1. I finished Roberta Brainard Garner's book, Pay the Piper: Growing Up in North Idaho today. I very much enjoyed how Roberta wrote her book in a series of short chapters. Some focused on family history, others on Roberta's varied experiences in the Silver Valley and beyond, and others on episodes in her family's life. While Roberta writes plenty about her father, many of the books episodes are focused on her mother, on Dorothy Brainard's complicated, free wheeling, law breaking, chaotic, indulgent, and energetic life. Dorothy Brainard is the book's central character, whether Roberta is writing about things Dorothy did or sorting out the influence and impact of her mother on her life. Throughout the book, Roberta reflects on her own life's many paths. I'm tempted to describe these many admirable paths, but I don't want to spoil the book should you read it. Suffice it to say that Roberta married a good man (Bruce) and together they raised two brilliant children, confronted and overcame difficulties in their life, but also enjoyed many good things as result of their hard work and willingness to face certain problems head on. Throughout the story of her adult life, Roberta keeps us in contact with Dorothy Brainard and we experience both mother and daughter come to their own reckonings regarding Dorothy's complex life.
2. I've been trying and trying to figure out how to write what I'm about to say, but, as of now, I don't have the right words. I'll just say that reading Pay the Piper was difficult for me, not because Roberta Brainard Garner made it difficult, but because when I read about the Kellogg I grew up in, it haunts me. I recognize that I had a lot of great times growing up, especially at the YMCA, playing baseball and basketball throughout my youth. I had, and still have, great Kellogg friends. I grew up in a solid and loving family. I loved the many activities I was involved in in addition to sports, especially music, a little bit of theater, and Boy Scouts and DeMolay. I enjoyed working at Stein's and, despite the terrible working conditions, I had a great time working at the Zinc Plant. But, despite all this, there are ghosts from those days that haunt me. I feel it. I can't really explain it. Roberta's book, to her credit, awakened them again.
3. I was under the impression that when he goes outside, Copper stays in the back yard. This morning, around 4:00, however, I heard two cats scream at each other between our house and next door neighbor Jane's house -- not in the back yard. I went outside to investigate and discovered that one of the cats was Copper. He came toward me and leaped through an opening in the upper part of the cast iron gate, the gate that keeps dogs confined in the back yard, but not the graceful leaping Copper. I'm not sure who the other cat was. I couldn't see in the early morning darkness. Copper came in the house, hungry, but no worse for wear, and now I am disabused of my fantasy that Copper stays put in the back yard when outside.
I don't know about Luna.
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