphor. Watch me Google up a thesaurus."

I suppose we parents all hover to a certain extent. It's become part of our buckled-up, helmeted, surveillance-heavy society. But I try to mitigate it. I send the kids outside to the backyard, down the block and to the park in an effort at encouraging them to do things on their own.

I know they'll go off on their own one day, far away to live their own lives. And they won't travel like helicopters then, but like jets feeling the need to get away. Or more accurately, as teenagers they'll ease out of the driveway onto a Memphis city street in a 26-year-old Volvo with no air conditioning and a missing taillight, and whispering to themselves, I'm sure, "Please don't watch me. Please don't watch me."

But I will be. Left there in the driveway, finally landing after a lifetime of hovering, I'll be there hoping they call soon to tell me what they've been up to.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more from him at uurrff.blogspot.com . Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Because I Said So: Dad sees library card as ticket to new worlds for daughters

World explorers

What I left out of this Because I Said So column was that on the day we were at the library, there were kids who appeared to be unsupervised running throughout the children’s section of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. So, on top of getting S & G their very first library cards, and some good books to take home, I also had the opportunity to make the point that they should never act like that in a public library.

Be kind to your books, people. Be kind to your libraries and be kind to your librarians, they’re not daycare facilitators.

The girls had been asking for a couple of days to go to the library and there’s no better request to get from your kids, is there? It’s better than “can I get a new video game?” or “can we go somewhere?” or “why can’t you just have a pool put into our backyard?”

G read through her books and a few days later was asking for more library. The next step, of course, is to teach them both how to use public transportation so that I can stay on the sofa in my air conditioned office the rest of the summer.

Today’s column:

Dad sees library card as ticket to new worlds for daughters
 

On a recent summer day, it came to my attention that my children were bored. This alert was not a subtle one; these are not subtle kids. The two syllables of "I'm bored" came out in the droning, whining tone of one of those French police sirens: "I'mmm bored … I'mmm bored."

Because the temperature was creeping up toward 100 degrees, I packed up my two daughters and took them to the coolest place I could think of: the public library. Once there, I filled out enough paperwork to either get them their very first library cards or to buy a whole other child.

The proud girls were handed their new cards to sign on the back, and then each stared at the shiny rectangle of plastic as if wondering how to turn it on and download something. I told them that with those cards they could take any book in that building home with them.
And that they could now drive a motor vehicle within the city limits. "Really?" they said, wide-eyed and expectant. No, that's fiction.

Is there anything we can give our children that is more exciting, more educational, more free than a library card? It is Alice's rabbit hole, Dorothy's yellow brick road, a winged Pegasus. That little piece of plastic can teach them how and where to satiate their curiosity, the responsibility of keeping up with the card and borrowed books, and that if they sound the alarm "I'm bored" within earshot of me, that they will be forced to better themselves.

Through the colorful forest of trees, we went into the children's section of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, that gleaming glass and steel lodge of literature. The girls perused titles, pulled out some books to get a sense of them, put some back and found a few to take home. My youngest, Genevieve, leaned toward oversize picture books with their tales of tigers, bugs, little boys and girls, and fables from far away. Nine-year-old Somerset focused on her folded-up summer reading list from Richland Elementary School.

During summer breaks when I was a child, my mother would stop by the main library when it was at the corner of McLean and Peabody to pick up a stack of books recommended for a boy my age. It was like a 100-degree Christmas for me. I would make my way through the pile, and she would then return them for another. I don't remember my first library card, but it must have been like being given a license to the world.

Watching my daughters and their growing excitement was especially heartening in today's world of the Internet, Google and the immediacy of knowledge — some good, some bad.

As they walked among the rows of books, their heads crooked slightly to read the spines, it was like the slowest web browser imaginable. Yet it was a great way for me to learn of their interests and to see where their curiosity, if unleashed in a room full of history, science and stories, might take them.

Will there be other milestones as exciting? Sure. They will both one day receive a driver's license, be accepted into college and get married. Those will be days of triumph and of excitement, days when boredom will be as forgotten as that overdue library book underneath Genevieve's bed.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more from him at uurrff.blogspot.com. Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The story of a fiction

(Warning: spoiler alert. Subtle though they are, there are characteristics of character and story here that I believe the author meant to be revealed slowly as a part of plot and structure. To make a point later on, I reveal a bit of that here.)

THE STORY OF A MARRIAGE by Andrew Sean Greer (Picador, 2008) is just that, it’s the story of a marriage. It’s not the story of all marriage or of how a marriage should be, but spotlights the fact that every marriage, every relationship, is so personal and so unique that behind every door is a different story. That’s how it is in Sunset, the book’s setting, a community built outside of San Francisco for soldiers returning home from World War II. “ … and they built a grid of streets and low pastel houses with garages and Spanish roofs and picture windows that flashed with the appearance of the sun, all in rows for fifty avenues until you reached the ocean.”

Within the walls of every house on all fifty avenues, we get the sense that a different story – some happy, some sad, some violent or dramatic or just beginning or in the throws of dying – is taking place. The story Greer lays out for us, though, involves Pearlie and Holland Cook, and how their world is turned upside down when an old war buddy shows up out of the past, wanders into their lives out of the dense fog that hangs over the bay. It’s a riveting story and Greer is adept at giving just a hint of something to come in the next chapter or the next section, and it’s generally something unexpected.

While there is no way to ever know what goes on in someone else’s marriage, the small tragedies and bright flashes of happiness, Greer gets into the lives of his characters, into the mind of Pearlie Cook and what makes her tick or, rather, what she thinks makes her tick; it’s forever changing, it seems, as are the times of the early 1950s, and she struggles with this.

The book is a unique one and not easily labeled, which adds to the appeal for me. As I continue my search for an agent for a couple of novels I’ve written, I’m amazed by the many genres, sub-genres and sub-sub-genres that fiction is placed into in an effort to buy and sell work. I use a website called querytracker.net and on its search page for agents and publishers just a few of the categories for fiction include action/adventure, chick lit, commercial fiction, family saga, general fiction, literary fiction, mystery fiction, romance, western and, of course, young adult. It’s daunting. It’s also a little ridiculous. I recently had some people tell me a book might not be for me because it’s “women’s fiction.” I wasn’t sure what this meant, that my brain, as full as it is of testosterone, football, hunting, Jason Statham movies and ball scratching wouldn’t be able to understand something as nuanced as discussions of menstruation, childbirth, hem lengths and pie making?

So, how to categorize THE STORY OF A MARRIAGE? The protagonist written by Greer, a white male, is a woman. So, it’s women’s lit. But she’s also black. So, it’s African-American lit. There is the theme of homosexuality in the book. Gay/Lesbian lit. Yet it takes place in 1953 and there is a lot of talk of WWII and the Korean War. Military lit … historical lit. The price sticker on the back of this Picador paperback, bought at the Borders going out of business sale a couple of years ago actually labels it as literary fiction.

Literature should be the great equalizer. The printing press itself was more of an impetus to equality than any other invention in our history, yet our books are pigeonholed. I’m not so naïve that I don’t understand why. I know literary agents need to describe a book in few words to sell it, and publishers need it branded before they’ll consider buying it. Bookstores need to know where in the store to place it and online sellers need to know whether to pair your purchase with a set of grill tools, a nursing bra or a pistol.

THE STORY OF A MARRIAGE is a book about love and hope and fear and loneliness and happiness, just as that women’s fiction novel is that I read not so long ago. These are emotions and themes that make up all of us, it’s what we all have in common and should be able to relate to regardless of where on the shelf it’s found.

Every book and story, just as every marriage and relationship, is different. But each is filled to capacity with great characters, plot twists, drama and emotions.

I also highly recommend Andrew Sean Greer’s THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI (Picador, 2004).