A League of Our Own


Billie Jean King: "Champions keep playing until they get it right."



As March winds down and basketball madness ramps up, it occurs to me that this month is a perfect blend of celebrating women's roles in history and sports.

For most of the year, my interest is focused largely on books - definitely not watching or attending any sporting events. Any excitement I have for Super Bowl Sunday is centered on the commercials and food. I can't say with certainty who won the World Series in 2014. But for a few weeks each year, I become a rabid fan of the University of Connecticut Huskies women's basketball team. My vocabulary now (briefly) includes double double, traveling, bank shot, and transition offense. In my mind, I'm on a first name basis with the student athletes. Sitting on my couch, hundreds of miles away from the game, I'm suddenly an expert on each players' strengths and weaknesses. My interest in the Huskies was first sparked when I lived in Connecticut in the 1990s. Coworkers' enthusiasm became my enthusiasm. It's still just plain fun to watch the team, with its ever-changing names and faces, continue to play hard. 

Tonight the UConn women, now an Elite Eight team, face University of Dayton. We'll know soon if the Huskies will continue the quest to return home as national champs for the third year.

I'll put away my UConn flag and return to being oblivious to the sporting world...until next March. 

Celebrate female athletes' achievements by reading their stories. 

Katie Hnida - Still Kicking, college football
Jan Reynolds - High Altitude Woman, skiing
Billie Jean King - Pressure is a Privilege, tennis
Laura Baugh - Out of the Rough, golf
Pat Summit - Sum It Up, college basketball
Peggy Fleming - The Long Program, figure skating
Serena Williams - My Life: Queen of the Court, tennis
Mia Hamm - Go for the Goal, soccer
Babe Didrikson Zaharias - This Life I've Led, golf
Martina Navratilova - Martina, tennis
Rebecca Lobo - The Home Team, college basketball (UConn)
Brittney Griner - In My Skin, college basketball
Olga Korbut - My Story, gymnast
Patricia Brown - A League of My Own, baseball
Althea Gibson - I Always Wanted to be Somebody, tennis
Wilma Rudolph - Wilma, track
Dorothy Hamill - A Skating Life, skating
Mary Lou Retton - Creating an Olympic Champion, gymnastics
Diana Nyad - Find a Way, swimming (released October 2015)
Dana O'Neil - How to be like Women Athletics of Influence
David Halberstam & Daniel J. Boyne - Red Rose Crew, crew
Geno Auriemma - In Pursuit of Perfection, college basketball (UConn)


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                     The Great River*


Rosanne Cash: "A feather's not a bird. The rain is not the sea. A stone is not a mountain. But a river runs through me."         
                                                                 from "A Feather's Not a Bird" - - Cash/Leventhal


There's something deceptive about a river. They're quiet, fierce, good and yet sometimes devastating neighbors. Rivers have helped build states and have also destroyed communities.

One American river in particular has been immortalized in songs, movies, books, and has perhaps inspired a few creative expletives: the Mississippi River. 

The impressive view of the Mississippi River (and Wisconsin) from the historic Effigy Mounds in northeastern Iowa is worth the hike. On that day, after reaching the peak, I stood contemplating the river as it stretched, languid, towards New Orleans.

MS River view from Iowa's Effigy Mounds

Peering through the heavy leaf growth, the river looked charming and gave no indication of its true calling: serving as a 2300+ mile lifeline for the United States. According to the National Park Service, 60% of the grain exported from the US travels downstream to the Port of New Orleans. Other shipped material includes rubber, paper, wood and coal. More than 50 American cities rely on the Mississippi River for daily water use, reported the Environmental Protection Agency. It's not just humans using the river. Migratory birds use the river's corridor for spring and fall migration, while 260 species of fish call the waterway home, according to the NPS. Adding, that at least 145 species of reptiles and amphibians are found in the upper river and its floodplains. Some of these reptiles, amphibians and fish can be seen at the National Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque, Iowa. (If you've never seen gar up close, you're in for a nightmarish treat.) 


Quick trivia question: how many states bump up against the MS River?  

The answer is 10. Can you name all 10?

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.

It's easy to dismiss this part of the country - flyover states they're often called. But to shrug off their importance is to forget their cultural contributions to the United States. These heartland states have arguably changed or created American food, music and literature.        
           
Remember the Louisiana Purchase of 1803? The purchase of these flyover states doubled the size of the United States at just four cents per acre, according to the Library of Congress. With that in mind, the LOC called the sale "the greatest real estate deal in history." 

Not long ago, Rosanne Cash, a singer and songwriter who also happens to be Johnny Cash's daughter, took a road trip with her husband around the southern tip of the Mississippi River and its neighboring states. She soaked up the stories and the people along with the humidity while crossing the river, back and forth. What emerged from this road trip was a Grammy award winning album, "The River and the Thread" which features the song "A Feather's Not a Bird." Last month, Cash went home with three Grammy awards: Best American Roots performance, Best American Roots song, and Best Americana album. 

For a treat, listen to Cash's songs. 

And, read a book by a writer with ties to a flyover state that shares the Mississippi River.

Minnesota:
Garrison Keillor - Lake Wobegon Days
Sinclair Lewis - Main Street
Neil Gaiman - Coraline (Wisconsin also claims Gaiman)
Louise Erdrich - The Round House

Wisconsin:
A. Manette Ansay - Vinegar Hill
Edna Ferber - Show Boat
Jacqueline Mitchard - What We Saw at Night
Peter Straub - KoKo
Susanna Daniel - Stiltsville

Missouri:
Mark Twain - Life on the Mississippi; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 
Paulette Jiles - Enemy Women
Evan S. O'Connell - Mrs. Bridge; Custer
Curtis Sittenfeld - Sisterland

Kentucky:
Bobbie Ann Mason - In Country
Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible
Sue Grafton - A is for Alibi

Illinois:
Richard Wright - Native Son
Carl Sandburg - American Song Bag
Nelson Algren - The Man With the Golden Arm
Stud Terkel - Working
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms

Iowa:
Donald Harstad - November Days
Timothy Bascom - Chameleon Days
Jeremy Jackson - In Summer
Stephen Lovely - Irreplaceable
Paul Engle - A Lucky American Childhood
Jane Smiley - Some Luck
Mary Kay Shanley - Our State Fair

Louisiana:
Kate Chopin - The Awakening
Lillian Hellman - The Little Foxes
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
Anne Rice - Interview with a Vampire
Ernest Gaines - A Lesson Before Dying
Tennessee Williams - A Streetcar Named Desire
Julie Smith - New Orleans Mourning

Tennessee:
Cormac McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses
James Agee - A Death in the Family
Robert Penn Warren - All the King's Men
Rosanne Cash - Composed

Arkansas:
Bette Greene - Summer of My German Soldier
Lois Lenski - Strawberry Girl
Kevin Brockmeier - The Brief History of the Dead
Laurell K. Hamilton - A Kiss of Shadows
Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 

Mississippi:
William Faulkner - A Light in August
Stephen Ambrose - The Wild Blue
Donna Tartt - Goldfinch
Mildred Taylor - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Greg Iles - Natchez Burning
Mark Childress - One Mississippi
John Grisham - A Time to Kill
David Halberstam - The Best and the Brightest
Charlaine Harris - Cemetery Girl series




One more river trivia question: which two states are on both sides of the MS River?

Louisiana and Minnesota

*From the Ojibwe name, "misi-zibi, meaning great river. Source: Dictionary of American History.






Mark Twain: "The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise." 














                                           ***  

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                              March


Dr.Seuss: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."


February is exiting much as it arrived - snowy and cold. What surprises await us in March? Will we be shivering this month or basking in the first shining days of spring? Historically, March has teased us with occasional lamblike weather, leaving behind the fierce leonine wind. Regardless of the sun or wind, let's celebrate the wearing o' the green and the birth of the man called Dr. Seuss.

Arriving on shelves are books by Rhys Bowen, Harlan Coben, Marisa de los Santos, Dennis Lehane, J.A. Jance, Thomas McGuane, Kathy Reichs, Debbie Macomber, Jennifer Chiaverini, Mary Doria Russell, Randy Wayne White, and a graphic novel version of Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time."

March is International Women's History Month, National Craft Month, Small Press Month, National March into Literacy Month. 

                                             

                                                   March Days 


1-7   -  National Write a Letter of Appreciation Week
1-7  -   National Words Matter Week
1-7  -   Read an E-Book Week
2-6  -   Newspaper in Education Week
2     -   Birth of Dr. Seuss, 1904 (Green Eggs and Ham)
2     -   NEA's Read Across America Day
4     -   National Grammar Day
4     -   Birth of James Ellroy, 1948 (L.A. Confidential)
5     -   Full Moon
5     -   World Book Day
6      -  Middle Name Pride Day (dedicated to all the Anns out there!)
8      -  Girls Write Now Day
8     -   Birth of Jeffrey Eugenides, 1960 (Middlesex)
8      -  National Prrofreading Day 
10    -  Organize Your Home Office Day
11    -  Birth of Ezra Jack Keats, 1916 (A Snowy Day)
14    -  International Ask a Question Day
14    -  Pi Day
15    -  Ides of March
16     - Freedom of Information Day
16-22- Shakespeare Week
16-22- World Folktales and Fables Week
17     -  St. Patrick's Day
20      - International Day of Happiness
20      - Vernal Equinox (and not a moment too soon)
20      - World Storytelling Day
21      - Poetry Day
22      - Birth of Louis L'Amour, 1908 (Last of the Breed)  
22-29 - American Crossword Puzzle Days
25      - Birth of Flannery O'Connor, 1925 (Everything That Rises Must Converge) 
25      - Tolkien Reading Day (or watch "Lord of the Rings" trilogy)
30      - Pencil Day 

And this closing thought from Charles Dickens, "It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold; when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade." 



                                          ***

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