I keep these questions in mind. As editor, it pains me when we cannot meet the standard I set out for this publication. When that happens, I have some important questions to ask myself.

And in this changing world of struggling newspapers, claims of the death of print media, the rise of AI and with it the accompanying question, I continue to ask myself, what are we doing, and why does it matter? They are questions we all must come to from time to time.

I remember the feeling of reporting on an event for the first time. It’s a bit like stepping into a new world each time, because these aren’t my social circles or my family. I’m there to discover, to learn the rules, to adapt. It’s like stepping into a picture book, a world built by someone else’s imagination. It is my job to find the story and tell it, with all its characters and qualities.

I recently finished reading Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children by Mac Barnett, which hit shelves this year after first being published in Rome in 2024. Barnett is known to this household as the author of Extra Yarn and Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. We’ve also enjoyed his work through a classic retelling of The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

In the final of three essays, Barnett wrote about the power of children’s imaginations to create secondary worlds within their games, with governing rules, punishments and rewards. Because of this skill, children bring an openness to how they read stories and how they engage with the world within the picture book, even a book as idiosyncratic as “Good Night Moon.”

It is with that openness that I must approach the work of newspaper reporting.

With this first link in understanding what I am doing, I sought to see if Barnett might have some other treasures I could garner to answer these questions.

He makes some significant points in the book, shaking down the pretentiousness of children’s literature critique, which either looks down on children’s literature or tries to make children’s literature more convoluted and burdened by adult ideas than it needs to be.

“A children’s book is a book written for children.”

It is as plain and simple as that.

His definitions and distinctions made me wonder if I could apply a similar method to that which we produce here each week.

The definition of reporting: telling the facts, writing what happened.

How it happens in children’s books, according to Barnett, falls into three categories: propaganda, which, by definition, intentionally pushes a particular message, even a positive one (most books, he asserts); genuine works of art; and samizdat, the stuff developed underground by children, like hand-drawn comics, zines and notes passed in class.

Do we have such categories here? Propaganda is a strong word to use when discussing journalism. But it is important to acknowledge the categories in which a majority of the material we print may fall: articles promoting events or organizations, and straight news reporting. The former may come from the organizations themselves, sharing about their upcoming event, inviting the community to learn about what they do. The latter is the day in/day out of following the happenings of a small-town news and its associated councils and committees.

Then there are those stories that get as close to art as I think we can with a weekly deadline. These are the heart of the town: the profiles of historic people, of people doing historic things, of people doing really, really good work. That is the art of the small-town newspaper; that is the thing that makes it priceless.

And the samizdat– well, in a way, is not this how small newspapers begin and sustain themselves now, leaving the mainstream to tell the stories that interest a subset of the greater population.

In his essay, Barnett asserts,

“We don’t recognize children’s books as a real art form because we don’t think children are capable of understanding art” and “The main reason for our low esteem for children’s books: our low esteem for children.”

Wow.

When it comes to literature, I agree with this.

When it comes to small-town news, I think we can find a parallel here too.

There are those who say our news is not big enough. But a small-town weekly newspaper is a different kind of newspaper and a world away from news online. It is a place where stories are told, the slow stories; it’s a place where history is generally recorded after it has happened, rather than as it unfolds.

The value of which is more relational than viral.

Like Barnett’s analysis of the children’s classic Good Night Moon became a classic because grown-up children remember reading it in childhood, so they read it to their children. Then their children, once grown up, read it to the next generation. The story matters not only because of the story itself, but because of the connection to the others who shared in it, and the generations who came before and lived something like it as well. In our case, the town’s traditions.

Value comes from reading the names of those who never expected to be in a newspaper, there on the printed page, or from seeing those who deserved all the awards for their good work finally recognized by a news outlet.

When much of the good work worth doing often goes unseen by the bigger, broader world, it is the small-town paper that can see it.

These headlines are happening here, in our backyard, our front yard and our neighbor’s yard. Celebrations of the next generation, tributes to the generation that is passing away, and support for the generation in the middle, hard at work to keep it all going.

Reporting in a small town is more than reporting the facts; it is an openness to discovery, to know and to see the other involved, to genuinely listen, and, I hope, tell a story worth reading.

What’s the takeaway? There will be a lot of stories that do the basic work. There will be some who approach works of art. The art of it comes from the content and shape of the story that lives inside a small town’s residents; the reporter only records it.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on July 21, 2026. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

It’s a lot.

We are not a wealthy people, so full-scale landscaping and maintenance are out of the question.

When we first moved in, the wild geranium and nettle stood two to three feet tall. Not a speck of grass grew except those wild clumps of weedy grasses that seek to take back this land for their own. Under the surface, I found netting from the sod that once made it beautiful.

Over the years, I tried a cut flower garden, sowing a pumpkin patch where there might have been a lawn, installing native plants, planting and replanting rose bushes. Many a dahlia has died. None have lived to tell the tale. There are gophers and ants and cats and children to challenge the gardens, but the greatest battle of all is the water.

It takes three years for a drought-tolerant plant to fulfill its promise of surviving on winter rainwater alone.

Sadly, for this reason, a goodly number of lavender plants went the way of the dahlias. Four have survived: massive mounds that grow in the direction of the light, oddly happy in their crowded state, nestled against 5-foot-tall Russian sage or squeezed between rosemary plants purchased from Trader Joe’s and Spanish lavender received free from a faraway FFA teacher who happens to attend our church.

There is an elaborate system of sprinklers plumbed underground, matching the maze of gopher tunnels. We cannot seem to make them work.

We tried this and that, avoiding overhead sprays, installing drip lines among the cut flowers. I sought to limit water usage and go green by avoiding the suburban lawn. But we have succumbed. The simplest solution will be the best, my thinking goes…this year.

It may be a new year.

This year, we managed to reduce the hand-held hose watering from five areas to two shaded spots that can handle a little neglect.

And I see that one thing persists among all the change, effort, trial and error. It is hard to put a name on it, but the act of taking the hose, turning on the water, standing there, flooding an array of overgrown plants and possible spider nests, that, although it is an inefficient use of time, has something beautiful to it, something still, something good. I see each plant individually, check their needs, pull this and that weed, note the areas that need pruning in order to thrive or create better balance.

The garden needs it.

And I need it.

Obedience to nature lifts me out of the to-do lists of my mind and the flutter of mental activity that goes with stepping into the online world to work or play remotely. As much as I want to attend every event for every news story, alas, there are not so many events, at least that I know of, to keep the pages filled with in-person stories. The online remote work matters to me as I source stories from other outlets and organizations and conduct email interviews, so both the interviewee and the interviewer can work remotely. It is rewarding, busy and challenging.

But the joy is in the in-person event.

The joy is in stepping outdoors, getting away from the office, and stepping into a new space, to turn on my attention, my recorder, my camera, stop and observe, listen, look, and get a sense of how this space is doing, what activity there is, and what story the space has to tell.

And while efficiency is a powerful incentive, it moves so fast and effectively that the individual person’s story or status might be missed.

As an editor trying to fill the pages each week, I am grateful for the efficiency, the email interviews, the people who take the time to write out those answers and send in photos, who share with me their poetry or interesting photographs, and who clue me in to what’s coming next via their email, Facebook messages and texts.

But as a reporter, the joy of my heart is to come to the event, to meet the people, to learn the backstory and hope for the future, to see you, to hear you, and to go back and put the story into words.

The lack of efficiency might mean more mistakes, but it will mean more memories and better relationships.

So, here’s the power of the positive press and of telling stories the old-fashioned way.

Do you have an event, a business, or a story you’d like to see covered in our pages? Email me at newsdesk@midvalleypub.com.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on July 14, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

For Spears, the awards represent what God had allowed the congregation to do in 53 years. But the ceremony's primary focus was Spears himself. Now, after 55 years of ministry as pastor of Hughson Assemblies of God.

At the age of 12, Ernie Spears first sensed a calling from God to ministry. School was difficult for him because of a speech impediment, and he had to take special classes to get through.

Spears joined the military after graduation on July 2, 1962. He served in the Navy for three years, including time on the sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an earthquake in Kodiak, Alaska, and overseas.

Now was the time for Spears to answer the call he received so many years before. He joined as an associate pastor with his father-in-law and worked in construction. In January 1972, he took on the role of senior pastor in Hughson.

Hughson Assemblies of God built the original church in 1947 and added to it over the years. In 1962, church members built the sanctuary. Spears assisted while home after boot camp, he said, to impress the young lady living in the parsonage. That young lady, named Norma, would later become his wife and the backbone of his ministry. “None of what I've done in my life could have happened without my wife, who has been my support,” Spears said.

In 1986, the congregation built the social hall that is used today. It is used not only for pie auctions and fish fries but also as a meeting place for Bible studies, community leaders in Hughson, and an alternate location for the senior lunch program. Currently, 80 active members attend the Hughson Assemblies of God, but on average, 120 attend each Sunday.

"I've got a whole church that loves to serve, and they love to do things and help,” Spears said.

For example, their recent fish fry brought in $3,000 for the missions. From July 8 to 16, a work crew from the church will go to Pelican, Alaska, and Island, where they have been restoring a church for the last eight years. The church now has a year-round pastor, and in those frigid winters of Alaska, when only five or six people might have attended in the past, the church now regularly sees 20 people on Sundays. They've built not only a building but also a community.

His time as a minister has not been without challenges. That speech impediment from his youth has continued to be something he has had to work at. He said his congregation knows there are certain words he struggles to pronounce, so when he says the fifth book of the Bible, they know exactly where to turn. "I still wrestle every week. It keeps me struggling before God.”

“To serve is all I ever wanted to do,” Spears said. He recalled that when he was asked to lead the teaching for a room of eloquent, educated men, Spears did what he has always done: “I spoke from the heart.”

When asked what lessons he has learned over his five decades in ministry, Spears said he's learned the importance of the “ability to listen” and build relationships.

Spears believes that building relationships is vital in all areas of life, including with people who are different from us. Through those relationships, we not only learn to accept them despite our differences but also grow from our interactions with them. By doing this, we're “constantly learning.”

Like a turtle on a fence post, Spears said, “I didn't get there by myself.”

Spears considers each day like attending a school of life. “What nugget can I pick up from? What was said here? What did I go away with?”

Spears meets monthly with leaders in the Hughson community. Each month, attendees share an update on their personal lives and professional developments. This keeps different branches of the town connected and makes leaders recognizable and “more than a title.”

During the award ceremony, the district superintendent referenced this project by saying, "We wish more pastors would take an interest in their community."

What began as a need to support the Senior Luncheon Program has become a joy for those who attend. City Council members, mayors, pastors, and school administrators who participate have publicly praised the project.

But this approach does not work in every town, Spears explained. "This is a rare community.”

And Spears would know.

He said, “I probably have served on the boards or led almost every event here in the community.” One night, coming home to his house, he found a note on his door directing him to attend a meeting at the Pizza Factory for the baseball league. He was informed that he was voted president that year.

To raise money to build a senior center, he joined Marie Assali in launching the Hughson Fruit and Nut Festival.

Together, they got every facet of the community involved. "If I want to be effective, I have to be where they're at; we have to be willing to come and be part of you.”

Looking ahead, Spears said, “I'm enjoying ministry as much or more than I ever enjoyed it.” And being in relatively good health, retirement is “just a word.” He plans to continue so long as he is effective.

“It’s not I, it’s we.”

Working together, taking joy, maintaining a heart of service—these are the messages Spears emphasized as he looked back on his decades in ministry.

“There's no reason why I would be at this point in the district and hierarchy. I want you to know that God's calling is what we have. God has brought me here with my inabilities. I have risen here not because of my abilities but because of my willingness to serve him. I want to encourage you: no matter where you're at in your service, you're there not because you have all the abilities and what you have there, but because God placed you there. Whatever you have, whatever you think you need, wipe that out and realize ‘God will provide for me. I can do what I'm supposed to do.’”

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on May 14, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

A few streaks of grey.

A division between my adolescent children and small children, living life in two very different modes, which I learn to exist in two worlds at once: the world of ambition, emotion, and acne vs toilet training, scootering at the park, and read-aloud picture books.

I am reading aloud to the older ones as well. In “Galahad and the Grail,” author and poet Malcolm Guite transports us to the forests of ancient Britain. The story is written as a ballad, meaning the lines rhyme and it’s easy to understand and read aloud. As an avid reader, who shudders in the face of the “Odyssey,” “Iliad” and “Divine Comedy,” this is more my speed. At first, the 12-year-old let me know she was bored. Now she’s asking me to read one stave after another. My voice cannot hold out for two; we learned this last night.

I am still reading picture books: “Jambari Jumps,” “Down in the Sea with Mr. McGee,” and “Raft.” They are the sort of books that teach us that summer is a season and not merely an absence of the usual commitments. It is a time to sub out the early morning rush, the haphazard breakfasts and questions about homework, for a June of lazy mornings and late-night movies and July full of festivity and parades for the Fourth of July, County Fair and summer camps.

Is it really possible that August will come again with its unbearable heat, which I will challenge myself to embrace, back-to-school sales, and the school days coming fast?

As a newspaper editor and reporter, my days move week by week, ramping up as the weekend comes and I take stock of what stories are out there, pushing myself to attend those evening events when a book and my pajamas are calling my name. Or on other nights when we sit out in the evening air, the sun dropping down behind the tree line, and the breeze picks up, bringing a coolness to temper the heat of the day. The kids run around, dashing by on their scooters, clambering over the puddles left by the slip and slide. It’s hard to step away from moments like this.

I do not remember this invitation to linger as a child. I do not remember dog days of summer or anything like it, but I feel it now. Maybe we need to go through the challenges and tasks of adulthood before we can really appreciate the invitation to linger and soak in the feelings that surround us in these lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, in the moments when we find ourselves with just enough leisure to accept it.

The funny thing is that very little about the adult’s life changes in summer, but the traditions, the break in the school year and its activities, the isolated all-consuming events like camp and county fair, give it a flavor we add into our lives and allow it to take hold, just this once. It’s a wonderful feeling, and one I want to savor. I hope you will, too.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on July 7, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

So with that, I give you an introduction to

Olav Audunssøn

An Introduction to the Text

A professor’s favorite work by Sigrid Undset was Olav Audunssøn.

The rationale: Kristin was written during Undset’s conversion; Olav is written after.

We had this conversation during class, the title of which I cannot remember, that reviewed the theological underpinnings of the Institute for Psychological Science’s anthropological view of man and approach to clinical therapy. The professor: Michael Pakaluk.

This was the most I knew at the time.

The Master of Hestviken is a tetralogy about medieval Norway written by Sigrid Undset. It was originally published in Norwegian as two volumes, Olav Audunssøn i Hestviken and Olav Audunssøn og Hans Børn, from 1925 to 1927. It is set in Medieval Norway, a generation before Kristin Lavransdatter.

The novel, like all of Undset’s novels, takes us deep into the heart of a main character with glimpses into the souls of those with whom he interacts. Olav and Ingunn have been in love, betrothed, they believe, since childhood.

In the first volume, Vows, the story takes shape as we see how totally bonded in spirit these two are. Upon the awakening of their desire for each other, they fly into each other’s arms and begin a sexual relationship. They fight for their right to marry. A separation ensues, the consequences of which will be felt for the rest of their lives once they are permitted to marry.

And there it ends until the next volume, Providence.

An Introduction to the Translation

It was translated into English first by Arthur G. Chater and published from 1928 to 1930. And now we have Olav Audunssøn translated by Tiina Nunnally from the University of Minnesota Press) In a series of four volumes.

The errors of the original English translation are not so great, and the note from Nunnally reflects less ire at the choices made 100 years ago in the work. Like Kristin, the Chater translation uses the same archaic prose not found in Undset’s Norwegian. The syntax was not so crumbled together to sound lofty as we saw in Kristin, but the dialogue felt wooden and forced. So Nunnally has set to work with a clear, clean, and earthy translation.

Comparing goods

With two short excerpts, let’s compare.

“Olav had inherited from his father a large battle axe. it was a horned axe with steel welded to the edge and inlaid gold paint on the blade. The half was wrapped with bands of gilded copper. The axe had a name; it was called Ættarfylgja, or Guardian of Kin” (Nunnally Translation, Providence page 23)

“Olav had inherited from his father a great battle-axe—with pointed barbs, steel edge, and inlays of gold on the cheeks; the shaft had bands of gilt copper. It had a name and was called Kinfetch (Chater translation, The Axe, page 20)”

For the modern ear, the Nunnally translation gives us a better visual and understanding of what is being described. This particular passage also has a footnote, giving the reader background information on the place, religion, and times in which the book is set.

“May the devil take you!” Eirik leaped to his feet in fury. “What sort of fathers are the two of you, men like you and Jörund! Whenever the world goes against you, you insult your own wives with disrespectful claims” (Nunnally Translation, Winter, page 264)

“Shame on you!” Eirik sprang up in his wrath. “What is this strain that is in such men as you and Jörund? When the world goes against you, you cry shame upon your own wives with infamous words–” (Chater translation, The Son Avenger, page 936)

This excerpt gives us a sample of the directness and poignency that comes with the modern translation, some of which is lost with the archaic approach. This is not to say there isn’t beauty to the language “you cry shame upon your own wives with infamous words” has a poetic rhythm to it, but something of the power was lost in the old translation.

A key theme: biographical considerations

If we consider Undset’s biography as a backdrop for the novel, some of her nuances float to the surface. Undset lived in Lutheran Norway, among atheist artists and intellectuals. She loved a married man, Anders Castus Svarstad, and married him upon his divorce, raised his children, including one with cognitive impairments, had children of her own, and another of whom was mentally handicapped and divorced in 1919.

Here she begins the undertaking of Kristin, first published in 1923.

Undset was received into the Catholic Church in November 1924.

Olav followed soon after, first published in 1925.

While Kristin explores the trials of faith with a willful personality that seems bound to resist, raised in a richly faithful and devout environment, Olav presents a reflective, idealistic character raised within a nominal faith, surrounded by those who practice religion when they must, but ultimately religion has little bearing on their decisions and deliberations. Pagan law, the law of the sword, still rules the hearts of those around him; sexual law exists only insofar as we consider inheritance rites.

We see in Undset’s modern novels, like The Wild Orchid, this same dynamic, transported in time, but with a wildly different outcome.

No, Olav will play with the interaction of these two species, one that constantly reflects in a society without reflection.

Undset likewise explored the sense of home and the theme of belonging. Olav was left to the Steinfinn household, far away from his own kin. They are fundamentally wired differently from him. But, in Ingunn, his childhood playmate, he feels at home. They are bound together, not only by their love and sexual relations, but by the interpersonal bonds of belonging when no one else has loved them or attended to them.

But, as a good author, the characters take on lives of their own. So, however inspired, informed, or first imagined by certain dynamics, Undset never binds her characters by her own experience. Once familiar with her canon, the breadth of personalities so thoroughly formed becomes apparent.

The takeaway

I first began reviewing this work volume by volume, but as I began the second volume, it was so readable, so exciting, that I kept plunging ahead before taking the time to write one by one.

Each volume has a unique feel to it. Publishing them separately allows the reader to take a breath before beginning something that has a very different mood and mode to it.

The first volume moves swiftly, with action, romance, excitement and longing. All that happens is terrible; you turn the page to know what will happen next. By the end of the volume, you’re sorry for these two foolish souls.

We are left in a place of tension. Olav’s conscience has been awakened, but he lives within a world that would not choose the hard road of faith. He has chosen to go against the still, small voice inside him.

Despite the heartache of being with him, he will choose Ingunn and all the ties that make her heart the home for his heart.

In the second volume, rightly called Providence, Olav will reap what he has sewn. The life between him and Ingunn unfolds based on their personalities and the circumstances that led up to their union. This is where the volume dragged for me in the Chater translation. The family stories do slow down the story, but Olav is learning his familial history, along with the reader.

In the third volume, Nunnally notes the mystical quality of this work. Reading Chater the first time, I was confused. The spiritual elements come through clearly in Nunnally’s hand; my second reading helped as well. This is a volume full of spiritual meat, reflection, and Undset’s understanding of how this God loves us, perhaps how this God displayed his love for her as she took her long path around to find him.

The fourth volume, Winter, brings us to the end of Olav’s life. His children are adults, and we see how their lives will settle as well. It is full of conclusions, but will not appease the reader too easily. One may be left wrestling with what this ending means; it does not come wrapped neatly in a bow. Undset has a way of giving you the key to an entire puzzle of a relationship or the work in one sentence. For me, the clarity of Nunnally’s writing helped me feel at peace with this ending.

I will be rereading this in the Nunnally translation. But as she writes in her notes at the beginning of the first volume, the changes were not as drastic as Kristin, so if you desire to explore the Chater, Cluny Media has republished the work in four lovely volumes. Both new editions come with attractive covers, solid pages that feel good to the touch and just enough weight to remind you’re reading a tetralogy, but not so heavy your arms get tired.

And the temperaments?

Well, I cannot help myself.

Olav is melancholic, maybe melancholic-phlegmatic. His unconfessed sin crystallizes his heart. Someone like Olav “does not easily forget,” as Ingunn told him before they wed.

Ingunn is sanguine, so sanguine it makes me crazy.

Eirik is also sanguine, and in him, Undset shows how the path of maturity can play out for one such as him.

Also on my reading list

Completed:
Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV, Vatican. va

Finished it, excellent. Just enjoy being written to by a Pope. No hot takes, don’t worry if this is some indication of what side he’s on or you’re on or they’re on, just read and reflect. It’s a refreshing thought. More to come on this.

Woven Words is an anthology of short poems featuring the work of Stanislaus County youth poets.

The first poem makes all the rest pale in comparison. I’m very proud to see projects like this take shape. Youth anthologies might just light the fire for a lifelong relationship with writing and art.

Salvation is from the Jews by Roy H. Schoeman. Ignatius Press.

It’s very good, but I kept forgetting I was reading it, so I skimmed the final chapters and called it done.

Make Believe by Mac Barnett. Love, love, love. Review to follow soon!

So Big by Edna Ferber. More on this later!

XXX

Still on the shelf:

A Room with a View by E. M. Forrester

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Trans. Maude. Everyman’s Library

Paused to read Undset and some book club books. To be continued…

Dewitt’s mother married after the First World War and worked with the Red Cross during the Second World War, even though he was married. She was 42 when Dewitt was born. Her father, a soldier in World War I, was sprayed with mustard gas and shot in 1917 or 1918. Her brother was a colonel in the US Army.

Margaret Dewitt knew she wanted to join the service after graduating from high school in 1963. “It was kind of scary for girls at that time,” Dewitt said. “Most mothers who didn’t even want their sons in it.”

She married early. Her husband, who was born an illegitimate child of “the master” when his mother worked as a maid in West Memphis, was already serving in the Navy when she married him. He was stationed in Japan. When he went down to the Mekong Delta, he served on USS Saratoga in the Delta.

Nursing in Japan During the Vietnam War

Dewitt worked for the Department of Defense as a civilian nurse in Yokohama.

Why did she work for the Army while he was in the Navy, her husband asked her.

The bulk of Dewitt’s family served in the army. It was the first branch of the military to allow blacks to join. She added, “The Navy turned me down to work because they didn’t really have any casualties. The army had the most.” Dewitt said. 58,000 U.S. Military casualties. “It was a lot of American dead either way.”

Nursing work with the army was “critical,” and Dewitt was glad to do it. “I was only 22. It scared the hell out of me when I saw these big, dead kids I met.”

While she was there, Americans ran the Japanese hospital. Their mission was to stabilize soldiers enough to send them home across the Pacific, where they would enter Travis Hospital and be sent on to hospitals nearer their homes. There were 1200 beds in the 12-story hospital. Dewitt’s bay cared for 86 patients.

“I was a young nurse in my first job, my first big job,” Dewitt said. “The majority of them lived long enough to bring them out, but those that weren’t, they sent for the families to come and visit with them before they died.”

When Dewitt first arrived, it took time to arrange her clearances, giving her the opportunity to experience some of the things provided for servicemen and women in Japan, like concerts with Tony Bennet and other performers. Dewitt directed the wives’ activities. She organized trips to smaller villages, shopping, “girl stuff,” and visiting sights in Japan that she might otherwise have missed. Dewitt took classes in doll making, making replicas of famous geishas, photography, ceramics, and Ikebana flowering arranging.

They lived on base, “because now the wars were going on, and there were so many dependents, you couldn’t get housing.”

She was cleared to work, and at age 23, Dewitt was a GS9.

When they called her, Dewitt traveled from Yokohama to the base where large Japanese-owned barracks had been converted into a hospital. The deafening sound of helicopters landing on the roof and people getting patients terrified them.

Dewitt kept at her work, recalling the most terrifying parts of her experience. She recalled the fear the nurses felt the day when Americans wanted to bring in nuclear-powered ships, and a protest followed. Japanese citizens surrounded the gate. The nurses could not leave the hospital until the unrest was quelled.

Berkeley Protests Against the Vietnam War

After her service in Japan, Dewitt returned to her home in Berkeley to finish her degree. It was the time of the Vietnam protests. The message was that Americans should not have gone to Vietnam.

“I kind of agreed with them,” Dewitt said, but felt compelled to speak up for the war. “I couldn’t say that. I had to say, well, you know, we’re trying to protect our troops, and help the Vietnamese people.”

But she felt silenced from sharing her experience. “I had to shut up because they were protesting that we’re there. I wasn’t telling all of them I was there, and that I did this, and what was going on. A lot of the secrets and how badly these young kids, 18 to 19 years old, were being blown apart? I saw them when they were hit with fire, how they shot, and they were burned and dead. I saw the effects of it, and it really hurt me because there were a lot of boys, and my family was all in the army.”

Nursing Work and Racism in the Prisons

Worked as a nurse in the prison. She noted she had “a special in my heart, a special feeling for those who had been on the front line and came back and were arrested for drug dealing. She thought especially of those Vietnam veterans who committed crimes, remembering the boys she saw in the hospital, sympathizing with the pain, killing and emotional numbing of drug abuse.

Reluctantly, Dewitt said, “Blacks don’t always have the choice to get better jobs. So you kind of have to take what you can get.”

The medical care was poor in the hospitals. Dewitt said prisoners were “dying by the day from various conditions, and such poor medical care was provided.”

Not many black nurses worked in the prisons, even though blacks make up over half of prison inmates in the United States. Dewitt saw many nurses, married to men who worked in the prison system. “They get so callous, and the women then begin to get that way.”

Dewitt moved on to a county hospital and earned her second degree at Sonoma State, becoming a nurse practitioner. But her timing was off. Professionally, hospitals needed more RNs. Graduates stayed local, creating more competition. “There wasn’t a whole lot of work for the nurse practitioners.”

But a need for Public Health Nurses arose.

The HIV Epidemic

“None of the nurses wanted to do it. Some of ours resigned, so they would not have to take those patients.” Dewitt signed up. “I was so scared of AIDS patients,” she admitted.

Dewitt was sorry to be like the nurses who were afraid and quit. She had lived in New York and Brooklyn, working in a county hospital there. She had seen the toll it takes. The photographs she first saw of AIDS patients came from the East Coast in New York and other major cities like San Francisco. Stanislaus County did not have as many patients, but she became second-in-command for the supervision of Stanislaus County.

“And it turned out that I love them, and I couldn’t believe that.”

The work was primarily case management to make sure they have the health services, hospice and that they keep their appointments.

On her caseload were many single mothers with full-blown AIDS who passed it to their children. Because of her 13 years as a labor and delivery nurse and time in the Vietnam War, supervisors assigned her to work with the mothers. “I managed to make sure they got the services that they got, and it was heartbreaking when the women died because they had kids.”

She said it was different for the men, so many of whom may have left their wives decades before, whose kids did not even know they were gay. But the women knew. Dewitt recalled these women having to turn their children over to their mothers to be raised.

“So after they died, then you just close the case because what else are you going to do?”

Dewitt managed the cases of 35 women.

After working with AIDS patients, Dewitt returned to the County Public Health Department to complete her nurse practitioner practicums, then to the VA clinic.

Because of her race, she struggled to find a doctor who would sponsor her. Like her, many other women had to relocate to find a doctor under whom they could work. Dewitt found one in Stinson Beach in Marin County at a small clinic on the other side of the coastal mountain range in sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, serving mostly “hippies,” “beach boys,” and “gay people.”

The work was light. Dewitt kept her house in Berkeley, where her sister lived and traveled back and forth to visit.

She returned to Berkeley in 1989 and recalled how crowded it was, with so many poor people.

Dewitt worked for seven years at the County Hospital.

The Red Cross and Widowhood

Dewitt joined the Red Cross in Alameda and transferred to Stanislaus County to work in local shelters. When Hurricane Katrina hit, she was ready for action, but plans changed when her husband was diagnosed with lung cancer. They gave him six months to live.

Dewitt cared for him as she could and then placed him in a hospital in Memphis, where family was nearby who could take care of him. She planned to retire on January 31 and join him.

He died on January 6, 2006. His sister was with him when he died. He is buried in the National Cemetery.

That March, Dewitt turned 60. She needed money but expected to be hard-pressed to find work at her age. A federal mandate changed that, taking over the medical care of prison inmates. 3,200 men lived in the nearby prison. Dewitt had work to do.

The American Legion Auxiliary

During and after her nursing career, Dewitt’s volunteer work with the Auxiliary remained an important part of her life. During Desert Storm, the Auxiliary packed boxes. They sent boxes to Afghanistan. They sent toys to children from military families at Christmas. They hosted big picnics on the 4th of July, outdoor Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas parties, and sent youth to Girls State in Sacramento, where the girls learned about US governance.

“For three days, and they learn about the people who help make America what it is,” Dewitt said.

During my one hour with Margaret Dewitt, I feel I can say the same.

The presentation began with Rennie Beck, Scott Beck’s mother and a member of the Hughson Historical Society, sharing her memories as the “mother of the band.”

It all began with banging on the pots and pans, Beck explained about her son. From kitchen tools to an afterschool community band, Scott Beck was always looking for a musical outlet. Ella Webb, his middle school band teacher, formed a Dixieland Band for Beck and his friends.

With tears in her eyes, Rennie Beck said, “Scott has come full circle” now that he teaches and plays locally. Other band members have also reconnected with the local community. Andrew Franco leads the guitar club. Matt Brown's daughter, Stella Brown, is also a vocalist. At the Hughson Youth Baseball/Softball League Opening Day, the two sang the “Star Spangled Banner.”

“It all started with Ella Webb,” Scott Beck said, opening his presentation. Webb allowed him and Andrew Franca to play in the band room after school. Beck said he learned a lot from Franca in those days and learned the foundation of “professional musicianship” from Webb.

The boys formed a band called Mosh Dogs and described it as “the beginning of me living and my mom's basement with the band.” Beck bought a guitar from Mr. Ingram, who taught music at the high school and ran Ingram and Bauns Musik Shoppe in Modesto. He and Franca wrote two to three songs with that guitar that first night.

One of Beck's fondest memories from this stage is that as they jammed in his mother’s basement, his father was always upstairs in the easy chair. But as soon as they began to play “Radar Love,” the band members kept their eyes on the stairs. Soon enough, they’d see Beck’s father sitting on the stairs, listening, his smile growing. When the song ended, he would nod and say, “Excellent,” before returning upstairs.

The band took a recording to Webb, who encouraged them further and invited them to play for Radio Days. Just before their first gig, they took a vote and chose the name Flying Blind.

Amping up their style, Flying Blind played in the quad at Modesto Junior College and nightclubs. Charlie’s Spirits in Modesto, a hole-in-the-wall club that supported independent musicians, became their home base.

They partnered with manager Chris Rickey to promote the band. Beck said the first time they played “Smokescreen” live, “people went crazy,” requesting the band to play it twice and again later that evening. When asked if he ever gets tired of playing the song, he responded, “Every time we play, every time, it's fun.” He shared the wide reach they’ve seen for Smokescreen, from radio stations in Chicago to karaoke in Thailand: “It ended up traveling the world.”

Jeff Duarte loaned the band enough music to hire producer Todd Herfindel in San Francisco to create a quality-level album. The band slept on the floor of a friend’s home in San Francisco, spending every day in the studio for a month. B93 gave them a chance and played it on the radio, and the song took off. They began playing for Summerfest and X-fest and were told by B93 that their song was the most requested in the radio station’s history.

At their CD release party, with thousands in attendance, Flying Blind sold 1400 CDs and $18,000 of merchandise. The next day, they paid Duarte back the entire amount of the loan.

Record labels pursued them as they negotiated offers between Universal Music and Atlantic Music, and were wined and dined in New York. They signed with Universal Music, which re-released their album before the tour began.

Beck’s tone shifted as he reflected on what went wrong during this period, quickly ending Flying Blind’s upward trajectory. He thought they should have toured more than they did; free downloads with programs like Napster rose in popularity, detracting from CD sales; 9/11 shut down the industry and venues. Beck said Universal Music “shelved” Flying Blind, telling them to wait to tour more, wait to record another record, and to keep waiting.

Eventually, the band asked to be released from their contract, and within a year, the band parted ways.

The remaining members moved to Los Angeles, where Beck lived for eight more years. Although Flying Blind was no longer producing music, Beck began to play with other groups. He played keyboard for a friend whose band signed a German record deal and then toured in Germany. “I saw the world,” Beck said.

In 2010, Flying Blind was invited to reunite and play for the Hughson Centennial. The band members reconciled and now play periodically in the area. But as men with jobs and families, Beck explained, finding a rehearsal time that works for everyone or finding the creative time to produce original music is difficult.

“Each one of us is very busy and at different stages in our lives,” Beck said in a later interview. “Some of us are shuttling kids to and from their own sports and activities. Others have kids who are grown and off on their own. When we’re not playing music, we are teachers, farmers, salesmen and health care workers. Sometimes you’ll catch Matt (and/or Stella) singing the national anthem at a local sporting event. Or you may see Scott (under the name Scotch Beck) playing a solo show at the Friday night market on 3^rd street or at various other local markets and venues.”

Instead, Scott began performing a solo career under the stage name of Scotch Beck. He writes ballads, mellower than the days of Flying Blind. Beck produced a solo album called “The Ballad of Bosco Jenkins.”

Flying Blind continues to reunite from time to time, playing local shows. For upcoming shows is either on Facebook: Flying Blind (Official FB Page) and Instagram: @flyingblind209

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on April 11, 2023. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

“Can you recommend a novel with a strong female protagonist?”

“Yes, Kristin Lavransdatter,” he said, without hesitation.

Okay…the priest went on to give something like a synopsis. I remember nothing of it. Whatever it was could be nothing in comparison to this 1000-page epic of the life of a … housewife.

Kristin Lavransdatter, written by Sigrid Undset (1882–1949), was published in Norway as three novels from 1920 to 1922: Kransen (The Wreath), Husfrue (The Wife), and Korset (The Cross). We enter the novel in the happy, carefree childhood of a girl beloved by her father. Her childhood is not without shadows, and as she grows, we will begin to understand, as she does, the images in the shadows, gaining a clearer understanding of what she saw as a child, as she matures into a woman and enters old age.

Kristin lives in 14th-century Norway, a Catholic world still with close ties to the ancient, pre-Christian legends and beliefs. As an older teenager, betrothed to another, Kristin falls madly in love and lust for Erland of Husaby, a Knight, um, arrant, who seems to destroy all he comes in contact with.

We follow Kristin through her untimely pregnancy, her marriage, her early motherhood, her widowhood, through seeing her sons make their way in the world and her death.

Why should a woman’s tale make up most of 1000 pages? The story is not without drama; its plot points read like a soap opera, and its subplots like episode summaries of prestige television. Beyond that, Undset takes us into the mind and heart of her characters. They are fully developed personalities, and their personalities are drawn to one another and clash with one another as life circumstances evolve.

Recall The Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames? If Tolstoy’s War and Peace is the magnificent work that it is because of the broadness of its scope in treating Russia’s history and issues, then Tolstoy is that image that takes us by the powers of ten out into the universe. Undset is the opposite. She takes us deep into the heart and mind, and what a visit. No less magnificent for its smallness, as its details are intricate and intimate, and just as hard to catch the aspects we pass by as we travel through.

I have read Kristin Lavransdatter four times since that first recommendation. As a young woman in love with her boyfriend, as an escape while a young mother in crisis, as a middle-aged mother having suffered in the past but now safe within a rhythm and routine, even peace; and as a woman looking at her older children, marveling at their growth and afraid for their future that lies beyond my reach. All these stages, Kristin experiences too.

At each stage, I felt deeply moved and drawn to new plot points I had overlooked before. The earlier scenes became memories for me that I cherish, but am no longer living.

An Introduction to the Translation

The first English translation, and only English translation until 1997, was by Charles Archer and J. S. Scott, published between 1923 and 1927. Kransen and Husfrue were translated from the original Norwegian as The Bridal Wreath and The Mistress of Husaby.

So much time passed between the first and second reading that I did not give the translation a thought. My first reading was a worn-out paperback borrowed from the Catholic Studies library at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. My second was a brown hardback book checked out, using my husband’s alumni card, from California State University, Stanislaus. I purchased my own vintage copy, from 1946, for my third reading. And when I decided my daughter ought to read this book, I bought the 2005 Penguin Deluxe Edition for my daughter, and after a week, I read it myself.

One more reading took me only partway through the second book, the political events being so difficult to follow.

Since then, I have learned:

Undset was fluent in English.

Undset was alive during the translation and saw the English translation.

Therefore, I assumed, Undset approved of the translation.

So I read her in the early English translations as the original. I enjoyed the otherworldliness of the old language. It took my mind to a different place. Olav Audunssøn, or in the English translation, The Master of Hestviken, is treated similarly. Undset’s modern novels were presented quite differently, direct and poetic, but with an elegant simplicity that characterized early 20th-century literature.

The Tiina Nunnally, modern translation of 1997-2000, is a modernized translation, at least, in comparison to Archer. Nunnally explains the problem with the early translations, “the translators chose to impose and artificially archaic style on the text, which completely misrepresented Undset’s beautifully clear prose. They filled her novels with stilted dialogue (using words such as ‘tis, ‘twas, I trow, thee, thou, hath, and doth), and they insisted on convoluted syntax.”

“Beautifully clear prose”

I recognized to what Nunnally referred.

“Nowadays, the role of the translator is different. Accuracy and faithfulness to the original tone and style are both expected and required,” Nunnally explains before elucidating the patterns of Undset’s prose and style, and the major alterations made by the Archer translation.

Now, as a published author, I have learned:

Publishing a novel is collaborative; editors have opinions, and publishers maintain knowledge of their market.

Authors may not have as much say as we expect from our vantage point a century later.

Undset may have been alive, and she saw the Archer translation, but it wasn’t how she herself chose to write the work.

Comparing goods

Below are three excerpts from each book.

(I learned to compare translations passage-by-passage from welovetranslations.com, a website I highly recommend. Buy the best translations! It makes all the difference.)

“When the lands and goods of Ivar Gjesling, the younger, of Sundbu, were divided after his death in 1306, his lands in Sil of Gudbrandsdal fell to his daughter Ragnfrid and her husband Lavrans Björgulfsön. Up to then they have lived in Lavrans’ manner of Skog at Frollo, near Oslo; but now they moved up to the Jörundgaard at the top of the open lands of Sil” (Archer translation, 3)

When the earthly goods of Ivar Gjesling the Younger of Sundbu were divided up in the year 1306, his property at Sil was given to his daughter Ragnfrid and her husband Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn. Before that time, they had lived at Skog, Lavranss manor in Follo near Oslo, but now they moved to Jørundgaard, high on the slope at Sil (Nunnally translation, 5).

We see it is not drastically different, but there is a difference in poetic quality (doesn’t “earthly goods” have a feeling of finality to it?) and note the use of a language to paint a picture for our imagination (“high on the slope”)

“I have said myself – and other have said the same – that Erlend seems not to be fit for aught else than to beguile women. You are answerable in part for such things being said – to that you have now yourself borne witness. Since then, he has shown that after all he was fit for somewhat else – your husband has won himself a good name for a bold and swift leader in war. ‘Tis no small gain for your sons that their father has wone fame for boldness and skill in arms. That he was – unwise – you should have known best of all of us. Best may you make amends for your shame by honoring and helping the husband yourself have chosen –” (Archer translation, 490)

“I myself have said, and others have said the same, that Erlend doesn’t seem to be capable of much else than seducing women. You are also to blame for this being said, according to your own testimony. But since then he has shown he is capable of other things—your husband has won a good name for himself through courage and swiftness in battle. It’s no small benefit for your sons that their father has acquired a reputation for his boldness and skill with weapons. That he is…incautious…you must realize this better than anyone. It would be best for you to redeem your shame by honoring and helping the husband whom you yourself have chosen” (Nunnally translation, 532)

This passage especially demonstrates the difference in syntax between the translations. One simply just reads better. Nunnally gives other examples in her note on the translation. The prose of the Nunnally translation is cleaner, simpler, and communicates better the thorough dressing down Kristin is receiving in this conversation.

‘Twas now well on in the summer of the year 1349; she had dwelt in the Rein convent two years, and ere Yule-tide came she was to take the veil. And the glad tidings came to her that, for her dedication, both her sons would come out thither in Abbot Johannes’ train. (Trans. Archer, p. 1011)

It was late in the summer of A.D. 1349, she had been at Rein Convent for two years, and she was to take the vows of a nun before Christmas. She received the joyous message that both her sons would come to her ordination as part of Abbot Johannes’s entourage (Nunnally translation, p. 1092).

This line stood out to me in my last read. “It was late in the summer of A.D. 1349.” I know the rest of the story. I don’t feel Undset’s writing has ever required me to grasp Norwegian history to enjoy her works. But Tolstoy and Hugo expect us to grasp something of Russian and French history to keep pace in their novels. After enough of them, it occurred to me, this line probably reveals the intensity of the drama that is to come, if you know what A.D. 1349 is the start of.

Per Wikipedia, “the Black Death reached Bergen in Norway by ship from England in late summer (probably August) of 1349, and spread from Bergen North to Trondheim in the autumn of 1349.”

The tranquility Undset creates leading up to this line, the gentle expression, “It was late in the summer of A.D. 1349,” is masterful storytelling, because it’s all about to fall apart in a dramatic, stormy ending to the 1000 pages of life we have lived with this character. The Archer translation is fine, but the quiet simplicity of Nunnally here is better.

What’s more, I look back, and I have four reading experiences to compare.

The first time, as my boyfriend and I rode bikes through Dry Creek in Modesto, I told him scene after scene from The Wreath, like I was sharing the best gossip or television drama.

And then, surprisingly, I found myself doing the same as The Cross. It cried out to be shared; so much did it fill my imagination.

So there you have it. If you are a book collector and nerd out about publication history like I do, buy the Archer, but read Nunnally. And if you are just looking for a good read, read the Nunnally.

I have loved them both, but find the way the new translation gripped me (and not cheaply, but by filling the imagination with images, concern and emotion) reveals something about its quality.

Now once again, but with temperaments

You can read this book with a book on the temperaments and spend a couple of thousand words analyzing their temperaments and how they interact with one another:

Kristin: Choleric-melancholic

Erlend: Sanguine-phlegmatic

Simon: Sanguine-melancholic

Lavrans: Melancholic-choleric

Ragnfrid: Melancholic-phlegmatic

Try it, it’s fun!

A look ahead:

I read The Master of Hestviken (Archer translation) 1.5 times. The first time: fascinating, very exciting to see what happens next. The second time: snooze-fest. And the characters irritated me. I couldn’t make it farther in that reading, even though I know the final book is so exciting.

Could Nunnally do for the second book of Olav (aka “Olav broods”) what she did for the second book of Kristin (aka “our medieval Norway history lesson”)?

I checked online again and found that three years ago, Nunnally completed her translation of Olav Audunssøn, published by the University of Minnesota Press. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

Also on my reading list

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Trans. Maude. Everyman’s Library

Salvation is from the Jews by Roy H. Schoeman. Ignatius Press.

Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV, Vatican.va

Woven Words, an anthology of short poems featuring the work of Stanislaus County youth poets

In the spirit of Women’s History Month and eagerly anticipating a presentation by Hughson High School athletes, Hughson Historical Society President Spiro moved rapidly through the agenda, connecting topics to the month’s theme and celebrating the opportunities available to women.

A new museum window display showcases women’s apparel throughout the ages. While Spiro praised the beauty of the clothing, she said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t live in those clothes. We used to wear shorts under our dresses because we weren’t allowed to wear pants to school.” Spiro graduated in 1972.

Members spoke about the 1970 Hughson High School Powder Puff game. At the time, the girls competed in the boys’ uniform and equipment and played tackle football. “Just think how tough we were, girls!” Spiro said to the students.

The Class of 2024 students were visibly impressed, especially Madison Duran, who expressed her childhood desire to be allowed to play tackle football. In 1971, the girls refused to play in the Powder Puff game when they were required to play flag football instead of tackle. “They thought us too precious,” Spiro said.

Past President Janet Camagna offered a look back at sports in Hughson. Some members present recalled their time in athletics in the 1950s. Some played on the Girls Athletic Association, playing half-court basketball on Saturdays.

Councilmember Julie Strain said that future Olympic athlete Pat Daniels ran on the track team at her high school in San Jose.

Camagna recognized Susan B. Anthony's role in women’s advancement and the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote. “My mother was nine years old. She was part of the first generation to be able to vote. You have to ask, why didn’t they have the right?” Camagna said, “Yes, we have made progress, but, oh, how slow it has been.”

Camagna exhorted everyone to get out to vote that day. “Every election is important. Never throw away your vote.”

On Facebook, Camagna posted photos of the first yearbook of Hughson Unified High School in 1914. “Since then, the girls have struggled for more sports and recognition. Over 100 years have passed, and women still have to struggle for facilities, coaches, and school financing to play sports that are equally available to girls. In the 1950s, when I attended HUHS, the girls had ‘play days’ with other schools once in a while as part of our extracurricular sports experience.”

Members noted how progressive the staff at Hughson High School got them into track and basketball games and workout routines with the male athletes. Spiro said, “In Hughson, a small farm community, the women are partners with their husbands on the farm. You get out on the tractor, and you put on the gloves. It shows historically over time.”

Another member said, “It’s also the advantage of a small high school. You get to try many things; you can make the team. If you’re on a huge team, only the developed athletes have the chance.”

Members spoke warmly of a coach from the 1950s who, now in her nineties, still plays golf daily.

The Hughson Historical Society's meetings are a time to share, recollect, and actively work to preserve and promote the city's history. By inviting guest speakers and their families to attend, as in March’s meeting, the opportunity to exchange recollections and hear present-day experiences opens the door to learning what was achieved in the past and how the work of past generations has benefited the future.

Student speaker Madison Jenks said at the close of their presentation, “Because of the work that was put in before us, we’re able to have these opportunities. Many of us, before we started this presentation, took it for granted. Being able to learn history and see where we’ve come from is something that will make us forever grateful.”

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on March 12, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

Undset lived from May 20, 1882, to 10 June 10, 1949. She lived in Norway until 1940, when she moved to the United States to escape the Nazi occupation. She returned to Norway in 1945. Her parents were atheists, and Undset considered herself agnostic for much of her life. Like many others, the First World War created a crisis of faith for her, culminating in her reception into the Catholic Church in 1924. Undset won the Nobel prize for literature in 1928 for her epic works set in the Middle Ages, titled Kristin Lavransdatter and Olav Audunsson (titled in its first English printing, The Master of Hestviken in its first English translation)

When Undset writes, she is not merely telling a story. She paints a portrait of a person. What makes her one of the greatest of authors is her ability to peer into the fullness of an individual and share the story from that person’s point of view. Every human being has strengths and weaknesses. Every human person has a limited understanding of himself. Events happen, sometimes very big events and sometimes very small events that awaken in us the truth we needed to know, or they are the straw that finally breaks us to do what we know to be right. Very few of us get it right the first time. We have illusions of what we can do, of what we are strong enough to withstand, and of what we like or dislike. Under these illusions, we may find ourselves in circumstances we never expected.

Undset is capable of seeing the full range of human experience. She causes you to love a rake like Erland in Kristin Lavransdatter. You pity the hard-hearted daughter of Olav Audunsson. You sympathize with the bourgeois bored housewife in Images in a Mirror, and like her, you wonder, is there more than this? Life with four children does seem a drudgery. What took the spark out? These are all questions we ask ourselves in similar situations. Undset saw that even in the most mundane, routine lives, we are still alive, still thinking, breathing, looking about us, and more than anything else, we are still longing.

What will we do with this longing?

The time and period in which Undset writes are pivotal in grasping the magnitude of the questions she asks. She lives in a secularized Lutheran anti-Catholic modern world of artists and writers to whom love, truth, and beauty are ideals of a distant past with no bearing on today. Marriage is nothing. Divorce is nothing. Sex outside of marriage is nothing. It all comes to naught. We do not have even free will, only what we feel.

What a perfect backdrop to place the woman of Images in a Mirror, who married for love, bore children she loves, and is loved by a faithful, hardworking husband who will find a way to give her the rest she needs after an illness.

Undset wrote Images in a Mirror in 1917, six years after the startling and heartbreaking Jenny (1911), two years before her marriage fell apart while on holiday (1919), three years before she published Kristin Lavransdatter (1920), and seven years before she converted to the Catholic Church (1924).

These dates matter when we consider the values that Undset writes about. For the artist who moves from atheism to Christianity, the jump in worldview is considerable. We see her through her characters, searching, responding to that longing that there must be something more. Undset is not afraid to write herself into her characters. What makes her magnificent is that she does not do only this; she also considers and explores the multiple facets of those her characters encounter.

It is not always perfect. I’m not sure Vegard is as clear as he might be in the beginning, the only time the reader is allowed his perspective. I want to go back and see if this man, this salesman, she later calls him, painted as fully as he might have in the beginning? Perhaps not.

Nor are those in the life of Paul, the protagonist of The Wild Orchid and The Burning Bush. In those works, we never see beyond his perspective. The outside characters are flat when compared to the depths of those supporting roles in other works. And yet, Paul himself is a little obtuse when it comes to what he sees in others, so perhaps we simply have a limited narrator because, although written in the third-person, we are always seeing the world from Paul’s perspective.

Like many artistic temperaments, he is consumed by the fire that burns within him, such that he cannot see straight. He is lit from within and pursues the ideas as much as he humanly can.

In Images in a Mirror, Undset also considers the artistic temperament, from how an outsider reads it to how it is truly experienced. With so many competing passions, the artist follows the one that cries the loudest. But that voice must be quieted if we are to do what is right.

Did Undset face these same issues? I have not yet read her autobiography or biographies on her. It can wait a little longer. Exploring and considering the fictional characters created by this remarkable woman is enough for me right now.

I think it’s probably always best to start with what is considered an author’s best work. Kristin Lavransdatter, translated by Tiina Nunnally, may be the best place to start. For a collection of her lesser-known works, check out the selection at Cluny Media.

Stay turned for my review of the Tiina Nunnally translation of Kristin Lavransdatter.

4-H began in Hughson in 1931. The organization was founded by A.B. Graham in 1902 in Clark County, Ohio, as a learning experience for children. In 1914, Congress declared 4-H a national organization through the Smith-Lever Act. It included children ages 9 to 19. It expanded to have a primary program, with children as young as 6 doing primary division.

In 1927, 4-H adopted the 4-H pledge: I pledge my head to clearer thinking,
my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living for my family, my club, my community, my country and my world. Every monthly community meeting, after reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag, children recite the 4-H pledge. In 1931, the logo was established “to make the best better.”

Feucht participated in 4-H in Contra Costa County, where her mother was the sewing leader.

Her two sons joined Hughson 4-H in 1995. Feucht shared that Alan was born with a type of dwarfism and “was in a wheelchair for most of his younger life between surgeries and things.” She said he was completely included in every kind of activity and involvement he was able to show rabbits at the fair.

Feucht’s husband, a woodworking teacher at Turlock Junior High School, volunteered as a woodshop leader. He led the woodshop project for ten years until the boys aged out.

For many students on the college prep course, their courseloads were too full to take agriculture classes or woodshop classes. 4-H offered these students an opportunity they might not otherwise have.

Feucht told the story of Bobby Ehrmann, who was involved in woodworking throughout his years in 4-H. Ehrmann, now Dr. Robert Ehrmann, an aeronautical engineer, participated in a building competition for an aerodynamic vehicle during his time at Texas A&M, competing against colleges throughout the United States. His group won top honors. Ehrmann later told Feucht, “I have to give you credit for a lot of my success because, as a youngster, you taught me how to measure, how to build things, how to put things together correctly and how to sand and sand and sand and how to put the bright, smooth finish on things.”

Feucht said the other students could put the design together and make it work, but “they looked to Bobby for how to finish this. It made my husband cry.”

When Alan Feucht was the only child to sign up for the rabbit project, Ardie Feucht became the rabbit leader. “What’s a mom going to do?” she said. “I didn’t know about rabbits, but I learned.”

Alan continued to show rabbits throughout high school and even in college. He continued as an assistant leader, guiding members in showmanship. He has continued to volunteer for 17 years. The project grew and, in some years, saw over 60 rabbits.

After teaching archery at junior high school, Feucht added archery to their offerings as 4-H leaders. That program continued for 9 years, co-leading with her son Thomas. “My own kids still wanted to be part of it as adults and give back to the community,” she said. “It’s been kind of a family affair for me. We’ve really enjoyed being part of this community.”

Feucht said her children learned public speaking and record keeping. Through the record books, members track their expenses, seek sponsorships to offset costs and sell their animals at the Stanislaus County Fair. “This project is so important because we have the kids track costs so they understand the concept of a budget as they approach and enter high school,” Feucht explained.

The emerald project completed by her son and his peers, creating a Resource Guide for Ornamental Horticulture, is still used by the fair to this day for judging.

Peyton Silveira, Makayla Silveira, and Janet Hill presented. Peyton has been in 4-H for six years, has participated in the goat, lamb, and sewing groups, and is now the communications officer. Makayla has been a member for nine years and has shown rabbits, chickens, goats, and lambs.

When asked what skills they have learned from 4-H that apply to other areas of their lives, Makayla said that learning to take a business mindset to selling and raising animals. Makayla explained, with business-like composure, that she did not sell her two lambs last year. Instead, a wild dog attacked them, but she plans to raise lambs and try again.

Janet Hill is in her fourth year of 4-H. She is now a youth leader for the rabbit group and went from owning one market rabbit part of the year to raising seven breeding rabbits year-round. As youth leader, she helps at primary and youth meetings, passes out papers and helps younger members with their showmanship routines. Her work with 4-H helped her go from a shy, quiet participant to a leader. Hill explained the responsibilities members take on, from rising at 6:30 a.m. to feeding animals before school to exercising them to feeding them dinner before eating dinner oneself.

Children seek sponsorships to help offset the costs of their animal projects. Hill creates a presentation and goes to potential sponsors with a gift basket in hand. She tells them about herself and her animal and asks them to consider supporting her project.

4-H is open to any child in Stanislaus County. Those who plan to attend Hughson High School and want to raise animals but lack the space at home to do so have access to the school farm.

4-H members meet at least twice a month, once for a community meeting in the Hughson Elementary School Cafeteria and again for their specific project, the time and place depending on the project and leader. Members participate in parades, the Hughson Fruit and Nut Festival petting zoo, and Ag Day at Hughson Elementary School. They can also attend Camp Sylvester.

Hughson, with 115 members, is the largest 4-H club in Stanislaus County. The Stanislaus County Fair has more animal entries than even the California State Fair; Feucht said, “If you do well at Stanislaus County Fair, know that you made it.”

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on April 9, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

There is a genre of film that attaches itself to a bigger genre, usually a type of romantic comedy. This is the fashion film. It’s the film that fashionistas might not remember the plot; they watch it for the clothes. When the plot itself is also good, along with the acting, perfection.

Like architecture, like furniture design, fashion is one of the decorative arts. It is meant to be beautiful and functional.

We can review the famous cerulean monologue from The Devil Wears Prada, spoken by Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep.

“Oh... ok. I see you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet, and you select out, oh, I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean.”

Blue is blue. If you feel that way, fashion films will not all be for you. Stick to The Women (1939) for its humor and all-star cast; Sabrina (1954) with its fairytale plot, Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden; Charade (1963) for is Hitchcockian plot, Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, Desk Set (1957) for its throwback technological revolution, Katherine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy, Clueless (1995) for its clever retelling of Jane Austin’s Emma, and well, the list goes on.

But when you see blue in all the ranges, suddenly B-quality movies become enjoyable not for their storytelling, but for their beauty. Funny Face (1957), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), Stepford Wives (1975), and Downton Abbey, anything.

Since Downton Abbey (2010) and Mad Men (2007), beautiful sets and costuming have become a common trade in prestige television, so many examples are many, but let us return to the movie that never attempted to be anything else, and yet it was: The Devil Wears Prada.

To consider its sequel, we must consider its original.

The Devil Wears Prada was beautiful to look at and did it lavishly. From its opening moments, this movie was driving itself forward with scene after scene or shot after shots within a scene of a runway of outfits for the viewers’ delight.

Based on a book, it had a plot of an assistant who takes a prestigious yet entry-level job to advance her career, under the command of a woman at the top, who had to be ruthless to get there.

Less intended was the scene-stealing Emily Blunt as Emily the First Assistant, whose ad-libbed lines became part of the cultural canon that followed this film.

The plot and writing had their weaknesses. “I didn’t have a choice” comes out of Andy Sach’s lips one too many times.

On the surface, the movie appears to fault Andy for choosing to put her career above her relationships and personal health. But as the movie celebrated each transformation and fashion step forward, the message did not land with any weight. Like the power-ballad “Let it Go” from Frozen, signaling the character’s freedom, while she freezes up the kingdom she has just been given responsibility over, and she will eventually have to be convinced to leave behind. It’s too exciting to expect us to believe this moment is the wrong path.

At the end, she describes her step away as “screwing up.”

Viewers can never really get a strong hold on the narrative’s perspective.

The Devil Wears Prada is not an effective morality tale, but it’s fun. It’s biting sarcasm, fantastic acting by Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt, endearing presence of Stanley Tucci, and Anne Hathaway’s beauty (performance limited only by the screenwriting material she had to work with) made this a delightful repeat viewing for me.

So now, the sequel.

First things first, how did it function as a sequel?

Like the Gilmore Girls revival, it feasts on giving us the moments when we see our old friends as their original characters again. Unlike the Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, you get the abundant sense of how much the director and writer loved and still love the original and its characters. The actors are so good that they pick up the older version of themselves near-perfectly. You can feel the expressive goofiness of Andy, now matured and capable of being a professional. Character development is nearly true to the former characters, but I would argue they push Miranda Priestly too far from her original mold.

She is fragile, as another reviewer pointed out. The fragility is not unwarranted, although ultimately over-the-top here.

The Devil Wears Prada II inhabits the modern world in which most of the world believes print media is dead or dying, cannot rely on the old financing methods and struggles to navigate the online, instant and superficial content world of the internet. The old generation that doesn’t get it. That generation is superfluous. HR restrictions are real and can get someone kicked out, even the likes of Miranda Priestly.

Even with navigating all those actually interesting problems for the characters to face, The Devil Wears Prada II falls into the greatest weakness of sequels. We had a movie that people loved the first time. Rinse, wash, repeat. The sequel takes the same development, pace, and emotions and repeats them in a new form. We have the Miranda-as-vulnerable, which moves Andy to her side; we have Andy kissing and walking backward, cutting the scene before the bedroom scene; we have the all-is-lost moment where Miranda will lose her job, and it goes on. Fans of the first movie will recognize the scenes.

But everything is more. More joy, more at stake, and more emotion.

This is a sappy movie.

I groaned. And more than once. The question “Have I taken you for granted?” had no place in this movie.

So many tears in the eyes. Anne Hathaway’s made-up eyes are burned into my brain.

The bite barely left a mark, and it was the biting humor that made the original so fresh and delightful. It was a comedy. Not a romantic comedy, not a chick-flick BBF (ahem, besties) comedy, but a straight, kind of screwball comedy without being stupid or lewd that we rarely get these days. Everything else the original tried to be, except a fashion film, was eclipsed by its humor, to its benefit.

What’s the moral of the story here?

In the 1930s, the Hays Code existed, but was not fully enforced, as Hollywood’s self-censoring of scenes and morality to keep it out of government reach. Characters who engaged in immoral acts could not just get away with it. There had to be some legal, relational, or personal punishment or conversion.

Was that what we got in The Devil Wears Prada?

In The Devil Wears Prada II, the final message is that some women love to work, and this is the thing they find joy in, and pursuing work above all else can be a really joyful thing. The sacrifice of relationships is part of that path. Miranda, in her line from the first film, is proven right; she and Andy are alike, and this film celebrates Andy’s actions to protect and advance Andy’s career.

Also, you don’t need a man to define you.

Also, it’s okay to make mistakes. We won’t do this relationship thing perfectly, and that’s okay.

And women can help each other.

It’s all fine, although I doubt the main moral of the story is particularly true. Miranda remains on top, but without work, what does she have? When one only fights for himself in life, he eventually finds himself alone, not a part of something bigger than himself that lasts beyond him and can hold him in the fragility that comes to us all. It works for now, but then we die alone, and that reality concerns me when I see it.

The film raises the question, then dodges.

But the clothes!

That’s right, this is a fashion film. It will take repeated watching to know if the weakened plotting and messages can be looked past.

Will the joy at seeing characters hold up if we watch the films back-to-back?

I loved the clothes, mostly. These are the styles we look at now, instead of the time capsule that comes with watching the original twenty years later. So I think more about my personal preferences than just the artistry of textile design.

I wonder if the quickened camera cuts of modern cinematography interfered with my ability to savor the outfits. I’m not sure.

Repeat watching will be necessary to see where it lands.

Last notes:

BJ Novak for the win – always fun to watch.

The reflection on Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” was so weird.

The banter with the contractor was fun, although chemistry was lacking.

They wasted Kenneth Branagh, unfortunately.

I will be rewatching it in the comfort of my own home one day, so it gets a tentative thumbs-up as a fashion film, but not as a film in its own right.

But from someone who gets viscerally angry when a movie is bad, that’s not too bad.

This is a Cinderella story.

What does that mean? The heart of a Cinderella story is that the underprivileged, long-suffering, usually virtuous female protagonist is given a leg up, and all her dreams come true, lifting her from the poverty she knows. The poverty may be material, but many stories reveal it is also familial. In more fleshed-out versions of the story, she is identified and chosen especially for her beauty, both inside and out. The virtues matter.

Flora is a ferret. In many hierarchies, we do not get much lower than that on the mammalian ladder. The ferret’s figure makes a perfect model for the setting and its Roaring 1920s fashion.

This is a picture book.

And the illustrations are lush! Oh my. Personality, humor, depth, color, joy, whimsy, serious fashion gravitas, and the deco, oh, the art deco! I watched a watercolor demonstration at ARCH art supplies in San Francisco, and the artist painted the dining room scene of a grand 1930s hotel. It was just like this.

I want to walk around these illustrations in real life. Art gallery in the lap, check.

The fashion, did I mention the fashion? This is my favorite historical time period. I am an avid old movie watcher. Shekels hit it just right. These are not the stereotypes of the time period; she captures the real thing. The costumes just happen to be draped on a variety of animalia instead of the rougher species of the era: the bootlegger and flapper.

What kind of ferret fairytale is this?

Fractured, or fleshed out, fairytales

The modern criticism of fairy tales, particularly the princess fairy tales, is that the reward comes too easily. Everything works out with the snap of the fingers for the protagonist. The Cinderella story by Perrault, from 1697, is as simple as it gets. As storytelling media evolve, writers try to answer the question: What motivates her? Why does she stay?

Flora is employed in the hotel. This is not a family affair. She is where she is for financial reasons.

“With a song in her heart…” Shekels describes and illustrates Flora’s inner life deftly and beautifully.

I like the newer versions of fairytales that still believe in the original story, but fill in the gaps. Grimm Brothers. The 2015 Disney live-action remake of Cinderella. The 1998 Ever After. Even the musical, Into the Woods, sits well with me for this story.

This is a traditional Perrault-style fairytale, swift in its telling, swift to its close.

I do not know how much this influences my enjoyment of this story, but I am married to a musician. The swift and happy ending came too easily for me.

If good narration brings us to a moment where all is lost, we care about the character and the resolution. I’m not sure I’m buying this retelling.

A well-known band would not be trying to work out a song the night of the performance; they would do a well-rehearsed set. They might add in new songs, but not that new, not so new that they did not realize vocals would be just the thing.

She has a song in her heart, but no vocal training, so it is unlikely that she would be such an immediate sensation, so much so that they are ready to sign her, then and there, and take her on tour.

There could have been more.

There could have been more. Maybe a little more of a backstory, so we know from where that experience came. Even the Phantom of the Opera wasn’t training up a blank slate.

Does Shekels know this, I wonder. Did she know she was bringing it in swiftly, and that’s part of the fun of a familiar story?

Some time has passed since our initial reading. There are books you read through, delighting in the language, holding your breath until that wonderful finish (An Orange for Frankie). There are books you read without interruption, ready to catch any joke (My Awesome Summer by P. Mantis). There are books you sing and laugh through, of which any interruption would spoil the rhythm (The Gruffalo). But there is another class of picture books. They are good. They are classic. They are in the canon of books I would not want to have missed. But they are strange. They are incomplete. They invite the commentary and the interruption and, dare I say, the humor of those reading them irreverently inserted.

My husband reads The Runaway Bunny as a horror story. The jokes are endless for us as well with Guess How Much I Love You. And yet we love these stories. As our oldest children entered their teens and new babies came again, we happily purchased them again.

They become part of us as we become part of the story. It’s a bit like The Neverending Story, I admit, but it becomes a beautiful shared secret among those who read it, with a chuckle and a sidelong glance that we know the real story —the story our silly parents read to us, the story our children tolerated as we read it aloud. They loved the picture; we loved the unity of an inside joke.

The illustrations: 100%. I would own this book for this reason alone.

The story: it fills the last category for me. I know there will be jokes, comments, insertions, and, hey, even some important conversations with my older children about how success and/or fame do not come easily.

Life is not a fairytale, although it speaks of the dream. It speaks to the truth of the dream. Sometimes, for a story, that is all we need.

This book is for:

The family led by a hopeless romantic who reads Jane Austen.

The family led by the artists.

The family looking for a simple, enjoyable read-aloud with beautiful language, that does not require long discussions, but invites it, the readers so wish.

I came to My Type of Holiness: Striving for Sainthood with the Temperament God Gave Me as an interested-in-the-subject person of the book. I learned about the temperaments in college, immediately found it applicable to my life and in seeing the comments, - finally a book on holiness for phlegmatics – I thought immediately this is the book for my husband, ahem, me!

In all fairness, when it came, my non-reader husband immediately wanted to take a look at it. I first encountered Rose Sweet through a divorce ministry an acquaintance asked me to volunteer with, leading small group discussions following video segments. She struck me as intuitive, intelligent, rational, and on the money as to people’s wounds. When I saw her name attached to this title, I was hooked.

I have never read anything by Rose Sweet.

Like many self-help style books from Our Sunday Visitor, the tone is conversational, but this one comes as well-informed. There are the obligatory reflection questions and speculation about saint temperaments at the end of each chapter, but they are ancillary to the meat of the chapter.

I wanted a book on the path to holiness as it applies to temperaments. But much of the book is really an introduction to the temperaments.

Such an introduction is needed, I grant you, and a well-balanced update to the archaic literature we might be using.

Sweet hits all the important points. And she actually hits the psychological literature, too.

What a temperament is.

And what it isn’t.

And how these other factors influence how we present. The temperament is the thing we’re born with. The personality is the nature/nurture thing that develops early on. Spot on.

Life circumstances bring out particular aspects. Life circumstances lead us to mask certain aspects.

Family systems.

Rose Sweet gets it in a modern, updated way.

She gives it as a life and relationship coach who is clearly dishing out this information regularly.

And that means, she has very few sources.

This is my great lament of books like this. There are some references, but for the most part, her information is very much integrated in her own mind so as to flow out as easily as a coaching session, but the reader does not have the benefit of the sources from which she first learned it.

Nevertheless, this is the absolute best introduction to the topic. And by the last third, she really does touch on holiness in an enlightening and remarkable way.

I wish there were more.

Personally, her balanced, well-rounded, all circumstances explored look at the temperaments was personally enlightening for me, a person well familiar with the theory.

I have a child who is a sanguine.

As a no-nonsense, let’s get this done choleric/let’s be quiet, read, and think deep thoughts melancholic, his personality has been a challenge both in parenting and during the homeschool day.

Many a behavior we thought, Why is he like this? What is wrong with him?

It turns out, a great lot of us are temperamentally… quiet.

And he is not.

So she has my interest piqued.

But it isn’t a deep dive by any stretch of the imagination. And I’m left wanting more.

The other revelation is her articulation of the weaknesses each temperament will fall into, and their strengths when living a life of virtue.

I said to my husband, whose advice on holiness has always been pray more, lead more, attend mass more – what if you just tried to focus these God-given abilities towards patience, kindness, peacefulness to God, and asked him to guide you in them? And there was silence.

Because when we hit on this path, this is something about the way God made us, and maybe he loves us and wants him for himself, but maybe we’re also okay, just the way we are, there isn’t much response except silence – wonder and awe.

So I recommend this book. Wholeheartedly. To all who will read it.

Attendees shared recollections of scouting campouts, cooking, service projects, Cub Scouts attending in the basement of the Hughson Baptist Church, bike rides down the Oregon coast, and the many efforts to earn those badges, including a few mishaps.

Special guests Richard Worley and Melissa Worley spoke about local Scout troops and their history with the programs.

Richard Worley leads the Hughson Scout Troop 27. Worley shared his recollections about Troop 27 and their projects, and showed his Scout uniform, explaining the meaning of various badges and symbols.

“I started at eight years old, and I'm now 72. It’s taken a long time, but I've had a lot of fun and enjoyed meeting many people. I'm an eagle, class of 1965, my son's an eagle, class of 1993, and my grandson is now a Cub Scout,” he said.

Currently, the scout troop has five boys and four adults. “Our troop is, as little as it is, probably one of the more active units in the district right now. Last summer, with summer camps closed, a family member had a cabin, and the boys went down there. They planned their own campout, did their cooking, went fishing, hiking, did all the stuff they would normally do at summer camp and had a great time.”

Worley shared Boy Scout books from several decades, “When you first join, you get a book you go through different steps. Each book has all of requirements that you need—the requirements of changed over the years. For instance, I think in one of these, you’re are supposed to know how to stop a wild team of horses. They also had to know Morse code, which I had to know from scouting, but that has been discontinued with the GPS situation in cell phones.”

Service forms an important component of Scouting. Worley shared, “We're down to a little bit smaller amount of scouts, but we're still doing service projects. We've helped Tammy Lee with the Christmas baskets for the last couple of years by counting out rice and beans and doing whatever to fill the baskets that they give out at Christmas. That's been a joy for us to do, as well, in the future, we're still talking about going to Hawaii for summer camp. We're going to try and start our tri-tip barbecue Fundraiser dinner again on the 29th of April. Be looking for that if you would, and we would enjoy serving you.”

He said, “There are over two and a half million eagles in the United States. If you average a hundred hours of service hours for each project, that adds up to a few. It's a wonderful program.”

Melissa Worley’s presentation focused on levels within Girl Scouts, the various badges and Girl Scout Cookies. When the Girl Scouts first began selling cookies in 1917, scouts made the cookies themselves. Troops receive the cookies during President’s Day Weekend and sell them during the next four weeks outside local stores and door-to-door. For every box sold, $4 goes back to Girl Scouts supporting camps and the local troop itself.

She explained the troop votes on what they will do with the profits from cookie sales. For one service project, the girls purchased books, went to a local preschool, read the books to the students, and then they donated the books to the preschool. They recently toured and donated to Hope’s Chance Horse Sanctuary, a local nonprofit that rescues horses.

Melissa said, “I love hearing all your stories about it. The rewards are not always seen. Hearing your stories and your memories of it helps me know that I am making memories with the girls.”

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on March 2, 2022. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209-358-5311.

Stockton Diocese Bishop Myron Cotta celebrated the mass. A reception followed with food provided by parish ministries. In the background, a slideshow displayed photos from the parish directories over the years.

Portuguese and Italian immigrants founded the parish in 1922, naming it after a saint beloved by both cultures, St. Anthony of Padua. He was a Franciscan friar, doctor of the church, patron of the poor, born in 1195 in Lisbon, Portugal, and died on June 13, 1231, in Arcella, Verona [Italy]. St. Anthony was canonized in 1232.

According to the parish, “In January 1918, Father James Delahunty celebrated the first Mass in Hughson, in the home of Mrs. A.J. Serpa. Catechism classes followed. For two years this mission community moved from home to home celebrating the sacraments until Father James Galvin rented Northway's Hall in Hughson for Sunday Masses and a Sunday school. This generated enough enthusiasm among residents that they began planning for a church. The mostly Portuguese community pledged enough money for a new church, where the first Mass of this young parish community was celebrated on Christmas Day, 1921.”

Phillips served as the first pastor of the parish.

The church was dedicated on Christmas Day 1922. Designed by Phillips it was an “A-frame building with stucco exterior, metallic sheeting and wooden wainscoting interior, it measured 90 feet by 42 feet.” The parish occupied one acre. On the remaining space on the property, there was alfalfa for sale.

Janet Camagna, the President of the Hughson Historical Society, remembers attending mass with her grandfather at the old St. Anthony’s. Camagna and her grandfather walked from their ranch across the high school to the church and attended mass. “I remember doing this, everybody was so big and I didn't quite know what was going on.” Afterward, they walked to a neighbor’s house. “They would have donuts or they would have various pastries and you would walk in the back door and there was this wonderful room.”

That tradition continues with coffee and donuts after Sunday masses today, although instead of a house down the street, it takes place in the Hughes Hall on the parish campus.

“For people who lived in Europe,” Camagna explained, “if there had been wars if they had been uprisings, famines, whatever, big families they had nothing to give the other children in the family, you had to look for something else. In the case of my own family on my father’s side, my grandfather was one of six children. There were no jobs. Father was working two different jobs and so then they had to look to see what else was going on. He heard land was being given in Canada to people that would make the trip like we did in this country giving land to people who would come across settle and work the land. That was very intriguing so that people would pull their money together. The appeal of getting land, getting a start was something that was irresistible.”

In 1967, the church building was completed along with a church hall with kitchen facilities and three classrooms where the Holy Family Sisters and lay people gave religious instruction to the children. Other facilities have been added since. In the 1990s, a chapel for daily mass and adoration was added to the parish rectory. After the COVID-19 shutdown, daily mass moved from the chapel to the church to allow for more spacing between people.

On May 29, 2022, Cordeiro opened a new chapel for prayer within the parish office. The chapel was designed by Cordeiro with a tabernacle from Mexico and artwork made from wood to represent a mountain range referencing Mount Sinai and the three Persons of the Trinity, Cordeiro said. Those who would like to visit the chapel may contact the parish office, 7820 Fox Road Hughson, Ca 95326, for more details.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on June 13, 2022. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

Though much of the Starn family history is recorded in a 1971 booklet created by the family, the delay in holding the dinner due to COVID-19 has allowed additional time to gather information. Starn has acted as contact man and historian as his family pieces together their family story for the presentation at the annual dinner. Starn shared with the Hughson Historical Society a collection of documents he found in the process.

Starn opened his presentation with a brief overview of family dates. Most family members began immigrating to the Central Valley at the beginning of the 20th century. Starn held up a picture postcard of Swanson’s in Hughson in 1911. He pointed out that there were “not too many buildings that make note of. In fact, there's not too many trees either. It's kind of barren.”

Attendees were unable to identify the location of Swanson’s in Hughson as one of the earliest buildings.

Starn then handed out a history of the Women’s Improvement Club written by his grandmother, Lula Starn, in 1959 for its 50th anniversary. “There were Women's Improvement Clubs in a lot of towns up and down the valley. They had a statewide association, which they belonged to,” Starn explained. He said the clubs disbanded in 1971, but from the time of their founding until then, they were integral to the City of Hughson. Historical Society members agreed.

“When you read the history, it's really interesting because from 1909 through 1959, the history of the Women's Club parallels the growth and development of Hughson, and you can see exactly how important this club was to Hughson's development,” Starn said. “You have to remember, in 1909, the government wasn't giving out money left and right. It was up to the community themselves to make all the improvements and raise all the money to do all the work. And, of course, who does all the work in most communities?”

Attendees answered, and he agreed, “The women.”

Starn pointed back to the original photo he showed, “Do you notice in this picture it’s devoid of any trees? One of their first projects in 1909 was to plant trees.” Members recalled town events surrounding Arbor Day. Trees were planted and watered by hand before irrigation was in place along the town's main streets.

Carrie Shrader, a member of the Women’s Improvement Club, advocated for tree planting in the park now named after her.

Other activities in the club included aid toward school equipment, school embellishment, school sanitation, school and community library, a community center home, home gardening, holiday celebrations. “The women took on more and more responsibilities in their plan for a more desirable home place.”

Women’s Improvement Clubs still exist around the county and began as part of a national Women’s Club Movement based on the idea that women had a responsibility to help transform public policy and improve social conditions where they lived. In the 1960s, membership waned as women found other opportunities for socializing. According to Martin E. Comas, writing for the Orlando Sentinel, longer work hours and children’s extracurricular activities continue to impact the ability of young women to participate in such organizations.

Hughson continues to enjoy the benefit of fraternal organizations including the Odd Fellowes who recently opened membership to women, the Young Ladies Institute for Catholic women or Knights of Columbus for Catholic men, the American Legion and Sons of the American Legion, the Hughson Lion’s Club chartered in July 2018, and Citizens for a Healthy Community.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on July 20, 2022. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications - committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

The Tractor Rodeo and Implement Show began in 1950 through the efforts of Hughson's young homemakers and young farmers. The young farmers went as delegates to a convention in Oregon in 1949. They returned with plans to bring such an event to Hughson, the peach capital of the world, to help the farmers find equipment and learn about new equipment.

Frank Patterson, a former chapter advisor, suggested the Tractor Rodeo as a possibility. Implement and truck dealers brought equipment to the show and added a “rodeo” demonstration. The rodeo was open to all persons, male or female, high school age or over.

The Hughson Tractor Rodeo featured tractor implement dealers. Farm implements were placed along the football field.

A parade was held down Main Street.

It started as a one-day affair and grew to two days. It included a free “bean feed” donated and cooked by local farmers and homemakers in enormous pots purchased from a Portuguese dealer in a nearby town. The beans were baked and served with canned peaches and whipped cream. During the Hughson Tractor Rodeo, four giant pots of beans served the community meal to 2000 people in 20 minutes.

According to Hughson Historical Society Members, people looked forward to the community meal. Some came with their pots to take beans home. After getting through the line, some visitors took their full plates right to the back of the line and ate in line while waiting to go through again.

The Tractor Rodeo included farm clinics, welding clinics, farm safety demonstrations, horse-pulling contests, a street parade and more. The day closed with the presentation of the Dairy Princess Contest Winners.

As one of the youth involved in the Tractor Rodeo, Former Mayor Dave Spears said to the Hughson Historical Society, “The beautiful thing about the Tractor Rodeo was the young farmers. The young farmers developed us as young people, and it put a lifetime tie between all of us.

“I was a peach picker. They were the peach growers and owners, but we were still all family. They taught us a lot of skills and a lot of things to do in and around the community. They taught us skills that the school didn't know how to teach us, but they did it from the ranch: how to communicate and how to come along and work together. They hired a bunch of us because they saw we were willing to get up early and stay late to work and help because we were willing to learn. A lot of the success that went into the Tractor Rodeo goes to all of you people because it was you, as your husbands, your sons, who came alongside us and supported and helped us.”

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on April 24, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications - committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

Leticia Cavazos presented, representing the Carranza family, who opened Carranza Pharmacy in 1986, to share about the family.

Cavazos said she comes from a family of 13 children, “My younger brothers and sisters have been very successful, and I think that we couldn't have done it if it wasn't for the older brothers and sisters. We stand on their shoulders.”

The Carranza children of Rosa and Ignacio Carranza are Dolores, Maria de Jesus, Martha, Amador, Ignacio, Maria Luisa, Flora, Amparo, Rosa, Jose Luis, Javier, Leticia, and Alida.

Cavazos described her mother as a firecracker, 4’ 4”, and widowed in 1961 when Cavazos was only four years old and her youngest sibling was nine months old.

According to Cavazos, Rosa said, “We need to go to America to get a better future to give my kids an opportunity.” And so she packed up 12 of her children and one daughter-in-law, and the family went to Tijuana to arrange for their papers to enter the United States. Cavazos recalled the different jobs held by other family members and spoke of their strong work ethic. "Everything you do, you do well. Be proud of the work you do,” she said.

The last of the siblings were able to enter the United States from Tijuana in 1963.

With family in Redwood City, the Carranzas tried to find jobs in the Bay Area, but not everyone could find work. A family member recommended they pick peaches in Hughson. When they arrived, Charlie Bogetti helped them with housing. She recalled that Ignacio worked with Martin Pohl and recognized the roles of Ed Little, Heraldo Chiesa, and Floyd Zeiger, who helped the family get established and find employment. "It was a very welcoming community, for the most part."

Two of her sisters left school to work, giving the younger siblings a better chance. A teacher named Mr. Williams encouraged Jose, the founder of Carranza Pharmacy, not to give up his education to work. "Don't give up on me," he said. Williams found a job for Jose with Bud and Verna Vierra at the pharmacy sweeping up or running the register.

Cavazos said her brother observed what the pharmacist did and realized it was something he also could do one day. People in his life thought it impossible but his response was always, "I'll find a way." Jose attended classes at MJC, starting his day at 4 a.m. to work in the fields and then go to school. He dreamed of opening a bilingual pharmacy. That dream became a reality after graduation and ten years of working at Long’s when Jose opened Carranza Pharmacy in Hughson in 1986.

Cavazos attributes the family’s closeness and successes to what their mother did for them and taught them. "We were the poorest of the poor, but we never felt it," she said. Rosa emphasized the importance of family, a strong work ethic, pride in your work, and always doing your best.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on June 10, 2023. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications - committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.

And so, in place of the first Tuesday of the month Historical Society Meeting in November 2024, the Hughson Historical Society joined together with the American Legion, Hughson residents, and family members of Howard Hiram “Hi” Hughson in the Pioneer Cemetery at Lakewood Memorial Cemetery and Funeral Home for the long-delayed headstone dedication of Hughson.

Danee Hutsell, pre-planning advisor at the Lakewood ceremony, led the service. In 2023, Hutsell joined the cause and researched how this could have happened. Through their research, Hutsell and Camagna discovered Paul Memorial in Pacific Grove, with Hughson’s niece, Hetty Eddy, handling arrangements for Hughson’s burial in 2006. Hughson’s will expressed the desire to be buried at Lakewood. When Paul Memorial could not reach Eddy by phone to approve the headstone, the design and placement went unapproved. Eddy returned to her home, away from the town, and was told by a family member that the headstone was in place. Over time, the grass began to grow.

When Ken and Carol Lundell discovered Hughson’s uniforms in an antique store in Monterey, they contacted the Historical Society to donate the uniform, a memorial book of photos and other memorabilia from Hughson they found in the shop. This set Past President Janet Camagna on the hunt for more information. She visited Lakewood Cemetery to photograph the gravesite and discovered that for 18 years, no headstone marked the grave.

“It was the Lundell family’s donation of military artifacts and photos, which they gifted the Hughson Historical Society, that sparked my interest in finding his gravesite which led me in a quest to put the wheels in motion to accomplish the goal of giving him the headstone he so richly deserved,” Camagna said.

Howard Hughson was born on September 15, 1918. He was a Navy captain during WWII, and he survived 29 battles in the South Pacific, including Pearl Harbor. He received five silver stars, four bronze stars and a Purple Heart. For 44 years, he lived in Pebble Beach and worked as a banker in Monterey prior to retirement. He died of complications related to cancer on March 26, 2006.

Hughson Historical Society President Cindy Spiro said, “His life journey took him all over the world, and yet he desired to remain in eternal rest in Hughson, California, named after his grandfather. Hiram Hughson. Perhaps he has fond memories of being a young boy visiting his grandparents on the farm. Or maybe he fished at the river, just down the hill. Nobody knows the reason for his decision, but for 18 years, his presence here was unknown.”

Hughson’s cousin, Melinda Garratt Nichols, offered a history of Hughson and his great-grandfather, interweaving the historical narratives that link these two men together across generations in war, injury, and wisdom.

Hughson grew up in Woodland and Piedmont, California, before attending UC Berkeley and law school at the University of Oregon. On February 28, 1941, Hughson was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy. He was assigned to the destroyer, the USS Maury, in Pearl. Harbor, Hawaii. On the Pacific, Hughson was “a true example of superb leadership,” she said. “Howard had the ability to use his talent, skills, and emotional intelligence to mobilize people to a common cause and make a difference in their lives.”

But it was Eddy’s testimony that highlighted the heart within the man.

Without his own children, Hughson had a warm and kind relationship with his niece. With her and others, “Uncle Hi” was jovial, kind, friendly, and lit up a room with his presence. When he corrected employees, he did it in such a way “that made them strive to do better. He was a person that he could get along with anybody.”

His legacy was passed on to another generation. As Eddy’s son came into adolescence for the first time, Hughson began to share the stories of the battles he had seen and the experiences he had. “My son was very grateful for that,” she said. Time does heal some wounds.”

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on November 19, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.