As I write this, it is the first of September. The nights dropped to 55 degrees. I donned my father’s flannel for my morning walk and my black corduroy jacket for my morning meeting. I pause on my walk to watch the geese change formation on their flight. I catch a feather dropped by a dove before it ever hits the ground. The day topped at 75 degrees, but I spent it indoors typing away. The afternoon will come, and the evening, and that sweet blessed breeze that signals the end of summer, the beginning of a change in the air. I don’t smell snow. I smell fall.

“The Gilmore Girls” was a comedy-drama television series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino. It stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel as Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, a mother–daughter pair living in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. It basked in the glories of fall and the quick comedic banter that became iconic to the show. I watched the show when I was pretty near the age of Rory, who begins as a 15-year-old daughter and ages her way to a Yale graduation. I watched it again as a mother. But when I watched it on repeat, it was a comfort show, full of familiar characters and quotable moments, quirks of people you live near who might drive you crazy, but you will do what you can to support.

The storyline itself can be thin at times, but the mother-daughter drama spans generations and emotions, between the lead characters and Kelly Bishop, who plays Lorelei’s mother. I cannot recommend the show for everyone, but I love it.

Today while scrolling social media, I saw the news that Danville will host Flannel & Foliage: An Autumn Weekend in Danville, three days of autumn festivities, coffee, cozy eats, and photo ops with stars from the show including Scott Patterson, Kelly Bishop, Sean Gunn, Emily Kuroda, Yanic Truesdale, Todd Lowe, and John Cabrera. The names themselves are hardly recognizable to the average ear. But that’s okay; the fans know.

The festival will take place Oct. 23 to 25 and is free to attend, with some VIP tickets available. Ticket prices and releases have not yet been announced. Would I go, I wonder, with my biggest-fan-best-friend living a country away? Either way, I signed up for the email list.

Organizers have said Danville was chosen for its small-town charm. And we know a thing or two about that in our towns.

“You finally found a way to fill September,” Lorelei told Taylor Doose, who runs just about everything in Stars Hollow, at the launch of a Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer festival. If we take our small towns together, it certainly feels like we could say the same as new events pop up each year. There is something to do just about every weekend, and even when the temperatures creep back up, the joy of fall and brisk mornings will not be daunted.

In our home, we celebrate September by reading apple-themed books from the Read Aloud Revival September book list. We sing the theme song from Disney’s Johnny Appleseed, and we used to buy bags and bags of Granny Smith apples on Tully Road, but this week they posted that due to Mother Nature, no apples would be sold this year. It’s a change we’ll have to roll with, like so many others that come when tied to the land.

Those comfort shows probably help us escape all that. Such groundedness belongs to the likes of Wendell Berry, an author and poet who died on Aug. 31. His work celebrated the land and the roots that come only from a land well lived on, and long lived on. He wrote of the geese I hear overhead on my walk in “The Wild Geese” and concludes, “What we need is here.”

What we need is here

I’m so glad we live in a world of Septembers, to borrow from Anne of Green Gables, where fall beauty comes to its fullest in October. We have not the same experience in our climate, so I am basking in the now, the shift and the change that promises new and different days ahead.

We will not have apples there, so we will check the nearby fruit stands located all around us, visit The Red Apple Bakery in Arnold and Indigeny Reserve in Columbia, and keep it festive, albeit busy, all September long.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on Sept. 8, 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.

“The Gilmore Girls” was a comedy-drama television series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino. It stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel as Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, a mother–daughter pair living in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. It basked in the glories of fall and the quick comedic banter that became iconic to the show. I watched the show when I was pretty near the age of Rory, who begins as a 15-year-old daughter and ages her way to a Yale graduation. I watched it again as a mother. But when I watched it on repeat, it was a comfort show, full of familiar characters and quotable moments, quirks of people you live near who might drive you crazy, but you will do what you can to support.

The storyline itself can be thin at times, but the mother-daughter drama spans generations and emotions between the lead characters and Kelly Bishop, who plays Lorelei’s mother. I cannot recommend the show for everyone, but I love it.

Today, while scrolling social media, I saw the news that Danville will host Flannel & Foliage: An Autumn Weekend in Danville, three days of autumn festivities, coffee, cozy eats, and photo ops with stars from the show, including Scott Patterson, Kelly Bishop, Sean Gunn, Emily Kuroda, Yanic Truesdale, Todd Lowe, and John Cabrera. The names themselves are hardly recognizable to the average ear. But that’s okay; the fans know.

The festival will take place Oct. 23 to 25 and is free to attend, with some VIP tickets available. Ticket prices and releases have not yet been announced. Would I go, I wonder, with my biggest-fan-best-friend living a country away? Either way, I signed up for the email list.1

Organizers have said Danville was chosen for its small-town charm. And we know a thing or two about that in our towns.

“You finally found a way to fill September,” Lorelei told Taylor Doose, who runs just about everything in Stars Hollow, at the launch of a Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer festival. If we take our small towns together, it certainly feels like we could say the same as new events pop up each year. There is something to do just about every weekend, and even when the temperatures creep back up, the joy of fall and brisk mornings will not be daunted.

In our home, we celebrate September by reading apple-themed books from the Read Aloud Revival September book list. We sing the theme song from Disney’s Johnny Appleseed, and we used to buy bags and bags of Granny Smith apples on Tully Road, but this week they posted that, due to Mother Nature, no apples would be sold this year. It’s a change we’ll have to roll with, like so many others that come when tied to the land.

Those comfort shows probably help us escape all that. Such groundedness belongs to the likes of Wendell Berry, an author and poet who died on Aug. 31. His work celebrated the land and the roots that come only from a land well lived on, and long lived on. He wrote of the geese I hear overhead on my walk in “The Wild Geese” and concludes, “What we need is here.”

I’m so glad we live in a world of Septembers, to borrow from Anne of Green Gables, where fall beauty comes to its fullest in October. We have not the same experience in our climate, so I am basking in the now, the shift and the change that promises new and different days ahead.

We will not have apples there, so we will check the nearby fruit stands located all around us, visit The Red Apple Bakery in Arnold and Indigeny Reserve in Columbia, and keep it festive, albeit busy, all September long.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on Sept. 11, 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.

Beginning in the late 19th century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, trade unionists proposed that a day be set aside to celebrate labor. “Labor Day” was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, which organized the first parade in New York City. In 1887, Oregon was the first state of the United States to make it an official public holiday. In the United States, a September holiday called Labor Day was first proposed in the early 1880s.

Peter J. McGuire, a vice president of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions – later named the American Federation of Labor – saw the International Workers Day, or May Day, parades celebrating Labor in Toronto and proposed a “general holiday for the laboring classes” in the spring of 1882 to the Central Labor Union in New York City. He recommended the event begin with a street parade as a public demonstration of organized labor’s solidarity and strength, with the march followed by a picnic, to which participating local unions could sell tickets as a fundraiser. Situated between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, McGuire thought the first Monday in September an ideal time for a holiday.

Incidentally, my memories of celebrating Labor Day harken back to when I was a McGuire as well, Casey being my married name. Labor Day was a remarkable and uncommon break from work for those in the household who worked. Ahem, “not I,” said the youngest child.

We packed up the trailer and camping gear, loaded the Ford F250 and began the long drive up to Burney Falls State Park. When we arrived hours later, my aunt and uncle were all set up. My father parked, unhitched the trailer, and unloaded our tents. My sister and I set to work, trained early in the art of pitching tents, choosing as remote a spot as we could in our two-spot campground.

Then the adults sat around the fire “visiting” while we biked and explored all our favorite places we saw, year after year. The short, paved switchback to the falls, the mile-long meander, the harrowing road down to the lake (on bike, sans helmets because that was not a law yet), the general store with ice cream, the rocks along the campground boundaries that we knew so well. It was the only regular vacation of my youth, and it was magical.

I knew about unions from my father’s less favorable stories of the impact union strikes had on his family, who needed the wages more than the strike. But before that time, the labor movement in the United States grew out of the need to protect the common interest of workers. For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. It led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired.

According to History.com, the early labor movement was based on the idea of a just society, the “labor theory of value and from the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship.”

Those were likewise the ideals of my family in regards to work, passed down to us as we saw them come home from work, spend the weekends laboring around the home property, and soak up the rest from their labors in that one real three-and-a-half-day vacation a year.

Union membership began to decline in the 1970s as imports and deregulation increased and nonunion competition grew. Nowadays, headlines highlight the efforts to unionize in companies like Starbucks, Walmart, Amazon, and ridesharing companies, stabilizing hours, creating job security, and increasing wages. Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers union, is back in the news, advocating for food aid through CalFresh.

Labor Day is still considered by marketers and those of us susceptible to their marketing as the “unofficial end of summer.” It marks the end of the U.S. culture’s nominal summer season, but the beginning of hope for us here in the Central Valley that the heat might soon subside. Schools open, vacations come to a close, and fall sports begin. The dust soon settles after almond harvest and pumpkins are added to the roadside stands.

Fall festivals run in earnest for the two months following Labor Day with the Turlock Melon Carnival on Sept. 18 and 19, Vintage at the Garden at the Hughson Arboretum and Gardens and Waterford Heritage Day on October 3, Great Valley Bookfest on October 10, Robert’s Ferry Harvest Market on October 17, and Hughson United Methodist Homecoming on October 24. After Halloween, the market tone shifts to Christmas and winter vibes, even as the warmth of summer risks persisting. The festivals offer at the sort of leisure Americans do best, celebrating, shopping and supporting the work of another as those industrious entrepreneurs set up shop, going from one town to another.

So, whether it be for you a day of rest, a day of celebration of workers, a kick-off of pumpkin spice season, Happy Labor Day.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on Sept. 1, 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.

Somehow, inexplicably, nearly nine months have passed, taking us farther away from those days.

Then one day, she came up to me and told me the end of the book “Charlotte’s Web” is so sad, and that when Charlotte died, she almost cried. I could hear, in her voice, the awe that she felt telling me this, that she was moved, on her own, to grief by something so beautiful and sad, and for all its fantastical quirks, something very true.

The next day, I read in a letter from E.B. White (May 1, 1951 to Carrie A. Wilson):

“If the vexatious world of people were the whole world, I would not enjoy it at all. But it is only a small, noisy part of the whole; and I find the natural world as engaging and as innocent as it ever was. When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what the spiders do or what the weather does. That this sustains me very well indeed, and I have no complaints”

It’s the end of August, the waning of summer. And we have plenty of spiders.

My friend in South Korea recently drove through this mad storm. It was a long saga, but at the risk of their lives, she, her daughter and friend made it safely off of the island of Geoje.

My older daughter imagined a story:

What if a child who never knew laughter found what she was searching for through death?

Flannery O’Connor hit on the same idea. In her short story, “The River,” a boy is searching for love and belongings, and in her typical ­­–very dark– Southern Gothic style, he finds it through an unexpected baptism.

Death sharpens our perspective when we experience an emergency. The trauma of a diagnosis. The fear of knowing that this emergency is serious in a way that none of the other emergencies have been. All of a sudden, the lesser things matter less. They’re put in the right perspective.

Then one more day later, I heard I listened to Russ Roberts interview Ben Sasse on EconTalk. Sasse said that while he wouldn’t wish for pancreatic cancer, he wouldn’t want to go back to not knowing what he knows.

I told my daughter something similar when she asked me on my birthday how it feels to be old. “Well, I wouldn’t want to go back to not having the wisdom that I have. I would rather have the wisdom than the energy.”

All these things are an invitation to me to sharpen my focus.

When the pettiness, the peccadillos, the frustrations, the mundane routines of life start to get to us, we need only turn around, walk a few steps, and look at the natural world. That might be the natural world of death or illness hoisted upon us, a medical emergency, a terrible weather event, or just a spider spinning a web in our windowsill, doing what spiders are meant to do.

However, we end up facing it, let’s remind ourselves to stop and to actually look at the thing for what it is in the bigger picture.

I think that so much of the grief we experience is enhanced by looking at it only from our own little standpoint. To the housekeeper trying to keep the house clean, it’s just one more cobweb. The loved one who grieves, she thinks of how she will never hear the voice of her friend again.

Let’s see it in the bigger picture.

Let’s see all our moments in the bigger picture. Let us live in the bigness of knowing that time has gone on before us and time will go on after us.

For those who are believers, that shortness may be a comfort.

“Life is short and full of misery. We’ll see them again in Heaven,” St. Zelie Martin wrote to her sister after the death of a child.

Without that view that life and the world go on beyond us, these crosses may feel insurmountable. We need to see a tomorrow that is bigger than our tomorrow that comes after tonight.

So today, look for the opportunity to see these little moments of nature, of creation doing what it was meant to do, doing what it has always done, tied up to the whole world, the whole universe. Take comfort in knowing that we are part of that. It has gone on before us. It will go on after us.

And when we have found meaning in our lives as to why we are here, and why we exist, then it can actually be a relief to know that we are so small. The world does not depend on me, does not depend on my social media comments; it does not depend on every little parenting decision I make. It does not depend on even what job I take right now. Few of us have that kind of power in this world, and we can take comfort in that. It can be a terrible thing to feel powerless, or it could help us to feel free. When we turn to the spider, to the weather, to the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on August 25, 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.

As the years passed, parish leadership changed, the parish diversified, drawing West Africans, Filipinos, Indians and more. As with many churches, ministries wax and wane, and the youth group that once drew hundreds of youth to its youth nights dwindled. The program draws around 30 to 50 young people and lacks volunteers. Some prefer the smaller group; others saw the potential for a new way forward to reach the hundreds of youth that are part of the parish.

Nathan Steingrebe, who worked as the youth minister in those days with Illo, with John and Francine English, approached Rev. Sam West with a new idea: bring in a NET Ministries Discipleship Team.

NET is an acronym for National Evangelization Team. NET Ministries was founded by Mark Berthum in 1980 in St. Paul, Minnesota. That first year, they offered 18 youth retreats throughout southern Minnesota. Young adults traveled in a van, giving these retreats over a three-week period in January. The following January, three teams of youth were sent to Winona, Minnesota, Fargo, North Dakota, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In 1981, these missions extended to a full-year commitment.

By 1988, it expanded internationally and now leads retreats in Australia, Canada, Ireland, and Uganda. The model of NET USA has remained largely the same: teams of 8-15 young adults, trained in ministry, travel the country to give retreats engaging the youth and talking about Jesus. While most teams traveled, the organization consistently utilized one “home team” that stayed in the St. Paul area, providing retreats locally and running a youth group out of the ministry center.

As the program evolved, this model was taken on the road, and in 2005, NET sent out the first of its Discipleship Teams to Faribault, Minnesota, where teams served for four years. Then in 2024, NET piloted the model again, sending out Discipleship Teams to Little Falls, Minn. and Brighton, Mich. “What we love about this new team approach is the opportunity not only to impact just one parish or one school but actually go out to the surrounding community. We can drive about 200 miles around there to go out and do NET retreats,” said Annie Denn, NET VP of Marketing and Communications.

“I think it’s a good fit because we have an active community; there are easily over 500 teenagers in our church, and it’s like having eight youth ministers, who will be fostering the same time of invitation that Christ extends to his apostle where he invited them into something, to a relationship,” Steingrebe said. “It’s an extension in the religious education department, in youth ministry, of eight individuals who will be reaching out not only to teenagers and middle school students but also young adults. It will create a deeper sense of community within the young adult community at St. Joseph’s. Also, staying with host families, it will have this ripple effect of blessings; hosting for two weeks at a time will bring a life to the church that can’t exist without it.”

On August 19, 116 young adults arrived in St. Paul, Minn. to begin their training. They’ll spend two weeks of it at a camp in Wisconsin to pray, talk about formation and the spiritual life and then four more weeks mastering the art of retreats, relational ministry and small group dynamics. Team members raise $7000 before they arrive, but it just scratches the surface of what it costs to

The organization partners with parishes or schools to make this possible. The cost covers health insurance, a small monthly stipend, transportation expenses, six weeks of training before teams even hit the road and more. In reality, it costs $400,000 to train, send, and support a 10-person Discipleship Team each year.

To make this program possible, NET asks the parish or school to help partner with NET by raising a portion of the funds. Parishes find host families to house the team members, usually for two weeks at a time, and are asked to raise $100,000 to offset the cost.

When Steingrebe and the Englishes approached West about bringing a NET Team to St. Joseph’s, the parish said yes, but they would have to raise the money.

And so they began.

After applying and qualifying for a parish team, the Englishes and Steingrebe began a planning commission to organize a fundraising dinner. They invited others to join the commission, bringing together a diverse group of volunteer contributors, including Hughson’s Tanya Valasquez. “She had a natural happiness charisma that helped,” Steingrebe said, who at times felt overwhelmed by the dynamics and work of putting on a huge dinner at the church.

They scheduled the hall, made announcements after Mass and sold tickets. Valasquez and Francine English arranged for youth volunteers to help at the dinner. John English and Steingrebe reached out to donors before the event. Erin Webster took care of décor. Over 240 tickets were sold; they were at maximum capacity. By the night of the dinner, they had sold $12,000 in tickets and received $35,000 in additional donations. Jazmin Rocha-Palmino joined the team arranging baskets for the raffle. “It was a huge blessing because of our lack of experience, we didn’t realize when people come, how much they want to give,” Steingrebe said.

At the dinner, guests arrived at the O’Hare Hall, beautifully decorated, warm and inviting, and were welcomed to a cocktail hour and line dancing led by Francine English. West led the opening prayer after some banter on stage with Steingrebe, whose infectious energy added to the joyful spirit that permeated the entire evening.

After a buffet served by The Holy Smoker from Brentwood, Calif., Western Regional Director for NET Ministries Michael Donaldson spoke, giving the history and stats of NET in the area and beyond. The organization has been a staple in the Stockton Diocese since 1987 and, in that time, led 409 retreats for 27,172 youth. There are 18 NET alumni from St. Joseph’s alone, and at least 62 from the larger area.

After Donaldson’s presentation, Valasquez, Michael Webster and Steingrebe spoke about their faith journey, their experience on NET retreats, serving as NET missionaries, and hosting NET missionaries in their homes. Steingrebe closed by asking guests to consider how much they could give.

When it came time to announce the raffle winners, Steingrebe and West returned to the stage, livening up the crowd. Steingrebe held onto one choice prize, a catered dinner for 8 with West in a private home, but when the time came to announce the winner of that raffle prize, the winner was no longer present. The crowd shouted “live auction!” and so they did.

To Steingrebe’s shock, the numbers went higher and higher, selling for $5000. “It created this huge commotion of joy and shock,” he said. Everyone cheered. West led a final prayer, and the line dancing recommenced, as guests stayed, socialized, and spread the joy that characterized the evening.

The numbers are still being tallied up, but Steingrebe estimates they may be 75% of the way there. St. Joseph’s is still accepting donations to help. To contribute, contact the parish office at (209) 551-4973.

The team that comes will provide upwards of 50 retreats for other Catholic Churches or schools during their eight-month stay in Modesto. As of this writing, there are still retreat openings for the team, arriving in mid to late September. To schedule, visit NETUSA.org or call 651-450-6833.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on Sept. 1, 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.

Mentoring plays an important role in life.

Our mentors may come in the form of grandparents, aunts or uncles, bosses or HR directors. They might be neighbors who know more about irrigation than we do. Or they might be fellow parents, just one developmental stage ahead of us, with some insight of how it is possible to come out on the other side of raising toddlers or teenagers with a relationship intact.

Mentors help us see a road ahead that we have not yet traveled. They give us courage to face that which is unknown to us, because it is no longer unknown to them, and the good ones probably also help us see that it’s okay, it really is okay that this is a mess right now. It is all part of the process.

Move Slow & Make Things: Pursuing the Delightfully Fulfilling Creative Life by Marian Parsons comes out this September. Marian Parsons is my mentor. She does not know me, although we exchanged a couple email’s regarding upholstery and an antique ironstone chamber pot. But any friend who has spoken with me about anything remotely personal has probably heard me say her name or mention her blog.

I had marriage mentors, but I did not have homemaking mentors, until Marian.

I met her through the Miss Mustard Seed blog, where she painted with her milk paint line, she sewed slipcovers for upholstered chairs, she ran a monetized website. None of this I did, not have I done, nor do I plan to do.

It was not in what she did, which was fun to read and watch as the years passed by. It was in the message she gave. When Parsons started her business, she and her husband had two young children, no spending money, and student debt. Her entrepreneurship came out of necessity, and as she learned over the years and shares in this new book, so did her creativity.

She needed to be creative, for the creative-types, it is a bit like breathing. And according to Parsons, because we are created beings, we all actually have this need.

So after nearly two decades in the business of being an influencer before it was called being an influencer, Parsons has written this book. It feels like the wisdom of the years that I have read from her boiled down and packaged in a beautiful hardbound copy, sprinkled with lovely photos of her art supplies, in her favorite blue, green and white pallet.

We need voices like this in the world of creativity, on and offline.

We need to hear the importance of slowing down, savoring, resting, growing in curiosity, perspective and growth. We need the encouragement to try new things, to make the necessary space to do that, to make a record, to connect with others, and to balance making a living with living a life. All this she talks about.

Without mentorship, we can fall prey to the voices of the world that say it everything needs to be perfect, it all needs to be a hustle, it needs to be photograph-ready, that is useless to be small, personal, and good enough. But Parsons reminds us that small is still beautiful, when you measure the small impacts we make each day through each connection, “At the end of the day, you start to see how large a life that actually is. It is an enviably big creative life,” Parson writes.

And all the joy and sorrow we take with us on the road as we live this life, the new experiences and knowledge we add to it become part of the wellspring whenever we are creative.

“An artist must have experiences to draw from. Your experiences are a well that is full of everything you’ve done, witness, and felt. It’s all the places you visited and lived, the people you’ve met and known, the books. You’ve read, the movies you’ve watched, and the music you’ve listened to, the classes you’ve taken, the food you’ve tasted, and everything you’ve done. It’s all the joy, hurt, love, and sorrow stored in your soul, a cache that’s been added to since the day you were born. Whether you know it or not, that store is what you draw from when you create.”

It’s the well of wisdom, of creativity and mentorship.

I am amazed when I look back at the gift this mentor has been to me over my 17 years of marriage. When I set out to write a book review, I had no idea it would be a tribute. With this book, I am grateful that perhaps it might be possible for others to receive the good I gained from her.

And the good is there for others to give as well. Mentoring via one’s profession is one way. Mentoring through the schools is another. Give it a try. You have no idea the impact you might have.

Move Slow & Make Things: Pursuing the Delightfully Fulfilling Creative Life comes out Sept. 1 at all the major booksellers. I recommend Bookshop or a physical local book shop as way to support local retailers.

And if you’re in or near Hughson, Calif., to become a real-life mentor to a local kid nearby, email Suzie Whitfield at swhitfield@hughsonschools.org.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on August 18, 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.

In this day and age, generally speaking, publishers look for a strong social media, newsletter/email list, or Substack following. That communicates to the publisher that the author has a steady audience, and therefore, a network of people to whom and through whom the book could be sold. Authors present, in their query, pitching the book to the publisher, how they plan to connect and market to that network in order to increase book sales. There are ways publishers help with the distribution and marketing, but in that sphere, the bigness of the company begins to take command.

Without regular newspaper and magazine publications printing critical reviews, most of the book recommendations out there are written by friends, people in the network, or those who suspected this would be a good book based on its author or contents, and requested a review copy. A good following can lead to good reviews which leads to more sales.

It can be disheartening as the online world remains saturated with writers of all stripes; the slices of pie grow smaller and smaller, it is harder and harder for people to make it good while keeping it meaningful.

Publishers analyze the cost and reward of taking on a new author. They provide an “advance” of money to be earned against later royalties, once-upon-a-time meant to support the writer while he or she writes the book. As the book sells, it earns royalties, a little piece of profit for the author. Earning against royalties means that until the advance amount is earned, the author will see no additional profit. If it never earns that advance, the publisher eats the loss. The author may have a hard time getting published again unless the work specifically captures the attention of an acquisition editor.

It is the voice of the acquisitions editor that lobbies for a particular work to be published.

When I was introduced to the acquisitions editor at Our Sunday Visitor, the books I pitched appealed to her and would contribute to the growing library of books published by Our Sunday Visitor that spiritually and emotionally support women, particularly mothers, at all stages of parenting. We worked together to give shape to the books in question. Journey in Love and Peace in Pregnancy were the products of that collaboration.

It is very much a collaborative process. And it is in that collaboration that we can see beyond the numbers- those disheartening numbers (!) that measure us only with big units, missing the nuances of the work we small folk can do.

So, you can imagine, when I sat down with Erik Anderson, Senior Acquisitions Editor at University of Minnesota Press, to talk about the process of publishing the new translation of Olav Audunssøn, how encouraging it was to hear about the collaborative process, the trusting relationship between editor and translator, the desire to publish good literature, and a business mission to look beyond passing trends to things of lasting value.

The beginning of a beautiful relationship

University of Minnesota Press had already worked with Tiina Nunnally on a dozen books beginning around 2012 with translating a series of Norwegian crime novels.

As an editor creates relationships with authors and translators, the things that fascinate them find the editor and the things that fascinate the editor find them, Anderson explained. “I was aware of her work and interest. There were conversations along the way; we would throw around ideas, talk about things she always wanted to translate.”

Nunnally, who translated Undset’s most famous work, Kristin Lavransdatter (2000), told Anderson she had an unpublished translation of the first novel of the Nobel Prize-winner Sigrid Undset, Marta Oulie, never before translated into English. In 2014, University of Minnesota Press published her translation.

When it came to Olav Audunssøn, “Having translated her other big medieval work, it loomed as something Tiina had wanted to do,” Anderson said. Nunnally approached him with the idea of translating Olav, and said this seemed the right window to do it. “Translators are often juggling so many works; where and how do you fit things in?” The time became right for Tiina to take on Undset’s other big work. “We were thrilled,” Anderson said. “It began relationally. We leapt at it together in that.”

Writing for so many future generations

“But with publishing working the way it does, how does University of Minnesota Press weigh the investment of a project like this?” I asked.

“As a publisher, we’re a nonprofit, mission-based pub that just turned 100 years old last year. We’ve always been, as a press, dedicated and devoted to scholarship and intellectual pursuit. Meeting readers, it was clear to us that this was so due for a new translation,” Anderson said.

The original translations of Kristin and Olav were intentionally translated in an archaic style, perhaps to give it that old-world feel for English-speaking audiences, but Undset’s originally Norwegian was far from that. According to Nunnally, Undset’s writing is direct, crisp, clear and concise, poetic but powerfully-so in its elegant simplicity. This was lost, sometimes violently so, in Kristin. While the Olav translation did not muddy the language nearly as much, the “crystal clarity” was lacking. It is the art of the translator to bring that about, by finding the space in which the voice of the original can meet the modern ear.

“As an editor, you’re doing this remarkable double step through time; you’re trying to bring forward Undset’s voice and writing from the 20s, but Undset is also doing the work of painting 13th-century Norway. You bring it all to a reader today and the decades going forward.”

Anderson said. “We often think a book of new translation meets a reader a couple years after it’s published. But how long, for those original Kristin and Marta, were those the translations of record? For over half a century. You’re writing for so many future generations.”

He said, as a press, University of Minnesota Press likes to publish big things. “We enjoy big projects that feel monumental, that feel important. The value was multifaceted and primarily had to do with the feeling that this if her masterwork.”

“A book of this magnitude, translators should have a version that reflects Undset’s genius as cleanly as possible to her original intent and voice, and who better to do it than Tiina? And when the time was right, it wasn’t a question of where the value is. We trust our people. I, as an editor, I follow the instincts and the aspirations of the gut of the writers that I work with,” he said. “It was a no-brainer.”

There were other elements, of course. As a publisher, University of Minnesota Press looks to preserve and promote works of Scandinavia. It was also a matter of “building out the knowledge and putting more in the world for those who study Scandinavian literature of this time, Scandinavian literature in translation. All the reasons people come to a writer like Undset, are wide and varied. It builds into a broader area of publishing.”

When I told him our library refused to stock more works by Sigrid Undset through the ZIP books program, and that I was told university students read Undset, not patrons of the public library, he was surprised.

“It’s always amazing at the variety of directions from which I see people become fascinated by Undset,” Anderson said.

They may be medievalists, fans of think this ought to be the next “Game of Thrones,” readers who read her for the spiritual/Catholic aspects of the writing, or people who just love good writing. “What’s always captivated me about Undset, I can’t get enough of Undset’s ability to write with such emotional and psychological depth and spiritual depth; it transcends any question of the what and where and why. Any writer that plumbs such profound character depth at such length and a lifetime length, it’s a profound thing to experience, regardless of your background,” he said.

Undset writes so rawly for that for people who love a tremendously painted world,” Anderson described it as “embodied.”

He told me of a reader who picked up Undset during the days of the pandemic. “I was living in a time that made me feel disconnected from my body; reading Sigrid Undset put me back,” the reader told him. For Anderson, “I’ve barely seen mountains in my life; I’m obsessed with mountains just from reading, because of the way she paints those worlds.”

The appreciation for Undset is also generational. “I know other authors who came to their love for her by their parents pressing the book in their hand.” One mother advised another, give her the book when she was 15; and tell her to read this every ten years because it will tell you something different as a woman. “She has now read it six times, and her mother wasn’t wrong.”

There is not just one audience for a great author, including a great author like Sigrid Undset. We have a Western literary canon of classic literature that often lacks the presence of female writers. Is it because they are female?

Is it because of language barriers, that Undset’s work has just not made it into her rightful place in the canon?

“That fascination comes from every direction, not just one vantage point in the world, generational, geographic,” Anderson said. “It’s not just the beauty but the profound connection that she makes to her characters.” A good translations brings this living within the “the space within the gift of a writer, the directness, crystal clarity of her word choice, the psychological depth, internal turmoil, what it means to live authentically, in a world that often makes that hard – and her characters are so often battling in that space – a good translation refines that transparency through the high wire act that Undset does.”

“We’re well beyond trends here. These sagas have never gone out of print.”

If you haven’t read Sigrid Undset yet, give her a try. It will be a long read, but a beautiful one. The personalities in her works are strong, and some of them ma drive you crazy, but it’s an entire cast of characters that live within these works, so like life, you’re likely to find one with whom you can relate.

You may read it within a few weeks; or it may take a year. Do not let the size intimidate you; just start small, one chapter at a time, and let the work unfold before you.

When discussing Undset’s work, we have her Medieval works and modern works, set in the time in which she lived.

You can find Marta Oulie (modern) and Olav Audunssøn for sale at the University of Minnesota Press (as well as other major booksellers). The Nunnally translation of Kristin Lavransdatter and, Undset’s modern and heartbreaking novel, Jenny is published by Penguin Books. (Please note: Jenny is a modern and heartbreaking novel, and this gripping translation includes some violence).

For Undset’s other modern novels, I recommend the editions (still in their original English translation) published by Cluny Media.

I received a review copy of the four-volume book, Olav Audussøn from the University of Minnesota Press (review posted here). I received no other compensation for this review. It’s just that good.

One is the fine art scene. It began with a special fashion exhibit at the De Young Museum about two years ago. Three times makes tradition, and so now, with a new exhibit opening, I returned for my fourth visit to the special exhibits of fine arts museums of San Francisco.

“Treasures of the Pharaohs” opened on August 1 at the De Young Museum. The exhibit brings together 130 works spanning 3,000 years of history, including objects from the Golden City, a newly unearthed workers’ community near Luxor.

My daughter has caught Egyptomania, not unlike Greeks, Romans, and finally, the British of the 1920s when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922.

I knew going into the exhibit that this was special, but as we moved from room to room, seeing towering stone statues to gilded masks to intricate gold jewelry, inside and outside coffin covers, elaborate designs, detailed sculpture molds less than an inch tall, it was clear that this was an opportunity of a lifetime. Beside a stone sarcophagus, I nearly wept.

A man beside me said to his wife, “We didn’t see this when we were there, did we?” Even those who tour the Valley of the Kings were seeing some of these artifacts for the first time.

It drew not only from the Golden City, but the tombs of Tanis, the only intact royal pharaonic burials ever uncovered, with findings to rival the nearly intact tomb of King Tutankhamun.

On everything, there was writing. These were a people of the written word. How remarkable. How we must take our own words for granted. Our fleeting they feel when recorded only digitally.

Following the exhibit, we spent an hour just off the Pacific Ocean, on the sands along Ocean Street, having a picnic of Trader Joe’s prepared food. I took her next to the Sutro Baths, originally designed by Adolph Sutro. These ruins were once an ocean pool aquarium among the rocks north of the Cliff House, expanded into a massive public bathhouse that covered three.

Sutro’s dream for the Baths was to provide a healthy, recreational and inexpensive swimming facility for thousands of San Franciscans. According to the National Parks Service, a classic Greek portal opened to a massive glass enclosure containing seven swimming pools at various temperatures. There were slides, trapezes, springboards and a high dive. The power of the Pacific Ocean during high tide could fill the 1.7 million gallons of water required for all the pools in just one hour. The Baths could accommodate 10,000 people at one time and offered 20,000 bathing suits and 40,000 towels for rent.

But the baths were not commercially successful over the long-term, and after closing, some proposed redevelopment, and finally, a 1996 fire that destroyed what was left; all we have now are a couple of rough trails as part of Land’s End Lookout and concrete ruins tagged here and there with graffiti, but open to the public for urban exploring as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

From there, with birthdays on our minds, we visited Susie Cakes, a little jaunt away, taking us past the magnificent Palace of Fine Arts, and into a bustling shopping district with Gap, Books Inc., Benefit Make-up, Madewell, and a vintage shop I couldn’t linger long enough to visit. Susie Cakes first opened in 2006 and is named after the founder’s grandmother. Its tagline is “Simple. Timeless. Delicious.” I will testify to that. With a mint green and bubblegum pink, vintage-look to the place, iced cakes and cupcakes, large-scale but crispy thin cookies, and generous slices, Susie Cakes is a perfect once-in-a-while treat. The flavors are excellent and true to their name; the cake is rich and substantial. Each cake slice would serve two people well, but my daughter planned ahead to purchase her own, and she joyfully ate it after lunch, after dinner, and very nearly after breakfast the next day.

So concluded our San Francisco adventure. I’m shoring up in my mind the treasures of the city to the treasures of the pharaohs to the treasures of my heart: climbing through ruins, getting nervous as the birds began to stalk us, laughing over how long a slice of cake can last if it’s big enough, and planning ahead for the next rendition of these outings – in short, time spent together. The time which is fleeting. Time from which we will not have the stone monuments to remember. Time marked with a language between just us two, that will be one day lost when the last of us passes away. I’m storing up the treasures of these times, and the memories, and the river of joy that runs through it.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on August 11, 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.

Sophia stops me to let me know someone from the Friends of the Library wants to get a hold of me. We wrangle a little as we’re apt to do as I say she can give them my personal contact info, but she would rather follow the rules. It is a good exchange and one we have regularly, not so much about the contact info as our little differences. We laugh and, I hope, genuinely enjoy the moments that come when one regularly sees the same people from day to day.

My daughter likes to visit the library to visit Sophia. They talk about books they have read, and Sophia listens, smiling, offering her ideas and enthusiastically taking note of my daughter’s recommendations.

Before Sophia, it was Heather. Heather and I discussed old movies, because she watched them with her father. Our bigger connection came through my son, Peter. My older children sat around the carpet to read; I sat down exhausted from the heartache of life, and Heather sat with Peter, doing the crafts with him, watching him progress through his toddler years. Those were defining moments of that time period for me, as those conversations with Sophia will be for my daughter.

Books up a Mountain: A Packhorse Librarian Story arrived in the mail last week, a bit ahead of its publication date for people like me to review the work. I read picture books first with my children, because their reactions are more telling than mine.

We lingered on the pages of Books up a Mountain written by Caroline Starr Rose and illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard. The illustrations were simple enough: watercolor in earthy tones conveying the naturalness of a landscape so wild it can only be crossed by horse or mule. We see the walls lined with faded newspapers, the period grain sack clothing of the Great Depression, the changing of the seasons. I noticed as we read through this story for the first time how unchanging is the face expression of the unnamed Book Woman of the story. How constant it is, like her effort carrying out the task given to her by the Works Progress Administration, to traverse these mountains to bring books to those remote dwellers far away from the town library.

The Book Woman returns to a different kind of sewing circle where she connects with others like her to mend the books that will go out again.

It is in the final pages of the book where we see her and her steady gaze, looking into the eyes of a man, steadily gazing back. My six-year-old daughter paused and lingered with her eyes, as I also found myself doing.

That gaze, rendered so absorbingly, reminded me of something.

The Book Woman is seeing the whole person. The reader learns through the story and description of this librarian’s work that the Book Woman cares for the whole person. She does more than deliver books. She sets a spell, reading aloud, making book recommendations, sharing the news of neighbors so remote a season will pass before they see each other again.

This is my experience of these libraries, postage stamp in size compared to other libraries nearby, small enough to know the patrons by name and manner. It must be in those slower, though still colorful days of San Francisco that a young Jack London walked into the library to ask for a book recommendation, and Ina Coolbrith offered him one. He came again and again, getting his education from her book recommendations, later becoming one of America’s greatest writers.

It may be the personal nature of the book that we consume with our eyes, digest with our imagination and then share in our discussions later on. Or it is in the small, open-to-anyone spaces with a remarkable number of ways to serve them that makes it so easy to enter and read, or enter and chat, to enter and be seen.

The algorithm can only average its recommendations, putting forward what has drawn the most attention from others. Its book recommendations pale in comparison to the sparkling eyes of a library assistant who has read every book in the series, or the librarian who remembers it best as the last movie she saw with his father, the one he always fell asleep to but insisted he loved.

In More Than Words: Writing in an Age of AI, Jack Warner proposes a sense of community can help us to develop our taste in books, not taste in the sense that “everyone should like this” but rather, “these are the types of books I enjoy, want more of, and often.”

Books up a Mountain: A Packhorse Librarian Story uses that musical, straightforward language one comes to expect from Waxwing Books, which is, undoubtedly, the muster these books must pass to be published by this imprint. It must read aloud well. Even the historical facts at the back of the book were engaging and held us longer, themselves worthy of being read aloud.

I come back to that two-page spread, her eyes meeting his from across the book, across the mountain. As embodied persons, we think and feel with intuition, reading the person before our brains even have time to process what we are perceiving. And then our brains process, adding to the depth and richness of our understanding of one another. When we see one another, we see more than the patterns and mathematical probabilities processed by AI; we see bits and pieces of the soul, as we collect the bits and pieces over time with the people we encounter.

The Appalachia of the Great Depression is remote from my world, but this small town library is not, and in the pages of this, the newest of Waxwing Books and officially coming out August 4, I saw bits of our own life, right there on the page.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on August 4, 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.

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.